FORT BERTHOLD INDIAN RESERVATION - Change is blowing in Indian Country, going around and around and around.

Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, home of the Three Affiliated Tribes, went on line with its first of hopefully dozens of wind turbines last week.

It's a small start to go around to an old promise made and broken back in the '40s.

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara were promised free electricity in exchange for giving up 25 percent of all the land needed for the permanent flood of Garrison Dam, a hydropower project.

Chairman Tex Hall said the promise of free power was made in 1948 negotiations and taken back by Congress in 1949.

The turbine in the hills above Four Bears village is the beginning of making it good, anyway, even if they have to do it themselves.

This first turbine is small in stature and output, by turbine standards.

It generates 66 kilowatts, compared to the standard 1.5 megawatts. Still, it makes enough electricity to light up 45 homes, or about one-third of the 4 Bears Casino.

McKenzie Electric Power Cooperative is buying the wind electricity for 2.5 cents a kilowatt, plugging it into a nearby transformer, and selling electricity back for 6.5 cents a kilowatt.

Terry Fredericks, of Twin Buttes, heads up the reservation's wind development project.

He said the tribes' goal is to offset the entire reservation's electrical consumption with wind energy.

The homes, businesses and ranches on the reservation require between eight and 10 megawatts of electricity.

Since wind energy sells for one-third of what electricity costs, the reservation would have to develop three times more wind megawatts than it consumes to get a full financial offset.

Fredericks said the wind energy revenue from McKenzie Electric can be used for the good of the tribal members.

For now, it amounts to "a few thousands, nothing big, but it's a start," he said.

Two wind studies will determine where on the reservation is the best site or sites to develop 30 megawatts of wind energy.

Fredericks said the studies are zeroing in near Parshall and Twin Buttes, based on known wind data.

He said the important part of the first turbine was developing the necessary relationships with power purchasers, consultants and suppliers Distributed Generation of Colorado and Integrity Wind, as well as the Inter-Tribal Council on Utility Policy.

Hall said Fredericks cut through many layers of red tape to finally get the turbine up and running.

"We wanted to demonstrate as a nation that we can get electricity from the wind," Hall said. "Now we can move on to the next phase."

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@;westriv.com.)