The artificial intelligence industry’s data center boom is the latest chapter in a long history of environmental racism and resource exploitation in vulnerable Native communities, says Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne activist Krystal Two Bulls, the executive director of Honor the Earth, an Indigenous-led environmental justice organization that is tracking over 100 proposed data center projects on tribal and rural lands. We speak to Two Bulls about the myriad impacts of what she calls a “modern-day iteration” of “settler colonialism,” including noise pollution, cancers and respiratory illnesses, water depletion, energy grid overload and even “ecological collapse.” As tech companies set their sights on Indigenous lands, Two Bulls says, “We’re always the one that ends up having to sacrifice our relationship to land, air, water, our communities and our nonhuman relatives.”
Transcript
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
On this Earth Day, we go now from Memphis to Montana, where we’re joined by Krystal Two Bulls, a longtime Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne activist. She’s the executive director of the group Honor the Earth, which has launched the No Data Center Coalition. Honor the Earth has been closely monitoring the construction of data centers in or near Indigenous lands. She’s joining us from the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana.
Krystal Two Bulls, welcome to Democracy Now! Can you give us an overview? You’ve made a crowdsource map of data centers and their relation to Indigenous lands across the United States. Talk about how you see this issue of data centers.
KRYSTAL TWO BULLS: Yeah. Good morning, Amy. Thank you for having me.
I think, you know, similar to what we just heard, we’re seeing the targeting of Native lands. But for us, when we talk about hyperscale data centers, we typically talk about the entire AI infrastructure, because that’s the driving demand for the hyperscale data centers themselves. And so we’re looking at the physical impacts of the data centers. We’re also looking at the critical minerals in the mining that’s going to be needed to power and create things like GPUs and servers and the chips, even the air conditioners for these hyperscale data centers, which often, and especially with this push for that mining to happen domestically now, we’re going to be looking at that mining happening on Indigenous lands.
We’re also looking at the uranium just now being added to the list of critical minerals. And so, that’s also going to be happening to power nuclear for fuel. And so, we have to also look at these hyperscale data centers that are creating—using massive amounts of electricity, and where is that energy going to come from. Now they’re shifting towards nuclear. They’re looking at revitalizing coal, the coal industry, and expanding fracked gas, until they can get nuclear online. And so, we try to connect all of those dots across the board, knowing that all of those industries right there are going to target Indigenous lands, as they have in the past and as we’ve already experienced.
The other thing that we’re seeing is that they’re targeting Indigenous lands because we have large — many of our large land-based tribes, we have access to that. We have access to water. There’s tax incentives that come along with it. We have a lack of legal infrastructure oftentimes to hold these accountable, these companies accountable. Also, the promised economic development that these corporations come with, when you are dealing with communities that often live in extreme poverty, the promise of these jobs is something that appeals to them, right? 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.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the issue of secrecy surrounding the locations and owners of these data center projects, why your map, this crowdsource map, is actually—has been so hard to compile.
KRYSTAL TWO BULLS: Yeah. So, oftentimes these corporations, the hyperscale corporations, such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta and Amazon, they’re oftentimes using their subsidiaries and then using also Native-owned energy companies to approach our communities. But they’re also coming with NDAs in hand. So, 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. 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 who actually — they’re actually supposed to represent.
And so, 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. And so, we’ve had to actually use our networks as organizers and activists to really build those relationships and to figure out where they’re proposing these hyperscale data centers. So, right now we’re looking at about 103 to 160 proposed hyperscale data centers on Native lands.
AMY GOODMAN: Krystal Two Bulls, the Tulsa City Council just passed a nine-month moratorium on data centers. The Seminole Nation unanimously passed its own moratorium. Can you talk about how, out of all the states in the country, an anti-data center movement is gaining momentum in Oklahoma? Why Oklahoma?
KRYSTAL TWO BULLS: I mean, right now we have a really strong team from Honor the Earth that’s located in Oklahoma, and they’ve been on the ground in these communities, hosting town halls, having meetings, reaching out to the tribes, attending tribal council meetings, door knocking, petitions, just everything across the board. But Oklahoma is oftentimes considered a sacrifice zone. And so, for us at Honor the Earth, we really made it an intention to invest in those communities, and especially because we have activists and organizers on the ground there.
And so, what we’re seeing now is that they’ve been able to build multiracial coalitions with folks in agriculture, ranchers, land owners, etc., and they’ve built these coalitions, and they are working with local communities and local municipalities and local tribes to push back and put in some kind of buffer in protections for our communities. We also have—you know, the Muskogee were able to block a resolution that would have moved forward a hyperscale data center, and so, you know, it’s really a testament to the powerful organizing that’s been happening there and people pushing back.
The other thing is, like, if we can get these victories in Oklahoma, which is basically the crossroads of every extractive industry in the United States, then every other state needs to follow suit, and there’s not an excuse for us to be able to push back in our own communities.
AMY GOODMAN: Krystal Two Bulls, you’ve called data centers “continued colonialism … in the name of imperialism.” Can you explain what you’re saying? You were also very active in the standoff at Standing Rock, where Indigenous people from Latin America, the United States, Canada and their non-Native allies, thousands, gathered to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline. What connections do you see between these?
