In this episode Gladys and Terrellyn talk about storytelling as methodology and worldview, songs in evaluation, accountabilities of evaluators, building a canoe in a learning journey, and Metuaptmumk. It’s a full and spirit filled conversation that we hope will nourish you, and inspire you to consider arts-based methods in your evaluation and everyday practices.  Terrellyn Fearn is an Indigenous scholar-practitioner. She is Mi'kmaq, Snake clan from Glooscap First Nation and a citizen of the Wabanaki Confederacy. Terrellyn is the Project Director of Turtle Island Institute, a global Indigenous social innovation think and do tank (a learning lodge) grounded in Metuaptmumk: All Around Seeing, a uniquely Indigenous approach to wholistic human development and systems transformation. Her work spans 30 years exploring the human dimensions of transformative change where systems science, arts and the sacred meet by amplifying Ancestral languages, ancient wisdom traditions and Indigenous sciences. She is a Research Associate with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation & Resilience and holds a Masters degree in Education. She has worked with over 350 Indigenous communities across Turtle Island (North America) to advance wellbeing and create communities of practice dedicated to social change and heart centered leadership. Terrellyn is a mother and believes large-scale systemic change begins through restoring the sacred feminine and reawakening the human Spirit by connecting to self, each other, our Earth Mother and all of Creation.   These episodes in Season 2 have been made possible through support from Canada Council for the Arts. I am grateful for their support!  Email: [email protected]  To be added to the mailing list when this is announced please send an email with the subject line: SUBSCRIBE to: [email protected]  For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/  If you are loving this podcast please leave a five star review on your favourite streaming service. If you would like to offer support please visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod

In this episode Gladys sits in conversation with Jennica Nichols and Maya Lefkowich of AND Implementation. Jennica and Maya talk about their own evaluation origin stories and everything arts-based evaluation! The conversation meanders through the excitement, cautions, and learnings on their professional journey with arts-based practices and methods in evaluation. We talk about creating intentional moments of reflection, creativity, joy, and story and close our time together by creating a collective found poem, of course! Jennica was born and raised in Southern Ontario and is of European descent. She comes to evaluation from biology and public health research. Jennica is passionate about increasing research and evaluation relevance and use by changing who leads and benefits from the process. Use, respect, and thoughtfulness are core values that guide her work. Jennica helps clients with meaningful measurement, evaluative thinking, and creative problem-solving. Beyond evaluation, she is a scuba diver always looking for a good hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Check out Jennica's found poem from the episode...   What is possible? Arts-based methods are intentional, relational.   There is power in softness. It has to have roots in something. Grounding in values and deep breaths We are all messy weirdos   Disrupting. Transforming. Building new relationships with knowledge generation. Without a blueprint [but] a dream It’s an evaluation love story. More magic please. Jennica Nichols    Maya was born in Toronto Ontario and is of Jewish and Eastern European descent. She comes to evaluation from health research. Maya is passionate about transformative, community-led, and strengths-based approaches that promote equity in research and evaluation. Creativity, justice, and integrity are core values that guide her work. Maya helps clients tell meaningful stories about learning, growth, and impact. Beyond evaluation, she is a potter and creative writer always excited to read about an unlikely friendship blossoming during a misadventure. Check out Maya's found poem from the episode...   What if What if “possible” informs We don’t need to talk about arts as different Grounded in values, worldviews Not the tools in the toolbox, but you You using the tools   If the goal is to build joy and community It makes me excited The fundamental conversations that need to happen If it’s on the page, we can deal with it That’s where the magic comes from Passion   Maya Lefkowich  Resources from this episode Free Resources on Arts-Based Methods Stories: https://www.andimplementation.ca/resources/categories/arts-based-methods    These episodes in Season 2 have been made possible through support from Canada Council for the Arts. I am grateful for their support!  Email: [email protected]  To be added to the mailing list when this is announced please send an email with the subject line: SUBSCRIBE to: [email protected]  For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/  If you are loving this podcast please leave a five star review on your favourite streaming service. If you would like to offer support please visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod

In this first episode for a special Season 2, Gladys shares what she has been up to, the stories that provide direction in her life, and what listeners can expect in the next episodes. She recounts the power and necessity of story to hold a space for Indigenous resurgence and decolonial futures and shares some poetry - because that’s what she loves to do!  Resources from this episode Resurgence of Indigenous Nationhood: Centering the stories of Indigenous full spectrum doulas: https://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/handle/1993/35171    Dr. Kathy Absolon: Kaandossiwin, 2nd Edition: How We Come to Know: Indigenous Re-Search Methodologies: https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/kaandossiwin-2nd-ed    Quotes from Dr. Warren Cariou and Dr. Neal McLeod: https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Books/I/Indigenous-Poetics-in-Canada    Dr. Leanne Simpson: https://www.leannesimpson.ca/book/as-we-have-always-done  A transcript of this episode can be found here. These episodes in Season 2 have been made possible through support from Canada Council for the Arts. I am grateful for their support!  Email: [email protected]  To be added to the mailing list when this is announced please send an email with the subject line: SUBSCRIBE to: [email protected]  For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/  If you are loving this podcast please leave a five star review on your favourite streaming service. If you would like to offer support please visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod

In this final episode Gladys reflects on the first season of Indigenous Insights and shares her understandings of Indigenous evaluation and why it is a critical mechanism for decolonial futures. And, as a sneak peak into the fun of Season Two, Gladys invites listeners into a space of reflection and poetry creation to think about (and feel into) what they have learned/unlearned throughout the journey of this first season. Please feel free to share your poem/creation once you make your way through the episode by emailing Gladys at [email protected]  Watch for Season Two coming Spring 2024. To be added to the mailing list when this is announced please send an email with the subject line: SUBSCRIBE to: [email protected]    The episode transcript can be found here. For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/  If you are loving this podcast please leave a five star review on your favourite streaming service. If you would like to offer support please visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod

