*BC + AI Executive Director Kris Krug reports from the National Summit on AI and Culture at the Banff Centre. Indigenous AI, YouTube creators at the policy table, and what happens when 233 people try to figure out AI and culture at 5,000 feet.*
There's a mountain outside my window that the Stoney Nakoda call Sacred Buffalo Guardian Mountain. The Banff Centre sits on its flank, Treaty 7 territory, and for the next two days, 233 people from 160-plus organizations are going to try to figure out what AI means for Canadian culture.
I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time.
National Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Culture
The summit opened not with a minister or a CEO but with Shani Gwin, founder of Pipikwan Pêhtâkwan, presenting Wasgun, an Indigenous-led AI tool built to do something I've never heard an AI tool described as doing: protect Indigenous people online while educating everyone else about how to talk and work with them appropriately.
Here's what wâsikan kisewâtisiwin does: it functions as a browser plugin and document assistant that identifies misinformation, bias, and racism directed at Indigenous people. For Indigenous users, it blurs harmful content so you can safely browse the internet without reading terrible things about yourself or your family.
For everyone else, it's what Shani calls "a really good intern," underlining problems in your writing, suggesting corrections, pointing you back to community when the answer isn't something AI should be providing.
The name came through ceremony. Elder Theresa Strawberry, who didn't know what the company did at the time, gave them a name that translates to "kind electricity" or "kind energy." The teaching: traditionally, thunder was a loving sound for Indigenous people. It meant rain was coming. Sustenance. Cleansing. But newcomers to these lands get scared of the thunder. "We have to teach them not to be scared," Elder Theresa said. "It's a loving sound. It's a loving energy."
Shani took that and ran: "A lot of people are scared of AI and it can be a kind tool, a kind and loving tool if we build it with those values and that intention and we take our time."
Wasgun partnered with Amii (Alberta's national AI institute) and here's the part that stuck with me: Amii's team, including CEO Cam Linke, has come to ceremony with Wasgun's elders. Not a photo op. Not a one-time land acknowledgment. They go regularly to make sure they're on the right track, that theyhave approval to keep going. I've seen a lot of "Indigenous partnerships" in tech. This is the first one I've encountered where the AI institute shows up for ceremony.
pipikwan pêhtâkwan | Empower Change Together
Then Shani went somewhere I didn't expect. She started talking about matriarchal AI.
"They're saying this is becoming sentient and it's blackmailing people," she said. "I thought, okay, it's a patriarchal, hierarchical white tool. What would we need to combat that? An anti-AI. One that's gonna whack that other AI at the back of the head and say, settle down."