As online gaming threatens casino revenues, one California tribe faces off over a data center

Tribal elder Keeny Escalanti’s voice cuts through the blasting air conditioning in the parked car, sweltering in the Yuma, Arizona, 109-degree heat.

A former president of the Quechan Nation, 72-year-old Escalanti’s words wield respect among his community. So when he speaks up about a rapidly divisive, national issue now coming to the reservation, his fellow tribal members listen.

“We have to protect what we have left,” Escalanti said. “We can’t afford to jeopardize the loss or the contamination of our reservation as far as the land, the water, the air.”

The Quechan’s Fort Yuma Reservation spans 45,000 acres across the Arizona-California-Mexico border. Last month the tribal council announced on its website that it is considering leasing nearly 1,000 acres of reservation land for the development of a 200-megawatt AI data center and a solar farm.

The announcement — and earlier suspicions that such a project was being discussed behind closed doors — was met with much outcry and pushback among the tribal community.

But tribal leaders are looking at data center development through another lens: As online gambling proliferates and puts the future of casinos into jeopardy, they need to diversify their financial portfolio. A data center, they say, could be an answer.

And while some communities and other tribes opt for moratoriums, the federal government is touting opportunities that put tribal communities under pressure to consider bearing the impacts of data center development.

Some Quechan leaders say unlike a project proposed in neighboring Imperial County, theirs would cause less environmental impact and bring more community benefits. 

They say the data center would be cooled mechanically to avoid exorbitant water use. They plan to sell solar energy to partially power the data center — and a portion of those profits, leaders say, would go directly to the bank accounts of the roughly 4,000 tribe members.

The council has estimated monthly stipends totaling $480 for those over 18 and older and nearly $700 for older members.

“We would actually give direct profit shares to our members, so that they could use the monies how they wish,” Councilmember Zion White said.

“It’s about self-sufficiency.”

That offer hasn’t convinced members who say they are against selling off their resources for a monthly stipend and giving in to the momentum behind a federal strategy to accelerate data center construction in the name of national security and other priorities.

Hyperscale data centers are resource-intensive and take up a large footprint of land, which concerns members.

“We have more pride in our people and in our culture and in our land than to ever be desperate for 400 bucks a month,” said Willie White, a former tribal council member who is running for tribe president in December 2026.

Opponents have also said that tribal leadership has not been transparent about the project, and that it has not followed the proper protocols for considering one of its kind and scale. They have commenced a formal process to recall Jonathan Koteen, the tribe’s president.

Koteen denies wrongdoing and says that although the council initially held conversations with various entities, members did eventually involve the appropriate department. He said he is equally as concerned over tribal land and resources, but that his administration is faced with a difficult decision of how to secure the tribe’s economic future.

He also said nothing is finalized.

“If anything goes against our principles or our morals, or our culture, then it’s going to be a hard ‘no,’” Koteen said. “Right now I think we’re just trying to do as much homework as we can.”

‘What do you lose?’

For tribes across the U.S., weighing paths for economic growth with development on their land is not new. 

In recent decades, casinos have served that purpose. Tribes have exclusivity and independence when the casinos operate solely on reservation land — and they create a robust revenue stream, providing direct earnings for tribal members and funding scholarship programs.

The energy and mineral sector, on the other hand, can be more complicated.

While most agree that seeking new revenue streams to support tribal education and workforce development is crucial, some members also are suspicious of allowing in extractive economies that have historically plagued Indigenous lands.

Indigenous leaders throughout the country have been raising alarms about the kinds of pressures tribes are facing as the federal government promotes data center projects on tribal land for economic development.

“Whenever they offer you something, you take it,” said Preston Arrow-weed, a Quechan elder, “but what do you lose for doing that?”

In a recent interview, Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne activist Krystal Two Bulls compared the recent wave of development to modern-day “settler colonialism” — calling it “data colonialism.”

