The Good Mind Guide to Artificial Intelligence

This playbook is a public resource for Indigenous organizations: First Nations administrations, community programs, non-profits, and cultural institutions who are weighing whether or not and how to use artificial intelligence in their work.

It is written differently than most AI guides. Rather than starting from a technology and asking where it fits, this playbook starts from Haudenosaunee principles: the Good Mind, Seven Generations, the Two Row Wampum, and the Great Law of Peace.

This includes information on the tradeoffs of using mainstream tech platforms. These systems can offer real benefits, but they can also quietly cost us sovereignty over our own data, knowledge, and decisions. This guide was written to help weigh that tradeoff deliberately, one decision at a time, rather than following AI adoption strategies developed by organizations that may not be aligned with our values.

A note on transparency: this guide was developed in collaboration with Anthropic’s Claude, but the final draft was edited by a human and peer-reviewed by community members.