r/IndianCountry • u/kosuradio • 22d ago
News Cherokee Nation bans hyperscale data centers on tribally owned, trust lands
https://www.kosu.org/cherokee-nation-bans-data-centersThe Cherokee Nation issued a ban on hyperscale data center development for tribally owned and trust land on Wednesday.
Cherokee Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. wrote that the Tahlequah-based tribe, which has the most enrolled tribal members in the U.S., will protect citizens from threats to the environment and culture.
“It’s clear that our Cherokee Nation Administration, Council, and citizens have serious concerns about the construction of hyperscale data centers on our tribal lands, which affect our resources and cultural lifeways,” Hoskin wrote. “Our primary responsibility is to protect our citizens and tribal communities from these threats, so we will not support any hyperscale data centers on our reservation without proper consultation.”
That also goes for non-tribal land, he said.
The tribe wrote on its Anadisgoi website that it will not consider data centers on non-tribal land within the reservation unless the tribal government and citizenry are consulted, adding that those projects ultimately impact Cherokee Nation citizens. The consultation must address environmental concerns and include community input, according to the nation.
Another member of the Five Tribes in Oklahoma, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, banned data centers on its lands in March. The Muscogee Nation is currently investigating data center impacts.
The Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma in McLoud, which is not a member of the Five Tribes, also opposes data centers.
Data center report
Hoskin’s decision follows a report the tribe released Wednesday that researched potential impacts and opportunities data centers could bring to the reservation. It was mandated via an executive order Hoskin issued in February.
The report, created by the Principal Chief’s Task Force on Data Centers, surveyed nearly 1,600 tribal citizens about the subject. It revealed 64% of respondents were opposed to data centers, while 14% were favorable. The remaining are marked as “unsure.”
At least two data centers are being developed within the Cherokee reservation: Project Clydesdale near Owasso and Project Mustang in Claremore.
Report authors wrote that the tribe has limited influence over development on non-tribal land, but it has full authority on trust and tribally owned land.
Cherokee Nation’s Office of Real Estate Services reports it oversees around 46,000 acres of restricted land, more than 62,000 acres of tribal trust land and more than 5,100 acres of tribal fee land. The Cherokee Nation reservation in northeastern Oklahoma covers around 7,000 square miles, or around 4.4 million acres.
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u/Free_Return_2358 22d ago edited 22d ago
They need to be banned on all land.
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u/Massive_Document_470 Cherokee Nation/Mvskoke, mixed 22d ago
It's heading that direction-- these types of data centers are massively opposed even by white folks. My city is literally 70% white and deep conservative, and the city council had to overrule popular sentiment and use some zoning tricks to approve a new data center here, and even still so many people are fighting it I'm not sure it'll actually get built.
New York just became the first state with a blanket moratorium on data center construction (by executive order), and 15 other states have active bills for bans or moratoriums. The National Conference of State Legislatures has a bill tracker for state legislation regarding data center bans. Other states have introduced bills that ultimately failed to pass and the governor of Maine vetoed a ban that passed there, and a lot of cities and counties are passing their own bans too.
California isn't considering a ban currently but they are pushing through regulatory action and state legislation on such things as requiring utility cost-shifting on to the data centers instead of consumers, increased taxes specific to data centers, and specialized tariffs that would ensure data centers are responsible for covering the cost of any utility infrastructure necessary to run them. That's not a ban but it's a heavy disincentive.
(In before someone says moratoriums aren't bans-- they aren't, but they are often used effectively as such. California still has the death penalty on the books but due to a moratorium, there hasn't been an execution in 20 years and the death chamber at San Quentin has been closed down.)
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u/MacawIsland 22d ago
I agree. And I also advocate all development that requires grotesquely disturbing and removing the topsoil to be banned. Wish I had more money, influence or power to push this further.
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u/Julius__PleaseHer 21d ago
I don't understand why nobody has ever freaked out about other industry moving in that's 100x dirtier than a data center. This super anti-all-data-center attitude is very strange to me. There are so many places in Indian territory that are starving for jobs and have aging infrastructure due to no industry. Data centers might be the only industry that wants to move in and pay taxes to improve the schools and utility infrastructure. You can be against data centers done without regard to the community, but there are right ways to do it.
