The Data Center Debate Taking Over Native American Tribes

This debate also coincides with proposed changes to Section 106, a clause in the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 that requires federal agencies to assess how development affects historic sites, which are decades in the making. If these changes are enacted, federal land, where Native Nations hold consultation rights under extant law, could theoretically become terrain AI data center developers could claim without a federal review process. 

More than 700 organizations, including Native Nations, have already signed a letter opposing this change to Section 106—but this isn’t the first time it has been targeted. 

Near the end of President Donald Trump’s first term, the Secretary of the Interior issued Secretarial Order 3389, exempting major energy and land-management projects from standard Section 106 review. It was a move the Biden administration noticed early on and swiftly reversed. 

The current Advisory Council on Historic Preservation rewrite picks up where that order left off, and is part of energy, transmission, and mining’s long game to weaken Section 106 as a source of delay for infrastructure—one that predates the AI boom by years.