Indigenous Evaluation Feels Like Home

Overview

The Interview

Gladys Rowe: Tansi. Greetings. I am so happy you are here.

I’m also excited to have Marissa Hill with me today. In honour of her grandfather, George Hill, Marissa walks a path that refuses complicity in silence or neutrality – both of which kill. Marissa’s bundle of teachings, Protocol, relationships, tools, and practices centre ancestral ways of knowing and being and her core intention is to cultivate systems that reclaim, restory, rematriate, and recentre Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Her work takes place within the realm of impact measurement, evaluation, data sovereignty, and intellectual property; is guided by Elders and takes place through Ceremony; and centres art as witness, record keeper, storyteller, and disrupter.

Marissa mostly works within social innovation and impact investment, including helping to build the first-of-its-kind pre-seed through scale Indigenous Innovation Initiative (at Grand Challenges Canada); co-leading Health Commons Solutions Lab; convening a global collective of Indigenous impact measurement leaders and experts; co-founding an emerging Indigenous data sovereignty collective; being a member of the inaugural City of Toronto Data and Technology Advisory Circle; and collaboratively transforming the impact investment industry into a space where First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people and Worldviews thrive through reciprocity, respect, relationship, love, and a re-balancing of power, methodology, and investment practice.

Marissa completed her Honours Specialization in Kinesiology at the University of Western Ontario, graduated top of her program for her MSc in Global Challenges at the University of Edinburgh, and has a background in quality improvement, project management, and design thinking.

Most important, Marissa is mom to an incredible 8-year-old who dreams of being a language speaker, beader, and dancer, and she enjoys a good laugh, big squishy hugs, and sharing food with the people and places she loves. Welcome, Marissa!

Marissa Hill: Ahniin, Boozhoo, hello.

Gladys: Wonderful. I wonder if you’d like to introduce yourself into this space beyond the bio I just shared?

Marissa: For sure. My English name is Marissa Hill and my Spirit name is Mino Mizzu Kummik Quae, which translates in English to Good Earth Woman. I was named by Elder Wendy Phillips, whose guidance and support is central to everything I do in life. Through my father, I’m a citizen of the Métis Nation and connected to Six Nations. My mother immigrated here from England, and comes from Black Irish, Scottish, and British roots. I was born and raised in Midland, which is the Traditional Territory of the Huron Wendat and the Chippewa Tri-Council, which is comprised of Beausoleil First Nation, Rama First Nation, and the Georgina Island First Nation. Midland is also on part of treaty 5 and 16 territory. When I was 10 I started to split my time between Midland and a small adjacent community called Penetang, which is on the traditional and Treaty territory of the Chippewa Tri-Council, Alderville, Curve Lake, Hiawatha and Mississauga’s of Scugog Island First Nation.

My life is rooted in complex intergenerational trauma and although it has certainly not been easy or without pain and loss, it has ultimately been one of tremendous beauty and transformation. I owe my existence in this moment, and the future of my badass warrior daughter, to every auntie and matriarch who showed me the way when I was lost in the depths of it all. It is to those humans I owe the gratitude of being brave enough to release myself to the (exceptionally non-linear) journey I took to arrive at this current version of myself.

I left home when I was 19 to go to university – not because I wanted to but because people were saying I was supposed to and that I couldn’t have anything I wanted without it. So with no money in my pocket and no authentic connection to that journey, I did it. I was the first person in my family to go to university and through miracles alone I was able to pay my bills and fill my belly long enough to finish. It was the first time I had been away from everything I had ever known. Growing up we didn’t have anything and we certainly didn’t travel, so I never knew what the world was like. I joke that until my early 20s I had no idea what an avocado or sushi or IKEA was. I was really isolated from the mainstream world through circumstance, and had no idea what I didn’t know. I thought everything around me in my communities was everything there was to know, and I have spent my time ravenously learning and exploring everything around me since then.