She said that the conditions on reservations make them an ideal target: access to resources, looser legal structures for overseeing companies, communities in need of jobs and income and jurisdictional issues that can make building easier.

Her organization, Honor the Earth, has been crowdsourcing a map of data center projects on or near tribal lands. It’s been tricky, she said: Companies like Google or Meta work with subsidiaries that come in and broker silent deals with tribes, sometimes using non-disclosure agreements early in the process to prevent community pushback.

Koteen and his colleagues on the council, Zion White and Christobal Illingworth, told inewsource that they understand and share the concerns their community voiced about the project.

They say they have not signed NDAs — or any agreements.

“We really want to make sure that our project is different,” Koteen said, “making sure that we are looking out for the land, the water, the health concerns that are there as well.”

Among the concerns tribal members are raising are damage to sensitive habitat, including plants that have cultural significance, such as creosote. They’ve also pointed to potential harm to animal migration patterns, the site’s 5-mile proximity to a school and housing, noise and other forms of pollution from byproducts of the facilities which could contaminate the earth and water. 

The project site is adjacent to the Colorado River and along a shallow water table lined by a levee.

“We have a responsibility to that river, and it’s insane to build an industrial project that close to it,” Willie White said.

Koteen said that more details will come once the tribe begins to carry out environmental reviews, and he anticipates “ stricter laws” could apply.

Quechan tribe members say they started hearing about the project before leadership presented it to the community. Several tribal members said the council first denied there was a project underway until confronted at one of its regular meetings.

Suspicions heightened when a tribal member heard that Sebastian Rucci, the developer of a controversial data center project in Imperial County, was spotted on reservation land.

Rucci’s project has galvanized strong community opposition throughout the county, and most recently is facing a new hurdle: a lawsuit alleging the county is approving the project in parts, a method called piecemealing.

Koteen told inewsource that his team initially contacted Rucci and met with him as part of its information-gathering process when they started considering building solar, but have not had discussions with him since. They are tracking developments in his Imperial County project, Koteen said.

More than 150 people attended a subsequent special meeting the council later decided to hold at the Paradise Casino. Willie White said almost all who attended, including tribal elders, opposed the project.

The data center would be powered by 60% solar energy and 40% natural gas. Council members considered four locations before settling on one that appeared suitable for the least amount of environmental and cultural impact.

Koteen said that rather than relying on the Imperial Irrigation District for power as the reservation does, a solar project would provide power they could sell to the company running the data center. He declined to disclose the company, saying no agreements have been signed.

‘Who is it actually going to benefit?’

Willie White remembers a day from his youth when he was celebrating a win with his baseball team. Four uncles showed up celebrating a victory of their own.

Along with a coalition of environmental organizations and tribes, they had successfully stopped the creation of a nuclear waste dump site in Ward Valley.

“These old timers that were walking in the door,” Willie White said, “man, they were like, you know, like legit Native men.”

He was inspired.

“If my grandparents and my great grandparents hadn’t been fighting for the Colorado River in D.C. and fighting off these gold mines and these refineries, would I have picked up that fight? Probably not,” he said.

Koteen said it would not be the first time tribal leadership would have to navigate advancing a controversial project, citing the building of the Quechan casino which faced opposition for its proximity to culturally sensitive lands.

Still, Willie White said he’s concerned that if the data center proceeds it would constitute a break with the Quechan heritage of being stewards of the land and water — and not only their own.

“That will be an arrow through our community’s heart,” Willie White said. “From this point forward, we won’t be able to stand the ground to protect places like Indian Pass and the obsidian buttes, and the Kumeyaay mountains.

“We’ll become hypocrites.”

It’s a point that elder Escalanti made, as well.

“If we jump into something like this and turn our backs on them, we can lose a lot of that support,” he said. “Who is it actually going to benefit?”

Koteen said that before they make any decisions, they will hold more community meetings to present and discuss details with the tribe.