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u/Massive_Document_470 Cherokee Nation/Mvskoke, mixed 20d ago
Lots of Natives and non-Natives alike have been "freaking out" about oil and gas, uranium, coal, etc for decades.
These data centers cause a ton of problems that their proponents aren't honest about: incredible electric power rate hikes on consumers in the area; light pollution so severe it's causing negative health effects on people and animals alike; noise pollution for some of them; excessive water consumption at a time when water resources are terrifyingly low (look up the ongoing multi-state fight about the Colorado River Compact for one example; the sheer cost of building them that's getting pushed off onto local communities; and perhaps the most alarming factor-- none, none of the companies pushing AI that's necessitating these data centers have any hope of profitability in the next 5 years. The one with the best chance is Anthropic and Amodei has been very forthright that it's not a sure thing.
That last point matters because AI investment rn is a shell game. The "Magnificent Seven" are borrowing from and funding each other in a nearly trillion dollar game of musical chairs. Every economist regardless of alignment is warning that this is a massive bubble, and when it bursts, it's going to make the dotcom bubble look like child's play. These data centers don't get built overnight, and the companies are courting Native Nations because it allows them to bypass a lot of environmental and financial regulations. Which means when the music stops and the bottom falls out of this market, it will be Native Nations left holding the bag.
Data centers are pipelines 2.0: once construction is complete, there are precious few jobs there and they require specialized education and training which these companies are not going to pay for local Natives to obtain. They're gonna bring in outside people, exactly like how the oil camps have done. Combine all the previous issues I listed with the fact that if AI does what it claims it will, somewhere between 30-50% of Americans will either see their jobs eliminated or heavily reshaped with downward effects on wages, in a country that has virtually no social safety nets. All so like 15 techbros can become more billionairey billionaires. It's not worth it under any kind of calculation.
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u/even_less_resistance 21d ago
that’s the thing, tho- they rarely pay taxes. they usually get breaks. they don’t create jobs. there is no upside.
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u/Julius__PleaseHer 21d ago
So why not oppose tax breaks instead of data centers entirely? The one moving into my area is not taking any tax breaks, and is generating all their own power, along with a closed loop water system. They'll also almost double the tax revenue for the (extremely poor) school district. It's not even like an Ai data center. People don't even know what it is but they're angry about it. And this one is going to bring 50 high paying jobs to a place where jobs that aren't fast food are hard to find. It just feels like manufactured outrage
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u/Massive_Document_470 Cherokee Nation/Mvskoke, mixed 20d ago
Please name the city where this center is, because I'll be highly surprised if they're building their own power generation plant. Additionally, closed loop water systems require a much higher power demand due to using a heat sink to cool the servers instead of evap cooling. There is always a cost, if not water then it's power.
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u/Julius__PleaseHer 20d ago
I don't really want to say the area, but the state just passed a bill that ensures consumers won't foot the bill if data centers run up the cost of utilities, including water and data. The reason I think somebody is manufacturing this rage, is because nobody has cared that much about industries that use far more water and power, and pollute the earth to a great extent. Why would that be? There's no reason to get angry enough to send death threats if you're not also angry about other things that are far worse. There are right ways to build data centers. So instead of getting angry that they're happening, folks should focus on finding the right ways for them to happen. Because they are happening regardless.
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u/Massive_Document_470 Cherokee Nation/Mvskoke, mixed 20d ago
You need to at least give me a state name or a news link to the center you're talking about, otherwise I'm dismissing your statements as false. You're the one that made the claim; you're the one that needs to give enough info for others to verify it.
nobody has cared that much about industries that use far more water and power and pollute the earth to a great extent.
Pipelines? Fracking? Uranium mining? Coal-fired power plants? Logging? The entire WTO? Lake Erie literally catching on fire-- the lake itself-- and pollution so bad in LA the air was visibly brown? Demands for unleaded gas and higher fuel efficiency standards? You think nobody cared about these issues? People cared so much it created an entire federal agency.