During my last year of university, I moved to Tkaronto where I’ve been a guest and a visitor for the last 13 years. It took me about a decade to realize I wasn’t going back home any time soon and to finally put roots down here. I was really nomadic and always felt like my time in Tkaronto was temporary, and the moment I chose to build community here is one I will never forget. I’m grateful for the relationships, adventures, loss, healing and opportunities that I’ve been gifted while here, including coming in relationship with you, Gladys, and all the other folks who I’ve done this great work with – it’s an exceptional gift that I share gratitude for daily and that I never take for granted.

Other than that, I’m a human who’s deeply flawed and who tries to move like the water, exploring the opportunities that gift themselves to me and that feel like they’re aligned to who I am and what I can offer. I have a little kiddo, she’s having a birthday and is finishing grade one, so it’s a big week at our house right now. There’s lots going on and it is a celebratory time so I’m coming with a lot of gratitude today! Miigwetch.

Gladys: Thank you so much for sharing and bringing yourself into the space in that way. What a beautiful celebration with your little kiddo this week as well. I’ve been really excited to share this space with you and I wanted to start off with asking you if you might share a little bit about the story of how you came into Indigenous evaluation work.

Marissa: I’ll start by honouring that I came into it by accident, or at least that’s how it feels. I was journeying toward it in ways I didn’t realize, but I feel like I came into this space really organically by going where I felt called to be, and just following different paths that interest me and that capture my imagination and my deep-rooted commitments. There’s something about the evaluation, learning, impact measurement, storytelling, and data sovereignty space that has captivated me in ways I can’t describe, but I can definitely feel.

I most substantially came into this space through the Indigenous Innovation Initiative. We were birthing this new innovation program into the world and we were sitting with the question, How are we going to know this has been a success? We were doing all this work to set the foundation for this new innovation platform, on this journey of co-defining with the community what success meant, how we might know we were progressing toward that, and how we would want to tell that story along the way. At the same time, we were bumping up against the all-too-familiar colonial performance measurement evaluation frameworks that were being imposed onto us without consideration of who we were, what we were doing, who and what this work is accountable to, and what Worldviews we were showing up with as humans. I know many of us have that shared journey of funders saying, And here’s how you’re going to measure the success of this program or this offering. So I came into evaluation and impact measurement within that context of trying to breathe life into this new innovation program that was rooted in community, rooted in Protocol and Values and Principles that were core to who and how we were as humans and what our responsibilities were to each other and the Earth. And we kept bumping up against this external model telling us how to measure and evaluate the performance and success of this sacred dream space that we were birthing together. Before that I had been sitting mostly in a space of theory, and that was the radical entry point into what has been a really beautiful journey of reclamation and rematriation.

Gladys: I love that, and what you shared resonates, it really connects to me and my heart. Thank you for sharing how you’ve come to this work. Can you share a little bit more about that evaluation journey with the Indigenous Innovation Initiative in particular? I know some great resources were created in thinking about what success could look like, what’s important to measure and how we might do this.

Marissa: I say it was beautiful because we had community and we were sitting in this space of being really intentional and really thoughtful, since our ultimate commitment and responsibility was creating spaces that nurture and sustain the Earth and each other. And then beside that was this simultaneous hard truth that we were also accountable to appeasing and demonstrating our value to these funders who were giving us dollars to make our dreams possible. So it was a slow journey. We spent about a year mapping out some foundational infrastructure to help us navigate what we called inquiry and learning. We sat with the question, What are we doing here? And we landed together on the terminology of inquiry and learning. For us, that meant evaluation, it meant impact measurement, it meant performance measurement – all these things came together as different forms of meaning-making to help us understand what we were doing and how we were doing it and what was happening as a result.

So we spent a long time working together, and out of that came two critical pieces of infrastructure. One was the Inquiry and Learning Bundle, which outlined how we were approaching learning based on who we were as an innovation platform and what we were trying to achieve through this new program. The other was the Indigenous Knowledges and Data Governance Protocol. We knew that alongside all of these learning activities would come a lot of stories and information that would be gifted to us by community, and we had an obligation to steward and care for that in a good way, in a way that aligned to the Protocol, Values, and Principles that are core to our collective responsibility to care for each other as community.^[1] When we felt like we were ready, we brought it to life through naming and birthing ceremonies that solidly rooted the commitment we cultivated within the Spirit of that infrastructure: our core commitment to caring for community, their impact, and their stories in a way that showed respect and love for each other, our communities and ancestors, future generations, and the Earth.

