KVIG Informative

The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe didn’t wait for state regulators to catch up. It passed its own permanent ban on data centers before a single one could be proposed on tribal land.

The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribal Council passed a permanent moratorium on data center development on Pyramid Lake Paiute homelands on Aug. 21, according to the tribe and the Water Over Data Alliance, a coalition formed to oppose the industry’s expansion in Northern Nevada.

Autumn Harry, a Pyramid Lake Paiute tribal member and co-founder of the Water Over Data Alliance, said the organization has focused on educating the broader community about how data centers specifically affect Indigenous communities, describing the industry’s water and land use as a continuation of historical land and water theft.

The moratorium applies specifically to tribal homelands under Pyramid Lake Paiute jurisdiction, giving the tribe direct control over whether any future data center project could be built there, regardless of decisions made by state or county regulators elsewhere in Nevada.

The vote reflects a broader pattern among Northern Nevada tribal nations. The Yerington Paiute Tribe and the Walker River Paiute Tribe have separately released resolutions opposing a different proposed data center, citing environmental and cultural concerns specific to their own territories.

Nevada counties and municipalities, including Henderson and Reno, have separately considered or enacted their own data center moratoriums this year, but those actions apply only within each jurisdiction’s own regulatory boundaries and do not extend tribal sovereignty protections to tribal land specifically.

Tribal nations elsewhere in the country have taken similar action opposing data center development on their own homelands, reflecting a national pattern of tribes asserting direct authority over land use decisions the industry has sought to expand into.

Nevada’s state and local governments are still debating how to regulate data centers project by project. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe settled the question for its own land with a single vote — and didn’t wait for anyone else’s permission to do it.