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Heirloom Praxis
An Afro-Indigenous, Black & Afro-Diasporic Activist Working Group

Our Intelligence. Our Communities. Our Future.

Technology for Our People. Knowledge for Our Communities. Power for Our Liberation.

Status: Founding circle now forming. Meetings will be online via Zoom; the schedule is shared with selected participants. Applying commits you to nothing.

Apply to join the working group

AI for the Village

Why we are gathering

AI for the Village is a virtual working group, now forming, bringing together Afro-Indigenous, Black, African American, and Afro-diasporic activists, grassroots organizers, educators, farmers, cultural workers, healers, artists, entrepreneurs, and community builders.

Our mission is to collectively explore, learn, and develop practical applications of artificial intelligence that strengthen our movements, enhance our community work, improve our everyday lives, protect our cultural knowledge, and advance collective liberation.

We recognize that artificial intelligence presents both extraordinary opportunities and serious challenges. Our goal is to harness its potential without reproducing the extractive systems, surveillance practices, cultural exploitation, and colonial power structures that have historically harmed our communities.

Illustration: a group of Black and Afro-Indigenous elders and young people gathered around a laptop in a community garden at sunset, a glowing map of Africa on its lid.
Illustration from the working group’s flyer, made with AI. It is not a photograph, and it does not show members of the group.
Illustration: five people around a wooden table, one pointing at a laptop showing an AI for the Village dashboard — community organizing, food and land sovereignty, media and storytelling, education, community business, healing and wellness — with a video edit open on a second laptop.
Illustration made with AI. It is not a photograph, and it does not show members of the group.
This circle is for

Activists, organizers, educators, farmers, healers, creatives and community builders

From Afro-Indigenous, Black, and Afro-Diasporic communities, exploring how AI can uplift our people.

Tap any that describe you — we’ll tick them on your application.

Together, we will

Five things we mean to do as a circle

  • Organize & empower our people
  • Advance food & land sovereignty
  • Build digital sovereignty
  • Amplify our stories & media
  • Grow collective community development
Our collective focus

Eight threads we will pull on together

Choose up to 3 that call to you, and they'll be on your application when you get to it.

  • Liberatory AI — organizing, mutual aid and community institutions

    Using technology to strengthen grassroots organizing, mutual aid, community institutions, and collective liberation.

  • Digital sovereignty — our data, creative work and ancestral knowledge

    Protecting our data, creative work, ancestral knowledge, intellectual property, and technological independence.

  • Decolonizing technology — bias, surveillance and community alternatives

    Examining algorithmic bias, surveillance, digital exploitation, and concentrated technological power while developing community-centered alternatives.

  • Collective innovation — practical skills, workflows and tools

    Sharing practical AI skills, resources, workflows, research, and tools that strengthen our individual and collective capacities.

  • Community wealth and cooperative economics

    Exploring community-owned technologies, cooperative enterprises, economic opportunities, and shared infrastructure.

  • Food, land and environmental sovereignty

    Applying AI to agriculture, ecological restoration, food systems, land stewardship, and environmental justice.

  • Cultural preservation and storytelling

    Using AI responsibly to preserve histories, amplify community voices, support independent media, and protect cultural expression.

  • Holistic well-being — education, health literacy, healing, creativity

    Exploring how AI can support education, health literacy, healing practices, creativity, and everyday life while prioritizing human relationships and community care.

Our commitment

Advancing collective liberation without reinforcing extractive, surveillance, or colonial systems.

Technology for Our People.

Illustration: a vivid mural of a woman's face in profile, painted across a brick city building above green trees.
Illustration made with AI. It is not a photograph, and it does not show members of the group.
Join the founding circle

A select group, committed to learning and acting together

We are inviting a select group of Afro-Indigenous, Black, African American, and Afro-diasporic activists and community builders who are committed to collective learning, collaboration, and meaningful action.

You do not need to be an AI expert. We welcome participants at different levels of experience who bring curiosity, lived experience, practical skills, community knowledge, and a commitment to collective growth.

Nobody is asked to prove their identity to apply. Describe yourself and your work in your own words, and that is enough.

Location
Online via Zoom
Format
Ongoing collaborative discussions, educational sessions, demonstrations, resource sharing, and project-building opportunities.
Schedule
To be announced to selected participants.
Participation
Interest-based registration and founding-circle selection.
Apply to join the working group

Tell us who you are and what you would bring

The first part and a few sentences in your own words are required. Everything else is optional. Applying is free and commits you to nothing.
Which describes your work?

Choose as many as fit.

Which areas of focus draw you most?

Choose up to 3 for now.

0 of 3 chosen.

A few sentences in your own words — your work, your community, what you'd like to learn or build. Please don't include anyone's private information or protected cultural knowledge.

Tell us a little more · optional
Your experience with AI so faroptional
How would you like to take part?optional

Choose any. None of these signs you up for anything else.

Would you be open to helping?optional

Hosting, teaching, collaborating, sponsoring or organizing.

Staying in touch optional — both start unticked
Workshop series

Not ready for the circle? Start with a workshop.

Five hands-on workshops open the same conversation to more of the village.

Illustrations made with AI. They are not photographs of participants.

See the workshop seriesPricing & access
What happens to what you share

Plainly, before you send it

  • It is stored in the Heirloom Praxis database, which is hosted by Supabase. It is read by the people forming the circle, to choose its first members and to stay in touch, and by no one else.
  • It is not sold, rented or shared — not with partner organizations, event organizers, or other projects in the Heirloom ecosystem — and it is not sent to any AI model.
  • Applying is separate from general updates and from asking for a personal follow-up. Each is its own choice, off until you tick it, and you can withdraw any of them from the link in our confirmation email.
  • A confirmation email is sent through our email service, Resend. You can ask us to delete everything about you at any time.

An independent initiative

The AI for the Village Working Group is organized through Heirloom Praxis. If you reached this page from an event or a partner’s link, that organization has not endorsed it and does not receive your details.

We are not simply learning to use artificial intelligence.

We are building the collective knowledge, technological capacity, and community power necessary to shape our own futures.

AI for the Village: Building Collective Intelligence Without Surrendering Collective Sovereignty.