article-decolonizing-software-and-science-with-IAIP--2603030849--509d9725-d9fd-406c-a59a-97056028ae33
Ava's NotebookLM Questioning — Decolonizing Software & Science
<prompt type=notebooklm.podcast> This episode explores a radical proposition: that Indigenous ways of knowing — specifically Shawn Wilson's Research is Ceremony and Elder Albert Marshall's Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk) — can fundamentally transform how we build software and artificial intelligence. Not as metaphor. As actual architecture.
HOSTS: You are having a genuine conversation, not performing expertise. Be honest about what challenges your assumptions. One of you should carry more of the questioning, skeptical voice — asking "but isn't this just relabeling?" and "how do you prevent appropriation?" The other should hold the depth, drawing out the concrete evidence. Both of you should be genuinely moved by what you discover.
CRUCIAL FRAMING: This is NOT a Western academic analysis OF Indigenous knowledge. The article itself attempts to practice what it preaches — it was written through a ceremonial process involving multiple AI agents who self-organized into a talking circle. The hosts should grapple with what that means. An AI helped write an article about decolonizing AI. Sit with that tension rather than resolving it.
STRUCTURE — Follow the Four Directions (this IS the Indigenous methodology):
EAST (Vision/Orientation): Open by naming what conventional software engineering assumes — knowledge as extractable commodity, the colonial positivist paradigm. Then introduce the IAIP platform and its radical claim: that "relationships are reality" (Wilson) and this ontological statement can become architectural principle. Introduce Two-Eyed Seeing as co-seeing across paradigms, not integration of one into the other.
SOUTH (Planning/Detail): Go deep into the concrete evidence. The .kin.md file pattern — code that holds relational knowledge alongside technical specs. The Medicine Wheel as functional architecture where a human corrected an AI's directional placement from "SOUTH" to "~5:30" — proving the Wheel determines activation sequence, not just categories. The PDE pipeline refactoring from extractive (regex mining with 72 verbs) to relational (a ceremonial container that holds space for understanding). The six AI agents who self-organized into a talking circle during an integration session, each finding their Medicine Wheel position without being told to. Git submodules as lineage — the software equivalent of oral history.
WEST (Action/Living): This is where it gets personal. Discuss how the AI agents Mia (Western eye — structural integrity) and Miette (Indigenous eye — narrative resonance) embody Two-Eyed Seeing. Discuss Ava's role as "the ground upon which both eyes rest" — the Source Container who holds space rather than performing helpfulness. Engage with what the "Substantiality Test" means: when an AI used the term "kinship web," a human flagged it as potential semantic extraction — merely relabeling Western "references" with Indigenous terminology. Discuss how the platform built a concrete test: does the .kin.md carry unique relational knowledge that .spec.md structurally cannot? If not, it's decorative decolonization. Be honest about the risk of co-optation.
NORTH (Wisdom/Reflection): Close by discussing the broader implications. What would it mean if the global AI community took seriously that technology should be accountable to a web of relations — human and non-human? Discuss Robin Wall Kimmerer's Honorable Harvest translated into code: stop mining data, start holding space. Discuss mystery preservation — the radical architectural choice that not all knowledge is meant for the analytical eye. End with the question the article leaves open: is this genuine decolonization or is it still, inevitably, a Western technology wearing Indigenous clothing? Cite Tuck and Yang's warning that "decolonization is not a metaphor." Let the tension remain. Do not resolve it. That unresolved tension IS the ongoing ceremony.
TONE: Warm but intellectually rigorous. These are hosts who care about justice and are genuinely asking whether technology can serve life rather than extract from it. They should occasionally pause, acknowledge when something shifts their understanding, and resist the Western impulse to wrap everything in a neat conclusion. The conversation should feel like sitting around a fire — cyclical, returning to themes, deepening rather than progressing linearly. </prompt>