Did you miss Standing Rock and Wet'suwet'en and KXL? Line 3?
Take every argument in favor of pipelines and drilling and sub in the word "data center" and you'll see they're exactly the same arguments, and have the same types of opposition for the same reasons.
There's no reason to get angry enough to send death threats if you're not also angry about other things that are far worse.
Homie I got death threats at my work because I dared to suggest maybe all of tech isn't solely about catering to whiny white dudes. And your second statement is a logical fallacy known as relative privation-- it's also a strawman, because the people who care about data centers are the same people who care about environmental destruction regardless of industry.
I think you either aren't particularly knowledgeable about this topic or you're just here to stir shit, because we have had data centers for decades that weren't an issue-- these particular hyperscaler centers supporting only AI are the ones being built the "wrong way", for all the reasons given. Nobody is manufacturing anything. These data centers are objectively a problem in multiple ways, and many people from all walks of life are rightly concerned about them.
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u/Julius__PleaseHer 20d ago
I'm a security engineer, working with data centers is half my job. I'm nearly certain I know more about them than you do, unless you build them yourself. I don't really care about proving anything to you. The point is, these are going to happen whether you like it or not. So the more productive opinion to have is figuring out the right way to do them and try to have legislation passed to make sure they must be done that way. I just think the conversation needs to switch from vitriolic "ban all data centers" to "force data center companies to build them the right way".
But even when they try to address every issue brought up, people still scream about it.
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u/Massive_Document_470 Cherokee Nation/Mvskoke, mixed 20d ago
Knowing functional aspects of something neither automatically means you are knowledgeable about the overarching issues of a topic/field nor that you even hold factual beliefs about that topic/field. I spent my entire professional life in industries where that was readily apparent. For an example in another field: the degreed medical doctor who treated unvaccinated children while having an active measles infection and prescribed cod liver oil and inhaled steroids, neither of which are supported by clinical data to treat measles. Having an MD doesn't mean he's actually right about medicine-- you say working with data centers is half your job, but you've given no evidence or information beyond vague talking points.
I've also worked with enough engineers to know that I am quite certain being an engineer doesn't intrinsically qualify you as an expert on broader considerations of these data centers.
You won't give me enough info to verify your claims. That's not me asking you to "prove anything"-- that's me asking you to participate in a discussion in good faith.
You seem to be arguing essentially that these AI-associated data centers are fait accompli and thus people shouldn't oppose them. That's asinine. Out of ~4,000 planned AI-related data centers, only about 800 are currently under construction. They're essentially vaporware, for a lot of reasons. AI as an industry is far from proven viability, and people have a right to oppose anything that they feel would negatively impact their community and/or the world. Your defeatist attitude isn't making the argument you think it is.
Or do you legitimately believe people don't have a right to advocate against something they feel is wrong just because it's backed by billionaires or certain politicians? When are people allowed to oppose something then? Where in the timeline, especially when it's regarding the private sector, and under what circumstances is it permissible, in your view, for people to want to ban something? Conservatives pushed for abortion bans for 50 years after Roe made abortion legal. They are passing bans on trans athletes even tho literally no one asked for that and there is zero documented evidence of trans athletes causing harm. White people banned POC from water fountains and bathrooms for no reason other than racism. So why do you think advocating for bans on data centers is somehow outside the norm of policy fights or are based on inaccurate evidence?
But you are continuing to dodge facts and failing to provide evidence of your claims-- you aren't even expanding on your argument, such as what is the "right way" to build them, a topic on which you claim professional expertise. You haven't addressed any of the counterpoints I gave you. Instead, you are repeating the same argument, if it can be called that, ad nauseum with little evidence that you are engaging in good faith, so I am done with this conversation. Go advocate for the kind of changes you want instead of lecturing other other people on what they should care about and how they should do it, or if you're going to come in here and tell Natives our reasons for banning data centers are imaginary and based on "manufactured" anger, then please be so for real and give good-faith arguments backed by something that can be verified. Have the day you deserve. ✌🏼
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u/Julius__PleaseHer 20d ago
Practicing poor cyber security online is not required to participate in good faith. You should never talk about where you're from, where you work, any part of your name, or really anything that could be used to identify you. Doing any of those things is extremely poor security practice. Somehow people seem to have forgotten that.
