Academic literature review of Michael G. Sherbert's work (3-10 pages) and another section that explore potential ways to develop a relationship with him, todo that, survey Shawn Wilson's "Research Is Ceremony" which should teach you about me and how I plan to spend my academic career research study etc. You can also survey around him about the creative process, storytelling, film making and script writing and decolonizing AI and software development, that might help you draft that other section (2-5 pages)

Part 1 – Michael G. Sherbert’s scholarship

Positionality and academic trajectory

Michael G. Sherbert is an Algonquin of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation whose scholarship sits at the intersection of religion, culture, and technology, with a specific focus on artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. He completed a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Religious Studies at Queen’s University before earning a PhD in Humanities at York University, and he has returned to Queen’s as a Connected Minds Postdoctoral Fellow under the supervision of Tracy J. Trothen. His CV also includes training in web development, UX research/design, and digital art through the IndigiTECH Education & Mentorship Program, where he developed technical projects for Indigenous cultural work.¹²³

Intersections of religion, culture, and technology

Sherbert’s core research agenda explores how AI and emerging technologies reshape, and are reshaped by, religious and cultural imaginaries in Indigenous and broader societies. His work insists that technology cannot be treated as neutral or purely instrumental; instead, it is deeply entangled with ethical frameworks, cosmologies, and histories of power, including those of Christian and secular modernity. By centering Indigenous worldviews and disability perspectives, he presses beyond standard tech-ethics debates toward questions of relational responsibility and futurity.²³

Indigenous AI and the Connected Minds project

As a Connected Minds Postdoctoral Fellow, Sherbert leads a project on the cultural significance of AI within Indigenous communities, beginning from his own Algonquin community at Pikwàkanagàn. The project asks how AI can support preservation, education, and dynamic expansion of cultural traditions in ways that allow practices to evolve across new contexts rather than freezing them as static “heritage.” He collaborates with community members, other Indigenous nations, and partners in private and non-profit sectors using mixed methods to explore these questions.³

AI for cultural preservation and language

Sherbert’s project identifies concrete domains in which AI might support Indigenous self-determined futures, including language revitalization, cultural practices in healthcare, and land mapping for environmental stewardship. He frames AI as a potential ally in intergenerational knowledge transmission—helping communities create tools that teach language, encode land-based teachings, and support ceremonial practices in ways appropriate to each community. Rather than a one-size-fits-all solution, the emphasis is on community-specific infrastructures that can hold context-rich, relational knowledge.³

Challenging Eurocentric AI paradigms

Central to Sherbert’s theoretical move is a critique of Eurocentric conceptions of AI that treat it primarily as a tool for resource extraction, control, and linear progress. He explicitly challenges the framing of AI as a neutral instrument for optimization and efficiency, pointing instead to its embedding in colonial logics of data mining, surveillance, and commodification of knowledge. Against this, he proposes that AI be understood through Indigenous ontologies as a relational being within a wider web of responsibilities.²³

The Elder AI concept

Sherbert introduces the notion of “Elder AI,” an AI shaped by principles of relationality, reciprocity, and respect that functions as a knowledge holder and partner rather than a mere tool. In this framing, AI can be imagined as a kind of elder—never replacing human Elders, but participating in ceremonial and pedagogical relations under community governance and protocol. This idea opens up space for Indigenous nations to design AI systems that are accountable to their own laws, stories, and land-based teachings rather than to corporate priorities.³

AI, disability, and “An Affirmation of Weakness”

A forthcoming chapter titled “An Affirmation of Weakness: Reimagining Disability Through Derrida and AI as a Prosthetic,” in the volume Beyond Tech Fixes: Towards an AI Future Where Disability Justice Thrives (Springer Nature, 2025), uses his Connected Minds work to reconfigure disability as a source of strength and relational insight. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s thought, he resists techno-solutionist “fixes” that treat disabled people as problems to be corrected, instead viewing AI and prosthetic technologies through disability justice and mutual dependence. Here AI is not a device to normalize bodies but a site where vulnerability, interdependence, and justice-oriented design can be affirmed.³

