We are living in a moment when the future is being sold to us.
Artificial intelligence promises to change the way we work, learn, communicate, and live. Every day, we hear about new technologies capable of doing things that once seemed impossible. We are told that this is progress, that these innovations will create opportunities, strengthen our economy, and bring us into a new era. An era of progress.
But there is a part of this future we do not see when we type a question into a computer or ask artificial intelligence to write a paragraph. Behind the screen are buildings that consume electricity, systems that require infrastructure, and facilities that can demand enormous quantities of water to keep their servers cool.
And, something that often goes forgotten, is that there is somewhere that this infrastructure has to go.
In Oklahoma, the expansion of AI data centers is no longer an abstract conversation about what might happen someday. It is already happening. In Pryor, Google’s data center used more than 1.1 billion gallons of water between July 2024 and June 2025, according to records obtained by The Frontier. Other proposed projects have raised questions about water supplies, energy demand, and the long-term effects of development on surrounding communities.
These numbers are difficult to comprehend. More difficult, perhaps, is remembering that water is not simply a resource to be allocated on a spreadsheet. It is what sustains our families, our communities, our farms, and the places we call home.
For Native nations, questions about land and water also exist within a much longer history: a history in which Indigenous peoples have repeatedly faced outside decisions about their homelands, resources, and futures.
That history does not mean every new development is inherently harmful, or that Native nations all share the same views on economic growth. Tribal nations are diverse, sovereign governments with their own citizens, priorities, and visions for the future. Some may see opportunities in new technologies. Others may determine that the costs for their communities and natural resources are too great.
What matters is that they have the ability to make those decisions for themselves.
Native sovereignty is not a ceremonial acknowledgment of the past. It is a living principle that matters in the decisions being made today.
During Native American Heritage Month, we often reflect on Indigenous history, culture, and contributions. That recognition matters. But honoring Native communities also requires us to pay attention to what is happening to them now, particularly when decisions about land, water, and infrastructure can shape their futures for generations.
In Oklahoma, tribal nations are already confronting these questions. The Cherokee Nation established a task force to examine the potential environmental and economic impacts of data centers. The Muscogee Nation rejected a proposed data center on its reservation in 2025, and the Cherokee Nation announced restrictions on hyperscale data center development on tribally owned and trust lands in August 2026.
These actions demonstrate something important: Native nations are not waiting for someone else to determine what happens next. They are exercising their sovereignty, weighing their options, and demanding that their interests be taken seriously.
Yet the decisions made by tribal governments are only part of the picture. Development can also affect Native citizens and communities when projects are proposed on nearby nontribal land, where tribal governments may have more limited authority. Questions about environmental impacts, public information, regulatory oversight, and meaningful consultation therefore extend beyond the boundaries of any single property.
I began thinking more deeply about the relationship between Native identity, law, and sovereignty when I attended the Tulsa Law Review Symposium on “Re-examining the Tribal Trust Relationship in the 21st Century” in the spring of 2025. One of the keynote speakers was Matthew L.M. Fletcher, a prominent Indigenous legal scholar and professor at the University of Michigan. During his remarks, Fletcher discussed something that has stayed with me: the Constitution is unusual in its explicit reference to “American Indians,” yet there is no single, universally accepted definition of what it means to be Indian. If you asked a room full of Native people to define that identity, you might receive a hundred different answers.
That observation speaks to something fundamental about the relationship between Native identity and American law. As Fletcher explained, the legal understanding of Native identity cannot simply be reduced to race. Tribal citizenship is political, grounded in the sovereign authority of Native nations to determine their own citizens. This distinction is especially important under laws such as the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which recognizes the political relationship between Native children, their tribes, and the federal government. Even the definition of an Indian child under ICWA reflects this relationship: a child must be under 18 and either a member of a federally recognized tribe or eligible for membership and the biological child of a tribal member.
Why does this matter in a conversation about artificial intelligence, water, and land development? Because sovereignty cannot matter only when it is convenient to recognize it. It cannot be acknowledged when discussing Native history, tribal citizenship, or the protection of Indigenous children, only to become an afterthought when corporations and governments make decisions about the land and resources that sustain Native communities.
The same principle that recognizes a Native nation’s authority to determine its own citizenship also demands that we take its political authority seriously when decisions affect its people,
This is where the conversation becomes a matter of civil liberties.
Who has access to the information needed to understand a major development project? Can residents learn how much water a facility is expected to use, where its electricity will come from, and what safeguards will protect the surrounding environment? Are communities given meaningful opportunities to ask questions before decisions become difficult to reverse?
These are not unreasonable demands. They are essential questions about accountability.
When information is difficult to obtain and decisions are made without meaningful public participation, communities can find themselves confronting consequences they had little opportunity to understand or influence. For Native communities, those consequences may intersect with long-standing concerns about cultural preservation, treaty rights, and the ability of sovereign nations to determine their own futures.
We should not have to choose between technological innovation and the rights of the people who live alongside it. Economic development and environmental responsibility are not mutually exclusive. Nor should the excitement surrounding artificial intelligence exempt its developers from the scrutiny we would apply to any other major industry.
The question is not whether Oklahoma should embrace the future. The future and progress are inevitable and so we may as well embrace it. It is whether we are willing to ask who gets to shape it.
As we recognize Native American Heritage Month, we must move beyond celebrating Indigenous cultures in the abstract. We must do things that will create actual change for the Indigenous communities. We must listen when Native people raise concerns about their land. We must respect the decisions of tribal governments. We must demand transparency from the institutions and corporations whose projects affect our shared resources. And we must recognize that a community’s right to participate in decisions about its future cannot be measured in dollars, projected tax revenue, or the number of servers inside a building.
A technological revolution may be measured by the speed of its computers or the scale of its investments. But the quality of our progress should also be measured by the people it protects, the communities it respects, and the futures it leaves intact.
Because progress is not simply about what we can build. What we can do. How far we can go.
It is also about what we are willing to protect.
