‘A roof over our people’s heads’: the Indigenous US tribe building hempcrete homes

Minnesota’s Lower Sioux Indian Community is pioneering green building with its fully integrated hempcrete facility – a first in the country

When Earl Pendleton first heard about building houses out of hemp more than a decade ago, it seemed like a far-fetched idea.

To start, it was still illegal to grow hemp – the non-psychoactive strain of Cannabis sativa – in the US. Importing it from overseas was prohibitively expensive. But Pendleton, a member of the Lower Sioux Indian Community, was intrigued by early research that showed hemp could be transformed into non-toxic construction materials that allow for faster build times and result in low-carbon, energy-efficient houses.