Last month, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma became the first Indigenous nation to officially ban data center construction from its land.
When a tech startup approached Tribal leaders asking them to sign a nondisclosure agreement along with a letter of intent to construct a data center on Seminole territory, the Tribal Council unanimously shot them down, voting 24 to 0 to instead enact a permanent data center moratorium.
The Seminole Nation isn’t alone in fighting off predatory tech firms. Across the country, data center developers are using underhanded tactics to ram their server farms onto Indigenous land, whether Native communities want them there or not.
In an interview with Democracy Now‘s Amy Goodman, activist Krystal Two Bulls, executive director of Honor the Earth — an Indigenous-led environmental organization that helped the Seminole Nation assert their rights against the unscrupulous data center startup — said there are anywhere between 103 and 160 proposed hyperscale data centers looking to build on Native lands.
One of the tactics Native tribes are increasingly seeing is the bait-and-switch, in which developers come in looking to build renewable energy infrastructure, only to swap the plan to a data center at the last minute.
“What we’re hearing from different Native nations is that corporations will come, they’ll start by talking about solar panels and installing that on their lands, and then it quickly shifts to a hyperscale data center,” Two Bulls said. “But often, before they even get to that conversation, they’re asking them to sign an NDA. And so that makes our tribal leadership accountable to them and not to the people… they’re actually supposed to represent.”
For the activists at Honor the Earth, not to mention Tribal communities themselves, that means proposed data center projects are often difficult to even identify, nevermind organize against, until they’re well underway.
“Oftentimes we don’t know that these projects are coming to our lands until we hear in a press release or on the news or we hear rumors of what’s happening,” Two Bulls explained.
Data center developers are all too happy to take advantage of rural communities throughout the US. But Two Bulls says Tribal nations make particularly appealing targets for exploitation due to their ample water and baked in tax incentives, to say nothing of the kind of economic desperation created by centuries of dispossession and neglect.
“When you are dealing with communities that often live in extreme poverty, the promise of these jobs is something that appeals to them, right?” Two Bulls said. “And then we also have the jurisdictional issues that happen on Indigenous land. So, all of those create an environment that is very conducive to these hyperscale data centers being built on Native lands.”
Against the whims of some of the most powerful corporations on earth, it seems the only solution is to get organized. Thanks in large part to efforts by organizations like Honor the Earth — which launched the No Data Centers Coalition in 2025 — politicians at all levels are starting to wake up and pass anti-data center resolutions.
In Tulsa and Oklahoma City, city officials recently voted to ban any incoming data center development until 2027. They’re temporary victories, but a testament to the kind of people power groups like Honor the Earth are harnessing to defend their homes.
“We were there in Tulsa to pass the moratorium last month, and we were there this morning in Oklahoma City to show that the community does not want these data centers,” Ash Leitka, director of Honor the Earth’s Department of Sovereignty and Self Determination told Futurism. “We want clean water. We want privacy and security. We want jobs and economic stability, all of which hyperscale data centers threaten and negatively impact. The falsely generated demand for AI and AI infrastructure truly is a death cycle.”
More on data centers: Almost Half of US Data Centers That Were Supposed to Open This Year Slated to Be Canceled or Delayed
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