KRYSTAL TWO BULLS: Yeah, I think Indian Country is always a target for extractive industry. And what history has taught us is that anytime outside industry comes into Indian Country and has all these big, you know, promises of jobs and economic development and language revitalization and all of these things, that it tends to not work out for us. We are never the ones that actually truly benefit from that, and we’re always the one that ends up having to sacrifice our relationship to land, air, water, our communities and our nonhuman relatives, as well.
And so, what we can see from that and learn from that is, like, that is a continuation of settler colonialism in the land grabs that we had seen back in the 1800s. Now we’re just seeing a modern-day iteration of that, where these corporations are coming in, because we have large land bases, grabbing up the land, building—saying that they’re going to build with the tribes, offer these things, go back on their promises, and then, yet again, we are left with the damages and the results and the negative impacts of that. And so, I think history tells us that this is just another—this is the same thing with a new face, a new name. And so, for us, it was really important that we called it what it is, which is, you know, data colonialism—right?—and really push back on the physical and the material impacts on our lands.
AMY GOODMAN: A recent Bloomberg analysis found electricity costs go up nearly 267% near data centers. Yet a lot of these data centers target poorer tribal nations. If you can talk about the environmental costs, the amount of energy that’s required, and also the economic costs?
KRYSTAL TWO BULLS: Yeah, I mean, we’re looking at, from what we know—like, a lot of times these data centers come with NDAs, so it’s really difficult to know exactly how much water usage that they’re going to have or how much impact they’re going to have on the grid. But what we do know from existing hyperscale data centers that have already been built is that we’re looking at anywhere between 300,000 to like up to 2.7 million—I’ve heard even 5 million—gallons per year of water that’s being used. Right? And, like, these corporations, they come in, and they present this closed-loop water system that they’re going to be using, and they tell our nations that there will be zero impact to the water. They also tell us that, in fact, they’re going to use water positivity, and they’re actually going to increase the usage in the quality of the water so we can actually use it more, which both have been dispelled since then, but it’s a very strong narrative. So, we know that there’s going to be negative impacts on the water based on existing hyperscale data centers.
We also know about the noise pollution that comes with these, right? Many times they have diesel generators, but also the noise alone from a hyperscale data center is around 97 decibels. For those of us that know what an LRAD is, a long-range acoustic device, it’s a sound cannon that can rupture your eardrums. That’s at about 140 decibels, right? So, 97 to 140 is not a big jump. And so, you’re looking at hearing loss for long-term exposure to the sound that’s coming from them.
Also, a recent study came out and said that hyperscale data centers can increase the heat and create heat islands up to 16 degrees on the land around them. So, if you think about the impacts on ecosystems and the temperature increase of the water that’s going to happen, we’re looking at ecological collapse around these hyperscale data centers in our communities.
And then, that’s not to mention the rare cancers that have been tied to hyperscale data centers, as we heard before, is the respiratory issues that come from breathing in all the toxins that they emit, as well, and then the electricity itself. They need massive amounts of electricity to be powered. And what we’re seeing is that they’re putting a massive strain on the grid. And so, for Native communities, oftentimes our homes and our communities do not have an updated electricity grid, right? The country, in general, does not have one, and tribes more so. So what we’re looking at is rolling power outages that are going to be coming, also the threat of fires. When you don’t have up-to-code electricity in your—or, electricians in your home updating the wiring and whatnot, you’re looking at the risk of fires if you’re going to flood that much electricity into the grid, right?
And what we’re seeing already is that these hyper—these data centers, these corporations, are already working with groups like our public service commission, our county commissioners, and they’re approving upfront costs, where the rate payers and taxpayers pay for these hyperscale data centers up front, before they’re even built. So we’ve already been seeing increases, almost double, in our electricity bills here in Montana. One winter, I think last winter, we’ve seen a young woman with a trailer house have an electricity bill of $900, as a single person in a trailer house in Montana. And we did not have an extreme winter that winter. And so, we’re already feeling the impacts of the electricity in the costs.
You’re also looking at the jobs. So, they come with promises about jobs and economic development, which, in the construction phase, yes, there may be up to 1,500 jobs that are available. Oftentimes those jobs will not go to local community members. They will go to construction companies who already specialize in building hyperscale data centers. And then, once construction phase is over, which can last up to two years, those jobs drop all the way down, sometimes to three full-time jobs. And so, we know that for sure in Rapid City, South Dakota. They’ve made that public, where they go from 1,500 to three full-time jobs. And so they actually are not following through on any of the promises that they’re making to our communities.
AMY GOODMAN: Krystal Two Bulls, I want to thank you for being with us in this Earth Day special. Krystal is Oglala Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and executive director of Honor the Earth, speaking to us from the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana.
Coming up on this Earth Day, we go to the Arctic Sunrise, a Greenpeace ship sailing with the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is en route to Gaza. Stay with us.
AMY GOODMAN: “Greed” by Sweet Honey in the Rock decades ago in our firehouse studio.
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