It was also this journey of bringing the funder on that path with us. At the end of the day, we could dream up and co-create and build these really beautiful innovation spaces and we could articulate a vision of what success and impact looked like for us, but without having that funder there along with us on that journey, we wouldn’t have been able to bring it to life in the right way. And so it was a very intentional, thoughtful journey of walking the funder through our needs and priorities, bringing them as best we could into our hearts and Spirits so they could see for themselves: What are we doing? Why is it so important? And why is it so important that we’re doing it so differently than you’ve asked us to, than you might be used to, than you’ve maybe seen before? So it was a very collaborative, very intentional, very slow journey that was anything but linear. And it couldn’t have happened any other way.

I remember vividly the day when this funder (who was a federal funder) said to us, Okay, you can do this the way you’ve described it. You don’t have to use this performance measurement framework we’ve asked you to use. I remember thinking, Wait, what?! Are you sure? <laughs> Although I had dreamt of that moment, I hadn’t fully expected it. Nothing had happened in my world to show me that kind of change was possible or that people within colonial systems cared enough to actually do the work required to make space for us to dream and thrive and reclaim. I had been consistently reminded of how systems had failed me and my family and my community, and I had nothing to carry with me about how these systems could show love back to us. So when we heard those words, I had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for being able to honour and care for the community in such a beautiful way and for cultivating a depth of relationship and trust with this funder to be able to get to that moment. It felt like some of the dreams of our ancestors starting to come true, and for that reason all the labour was worth it.

Through that work, we also birthed what we called our “program story” which was a reimagination of a theory of change or logic model, for folks who are familiar with those types of tools. In fact we actively were trying to separate ourselves from these models, as their prescriptive and assumptive nature were not aligning with how we were sitting with this work. This program story explored questions like, What does this new innovation program want to do? What does it want to be? And how are we going to know if and how we are moving toward that? How are we going to know what impact stories to tell? It spoke of the heart and Spirit of this innovation program and acted as a really important guidepost for us to talk about what we were measuring, how we were measuring it, and how we were sharing back what we learned. So all together, these fundamental pieces of infrastructure guided that journey in a good way and they are still core to the foundation of the Indigenous Innovation Initiative (and have been used and shared and evolved in other places since then, as part of bringing others on similar journeys).

Gladys: That is amazing. I will definitely share the links to those documents. One of the things that stood out for me – and you said it a couple times – it was a really slow process. <laughs> I wonder if there are any learnings you might share about that process being slow, as you’re walking alongside and working with the funder. Are there any tidbits from that slowness that you might want to make visible here?

Marissa: There are so many layers and so many things that came together in that journey. Someone said to me once, Focus on the strengths of your narrative and of your story, and use that as your tool and as your Medicine to push back and to push forward. Because it’s a hard journey when you’re pushing back on policies and expectations that are rooted in systems of genocide toward Indigenous People. The reality is that what we now call Canada is founded on the intentional desire to erase Indigenous People. Period. We need and deserve for our ancestors’ wildest dreams to come true and for our inherent rights to be honoured in a way that is still relatively new and unheard of in this field, despite how loud we are as communities about what we need. We need and deserve evaluation, impact measurement, performance measurement systems – however you want to label them – that intentionally want to nourish us, not harm us. That intentionally want to restory our narratives, not reduce us to our deficits through narratives created about us through violent methodologies that distort or completely ignore our conceptualizations and stories of who and how we are as Indigenous People. And that intentionally reject arbitrary bean-counting exercises that are for the sake of vanity and output metrics alone, and that are void of accountability back to community and the Earth. So there’s this urgency for transformation, while at the same time you’re pushing against systems and structures that were built to erase and exclude us. When you’re pushing back on that, it does not happen quickly and there are so many opportunities to lose trust of community along the way, but also trust of that system or that entity you’re working alongside and trying to bring on that journey. The reality is that our communities are not yet resourced to self-mobilize in the ways we want and need to, and Indigenous People are generally still (unwillingly) dependent on colonial systems that warded us in the first place and that have shaped our lives since then. Unfortunately, in most instances evaluation spaces we find ourselves in, the relationship between funder and community is one of power and dominance, and it’s largely coercive, in that we need to give them what they want so we can access the resources to do what we need. So the pace of the journey to reimagine evaluation and impact measurement has to consider where those external systems are at and how to bring them along so they can meet us where we’re at, in a way that is actually anchored on us meeting them where they’re at.

