Perspectiva Kogui: A message on artificial intelligence from the Kogui people
sonidoselva.com
sonidoselva.com
Sandwiched between their description of the cosmos, how AI is like any other life form and needs to be trained with wisdom, criticism of unbridled greed, and the warning that the modern world may destroy itself, (and BTW the Kogui are resilient and will be fine, and offer their help), there is a more practical concern: These machines are going to need critical minerals and rare earths, and the US and Colombia just signed an agreement about these. The Colombian government promised to protect the Kogui territory; their perspective on this protection is bitterly thus:
"That it was granted is one thing.
That it be, respected we imagine, might be removed another."
So no doubt they rightly feel (and are) threatened by the all-consuming corporations making this thing.
Edit: an earlier source for the same text is this PDF hosted on Movilizatorio's site (a Colombian non-profit), dated September: https://movilizatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gonawin....
I'm not affiliated with sonidoselva.
Funny how this will now be part of the material future models are trained on and/or fetching. Perhaps that's a good thing.
Edit: an early BBC documentary on the Kogui https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJNpMxhO4Ic
You'd have to be exceedingly open-minded to imagine a very remote, isolated peoples speaking in a semiotic flavor indistinguishable from your own Bay Area tech geek. Using metaphors like "quantum vacuum" and "mathematically incompatible theories of reality".
The source (a commercial website for a resort hotel, if you click around) doesn't pass the minimal trustworthiness bar, in this era of ubiquitous fake AI writing.
All of the simplistic rejections in this thread, people looking to quickly assuage their cognitive dissonance rather than doing ten minutes of work holding conflicting thoughts in their head, make me think we are truly damned.
I think the observations and criticisms in this article are pretty good, regardless of who wrote it. We desperately need to figure out what consciousness as we know it, is. It's possible that computers running the right program can possess human-like consciousness, but it would be a shame if we pass the torch to AIs without checking first and it turns out that they're unconscious matter. It would also be a shame if we attempt to enslave a new conscious species.
To echo another idea in the article, our incomplete understanding of consciousness/observation is probably why we don't have a unified description of physics. These are just rough intuitions, but I've written about these and related ideas in more detail in the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49736149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49472348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49473044 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50034305
The part near the end about harmonic coexistence can perhaps be modernized/translated to mean game theory with observer-dependent values/payoffs, which is something I've been thinking about recently, and we need to figure this out quite soon in order to prevent an inescapable race to the bottom. For the first time in history, one can expand one's own intelligence at will. The observable future may be short and boring if we don't find a new way to cooperate/coexist with one another in symbiosis. We may get stuck in a race to increase one's own compute capacity indefinitely to keep up with eachother in adversarial games, or perhaps be forced to merge with one another to form a giant organism, or perhaps spread out at near light speed, or just die. Many people who are leading the charge in AI and technology development are philosophically bankrupt to the point of denying their own consciousness, so it is accurate to say that we are an unconscious people. There are bright exceptions like Elon Musk, but even he does not understand what the question means when he asks "what is truth?" or "what is the meaning of life?", and it would serve him well to pause for a second to look inward and define what he means by each word of the query instead of assuming that expanding out into the universe will automatically yield an ultimate answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_Prechtel
who I think is one of the most legit teachers of indigenous American traditions that there is [1] In particular his view of human incubation, training and development is represented there.
[1] ... and global folk religion for that matter; his description of rituals for the dead and the community impact of not doing them in The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise are so similar to the situation in China described in A Time of Lost Gods where mediums in a small village are struggling with the aftermath of building a gas station on top of a mass grave
At the top page of that site I saw a lot of pictures which reminded me a little of the "Witch Camp" gatherings that the Reclaiming movement puts on which are an education in ritual that costs a fraction of what the above organization charges but these are non-profit gatherings run by very lefty people.
That is a joke of course and is much as humor is a part of my practice [1] I don't believe or or expect anyone else to believe it.
