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A few minutes’ drive outside the borders of Akwesasne Mohawk Territory, industrial sites line the perimeter.
One aluminium reduction and smelting site now operates as a digital currency mining facility.
The facility is set to expand, opening the doors to a new hyperscale data centre. The centre will be another facility on the list of many that border Akwesasne, Kanienʼkehá꞉ka territory.
A truck with three Kanienʼkehá꞉ka women drives past the facility. As they pass, a group of men nail up “no trespassing signs” along the facility.
“You’re on native land,” Dana Leigh Thompson shouts from the driver’s window. Thompson has been fighting to protect Akwesasne’s land, water and people for decades from outside corporate industry.
“We don’t care how many signs they put up [saying] no trespassing,” says Thompson. “This is our land. This is the land of the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka. Period.”
Three industrial and commercial sites are located near Akwesasne. In the United States, these are known as Superfund sites.
The digital currency mining facility once operated as Reynold’s Metals. For decades, the aluminium reduction and smelting site released high amounts of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the environment.
A significant number of U.S. Superfund sites are located on or near Indigenous land. Indigenous communities in North America are disproportionately exposed to environmental contaminants, including PCBs, according to a study from 2012.
“There are 1,373 Superfund sites on or adjacent to indigenous communities in the United States,” says Thompson.
Two other Superfund sites line the border of Akwesasne.
The defunct General Motors site leaked aluminium die casting, contributing to PCB contamination.
Thompson stands on her land, neighbouring the former General Motors site.
“What happens when a boat passes, all the water goes out, pulls it out, then it acts like a suction cup,” she explains, explaining that the pollutants are pulled from the site where PCB contamination is buried in the ground.
The third Superfund site, Alcoa Grasse River, discharged PCBs onto the land and neighbouring wetlands from the 1950s to the mid 1970s.
‘Ranatakárias’
In July 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to accelerate federal permits for data centre infrastructure. Within it, it states that environmental reviews should be expedited to turn Superfund sites into data centres.
His efforts to expedite the conversion of Superfund sites into data centres, like the ones that line Akwesasne, have earned him the name “Ranatakárias” in Akwesasne.
“What that translates into is ‘town destroyer,’” says Thompson.
Now one of these sites will be expanding to develop a 1.5 million square foot hyperscale data centre.
New York Digital Investment Group operates a digital mining facility on the old Reynold’s Metals site. The group has partnered with North Country Collocation Services to open the data centre.
Wetlands surround the proposed three buildings that will inhabit the new hyperscale data centre.
APTN News reached out to both New York Digital Investment Group and North Country Collocation Services for an interview request but didn’t receive a response.
Thompson mentors the next generation. The next generation leading the fight against industrial and commercial sites opening along Akwesasne calls itself MUSH.
“We modelled ourselves after MASH, Mohawks Agree on Safe Health, which was created in 1981, during the height of all of the health effects and the environmental impacts that were happening to our people in the surrounding communities,” says Marina Johnson-Zafiris.
Johnson-Zafiris is a member of MUSH – Mohawks United Safety and Health – alongside Ronni Sunday.
The two focus their post-secondary studies on topics related to their work at MUSH.
“I’m a master’s student at Paul Smith College, studying natural resource conservation,” says Sunday, announcing to an audience.
The duo presented their work to an audience of students, researchers and students at the River Symposium, an event held in Cornwall, Ontario, to share knowledge of freshwater ecosystem conservation.
“I’m a PhD candidate at Cornell University in information science, where I mainly study work in developing technologies for land and water defenders,” says Johnson-Zafiris.
“Trump’s son is invested in these data centres big time,” Johnson-Zafiris says to the audience. “He made a statement, it was two or three weeks ago on National TV … he said, if you don’t want data centres, you’re going to be poor.”
Sunday and Johnson stand across from the lot set to be turned into the hyperscale data centre.
While health impacts from PCBs are well-studied, the effects of data centres are not.
“When it comes to these data centres, we don’t have cumulative long-term comprehensive research,” says Johnson-Zafiris.
MUSH specifies that their fight is against hyperscale data centres.
“We’re being very careful with our language in saying hyperscale data centres so that people can’t be like, ‘Well, you’re using a data centre when you turn your phone on when you use Facebook,’” says Sunday. “We’re aware of that, but what we’re talking about is the scale of everything.”
Akwesasne is a border community, meaning the U.S.-Canada border runs through their territory. In May, the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne on the Canadian side put out a statement condemning and vocalising concern over the building of this hyperscale data centre along the border of Akwesasne. In October, the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe on the U.S. side formally published a press release opposing the Hyperscale Data Centre from being built on or near their land.
APTN reached out to both councils for an interview. The Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe denied our request, and the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne never responded.
“They’re not really communicating with each other in the way that would kind of show a stronger stance against hyperscale data centres and also extractive industries,” says Sunday. “We’re just seeing one council saying something and the other one kind of following along behind them afterwards.”
Sunday says MUSH has been trying to get both councils to communicate on this issue together, “instead of just talking to me and Marina, and the rest of MUSH,” she says. She added that some elected officials from the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne have been attending some of MUSH’s information sessions. “But it’s two out of nine,” she said.
The group says they are not only fighting to prevent a Hyperscale Data Centre from opening on or near Akwesasne land. “What we’re hoping to do as MUSH, as a community organisation, is not just to focus on a ‘not in my backyard conversation,’ says Johnson-Zafiris. “This shouldn’t be in anyone’s backyard.”
This week, the two will be travelling to Antalya, Turkey, to attend the United Nations environmental forum COP31 alongside Indigenous Climate Action to raise global awareness around Hyperscale Data Centres.
Nā Savanna Craig nō APTN News