Sam Bird is a citizen of Peguis First Nation, currently residing in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She is a Program Partner at the Mastercard Foundation, Canada Programs, with a focus on Youth Engagement. She’s passionate about creating systems change for Indigenous young people. Outside of work she loves to enjoy all that northwestern Ontario has to offer when it comes to hiking, canoeing, and skiing. Sam is also an emerging writer, with work included in the newly released Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology. Sam is the host of Young People Know, a five-part podcast series featuring the voices and experiences of young Indigenous leaders. The podcast explores the principles of effective, meaningful, and genuine youth engagement. In conversation with Indigenous young people from across Canada, the series shares the challenges, benefits, and opportunities they face in serving on advisory councils while working to create transformative change that embeds Indigenous values, priorities and protocols into the organizations and systems that affect their lives.   Resources from this episode: Young People Know Podcast Series   The transcript for this episode can be found here. For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/  If you are loving this podcast please leave a five star review on your favourite streaming service. If you would like to offer support please visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod

Dr. Karen Alexander is Ojibwe from the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. She is the proud mother of four and grandmother of five. Karen’s culture as an Indigenous person is most important to her and she passes down her knowledge about how to live life ‘in a good way’ to her children and grandchildren. She has always strived to help other Indigenous people to heal and has been an addictions counselor and clinical social worker, as well as an evaluator and a researcher. Karen is most interested in making sure that Native people have programs, services, and evaluation that is appropriate to their culture. Karen’s dissertation examines the values that make us who we are as Indigenous people and the benefit of the inclusion of those values in evaluation. Most of all, Karen hopes that her research will help others to know ‘who we are’ on a deeper level.   Resources from this episode: Exploring the Use of Cultural Values in the Evaluation of Programs with Native American Tribes   The transcript from this episode can be found here.   For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/  If you are loving this podcast and would like to offer support please leave a five star review and/or visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod

January O’Connor currently lives in Anchorage, Alaska. January is Tlingit and is Alaskan born and raised in Kake, Alaska. She possesses a Masters in the Arts of Teaching from the University of Southeast and a Bachelor’s in Psychology from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and is a current PhD student in University of Alaska Fairbank’s Indigenous Studies program. In her Indigenous Studies PhD, January will research indigenous evaluation. Her secondary research passion and interest is indigenized education in secondary and post-secondary environments.   She is also a Founding Director of Raven’s Group LLC, a consulting group that provides services in program planning and design, grant writing, education and youth programming, and evaluation for educational programs that focus on Rural and Alaska Native youth and students.    In addition to bringing her educational and lived Alaskan and Alaska Native experience to her evaluation and research practices, she has 15 years’ experience leading and developing youth programming that is culturally responsive and based on positive youth development guided by research. Resources from this episode: Indigenous Peoples in Evaluation Topical Interest Group, American Evaluation Association.  Ravens Group LLC https://www.ravensgroupak.com/ University of Alaska Fairbanks Indigenous Studies https://www.uaf.edu/indigenous/  The episode transcript can be found here. For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/  If you are loving this podcast and would like to offer support please leave a five star review and/or visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod

Dr. Myra Parker is an enrolled member of the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes and serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She is currently the Director of Seven Directions which is housed in the Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors within the Department of Psychiatry.   Dr. Danielle Eakins is a licensed clinical psychologist and a research scientist at Seven Directions. Danielle is dedicated to supporting behavioral wellness through collaborative, strengths-based partnerships with Indigenous communities.    Resources from this episode: Indigenous Evaluation Toolkit: An Actionable Guide for Organizations Serving American Indian / Alaska Native Communities through Opioid Prevention Programming The transcript from this episode can be found here. For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/  If you are loving this podcast and would like to offer support please visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod

Caroline Davis is Diné (or Navajo) originally from the Navajo Nation in Arizona. Born and raised on the reservation, she has first hand knowledge that drove her passion to work in the field of public health. Tailoring her career specifically to Indigenous Populations she found her niche in evaluation work, and considers herself an advocate for the inclusion of Indigenous research and evaluation methods in any work with all communities but specifically Indigenous communities. She currently lives in Southern New Mexico with her husband and 3 children and works as a research director for an evaluation consulting group.    Resources from the episode Tribal Early Childhood Research Center The episode transcript can be found here. For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/  If you are loving this podcast and would like to offer support please leave a five star review and/or visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod

Dr. Melissa Tremblay is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta . She is a Métis scholar, born and raised in rural Alberta. Melissa has a background in program evaluation, project management, children’s mental health, and working with Indigenous children and families using community-grounded methods. Melissa has worked in the field of evaluation for over ten years, and maintains a private evaluation practice. Her research and clinical background is focused on children’s mental health and working with Indigenous children and families from a strength-based perspective. Her research interests are primarily focused on exploring the development, resilience, and mental health of Indigenous children, youth, and families, as well as the use of arts-based methods with diverse populations. Melissa’s research takes a relational, community-based participatory approach and has allowed her the privilege of working in partnership with Indigenous peoples, communities, schools, and agencies across the country.   Resources from this Episode    Dissertation: Understanding the Experiences and Characteristics of Teen Families Involved in a Supportive Housing Program The episode transcript can be found here.  For more visit: https://gladysrowe.com/category/indigenousinsights/    If you are loving this podcast and would like to offer support please visit: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/InsightsPod