There’s a lot of opportunity for things to be really difficult and you need time and space to sit in that complexity. It’s a difficult space for a many people because it challenges everything they know about evaluation or performance measurement or grant funding or running programs. It challenges people’s status quo and Worldviews – which often feels like the pinch of discomfort. You can’t move through that quickly. You need to walk with love and compassion, and share that love and compassion even when people don’t feel like they’re lovable or deserving of the energy required to stay the course with them. There are moments where things are hard and they’re really tense and there’s a lot of feeling, and slowness helps you stay rooted in that love and in that compassion, so those moments don’t take you over. The slowness allows you to step back from those spaces to gather yourself, seek counsel, and rest and repair from the labour of the journey. Which is exceptional – there’s so much invisible labour that weighs on your Spirit and that needs to be tended to as you go.

It’s also about continuously creating space to keep standing up, to keep telling your story, because you will have to tell your story numerous times before it is really heard and listened to. I think a critical part of that slowness is there’s so much unlearning that has to happen for there to be space for your story to be heard and loved and cared for. In this example, it was on the side of government funders who were for the most part eager to learn, but the reality is that it’s a really difficult process and it doesn’t happen quickly for anyone, no matter how ready they want to be or think they are. And you need to sit intentionally in guiding a person through the process and the self-reflection: What are the things I need to let go of? What are the things I need to unlearn? How might I do that? What does it look like for me to release control and trust in Indigenous People to know what is best for them? How do I move from a space of power and control to one of learner?

When I think of the process we moved through, I think about being like slow gentle moving water. We’ll come up against rocks every now and then. There might be rapids, too. But no matter what, the water is slow and it’s thoughtful and it’s moving and it’s going to get where it’s trying to go. It takes a long time for people to put down power and privilege and it takes a long time for people to sit in discomfort long enough to finally understand the need to release control and hold a mirror to systems they build and perpetuate that are rooted in colonial violence. And it shouldn’t be this way, but we have to wait until they get to a point where they can listen and hear and feel and dive into all that complexity, and into their own positionality and role in colonial systems. A space where they are actually able to hear you, without the veil of their own story and their own needs and their own Worldviews and conceptualizations of what is right and what is worthy and what is valid. Yes, that slowness is needed so safety can be maintained and so people can be well during that journey, but also because there are so many complexities being unpackaged and reimagined and brought into the light for the first time for many folks.

Gladys: I love the beautiful vision that you shared around a gentle moving stream or river. I’m feeling the power of that slowness and the unlearning and the beautiful space of compassion that you’re describing. And I’m wondering – this is a big question but how did you do that? <laughs> What was important in that time and space to make sure that that unsettling could happen? I imagine some of the means might be Ceremony and Medicines, but what were some critical elements that allowed for that?

Marissa: I think the short answer is we did what we needed to do, when and how we needed to do it, but we didn’t actually know what that was until we knew. I know that’s confusing for some people, but I also know it’s a shared experience that resonates across Indigenous Worldviews. It was small and incremental steps coupled with big brave leaps and releases, and it’s continuing on now in Ceremony and in community. We started with this realization of, That’s not going to work for us. That structure you’re imposing on us to measure impact and show performance and progress is harmful, and could be violent and could negatively impact folks in the community who we are here to support and who we are accountable to. So it was that immediate acknowledgement: This isn’t going to work, so what will?