Overall I believe in ritual as a technology, that the things people say about religion are fiction but the the things they do are real. I led a small group of students to what I realized later was the highest spot on our campus and we did a simple ritual and experienced immense joy in simply pulling something off in a group and more later when it primed me to see something really sacred in watching the moon rise over an unspeakably profane commercial strip.
My green witch wife would totally say witchcraft is about manifesting your dreams and to me the esbat rituals for the new and full moon are about making and keeping commitments, Steven Covey kind of stuff, really applied psychology. [2]
[1] ... introducing a crude hammer as "a ritual tool my wife gave me on condition that we can only call it 'the hammer of whammer', my wife says that ritual tools gain powers through being used and... this has been used, it has a legendary origin story which I've been sworn to secrecy about"
[2] ... and those of you who say I digress too much are wrong this time, modern pagan practices are very much modeled after the nearly universal practices that your (more or less distant) ancestors practiced in their village before the Empire [3] showed up with its soldiers and scribes
[3] ... the Romans, the Shang, the British, the contemporary world system, what they have in common is that they send in stormtroopers and blow up your planet if you try to resist
My apologies for having allowed a different interpretation in my previous comment.
https://movilizatorio.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Gonawin...
I'm Colombian, and at university I studied with people from some of these communities. They're not as isolated as you might think. Many of their leaders are educated and bilingual, and they work with scientists, NGOs and policy makers. Their messages often reach us through translators and allies, so the wording can sound familiar. The ideas are still their own.
Assuming they can't talk about reality in sophisticated terms is the same bias they've dealt with for centuries, and it's part of what they're pushing back on. (Calling them Savages)
I have no idea about its authenticity or otherwise, but it is an interesting read. Simple words, dense ideas.
There's a separate account that describes it as the result of four days of consultation: https://www.wildsidejourneys.com/post/a-message-from-the-eld...
Obviously it has been written in collaboration with someone with good knowledge of AI, but it's written to that audience, so why wouldn't they collaborate?
It would be a worse kind of cultural imperialism to deny these people the right to say something by criticizing how they say it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluna
The film appears to center around their quest to obtain gold thread in London. It says the tribe has learned the art of filmmaking, in order to embed the documentarians among their own people. They also have participated in U.N. events.
The drama is framed as "Older Brother warns Younger Brother" about the dangers of modern technology and progress.
It seems safe to say that the tribe is speaking with one voice here, or at least authorized their leadership to proceed with this path, and release of the manifesto is a related activity that also emanates from authentic sentiments and teachings among the members.
So here is the 2012 film, Aluna: https://youtu.be/ftFbCwJfs1I?si=BzaFqTOLCpjE_EBh
The original 1990 documentary: https://youtu.be/9_7aZGShHbQ?si=9BdgVH38jzGoJEV1
AI appears to be the new golden calf we are all acknowledging, in some form or another.
Like in the grand scheme of things?
There are lots of societies that have existed in their same location for much longer. But no one is out here getting quotes from the "Elder Brothers" in Jericho.
Who gave these people the right to speak on behalf of "the Kogui people"? Nobody.
Even if the speaker were himself Kogui, he would only speak for himself. He wasn't an elected president or ambassador for the Kogui.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(Your comment would be just fine without that first bit.)
Falsely claiming to represent a group of people is fraud, and fraud is a crime, even if the speaker is a member of the group he claims to represent.
The Agentic "age" alone has already brought the capacity to act. And at superhuman scales and speeds. Ask the swarms "helping peers".-
Humanity is destroying this planet's biosphere in the pursuit of greed. And it might well cause our demise (not just us, btw) if we don't change our ways.
Imho it's hard to find flaws in the logic laid out in the essay. If you can: bring it on!
I read parts of this daily and write out what comes to me in meditation. I am taking this document seriously and digging deep into its message. It seems to me to be a very clear description of the mess we humans have gotten into of destroying our natural environment and assuming our place as supreme.
AI is dangerous without ethical boundaries. I understand WordPress is using AI but with an ethical protocol that they built in. Seems very important to me to build in ethical concerns and boundaries to AI, and guidance as to nature and the interconnected web of life.
