Flowage Lake, which holds abundant wild rice, is about 10 miles away from the proposed Talon mine site. This mine is just 1.3 miles from Anishinaabeg homes and is located directly in the 1855 treaty territory where the Anishinaabeg hold treaty-reserved rights to hunt, fish and gather.

Sam Altman, OPEN AI (the company behind chatgpt) : “I think AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world..But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.”

At this moment, there are grave threats to future generations’ water and, in turn, their lifeways.
We are witnessing the impacts of climate change firsthand here in Minnesota. This crisis is predicted to only get worse unless we take collective action to change course. Unless we choose a different path, we risk creating a planet that can no longer sustain life. Indigenous wisdom can help us, but only if we let it.

The Rise and Repair Alliance is an alliance of environmental, Indigenous and faith organizations working together to advance climate justice while protecting Indigenous rights.

We are working hard to teach others that protecting Indigenous rights protects the rights of all Minnesotans to clean water, fresh air and a healthy world. Climate justice means we work toward a transition away from fossil fuels in a way that does not make anyone’s homelands sacrifice zones. 
The decisions of our generation will decide what type of life our children will have.

Will they have a life of abundance and prosperity to allow them to exist and thrive?

Or will they be left with a legacy of contamination and irreversible damage?

These choices are in our hands, and we must ensure that the good path, Mino-Bimaadiziwin, is at the center of our work going forward. 

Anishinaabeg prophecies brought our people here to the place where food grows on water. And since then, our purpose has been clear: to protect the water and wild rice.

The seventh fire prophecy speaks of the time we are living through. Our ancestors knew we would face a choice between two paths: one is the path of a swift rush into technology, leading to a charred, burnt earth where walking it will cut our children’s feet, and this path leads to the destruction of life on our planet.

The other path is one of brotherhood and healing the Earth, where we look to Indigenous wisdom and bring it into the modern world. We are witnessing this choice play out before our eyes as the rush to build massive-scale data centers to power Artificial Intelligence is being forced upon our communities. These data centers will use massive amounts of electricity, water and critical metals and minerals to construct. The choice is ours, and it is clear to most that these data centers do not benefit the average person.

In Minnesota we are working toward a just transition away from fossil fuels to address the climate crisis, one in which Indigenous homelands are not sacrificed.

The current planned energy transition away from fossil fuels relies heavily on mining. According to Morgan Stanley Research Institute: 97% of the nickel, 89% of the copper, 79% of lithium and 68% of cobalt reserves and resources are located within 35 miles of reservations.

Indigenous homelands cannot bear the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels. Our cultures remain intact despite all that the United States government did to try to “kill the Indian to save the man” throughout U.S. history. 

Our cultures and traditions are alive and remain dependent on our relationship with the land. We cannot sacrifice Indigenous homelands to transition from one heavily polluting industry to another.

This sacred connection is central to protecting life as we know it. According to the World Economic Forum, “Indigenous Nations make up 5% of the global population, yet the land that they care for is home to 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity.”

Indigenous people hold the web of life together through our connections and caring for the land. Now is the time to stand with Indigenous nations in working toward protecting our collective futures. 

The push to invest in data centers for AI isn’t the path to greatness that’s being sold to us; it’s a fast route to destroying life on our planet. It demands enormous amounts of energy, metals and water. Metal mining is the most polluting industry in the U.S., according to the EPA.

Mining in the U.S. will pollute Indigenous homelands, and we are witnessing these projects move forward without tribes’ free, prior and informed consent.

The energy needed to operate large-scale data center facilities will push us further from our clean energy goals and could drive up electricity prices for everyday people.

Bloomberg notes, “Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers.” 

According to the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, “If all 10 proposed data centers in Minnesota come online, they would consume as much energy as the entire state.”

One study estimates that AI-driven data centers could use 1.7 trillion gallons of water worldwide by 2027.

“The mammoth data center proposed in Farmington is estimated to drain 900 million gallons of water from the community’s aquifers, roughly double the water consumption of the entire city.” (MCEA)
The waste of water and the contamination that can be exacerbated through this overuse are alarming. An Amazon data center in Oregon is linked to increased nitrate pollution in groundwater, creating health risks for local residents. Some of the water evaporates in the cooling systems, but the nitrate contaminants remain and are then pumped back into the wastewater system.

PFAs used for cooling are also a concern among these proposed projects, as they use forever chemicals in their cooling systems. We already have a massive PFAs problem on our planet. 

To be clear, these are not the data centers that power our phones and Zoom meetings; they are data centers required to push artificial intelligence on us without our consent.

Artificial intelligence is not worth the risk, and we don’t need it to survive. What we do need is clean water, and we must remember that going forward. 

Overconsumption of the Earth’s resources has caused the climate crisis. Continuing this overconsumption to power data centers to create artificial intelligence will worsen planetary health.
This summer, Minnesota experienced days when the air was hazardous to breathe due to unprecedented wildfires fueled by climate change, and we are now in the middle of an extreme drought. We have disrupted natural cycles that keep life in balance. 

The Department of Energy recently released a report predicting that blackouts will increase 100-fold by 2030 due to the energy demand from data centers running AI, and it urges us to continue relying on fossil fuels to power these giants!

We cannot allow that to happen; it will exacerbate the climate crisis.

Communities can win these fights
Hope lies at the community level. Now is the time to organize. Show up at community events ready to speak out against planned data centers!

It is essential to let our leaders know we do not consent to having large-scale data centers built in our communities that take and give nothing back. There is no long-term benefit to building these; only negative consequences. 

Data center challenges arise primarily at the local level, as most permitting decisions are made by local authorities, according to Data Center Watch.

One community in Michigan showed up and spoke out against a data center, and the project was pulled.
Ensuring that our local leaders understand that we do not consent to our waters, energy and collective futures being threatened by these projects is key to stopping these data centers.  Moratoriums have been enacted at the local level all across the country; let’s keep pushing for moratoriums all across our state.

Our planet’s health is more important than increasing the wealth of a few!

The Rise and Repair Alliance is working hard to ensure Minnesota takes that positive path — it will take all of us uniting and raising our voices to say, “Enough is enough.”

We got this, Minnesota.

Leanna Goose is an Indigenous environmental activist, organizer, and enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in northern Minnesota. She advocates for climate justice, water protection, and the legal recognition of wild rice (manoomin). She is the Rise and Repair Alliance Co-Facilitator and Organizer