Webinar Series: Widening Our Worldview
This is a virtual webinar series taking place in 2025.
Webinar Details
As a part of the Evaluation Capacity Network's ongoing efforts towards embedding Indigenous knowledge into the Canadian evaluation landscape, we invite you to join us for the continuation of our five part "Widening Our Worldview" webinar series which started with our first learning session "Cultivating Safe Spaces" in November 2024. Guided by Indigenous evaluation experts, participants will learn about a variety of the underpinnings that inform Indigenous evaluation practices and how to incorporate Indigenous practices into their programming.
Session 2 (March 5, 2025): Co-creating Evaluation Plans
Session 3 (March 26, 2025): Indigenous-Informed Logic Models/Theory of Change
Session 4 (April 16, 2025): Arts-Based Data Generation
Session 5 (May 7, 2025): Data Sovereignty
During the registration process you will be able to reserve a spot for the session(s) you wish to attend.
Who Should Attend?
This session is intended for anyone looking for learning opportunities specifically pertaining to Indigenous and decolonial evaluation approaches. Please note, we have limited capacity for this session. If you are no longer able to attend, please cancel your registration as soon as possible to enable others to join.
Webinar Sessions
Please choose which sessions you would like to attend.
Virtual
Session 2: Co-Creation of Evaluation Plans
Join Gladys Rowe for her and Mewinzha Ondaadiziike Wiigaming’s American Evaluation Association 2024 Conference presentation entitled “Crafting an Anishinaabe Evaluation Framework: Co-Creation, Iteration, and Community Alignment in Evaluation Practices.” Guided by an Anishinaabe framework that serves to highlight Anishinaabe values, cultures, and aspirations, joining members will learn the critical steps needed to co-develop an evaluation framework and the importance of co-creation, iterative development, and alignment with Indigenous practices. By utilizing co-created evaluation tools and indicators of success, members will learn how to develop a sense of belonging, understanding, and empowerment amongst community members, whilst ensuring relational ethics are upheld.
Session 3: Indigenous-Informed Logic Models/Theories of Change
Join Andrea Johnston for a discussion on the differences between Western logic models/theories of change vs. Indigenous ones, as well as how to incorporate the latter into your own programming. Guided by nearly 30 years of Indigenous evaluation expertise, Andrea will highlight various differences such as taking a strengths-based approach that prioritizes the restoration of balance within communities, community relationships, collective well-being, connection to land, community-led action and decision-making, and, at times, cultural revitalization. Decolonial practices of knowledge transmission through storytelling and the importance of addressing historical traumas in programming will also be covered.
Session 4: Arts-Based Data Generation
Join us and Dr. Lana Whiskeyjack for the fourth webinar in our Widening Our Worldview series. This session will focus on Arts-Based Data Generation. From Saddle Lake Cree Nation, Dr. Whiskeyjack is a Nêhiyaw author, multidisciplinary artist, scholar, and arts actionist educator. Through this webinar, participants will be introduced to arts-based modalities as a tool for generating powerful data grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
Session 5: Building Ethical Data Futures: on Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Ethics
This session will explore the intersection of Indigenous data sovereignty, ethics, and culturally responsive evaluation (CRE), emphasizing best and promising practices through Indigenous evaluation methodologies. Our time together will center on discussions surrounding ethical frameworks that prioritize the voices, needs, and traditions of Indigenous peoples in data practices. The goal is to uplift Indigenous data sovereignty as a respected and integrated methodology into evaluation frameworks, furthering decolonization and reconciliation work in meaningful and actionable ways.
Our Speakers
Gladys Rowe
Independent Evaluator
Gladys Rowe is a Muskego Inniniw (Swampy Cree) person who also holds relations with ancestors from Ireland, England, Norway, and Ukraine. She is a member of Fox Lake Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba. She currently resides on the occupied lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples in Washington State. Gladys is a Scholar, Filmmaker, Poet, Author, Facilitator, Researcher, and Evaluator. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to her work and loves to think inside the circle when it comes to transforming the futures we are living into.
Andrea L. K. Johnston
CEO
Since 1991, Johnston has been employed full-time as an evaluation manager working towards a future that changes the relationships between Indigenous Peoples and funding agents to operationalize an environment in which Indigenous Peoples can set their parameters. Andrea enjoys working most with colleagues and partners who support the goals of the projects in which she is engaged. She works to break down walls and works hard to learn from all those with whom she engages in dialogue during her project work.
Lana Whiskeyjack
University of Alberta
Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts
Lana Whiskeyjack is a nêhiyaw (Cree) visual storyteller, scholartist and arts actionist educator. She is a multidisciplinary artist, scholar, and author from Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Treaty Six, Alberta, now based in amiskwaciy waskahikan, Edmonton. Lana demonstrates innovative interdisciplinary Indigenous knowledge translation and mobilization through arts and land-based practices, community-engaged research, scholarship services and teaching. Her scholarship is grounded within nêhiyawêwin (Cree language), nêhiyaw ways of being and knowing. Her current collaborative research explores gender and sexual diversity, rites of passage, rematriation, kinship systems (wahkohtowin) and health and wellness. Her visual works have been exhibited internationally and she created over a dozen digital stories for accessible intergenerational community resources. She was awarded Research excellence within her current role as an associate professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta."
Amber Bedard
Research Steward
Amber Bedard (She/Her/Hers) is a member of Piikani First Nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy in Alberta and Montana. Amber has a diverse background in Indigenous research and consultation, primarily working within program evaluation in the public and private sectors, as well as in higher education. She is passionate about ensuring research and evaluation is done in a culturally responsive and safe manner, while also advocating for deep learning and creating space for Indigenous knowledge.
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