Cherokee Nation In The US Bans Data Center Development

By Jason Ma of DataCenterDynamics

The Cherokee Nation in the US has banned data center development on its lands, according to an announcement made by its Chief Chuck Hoskin on August 5, Thursday.

“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. 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,” Chief Hoskin said.

“We want these companies to know that we expect them to engage with us early and transparently, as these projects impact every Cherokee.”

On the same day, the Cherokee Nation also released a report on data centers, which found that 64 percent of the 1,593 Cherokee Nation citizens surveyed did support hyperscale data center construction within the Reservation, a 7,000 sqm (75,347 sq ft) area in northeastern Oklahoma where the nation has legislative, executive, and judicial powers. Only 14 percent supported their development, and 22 percent remained unsure.

The report states that two data center projects – Project Clydesdale, a $1 billion campus in Tulsa County, and Project Mustang, potentially located in the Claremore Industrial Park – are currently under development within the Cherokee Nation Reservation.

But the report also emphasized that the nation had an interest in “continued reliable, secure, cost-effective access to colocation and cloud services for government and business operations, disaster recovery, and sovereign systems including tribal registration and vehicle tag administration.”

In August, a broadband data center was built in the Hoopa Valley Reservation, home to the Hoopa Valley Tribe in northwest California.