Nation-to-Nation Evaluation
Governance, Tribal Sovereignty, and Systems Thinking through Culturally Responsive Indigenous Evaluations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3138/cjpe.67977Keywords:
culturally responsive evaluation, First Nations, government evaluation, Indigenous evaluation, Native American, sovereignty, systems evaluationAbstract
This paper was presented as part of the opening plenary panel at the 2018 Canadian Evaluation Conference in Calgary, Alberta, on May 27, 2018. Through telling the origin stories of First Nations/Indigenous people and Western evaluation colleagues, we can begin to understand the history and practical applications for advancing the truth through evaluation. The Doctrine of Discovery is rarely told as part of the Western canon of history or contemporary evaluation practice. There are significant and negative cultural, human rights, and social impacts that have deep institutional and systemic roots that continue to cause harm to First Nations/Indigenous populations throughout the world. To change centuries of old negative outcomes and impacts, we must understand our personal origin stories and the origin stories embedded within evaluation. Governance, policy, and evaluation can work as transformative levers for professional and sustained change if systems, critical and Indigenous theories, and methods are utilized. This paper offers origin stories of First Nations and colonial nations as a historical perspective and a new Tribal Critical Systems Theory to change contemporary Nation-to-Nation evaluation practices.
References
Alexander VI. (1493). Inter caetera [Papal encyclical]. Retrieved from http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Alex06/alex06inter.htm
Bipartisan Policy Center. (2018, April 11). Evidence use in Congress. Retrieved from https://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/evidence-use-in-congress/
Bowman, N. R. (2018). Break the sounds of silence [video]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/7fpo5Lc1-U0
Bowman, N. R., Bremner, L., McKegg, K., & Wehipeihana, N. (2018, May 27). Reconciliation and culturally responsive evaluation: Rhetoric or reality? Canadian Evaluation Society: CES Co-Creation 2018, Calgary, Alberta. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6AnckEH1Eg
Bowman, N. R., Dodge-Francis, C., & Tyndall, M. (2015). Culturally responsive Indigenous evaluation: A practical approach for evaluating Indigenous projects in tribal reservation contexts. In S. Hood, R. Hopson, & H. Frierson (Eds.), Continuing the journey to reposition culture and cultural context in evaluation theory and practice (pp. 335–361). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
Brayboy, B. M. J. (2005). Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in education. Th e Urban Review, 37(5), 425–446. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-005-0018-y
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). (2018, March 19). Beyond 94: Truth and reconciliation in Canada. Retrieved from http://cbc.ca/beyond94
Canadian Press. (2018, November 22). TRC heard concerns about coerced sterilization of Indigenous women, says Murray Sinclair. CBC. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/trc-concerns-coerced-sterilizations-murray-sinclair-1.4917321
Cobb, D. M. (Ed.). (2015). Say we are nations: Documents of politics and protest in Indigenous America since 1887. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Commonwealth of Australia, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. (2018). Indigenous advancement strategy evaluation framework. Retrieved from https://pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/publications/ias-evaluation-framework.pdf
Diabo, R. (2018). Trudeau gov’t’s plan to entrench 4th level of Indigenous gov’t and permanent subjugation of First Nations. First Nations Strategic Bulletin. Media Co-op. Retrieved from http://www.mediacoop.ca/story/trudeau-government-%E2%80%9Crights-recognition-framework%E2%80%9D/36775
Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237907.001.0001
Gaudry, A., & Lorenz, D. (2018). Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: Navigating the different visions for indigenizing the Canadian Academy. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 14(3), 218–227. https://doi.org/10.1177/1177180118785382
Goetting, N. J. (2010). The Marshall trilogy and the constitutional dehumanization of American Indians. Indigenous Policy Journal, 21(3), 1–17. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1840824
Government of Canada, Department of Justice. (2018). Principles respecting the government of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/principles-principes.html
Green, J., & Starblanket, G. (2018, August 7). Recognition of Rights Framework risks terminating rights for Indigenous peoples. Regina Leader-Post. Retrieved from https://leaderpost.com/opinion/columnists/recognition-of-rights-framework-risks-terminating-rights-for-indigenous-people
Grosfoguel, R. (2013). The structure of knowledge in Westernized Universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-knowledge, 11(1), 73–90. Retrieved from http://scholarworks.umb.edu/humanarchitecture/vol11/iss1/8
LaFrance, J., & Nichols, R. (2008). Reframing evaluation: Defining an Indigenous evaluation framework. The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 23 (2), 13–31.
