frontmatter 
title: Sunaŵi
aliases: [Home, Sunawi]
tags: [home]

Sunaŵi

"to think one's thoughts, to ponder, to think in existence" — Owens Valley Paiute

This site is a living document about what responsible AI looks like in language documentation, preservation, and revitalization work. It is designed to be a growing, cross-referenced collection of examples, terminology, and people, meant to help communities, researchers, and practitioners have productive conversations about this topic. It grew out of the Sunaŵi workshop (June 2026), but it is built to keep growing well beyond it.

Goals of This Wiki

A central takeaway from the workshop, and the reason this wiki exists, is that conversations about this topic are genuinely difficult, for many reasons. To name just a few:

  • Earned mistrust. Indigenous communities have a long history with extractive research, and researchers often don't understand that history or the concerns it created.
  • Jargon. Technical language gets in the way of conversation between fields, and "AI" is so broad that two people talking about it (critically, hopefully, etc.) may be referring to completely different technologies.
  • Heterogeneity. Indigenous communities' goals and concerns vary widely. There's no one-size-fits-all answer, and that makes it very difficult to rigorously define what good or bad work looks like.

Together, these difficulties (among others) make prescriptive guidance impossible: there is no checklist that fits every community, language, and tool. So instead of rules, this wiki is example-driven, collecting good and not-so-good examples of tools, collaborations, and approaches, each with its upsides and downsides, and cross-referenced with terminology. By working through this history and the specifics of many concrete examples, researchers, communities, and institutions can build a deeper understanding of AI technologies, their risks and potentials, and especially of what responsible collaboration looks like. We hope this document can help enable the continued, interdisciplinary, cross-sector conversation this work needs.

Finally, we hope more people will start paying attention to this space. Nearly every major question society is asking about AI shows up here in concrete form: environmental impact, privacy, data sovereignty, consent, ownership, cultural homogenization, misrepresentation, misinformation, and even its effect on our own thinking. It's also a space where AI has the potential to do real good. If you want to understand what responsible AI actually looks like in practice, not just in principle, this is one of the best places to look!

Who this wiki is for

This wiki is not only for academics, institutions, and industry. It is just as much for Indigenous communities and the people who plan, administer, and govern language work within them, and for educators at every level. Responsible AI in this space depends on collaborative dialogue across all of these perspectives and experiences, and this document is meant to be a shared reference that people coming from very different starting points can read, question, and build on together.

How this wiki is organized

  • Examples/: the heart of the wiki: concrete tools, collaborations, and approaches, each with its context, upsides, and downsides.
  • Terminology/: short, plain-language definitions of technical terms, concepts, etc. These are referenced throughout the examples.
  • People/: Sunaŵi workshop participants and contributors to this wiki.
  • About/: the workshop this grew out of, related efforts like the CORE Institute Fellowship, and the process for updating this document.
Cite this
@misc{coleman2026,
  title        = {Sunaŵi: A Living Document on AI & Indigenous Language Revitalization},
  author       = {Coleman, Jared and Coleman, Tainã and Iskarous, Khalil and Krishnamachari, Bhaskar and Nelson, Glenn and Anastasopoulos, Antonios and Andrews, Helema and Ankiel, Ben and Aplin, Chris and Arvizu, Citlali and Barragan, Luis and Bögre Udell, Daniel and Brixey, Jacqueline and Cabrera, Mónica and Coto-Solano, Rolando and Dionisio, John David and Ebrahimi, Abteen and Floca, Melissa and Fountain, Amy and Frey, Ben and Gaeta, Alejandra and Hearrell, Chad and Heaton, Raina and Hildebrandt, Kristine and Huaute, Ray and Jimenez, Ruth and Kellerstrass, Jordan and Kendall-Bar, Jessica and Krim, Jessica and Kroskrity, Paul and Liu, Zoey and Lockwood, Hunter and Maillet, Kiana and Munro, Pamela and Prud'hommeaux, Emily and Ramonetti, Pedro and Scarcliff, Brent and Sullivan, Mairead and Thakur, Jay Prakash and Ticona, Belu and Toal, Kira and Toal, Ray and Torrence, Harold and Wein, Shira and Wright, Tiffany},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {Sunaŵi},
  url          = {https://sunawi.kubishi.com},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-08-01},
}
Updated
Supported By the National Science Foundation Award 2542375.