We started in Ceremony, we called out to Elders and Knowledge Keepers and folks in the community who could help and guide us. And we spent a lot of time listening and learning: How might we move through this? What would that look like? We gathered and cultivated the story of community that wrapped around what it was that we were doing. Because when we went into that space with the funder, it wasn’t our truth as employees of an innovation platform that we were honouring in that moment; it was the truth and story of community, the dreams of our ancestors, and the wellbeing of future generations. So we spent as much time as we could learning what that truth was and what that story was, and how we could tell it and honour it in a good way. That is what fed us and nourished us through that journey. That is what we rooted in. It wasn’t about any one of us in that room; it was about all All of Creation and All our Relations past, present, and future who we were honouring in that room.

That’s not to say we didn’t take steps backwards. We did. There were moments where we felt like we were really getting there! And then the funder would say something and we were like, Okay, we’ve just gone 15 steps backwards. That’s okay. So, we would go back with them and we would start where we went back to and we would keep moving forward in that good way. Doing the right thing in those moments meant going back to the truth that was shared with us from community and gathered in Ceremony. Always going back to the voice that wasn’t in the room and the only voice that needed to be heard in that moment.

So it was that constant honouring of community the entire time. And if what community was telling us shifted and changed, then we shifted and changed; that was the thing that kept us moving and that was the thing that allowed us to speak the truth and to tell the story. That was what nourished the unlearning. We’ve all experienced and are going through different forms of unlearning and relearning – and it’s really beautiful when you sit in that and you feel that with other people…which can include people you at one time didn’t trust or feel safe around. You build tremendous relationships when your actions and words are raw, and honest, and transparent, and rooted in this collective commitment to do the right thing, not because it is easy, but because it is the right thing to do. That was what brought us through to the other side.

Gladys: Amazing. I’m hearing so much there that resonates with a project that I worked on when I was walking alongside the work of the Winnipeg Boldness Project, and it makes me think about the guidance from the Knowledge Keepers there about making sure to take care of the Spirit of the work and the Spirit of the community stories. That leads me into the next question. I know you’re doing exciting work in the area around data governance, data sovereignty, and Protocol, like how to take care of the stories that are offered in a good way that’s in alignment with Indigenous Protocol. Could you share a little bit about your work in that area?

Marissa: Yes, of course. It’s funny: I talked at the beginning about how there’s this thing that you gravitate toward and this thing that calls to you. One of the places I’ve always been called back to is data sovereignty. And I’ll start with some exciting news. A couple of friends and I have come together and we are bringing to life a dream that we’ve had for a while. We just honestly were so scared, not knowing what we were doing, but knew that we needed to do this. We’re being called to do this. So together we are slowly <laughs> bringing to life an Indigenous data sovereignty collective that includes folks from all around the world. We are intentional with how we move through this work, honouring our messiness as we do this off the side of our desks, and are creating a space that is specifically for and by Indigenous People who are committed to Indigenous data sovereignty and who need a place to come back home, and to be together on the hard journey that is data sovereignty. We do not share a lot about it in the public eye. We are stewarding this journey deeply within the Spirit of sovereignty and over time will gift our learnings and dreams with the world, but we have work to do before then.

I remember, when I started my work in the evaluation and impact measurement space I felt really lonely and I wondered, What is my Medicine in this place? What is going to nourish me? What’s going to sustain me outside of myself? Who are the other people I can put a hand out to, and who might need my hand? I remember putting a call out and I found Indigenous buddies from all over the world, and we started to work. What we really quickly realized is there are so many dedicated people doing this work in disparate, disconnected ways, whether it’s data sovereignty or evaluation or research or impact measurement. And so we had this vision: Can we find a way to bring us together in a place that’s virtual since we’re all around the world? How can we bring together this abundance of love and Spirit and Medicine and Ceremony and wisdom and hard, intentional work that’s happening? And so we’re bringing to life this collective slowly and intentionally and in a way that honours where we are at, doing this with no resources to mobilize other than what we have within ourselves.