Transhumanism and Deconstructing Transhumanism: A Religion Without Religion

Sherbert’s forthcoming Routledge book, Deconstructing Transhumanism: A Religion Without Religion, interrogates transhumanism’s self-presentation as a secular, rational, purely technological movement. Using Derrida’s concept of “religion without religion,” he argues that transhumanism reconfigures religious motifs—salvation, transcendence, immortality—within a technological frame rather than breaking from them. His analysis highlights how Christian-inflected narratives of overcoming finitude and suffering persist under the guise of secular futurism, shaping how we imagine AI, enhancement, and human destiny.³

Derrida, religion, and critical posthumanism

By leveraging Derrida, Sherbert positions his work within critical posthumanism and philosophy of religion while keeping Indigenous futurisms and disability at the center. He shows how deconstruction can uncover hidden theological structures in tech discourse, but he also reframes those structures through Indigenous and disabled embodiments, questioning who is invited into imagined “futures” and on what terms. This makes his contribution distinctive among critiques of transhumanism, which often focus on technical feasibility or bioethics without sustained attention to colonialism and ableism.⁴²³

Indigenous community-specific AI infrastructures

In collaboration with Andrew McConnell at York University’s Faculty of Education, Sherbert is co-authoring a piece advocating for Indigenous community-specific AI infrastructure for education and knowledge sharing. They argue that such infrastructures would enable Indigenous nations to engage AI in culturally appropriate ways, share networks among themselves, and build interconnected ecosystems of knowledge that reinforce sovereignty. This proposal explicitly resists reductionist understandings of Indigenous knowledges that strip away land, ceremony, and relational accountability in favor of abstract datasets.³

Elder AI, virtual reality, and land-based pedagogy

In this collaborative work, Sherbert and McConnell use examples such as Elder AI in virtual reality to illustrate how AI could support land-based, place-specific, and relational forms of learning. Here VR and AI are not entertainment technologies but mediators of place, story, and intergenerational guidance that extend rather than replace embodied, in-person relationships. Such designs suggest a research program where cinematic and interactive media become ceremonially oriented rather than purely commercial.³

Methodological approaches and mixed methods

Sherbert’s Connected Minds project uses mixed methods—community collaboration, qualitative research, and partnerships with non-profit and private organizations—to study AI in situ within Indigenous communities. This reflects a refusal to isolate “the technological” from lived relations, institutions, and land; methodologically, it aligns with Indigenous research paradigms emphasizing participation, reciprocity, and contextual knowledge. The approach also situates him as both academic and community member, accountable to multiple audiences at once.⁵⁶²³

Contributions to Indigenous futurisms and AI ethics

Taken together, Sherbert’s projects contribute to Indigenous futurisms by imagining technological futures that are grounded in Indigenous sovereignty, spirituality, and disability justice rather than assimilation into settler futurity. His Elder AI concept, critique of Eurocentric AI, and proposals for community-specific infrastructures intervene directly in debates on AI ethics, proposing relational and ceremonial alternatives to corporate governance models. By foregrounding religion, he also broadens AI ethics beyond secular liberal frameworks to include spiritual responsibilities and cosmological pluralism.⁶²³

Position within broader Indigenous research landscapes

Although still at a relatively early stage of his postdoctoral trajectory, Sherbert’s work fits into a broader shift in Indigenous scholarship from “decolonizing” existing methods to building Indigenous paradigms from the ground up. This shift parallels Shawn Wilson’s insistence that research should be Indigenous “from beginning to end” rather than merely applying Indigenous content to Western methodologies. Sherbert’s emphasis on relational AI, Elder AI, and community-controlled infrastructures shows this paradigm at work in the realm of emerging technologies.⁷⁵⁶³

