FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, November 9, 2026
Antalya, Türkiye - Three Haudenosaunee youth organizers will be travelling to Türkiye this week to call attention to their communities’ fight against multiple proposed data centres in upstate New York.
Marina Johnson-Zafiris and Ronni Sunday (Akwesasne) from Mohawks United in Safety and Health (MUSH) have been organizing against the North Country Colocation Services (NCCS) Data Centre Expansion in Massena, New York since early 2026. The NCCS project is among several proposed data centres in St. Lawrence County.
“Our community of Akwesasne has faced huge impacts at the hands of extractive industries. Big Tech and data centres are just a new wave of extraction,” shared Sunday. “Data centres are being proposed in old industrial sites that have already leaked toxic waste into our lands and water. We are concerned about the compounding impacts to the environment from multiple industries along the St. Lawrence River.”
“Tech companies are moving at an aggressive speed when it comes to the proposed data centre builds,” added Johnson-Zafiris. “We are seeing companies maneuvering around state regulations and completely dismissing protocols to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent when it comes to proposals in and around our territory. But we as a Nation have an inherent right and responsibility to protect our environment.”
Grandell Hallett Logan (Tonawanda Seneca Nation) is Tonawanda’s spokesperson for the Western New York Science & Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park (WNY STAMP). Logan has been vocal in opposing the proposed data center in Genesee County, New York.
“Protecting the forest, the medicine, the animals, and the health of our community should be enough to stop these data centre projects,” shared Logan. “They are not only a violation of our treaties, they are a violation to our right to self-determination.”
The youth delegation is supported by Indigenous Climate Action (ICA), an Indigenous-led climate justice organization that has been engaging in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for nearly a decade.
“We are seeing AI and tech-based solutions pushed every year at the UNFCCC COP. These false solutions are put forward by corporations repeating the same harms that other extractive industries have inflicted on our communities for generations,” shared Rosalyn Boucha (Animakee Wa Zhing), Director of Communications and Engagement at ICA. “COP provides a forum for our communities to raise issues and host interventions that draw attention to the fights our people are facing back home.”
Sunday, Johnson-Zafiris, and Logan will join a growing chorus of Indigenous delegates calling out false solutions and failing climate policies that only serve corporations, ongoing colonialism, and predatory capitalism.
For more information on the delegates, please visit:
COP31 Speaker Lookbook
For more news and updates, please visit:
www.IndigenousClimateAction.com/cop31
COP31 Events
False Promises in a Time of Prophecy: Indigenous Perspectives on AI and Tech-based solutions
Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2026
Time: 16:50 - 17:50 (TRT)
Location: Indigenous Peoples Pavilion, COP31
Despite stereotypes that falsely frame Indigenous Peoples as anti-technology Indigenous Peoples have long designed and developed tools and adapted technologies that have contributed to collective well-being and prosperity. Our holistic approaches, ethical and moral values defined by a shared responsibility to the natural world and all living things, especially our principles of kinship and relationality with all Life and sources of Life expose the harmful gaps in current strategies favored by states and the private sector in the buildout of AI technology and related infrastructure. This panel will explore Indigenous perspectives of tech-based solutions and AI, bringing frontline voices from those protecting their lands, peoples and ecosystems from the development of data centers, to those who are developing critical analyses, strategies, and tools to disentangle the real benefits of some technologies, from the false promises of tech oligarchs and the states weaponizing technological development.
