CedarStack

Osage Earth and Education Collective

CedarStack

Native-owned data center powered by renewable energy in Indian Country, protecting tribal data by building sovereign archival infrastructure.

New York, NY, USA

USA

Nonprofit

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Less than 1% of broadband infrastructure funding has historically gone to tribal governments, leaving Indigenous communities reliant on non-Native intermediaries for internet access as well as cloud storage, analytics, and environmental data (NTIA, Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program). This underinvestment limits access—but even more critically, it restricts control. Indigenous Nations cannot fully exercise sovereignty without governing their own data. When information about lands, sacred sites, and resources is stored externally, it can be used against the very communities it represents. In 2016, Dakota Access Pipeline developers bulldozed sacred burial grounds of the Standing Rock Sioux just one day after the tribe submitted GIS coordinates to a federal court. Lacking sovereign infrastructure, the tribe had no mechanism to protect that data from misuse. Currently, there are no publicly documented, tribally controlled data centers on tribal land designed specifically to protect and govern Indigenous data. While some tribal entities have set up isolated servers, these efforts often rely on external services, lack scalability, and don’t offer a shared, renewable-powered solution. Without comprehensive infrastructure co-located with clean energy and governed by Indigenous communities, tribes remain vulnerable—unable to build long-term digital resilience or assert full legal and cultural authority in an increasingly data-driven world.

CedarStack is a sovereign data center located in Osage County, designed to protect, house, and govern Indigenous data on Indigenous land. Powered by a solar and geothermal microgrid, it addresses a centuries-old problem: the weaponization of information against Native communities. From census records used to facilitate forced removals during the Trail of Tears, to oil headright rolls that fueled the Osage Reign of Terror, to the recent destruction of Standing Rock burial sites after GIS data was submitted to federal courts—external control over Indigenous data has long enabled exploitation, violence, and erasure. Today, emerging technologies like AI make unprotected data even more extractable and dangerous. CedarStack offers a tribally governed solution, rooted in community trust and built with direct tribal buy-in. It will serve as both a secure infrastructure and a digital cultural archive, housing ecological data, language materials, land records, and more. Its solar and geothermal microgrid is not only sustainable but crisis-resilient: in emergencies, battery units will be able to be disconnected and deployed to support local energy needs. More than a data hub, CedarStack is a long-overdue act of defense and self-determination—a shield against past patterns of harm and a foundation for Indigenous digital sovereignty.

CedarStack serves Indigenous Nations across the U.S., beginning with a pilot in the Osage Nation. Despite increasing demand for secure, sovereign data governance, tribal communities remain underserved by centralized infrastructure. A 2022 survey by the Native Nations Institute and NCAI found that over 70% of tribal governments cited lack of infrastructure and reliance on external hosts as key barriers to data sovereignty. Tribal Nations face deep challenges in managing cultural heritage and critical records. Burial maps, genealogies, land documents, and language archives are often fragmented across external institutions and non-Indigenous repositories. This lack of integrated, tribally governed infrastructure undermines long-term cultural preservation, planning, and intergenerational knowledge transfer. CedarStack addresses this gap by building tribally governed, solar- and geothermal-powered data centers located on Indigenous land. These centers will serve as secure, sovereign homes for sensitive data, supporting cultural archives, land governance, and language revitalization, while offering community access through educational and cultural programming. The Osage County pilot will serve as a scalable model for other Nations, demonstrating how data infrastructure rooted in Indigenous governance can reduce dependency on external providers and safeguard knowledge for future generations.