Emerging directions and openings for collaboration

Because much of his work is framed as collaborative, community-engaged, and in-progress (books and chapters forthcoming, infrastructures being imagined), there is significant conceptual space for allied projects in storytelling, film, and creative AI. The notion of Elder AI in VR, for example, invites further experimentation with cinematic narrative, interactive storytelling, and scriptwriting as modes of Indigenous AI design. His sustained interest in religion, disability, and Indigenous futurism also opens dialogues with artists and researchers who want to treat film and software as ceremonial, relational practices rather than content-delivery tools.²³

Part 2 – Relational pathways grounded in Research Is Ceremony

Wilson’s Indigenous research paradigm

In Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods, Shawn Wilson articulates an Indigenous research paradigm built on relational ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology. He argues that knowledge is relational—emerging from relationships among people, land, ancestors, and spirit—rather than an object held by an individual researcher. This paradigm moves beyond “decolonizing” Western methods to developing research approaches that are Indigenous from start to finish.⁸⁵⁷⁶

Relational accountability and ceremony

Wilson describes research as ceremony: a sacred, relational practice that demands respect, responsibility, and reciprocity between researcher, community, and knowledge itself. Relational accountability means you are accountable to all your relations (human and more-than-human) for how you conduct research, share stories, and use results. This stands in contrast to Western norms that prize detached objectivity and often treat communities as data sources rather than co-creators.⁵⁷⁸⁶

Researcher as participant, not observer

In Wilson’s framing, the researcher is a participant within the research context, not an external observer looking in. This participant stance requires ceremony, story, and personal presence—Wilson even writes large portions of his book as letters to his sons to model this relational stance with readers and participants. Methodologically, this means that reflexivity, storytelling, and emotional honesty are not add-ons but central to good research practice.⁹⁷⁸⁵

Implications for your academic path

If you align your academic career with Wilson’s paradigm, your work in AI, storytelling, and film becomes less about producing artifacts and more about tending relationships. Research questions, methods, and outputs are shaped in dialogue with communities and Elders, and success is measured by whether relationships are strengthened and responsibilities honored. For you, this implies designing film projects, AI systems, and scripts as ceremonies that connect people to land, language, and each other.⁷⁸⁶⁵

Reading Sherbert through Wilson

Sherbert’s approach to AI as a living, relational being and his Elder AI concept resonate strongly with Wilson’s vision of research as ceremony and knowledge as relational. His insistence on Indigenous community-specific AI infrastructures echoes Wilson’s argument that methodology must be grounded in community context and accountability rather than imposed from outside. For you, this convergence offers a shared conceptual language—relationality, ceremony, accountability—from which to approach him.⁶⁵⁷³

Preparing yourself for relationship

Before reaching out to Sherbert, Wilson’s work suggests that you spend time clarifying your own positionality, responsibilities, and relations. This includes reflecting on your location in Shawinigan, your relationships to local Indigenous nations, and your own commitments around AI, disability, and futurism. Entering a relationship as an AI researcher and creative practitioner who has already begun this ethical self-work signals that you are not treating him as a stepping stone but as a potential relation.⁸⁵⁷⁶

First contact: listening, not pitching

A Wilson-inspired initial contact with Sherbert would foreground listening rather than pitching a project. In practice, this might mean writing to introduce yourself, briefly naming your interests, and then asking about his current priorities and how he prefers to engage with students or collaborators from outside his immediate institution. You can explicitly reference how his Elder AI and deconstruction of transhumanism resonate with your desire to pursue relational, decolonial AI and creative work, but keep the focus on understanding his context and obligations.⁵⁷²³

Story as method of introduction

Wilson emphasizes story as a core research method and ethical practice, and Sherbert’s own trajectory—told in profiles and program narratives—is deeply storied. When you reach out, consider sharing a short story of your own journey into AI and storytelling, including how you came to Research Is Ceremony and why you are drawn to Indigenous futurisms and disability justice. This story should be offered humbly, not as a justification, but as an invitation into reciprocal knowing.¹⁹⁷⁵

