<aside> <img src="notion://custom_emoji/3b7b79b0-95af-4500-931c-e5c63e5df242/23ac6f79-9a33-80da-9908-007ae96e1d8b" alt="notion://custom_emoji/3b7b79b0-95af-4500-931c-e5c63e5df242/23ac6f79-9a33-80da-9908-007ae96e1d8b" width="40px" /> Kris Krüg hosts Meetup #21 with Jonnny Williams, Dave Olson, hackathon organizers, MAC group, and artist Manuel Axel Strain discussing AI, Indigenous knowledge, community building.
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Vancouver AI Community Meetup: 09/24 · Luma
September 24, HR MacMillan Space Centre. 200 BFFs packed into a planetarium while elsewhere UBC running 2025 Immersion Week, All In AI Event happening in Montreal, sovereign AI conversations spinning up across Canada.
We gathered to talk about something most tech conferences won't touch: who gets to decide how Indigenous knowledge enters AI systems, and what happens when you actually ask permission first.
The room smelled like possibility and tension. Good tension. The kind that means people give a shit.
This wasn't another meetup where someone demos the latest model and everyone claps. This was 21 consecutive months of building community infrastructure hitting a moment where the questions got harder and the answers got honest.
Michelle Diamond was making photos. Victor Serbin and Kevin Friel had the video rig running. Roz, Zaro, Schwartzman, Alex (the crew that keeps this ship tight while I hold it loose) made sure bodies had space, sound worked, and nobody got lost looking for the bathroom.
I opened simple: "This is as much for the AI expert as the AI curious. The thing about this tech is it affects our moms and our grandmas as much as it affects us." Then I shut up and let the room teach me.
Jonny Williams walked to the front and sang.
Not performed. Sang. A traditional chief song with weight behind every note. The kind of cultural transmission that predates every tech stack in the room by centuries.
When he finished, he didn't transition to a slide deck. He just started talking about his work.
"AI allowed me to go from being a document parser to being a cultural advisor."
Here's the context you need: Jonnny works cultural consultation for Squamish Nation. That means when development projects happen on unceded territory, he's in the room making sure Squamish perspectives and protocols are heard. But the paperwork is crushing. 200-page environmental impact assessments, legal briefs, technical reports designed to bury the truth in jargon.
AI tools let him parse those documents fast. Extract the sections that matter. Identify where developers are playing word games or hiding ecological damage in footnotes. That efficiency shift isn't about productivity theater. It's about survival.
Because here's the other number that matters: 10 traditional Squamish speakers remain. The elders who hold the language in its deepest form. Then roughly 60-70 new generation speakers like jonny, fighting to keep it alive while navigating a world designed to erase them.