Creating New Stories

The Role of Evaluation in Truth and Reconciliation

Abstract

This paper describes the origins of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, with the focus on how evaluators and their professional associations can contribute to truth and reconciliation. At the professional association level, the actions that the Canadian Evaluation Society has taken in committing itself to incorporating truth and reconciliation into its values, principles, and practices are highlighted. At the individual level, evaluators are challenged to reflect on their practice. As storytellers, evaluators have been complicit in telling stories that, while highlighting the damaging legacy of residential schools, have had little influence on changing the status quo for Indigenous peoples and communities. The need to reconsider who should be telling the stories and what stories should be told are critical issues upon which evaluators must reflect. The way forward also needs to include a move toward a more holistic view, incorporating the interaction between human and natural systems, thus better reflecting an Indigenous, rather than a Western, worldview. The imperative for evaluators, both in Canada and globally, to see Indigenous peoples “as creators of their own destinies and experts in their own realities” is essential if evaluation is to become “a source of enrichment … and not a source of depletion or denigration.”