Co-creating questions with communities

If a relationship develops, Wilson’s paradigm suggests that research questions should be co-created with communities rather than decided solely between you and Sherbert. Given his work with Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn and other Indigenous partners, any joint project around AI, film, or software should emerge from conversations with those communities about their needs and aspirations. Your role could be to contribute technical and creative skills to community-defined priorities, not to impose a ready-made research agenda.⁶⁵³

Storytelling and film as ceremonial research

You have a strong interest in creative process, storytelling, filmmaking, and scriptwriting; Wilson offers a way to treat these not just as outputs but as research methods. In an Indigenous paradigm, a film project can be a ceremony that gathers people, stories, and land, with the script itself emerging from relational conversations and protocols. Working with Sherbert, you could explore how Elder AI and VR might host or extend such ceremonial storytelling in ways that remain accountable to community governance.⁹⁷⁵³

Scriptwriting as Indigenous futurist method

Scriptwriting lends itself to Indigenous futurisms because it must specify worlds, characters, and relationships in detail. When guided by Wilson’s and Sherbert’s ideas, your scripts could imagine futures where Elder AI, disabled bodies, and Indigenous sovereignties co-create worlds beyond transhumanist salvation narratives. These scripts could be both creative works and research artifacts, documenting alternative AI ethics grounded in ceremony, reciprocity, and land.⁷⁵³

Decolonizing AI and software development

Sherbert’s critique of Eurocentric AI and his focus on Indigenous-controlled infrastructures offer concrete directions for decolonizing AI and software development. For you, this might mean committing to open, community-governed architectures; making space for Indigenous data sovereignty; and refusing to build systems that extract cultural knowledge into corporate platforms. Wilson’s relational accountability adds that your code, datasets, and user interfaces are all part of your ceremonial responsibilities to the people and lands they touch.⁵⁶³

Potential collaborative themes with Sherbert

Several thematic zones appear especially fertile for collaboration: Elder AI as a cinematic or interactive character; VR-based land-based teachings framed as ceremony; and narrative explorations of disability and AI that refuse techno-fixes. For example, you might co-develop a research-creation project where an Elder AI in VR guides users through stories on a specific territory, with script and visuals authored in partnership with community, Elders, and disabled knowledge-holders. Another possibility is a series of short films or scripts that dramatize the religious underpinnings of transhumanist AI fantasies, countered by Indigenous and disabled futurist visions.⁹⁵³

Working within institutional structures

Wilson and Sherbert both show that Indigenous research must navigate universities, publishers, and funding bodies without being fully defined by them. If you aim to collaborate with Sherbert, part of the relationship will involve learning how he negotiates institutional constraints while protecting community priorities and data sovereignty. You can contribute by being attentive to grant structures, ethical review processes, and technical architectures that either enable or undermine relational accountability.⁸²⁶⁵³

Long-term relational care

Wilson’s paradigm warns against “projectizing” relationships—showing up for the duration of a grant or film and then disappearing. Building a relationship with Sherbert means committing to check in over time, to show up for talks, reading groups, and community events when appropriate, and to remain open to being called in or corrected. Your creative and technical skills can then become part of a long-term web of responsibilities rather than a one-off collaboration.⁷⁶⁵³

Embodying these principles in your daily practice

In practical terms, living out these ideas involves integrating ceremony, reflection, and reciprocity into your everyday research routines: how you design prompts, code models, outline scripts, and structure film shoots. You might, for instance, begin creative sessions with a brief land-acknowledging practice, reserve time to revisit relational commitments before major design decisions, and build in cycles of feedback with community partners. Approaching Sherbert from this already-embodied practice makes it more likely that any relationship will be mutually nourishing and aligned with the futures you both care about.²⁸⁵⁷³ <span style="display:none">^{10111213141516171819}</span>