Like the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation where I was born, the reservation I live on, Lake Traverse, straddles the North and South Dakota border. Thanks to climate change, we’ve been bombarded by polar vortices. We’re accustomed to cold, but not deep freezes like this. Last fall, farmers burned through a lot of propane to dry out a late, wet harvest. This caused a shortage, and skyrocketing propane prices. A harsh winter compounded with a propane shortage has caused a heating crisis unlike any I’ve seen during my lifetime.

If there’s no money for propane, you go without heat. Some areas have given tribal members the option to leave their home and go to an emergency shelter, others could stay with relatives — but not everyone wants to leave their home unattended. People worry about freezing pipes or their home being burglarized.

The public didn’t realize how dire the heating crisis was until a few weeks ago, when Debbie Dogskin, a resident of the Standing Rock Reservation, froze to death. It was just as cold inside the home she was in as it was outside. The propane tank was empty.

Much has been made of the generous donation the Shakopee community has made to Standing Rock to buy propane. It’s sincerely appreciated. Yet such aid, governmental or otherwise, is a temporary solution to a problem that will only get worse. Even now, there are Natives choosing between buying groceries or medicine, and propane. Friends of mine are heating their home with conventional ovens, by leaving the stove door open. Others are using space heaters, or even burning clothes to keep warm. Such heating methods can be dangerous. In 2005, four Native foster children on my reservation died in a house fire ignited by a blanket on a heater.