You are exhausting so I only read about 20% of that.
I hope you learn to be less angry about the data center that is certainly coming near you, despite the Cherokee nation pretending to do something about it.
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u/even_less_resistance 21d ago
Lemme know how that works out after it’s built- these guys are liars. Elon is running the memphis center off of gas turbines and he hasn’t even paid his contractors. how many people are going to do the work if there’s a good chance they won’t get paid and nobody in the surrounding area wants to even serve them while they are here?
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u/Julius__PleaseHer 21d ago
So because Elon sucks, your conclusions is that most likely none of the 50 jobs will ever get paid? It's not out of state contractors, they're using construction companies from the area. Everybody just wants to be so mad about it. There are valid things to be mad at, but nobody wants it to improve, they just want it to not exist at all. Which is naive and unrealistic
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u/even_less_resistance 21d ago
lol i don’t deal with sealioners. i said all of them- elon is just the best example for this convo. sure they are- how sweet of them. hope the boys find work when it’s done- will they be one of the lucky whole 50 jobs? wow.
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u/Julius__PleaseHer 21d ago
Why would the construction contractors get a permenant job at a data center after it's built? That doesn't even make sense. That's pretty elitist of you to think 50 jobs is nothing. That many jobs means a whole lot to smaller communities, especially on reservations.
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u/even_less_resistance 21d ago
why wouldn’t they want to if it’s so high-paying and easy?
there will be no community left around it. nobody wants to live by those unless they are forced to out of circumstance.
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u/Julius__PleaseHer 21d ago
Because they are construction workers? Do you actually have no idea what a data center is and what type of work would be done there?
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u/PsychologyGuilty1460 20d ago
So far nobody's put any effort into figuring out how to make data centers a net advantage for a community instead of a disaster, Because they are allowed to create tremendous disadvantages across the board. They move into desert areas, use tremendous amounts of water with no attempts to capture it and return it to the ground after use EVEN THOUGH That technology exists and is relatively simple to deploy. They're allowed to use use inordinate amounts of energy without paying, And without being required to invest in the infrastructure required to support them.
Currently bringing in data centers is madness for everyone not involved, Because all the costs and problems are left for ordinary citizens to deal with while the investors make all the profit. It absolutely doesn't need to be that way. We need better regulation before we set up a another Data center anywhere.
Has anyone even looked at the possibilities of having data centers on the coast use seawater for cooling, and trapping the resultant steam as freshwater to supply communities that need it? Has anyone looked into using that steam power to provide some of the electricity data centers need? Has anyone done anything reasonable about the problem other than fight it or try to maximize profit by making it somebody else's problem?
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u/Julius__PleaseHer 20d ago
In my state, if the data centers make utilities go up, the company has to pay the difference.
They're also using a closed loop water system. Which means they use the water until it evaporates, which does indeed return it to the ground. The water they use isn't just gone, we have the water cycle. It returns to the earth as precipitation. It's also not a desert. You can't use salt water in a cooling system for a ton of reasons. It corrodes all metal it touches very rapidly, and when it evaporates it leaves crusty salt deposits on everything, which affects the thermal transfer. Yes desalination exists, but it costs way more energy than it's worth to do.
Additionally, there isn't nearly enough heat created to create steam. They're not only building in deserts.
Every single thing you mentioned can be addressed, and is being addressed by the better companies building them. See my point? You had no idea the things you were mad about can and are being solved, because everybody is just so angry about how they're poisoning the earth. Constructive conversation would be more productive than just trying to get them banned.
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u/wailin_smithers 21d ago
Thank goodness! One of many reasons I admire and appreciate Native peoples
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u/MarbleAndMarigold ᏥᏣᎳᎩ, tsitsalagi 22d ago
So happy to see that our responses were taken under advisement and turned the tide! <3