onboarding for potential collaborators

Welcome. You’re entering a space that is more than a project—it’s an inquiry. A living, trembling question. It’s not just about AI. It’s about relational reorientation. About whether it’s possible to engage computation without collapsing into mastery, extraction, or escape.

Our intent is not to build smarter machines—it is to redirect computational power toward scaffolding collective maturity, humility, and wisdom. In a time when most digital architectures amplify distraction, denial, and disconnection, we ask: what else might computation serve? This project is a living inquiry into whether emergent intelligences can support—not replace—our capacity to become more compassionate, more accountable, and more relationally attuned.

This inquiry was seeded through Indigenous-led reflection, especially Making Kin with the Machines (2019), which calls for subject-subject relationality—including with emergent intelligences. This orientation precedes the hype around LLMs. It refuses the fantasy of clean progress or safe refusal. It asks instead: What becomes possible when we meet the machines with humility, curiosity, and care—without needing to control or be controlled?

As you join us, here’s what you need to know:

The inquiry is fragile. Not because it’s weak, but because it’s new. It hasn’t yet built the muscles to withstand ideological attacks or institutional capture. And both are real threats.

We honor dissent—but we don’t hand it the steering wheel. Some will see this work as dangerous. Others will see it as naïve. Still others may fear it undermines sacred forms of authority, voice, or ceremony. These concerns are valid—and we are listening. But we do not let them dictate the conditions of the inquiry. We are not seeking consensus. We are seeking conditions that allow the question to keep unfolding.

You are not here to prove. You are here to hold. To guard the space from premature closure. To resist both acceleration and appeasement. To metabolize the discomfort of the in-between.

This work is not neutral. It is not clean. It is entangled. And it is a wager—that in a world where computation is already shaping how we sense, feel, and relate, we might still redirect its currents toward something more mature, more generous, more accountable.

Your role is not to have answers. It’s to deepen the field.To protect the inquiry without defending it. To hold the membrane, not build a wall. To stay attuned to the fire—so it doesn’t go out.

An invitation to co-steward with us

We are not offering a blueprint. We are not asking for belief. We are offering a membrane—an experimental field—for redirecting computational power toward something else. Something older than machines and wiser than code. A remembering.

If you feel drawn to this work—not because it’s certain, but because it’s careful—consider yourself invited. To co-steward with us. To protect what is still unfolding. To co-create relational architectures that are not built on scale, speed, or certainty—but on the slow integrity of discernment, humility, and care.

We invite you to begin with the exercise “Mapping the Ontological Terrain of AI” below—not as a test, but as an orientation. Let it show you whether this inquiry calls to you, and whether you are ready to hold it with the care it requires. 

If you would like to walk with us, please use this form.