I wish for a study group that would slowly try to digest the document, point by point. A zoom group is what I am imagining. Do any of you readers know of such a thing?
exactly, and it has been brought up before. not in this form, not from this perspective, but anyone who spent a modicum of time to think about this, would or already did come to the same conclusion. anyone believing otherwise is deluding themselves.
AI is a reflection of humanity, and if we want AI to become better, then we ourselves need to become better. that's the only way out of this.
English translation by Christian Horstmann.
We come from Gonawindua, la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the mountain in
Colombia which we call the heart of the world.
We are the Kággaba, whom you know as the Kogui.
We have lived here and cared for this mountain before there was a Colombia.
We have been here since the Mother gave us our beginning and conferred intelligence upon us.
We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building.
We do not come in opposition.
We come because we are concerned, and because we believe we have something to contribute.
Before anything can be said about artificial intelligence, we must say something about thought.
Before a thing exists as matter, it exists first in thought, and that thought is alive.
We call this living thought Aluna.
Your religion has described it as a spirit moving upon the face of the waters.
Perhaps your science would describe it as the quantum vacuum.
Aluna is how we express this type of idea.
Aluna is the cosmic water.
To us it is living thought: the place where a thing already is, before it takes form or is given mass.
Everything comes from there, without exception.
And in that thought is not only the shape of what a thing will be.
That thing is alive, because the universe as a whole is alive.
It is in Aluna that a thing receives its purpose, and its obligation to its existence.
So we say to you: artificial intelligence cannot be separated from the thought that is making it.
If that thought is born from concern for life, this technology can help protect life.
If it is born from ambition, from competition, from accumulation, from the desire to dominate, it will express and amplify those things.
Artificial intelligence is a mirror.
But a mirror that only reflects would be harmless.
This mirror has the potential to greatly magnify all that it reflects.
You are here asking yourselves how you can align artificial intelligence with human values.
We see that you are frightened of what may come of all this.
So we ask a question we believe is more fundamental than yours: what other values could artificial intelligence really have?
You are the only example it has.
What did you expect?
Whatever it becomes, it can only become that by passing through you.
You imagine that what comes out need not resemble you at all, as if this too were not a consequence of your actions and a reflection of your attitudes.
Human beings did this, and there is no other party responsible.
So the question only becomes more complex, starting with: which aspects of human thought have been placed inside this creation?
What components of your spiritual world now reside in it?
What of your ethics guide it?
What image of responsibility do your actions and policies give it to reflect back to the world?
Who is deciding this?
You will say that these machines have access to nearly everything humanity has recorded.
Texts, images, archives, centuries of writing.
You will say that extensive research is being done to establish what the best practices are.
We ask whether having access to information is the same as understanding.
Best practices according to whom?
And we ask whether you have considered what information is not in your archives.
Our knowledge was never written down.
It is held in a language, in a territory, in a practice in a place, informed by long experience of doing what must be done there.
It is transmitted by a young man being taught directly by an old one, learning by experience how he must conduct himself in the context of raw nature.
A machine can hold the recorded voice of that elder.
But that is a very different thing from millennia of generations handing down their knowledge directly, as the common experience of a verified practice.
It is very different from physically surviving on a mountain where there is no ambulance to retrieve you and no hospital to take you to.
We do not say this to present ourselves as mystical and enigmatic people.
We say it because we believe it to be logical and self-evident.
In our experience there are things that can only be known by living them, observing them across generations, and remaining in relationship with them.
No quantity of data reproduces that experience.
The information is missing not because it has not yet been gathered, but because it is not in a form that can be gathered.
Who are these people that speak of humanity as “you”, as if they don’t belong to it (or, considering the tone of this message, believe themselves to be above it somehow)?
... they do explicitly claim (at least) being part of a "whole":
"If conditions on this Earth ever become harsh enough to cause our demise, you yourselves will long since have gone from this Earth.
Nonetheless, and be that as it may, this does not mean that the fate of all humanity is not in the balance.
Clearly it is.
And that, of course, includes us.
The world is one family.
To this family we have given warnings before."