National Congress of American Indians. (2018, December 3). Joint statement on the United States Department of Justice’s decision to defend the Indian Child Welfare Act. Retrieved from http://www.ncai.org/news/articles/2018/12/03/joint-statement-on-the-united-states-department-of-justice-s-decision-to-defend-the-indian-child-welfare-act
Newcomb, S. (2008). Pagans in the promised land: Decoding the doctrine of Christian discovery. Golden, CO: Fulcrum. Parker, C. (2018, May 7). Trump’s political maneuvers could rob Native people of Tribal sovereignty. IC Magazine. Retrieved from https://truthout.org/articles/trump-s-political-maneuvers-could-rob-native-america-of-tribal-sovereignty/
Patton, M. Q., McKegg, K., & Wehipeihana, N. (Eds.). (2015). Developmental evaluation exemplars: Principles in practice. New York, NY: Guildford. Prussing, E. (2018). Critical epidemiology in action: Research for and by Indigenous peoples. SSM—Population Health, 6 , 98–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2018.09.003. Medline:30246140
Reinhardt, M., & Maday, T. (2005). Interdisciplinary manual for American Indian inclusion (1st ed.). Tempe, AZ: Educational Options, Inc. Retrieved from https://tribaleddepartmentsna.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/american-indian_inclusionmanual.pdf
Rodriguez-Lonebear, D. (2016). Building a data revolution in Indian country. In T. Kukutai & J. Taylor (Eds.), Indigenous data sovereignty: Toward an agenda (pp. 253–272). Canberra, Australia: Australian National University Press.
Schoenefeld, J., & Jordan, A. (2017). Governing policy evaluation? Towards a new typology. Evaluation, 23(3), 274–293. https://doi.org/10.1177/1356389017715366
Shepherd, R., & McCurry, P. (2018, October 31). Ottawa must talk to Canadians about nation-to-nation agenda: It’s time for the Trudeau government to fully engage Canadians and Indigenous communities in the conversation around its nation-to-nation agenda. Policy Options Politiques: The Public Forum for the Public Good. Retrieved from http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/october-2018/ottawa-must-talk-to¬canadians-about-nation-to-nation-agenda/
Simon, P. (1964). The sounds of silence. Retrieved from https://www.ultratop.be/nl/song/8947/Simon-&-Garfunkel-The-Sounds-Of-Silence
United Nations. (2008). United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous people . Retrieved from https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf
Waapalaneexkweew (N. R. Bowman-Farrell, Mohican/Lunaape). (2018). Looking backward but moving forward: Honoring the sacred and asserting the sovereign in Indigenous evaluation. American Journal of Evaluation, 39(4), 543–568. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214018790412
Waapalaneexkweew (N. Bowman, Mohican/Lunaape), & Dodge-Francis, C. (2018). Culturally responsive indigenous evaluation and tribal governments: Understanding the relationship. In F. Cram, K. A. Tibbetts, & J. LaFrance (Eds.), Indigenous evaluation. New Directions for Evaluation, 159, 17–31. https://doi.org/10.1002/ev.20329
Wehipeihana, N., & McKegg, K. (2018). Values and culture in evaluative thinking: Insights from Aotearoa New Zealand. In A. T. Vo & T. Archibald (Eds.), Evaluative thinking. New Directions for Evaluation, 158, 93–107. https://doi.org/10.1002/ev.20320
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Waapalaneexkweew Nicole Bowman
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors contributing to The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 (CC-BY-NC) license. This licence allows this work to be copied, distributed, remixed, transformed, and built upon for any purpose provided that appropriate attribution is given, a link is provided to the license, and changes made were indicated.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
