Jasmine Lamb: A window into energy justice on Wabanaki lands

For Jasmine Lamb, energy justice is about ensuring that marginalized communities have equitable access to the benefits of energy production and a say in the decision making processes about how their energy is produced. The Ph.D. student in the Ecology and Environmental Sciences Program and member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point works to identify barriers and opportunities for renewable energy and energy efficiency adoption. Through her work, she is helping to lead the charge for community actions advancing renewable energy and energy efficiency adoption in communities across Maine, including the five sovereign Wabanaki tribal governments. 

Lamb’s journey to becoming a researcher and energy justice advocate for Maine’s Wabanaki Nations took a few twists and turns before she finally landed in her Ph.D. program. When Lamb started as an undergraduate student at UMaine, she focused her efforts on studying communication sciences and disorders with the goal of providing culturally-appropriate speech and language services to Wabanaki youth. She also minored in Native American studies.  

Even though she enjoyed her speech pathology coursework, Lamb always had another passion in the back of her mind: fighting for solutions to climate change. Lamb said when she was a kid, she was a “climate change nerd,” and was active in her elementary school’s “Green Team,” which took creative — often, perhaps, ambitious — approaches to addressing the issue of climate change in her community.

“We had all sorts of crazy projects that we wanted to do that we obviously never found funding for because we were children,” she said with a laugh. “Like, we wanted to put a garden on the roof of the school. That never happened.”

It was her latent passion that, as an undergraduate, drew her to classes like Native Americans and Climate Change taught by Darren Ranco, professor of anthropology, chair of Native American Programs and faculty fellow at the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions. Lamb said that course “planted a seed” that she needed to do something to address the environmental injustices faced by Indigenous communities.

 

 

That seed began to sprout when as a junior, Lamb came across a listing for an undergraduate research assistantship with Sharon Klein, associate professor in the School of Economics. The position was for a project led by Penobscot Nation citizen Shantel Neptune to weatherize homes with window inserts made in collaboration with the nonprofit organization WindowDressers. The research assistant would help build these window inserts, which are removable frames wrapped on each side with tightly-sealed, clear film that creates an insulating airspace to prevent heat loss in the winter, and finished around the edges with a compressible foam gasket that provides a tight seal while allowing the inserts to slide in and out of place for seasonal changes. The position also involved surveying tribal citizens about their opinions and preferences about alternative energy. 

“I was working at Walgreens at the time as a cashier and emailed Dr. Klein saying, ‘I am interested, but I do not think I would have enough time to do both jobs,’” Lamb said. 

After attending the job interview and learning more about the opportunity, she immediately gave her two weeks’ notice at Walgreens.

Klein said that she was instantly drawn to Lamb’s enthusiasm and lived experience. When she started working with Lamb, she knew she had made the right call. 

“She is one of those people who sees what needs to be done, does it right away and does it exceptionally the first time,” Klein said. “She sees things before you do and she takes care of them. I watched her interest in energy, energy justice and her own people grow and the connections she made between the new work and her experiences as an Indigenous woman.”

Lamb spent a lot of her junior and senior years traveling to the homes of Penobscot Nation citizens, assisting Klein and Neptune in measuring windows, entering data and surveying tribal citizens about their experiences with energy and the change they hoped to see in their communities. 

Lamb also conducted a thorough literature review of community energy and energy justice in Indigenous communities, and used that to design a related project that expanded upon the work of her research assistantship. She focused on the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point, conducting surveys and interviews with tribal members about their experiences with energy and climate injustice, the energy-related problems experienced in their homes, and their preferences and opinions on alternative energy options for both individuals and the tribe.

Over the course of the project, Lamb fell in love with how community energy justice empowers citizens to take action to address the problems that impact them.

“I learned more about energy, and I realized that it is connected to every part of our lives,” Lamb said.

After graduating, she continued to pursue a master’s degree in communication sciences and disorders, thinking pursuing speech pathology as a career was a practical choice due to the high demand and relatively high pay. Still, she kept working with Klein as a service provider assistant for the Maine’s Community Resilience Partnership, where she assisted with enrolling four of the five Wabanaki Tribal Nations into the program, including the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point. After enrolling her own tribe, Lamb established the Sipayik Resilience Committee in 2022 to establish a structure for tribal members to work on actions that would result in increased access to renewable energy and energy efficiency technology, and increase the tribes’ climate change resilience through citizen science. She helped facilitate a community resilience meeting, where tribal members prioritized actions from a list of 72 actionable items regarding resilience provided by the state.

“Electric bills in Pleasant Point are incredibly high; lowered electric bills were the most pressing need in the community. How can we use this information to inform action to address these needs?” Lamb said. “The top priorities were increasing access to weatherization, renewable energy and heat pumps. Those three priorities have basically ruled my life ever since.”

The more time and passion she devoted to the project, the clearer it became to Lamb that she needed to make a big change. 

After a year, Lamb left her masters program and enrolled in her Ph.D. program in the Ecology and Environmental Sciences Program with Klein as her advisor. Klein was thrilled to have her back on board.

“She also has a passion for justice for Wabanaki people that I have seen grow throughout the years we have been working together. She brings that passion into her research, which helps keep her motivated during particularly difficult or tedious tasks. She is very committed to preserving data sovereignty for Indigenous people. She is also incredibly brave, taking on projects, exploring ideas and speaking out when it is needed, when others might feel too nervous or unsure. All of these qualities make her a strong community-engaged social scientist and community leader,” Klein said.

Lamb just completed the first year of her Ph.D. program, and is currently working on a grant from the U.S. Environmental Project Agency’s (EPA) Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program to advance sustainable energy adoption in low-income communities. Her dissertation research focuses on how the tribal citizen committee at the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point can build their capacity to advance energy and climate justice.

As if that weren’t enough, she has a dual role as a researcher and representative on the Wabanaki Sustainable Energy Team, where representatives from each Tribal government collaborate on sustainable energy projects. Lamb also continues to work with the Sipayik Resilience Committee with co-director Genevieve Doughty, and many other tribal citizens who are dedicated to making a difference within the community. She is especially proud of a program they have implemented for free energy audits for tribal members, with funding in place to implement weatherization actions.

In 2023, Lamb was awarded a Mitchell Center Sustainability Award for outstanding contribution of a student to sustainability research. She was also honored at the 57th Annual Passamaquoddy Days, and was most recently named a 2024 Tom’s of Maine incubator member for her work with the Sipayik Resilience Committee.

Lamb said that now, going into the second year of her Ph.D. program, she often thinks about the little kid that tried to get a garden on the roof of her elementary school.

“It’s funny to see that come full circle and now I’m looking for grants for similar kinds of things,” Lamb said. “Energy is a weird niche that I never thought of before. It would be really cool for students from multiple different disciplines, especially Wabanaki students, to know that they can engage in community energy or energy in general as a career path.” 

Contact: Ruth Hallsworth, hallsworth@maine.edu