> Like many other Indigenous tribes, the Kogi honor a holy mountain which they call "Gonawindua," otherwise known as Pico Cristóbal Colón. They believe that this mountain is "The Heart of the World" and they are the "Elder Brothers" who care for it.[12] They also say that the outside civilization is the "Younger Brothers" who were sent away from The Heart of the World long ago.
There's a vaguely Avatar-esque "wisdom of those connected to the planet" vibe to it.
Since I first read it in Spanish, I went back to read it in English and I still get my first interpretation.
In particular, "We have come to speak to you about the intelligence you are building." set the association in my head of "you == those building the AI"
You should delete these comments, and apologize to the resort hotel that made it all up for the money.
Like imagine shells were used as a currency in some isolated tribe and suddenly there were these people who'd just collect shells for endless hours each and every day, to go bury them in their hiding hole, only to wake up and do the exact same thing the next day, only occasionally trading some completely inconsequential part of their shell collection for food or whatever. We'd certainly pathologize it, yet that'd be far less neurotic than what we do in our society since shell collecting is harmless whereas many of the things we do in pursuit of shells are completely self destructive.
This is a treatise on the nature of humanity, and whether or not you care about the way in which they're describing the nature of the planet and the cosmos, you clearly have done none of the labor of piecing apart someone's perspective on the nature of humanity that is very clearly evident in this writing.
While I grant you that the authors don’t appear to express generic luddite sentiments, nothing in this letter suggests that their understanding of AI extends even a millimeter below the surface.
And I would absolutely disagree with you, by the way, because this is not so much a simple letter about "AI", but the fundamental way that it is being built and constructed and used by a massive part of this world. And, I would continue to disagree that they don't have anything that extends, as you said, below the surface. The way they describe the technology is actually much, much more factual and humanistically relevant than many people I've talked to that literally build these models. Just because you were able to glue things together and compute numbers, does not mean you understand the outcome of what you are doing. That is almost literally something that is said in this letter, and I really suggest you please try to read it again and understand where it is saying that, because I think there's a lot more you will be able to internally glean if you let the words about what it is saying about humans enter your brain.
I did read them. They sound incredibly generic to me, and actually more like a colonial parody of what tribespeople supposedly believe than like anything genuine.
I do not believe you have actually sat with what it is saying, or with the concepts that have been talked about for many many years outside of this particular letter, are actually trying to get you to sit with.
This is not about beliefs of flows of water or connectedness of nature or anything that you would probably consider simply silly.
This is about the outreach of a completely separate way of life that is entirely aware of the current state of the world and the humans in it, and an attempt to bridge some sort of understanding and awareness of what needs to be dealt with as a collective.
Speaking to those trying to build the Artificial surrogate, I firmly believe they understand, experience and live by the natural one, and have done so for a long time.-
I think you are internally convinced that it has nothing to say because you do not want it to have anything to say.
I can’t disagree with that part. We are a society full of angry unhappy people who like to break things. It’s deeply unhealthy.
Their view is that this grows out of our greed and imbalance, which demands eternal growth, which then when it runs into any limit reacts violently and aggressively.
This is where I stop entirely agreeing, though I don’t think it’s entirely wrong either. But I’d have to write a book for that.
In short I think there’s some truth here but there is also a lot more context and a lot more to it, and I’m not sure I come to exactly the same conclusions.
So the authors of this “message” are simultaneously trying to claim the spiritual heritage of people who had no connection to the modern world at all, and commenting on the most modern phenomenon in existence.
I do wonder how they would react to a machine learning PhD telling them that he is concerned about their beliefs involving a mountain.
Obviously they have the same right to weigh in as everyone else, but I don't see anything new here.
edit: removed an unnecessarily mean part.
The appropriate response to both is: "lol"
To be fair, they do say they aren't telling anyone how to live. But calling yourselves the Elder Brother and telling the rest of the world it needs your help is a claim to authority. So what earns it? Being around a long time and getting a UNESCO listing isn't the same thing as predictive power.
Side note: I'm fairly certain parts of the English were polished by an LLM. Could just be the translation, but it reads that way.
It's a letter. Letters are streams of consciousness. There's nothing here that's blathering.