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The Delicious Irony of Funding Your Own Executioner

Recollections of a deadbeat

I realized something today that made me laugh in that dark, slightly unhinged way you laugh when the joke’s on you.

A friend mentioned some people we know were protesting oil companies. Standard stuff. Angry signs, righteous fury, the whole performance.

Then we all went home and turned on our lights.

We’re literally paying the same people we’re screaming at.

The Beautiful Absurdity of Modern Resistance

It’s not just energy. We fight the cancer-causing radiation of 5G while scrolling on our smartphones. We protest Big Oil while filling our tanks. We rage against the machine while the machine auto-drafts our bank accounts every month.

But energy hits different.

Your smartphone? That’s optional, technically. Your power bill? That’s a non-negotiable charge. You have no other option unless you make one yourself.

And here’s where it gets interesting: $21.1 billion in customer utility debt across America, while in Canada, utility debt has skyrocketed—BC Hydro alone saw arrears jump over 50% in recent years. When you can’t pay, you know what happens? You take out payday loans at 400% interest rates to keep the lights on.

The system doesn’t just trap you. It profits from your desperation.

We’re Fighting the Wrong Battles

As a tribal person, I see this differently than most people might.

We gather our strength from community, from unity, from being together. That’s not some romantic notion—that’s survival strategy that worked for thousands of years.

But look at us now.

We’re fighting each other about drugs, about who’s more traditional, about a hundred different things that keep us separated. Meanwhile, 14% of Native households lack access to electricity—ten times the national average. Some communities have 40% of people living without power, 90% below the poverty line, 80% unemployment.

This is happening inside the United States.

Think about that aggressive dog your neighbor hates, the one they want gone. What they don’t see is that mean dog keeps wolves, bears, and coyotes away from your people. If you brought your young to that animal, showed it you’re the same pack, it wouldn’t be aggressive to anything except the stranger in the van with free candy.

We’re so busy arguing about the dog that we don’t notice the actual predator.

The System Is Designed to Replace You

Here’s the part that should make you laugh and cry at the same time.

Going off-grid might devastate you individually. Disconnection fees, reconnection bribes, credit destruction, frozen pipes, spoiled food. Research shows if you’re disconnected once, you enter a cycle of being disconnected over and over. Your utility debt follows you, prevents you from moving, traps you in poor-quality housing.

But to them? You’re just one less bill to collect.

They move on without blinking. Ten more desperate people sign up while you freeze in the dark.

Native American households spend 45% more of their income on energy bills than white households. This isn’t just economic exploitation. It’s racial wealth extraction disguised as utility billing.

What Breaking Free Actually Means

White men went from horses to self-flying helicopters in less than 100 years. All of us aided them by falling victim to a trap of monetary value.

If we stopped warring amongst ourselves, we’d triple their progress easily.

Tribal lands contain 6.5% of total U.S. utility-scale renewable energy potential. The solution exists—renewable energy controlled by tribal communities. But structural barriers imposed by the federal government make self-determination an uphill battle.

We can fix a pothole that pisses us off. We can come together and build our children a park. We can know what all the kids are doing if we talked like a tribe used to.

We just don’t quite know all the options yet.

But we’re learning. And when tribal people choose to be the best at something, we always have been.

The stranger in the van is still out there. The question is whether we’ll keep fighting each other about the dog, or finally turn around and see who’s really trying to take our children.