Whether it’s in evaluation, impact, measurement, research, any of these areas, the one thing I continuously come back to is that we cannot do this alone. There’s so much work to be done and it’s powerful, sacred, relational work. We have lots of teachings around these big transformational things not being for us to do by ourself. Who are you to do this work on your own? And so we bring together that abundance, and bring together our tools, our Protocol, our Medicine, our wisdom, our intentions; we cultivate togetherness and see what comes of that. We have no idea what it’ll do or what will come of it or what that pathway is going to look like, and we’re all okay not knowing that because it’s going to become whatever it needs to be and we’re excited to see it birth itself in this way.

Data sovereignty comes up a lot in all of these spaces because it’s an underpinning feature of evaluation, research, impact measurement, etc. Knowledge and data are critical to our sovereignty and wellbeing as nations and communities and there’s so much violence that has happened around our data and our stories, and around how it’s collected and used and weaponized against us – perpetuating false narratives, reducing us to our deficits, and erasing us and our truths. So there’s healing to be done within the realm of data sovereignty. Creating any space that we can for that to flourish feels like a tremendous gift and opportunity. And so, wherever I go, if someone’s like, Hey Marissa, come talk to us about Indigenous research or evaluation or impact measurement methodologies, I always make sure to bring data sovereignty into those conversations. Even if it doesn’t feel like that’s what I was expected to bring into that place, I make sure to bring those conversations into all those places, because people start to connect data with colonization and harm and violence. They realize, Oh, I had no idea, I never looked at data as a weapon, or I never looked at data as Medicine. I hear it from people every single time.

It’s a really beautiful world to be in and I have so much gratitude to be in it. I still ask myself, How did I end up here? What a beautiful, sacred gift.

“I remember, when I started my work in the evaluation and impact measurement space I felt really lonely and I wondered, What is my Medicine in this place? What is going to nourish me? What’s going to sustain me outside of myself? Who are the other people I can put a hand out to, and who might need my hand? ”
 _{– Marissa}Gladys: Me too! Thank you for stepping courageously into that space even though it felt like a big leap. That’s amazing and I can’t wait to see where this journey goes.

I want to ask you some higher-level big questions around Indigenous evaluation as a field. So when you think about the field of Indigenous evaluation or what Indigenous evaluation means, what does it mean? What does it feel like? What does it look like? What does it sound like? When you say Indigenous evaluation, can you describe holistically what that is for you?

Marissa: It feels like love. It feels like home. It feels like the healing energy of water for me. It means telling our stories about who we are, what we are doing in these spaces, and how we are creating. How we are rejecting, reclaiming, healing, and rematriating. Re-mobilizing. We know there’s tremendous impact that happens when we have self-determined, self-governed work that is rooted in Ceremony, Protocol, Values, and Principles. We know the beauty that comes out of that. We know the truth of what we do, and create, and contribute in these spaces. And for me, Indigenous evaluation and impact measurement is a way to tell that story: What are we doing? How are we doing it? What is that really substantial impact that’s happening in the community and for the Earth as a result? Why are our contributions so critical to tackling the intractable global challenges we face as humans and as Creation?

The further I get into this space the more focused I am on reclaiming ancestral practices that have been stolen from us, erased from consciousness, but are sitting in our ancestral blood memory waiting to be woken back up. I am constantly looking for a pathway that looks and feels and sounds distinctly Indigenous and that rejects what does not serve us and what was not made for or with us. What did we do before? How would we do this pre-contact? Despite being evaluators since the beginning of our time on this earth, Indigenous People have been excluded from the world of evaluation and impact measurement in this settler-colonial context where evaluation and impact measurement – as a word, as a regime – has come to life. If you ask communities around the world, there’s no word in Indigenous languages for evaluation or impact measurement, but there are words for learning, exploration, and curiosity. Indigenous People have always measured and evaluated – it’s how we survived – we just didn’t call it that. It’s how we knew our food supply was abundant, it’s how we knew our ecosystems were healthy, it’s how we learned and continuously improved. So I think it’s bridging reclamation and this contemporary space we find ourselves in, bringing back what our ancestors want us to know and feel and do that cultivates the wellbeing of each other and the Earth.

Gladys: Beautiful. And I’m hearing in that the ability to determine what is right for us as communities, right? Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s concept of research that’s by us, with us, for us is similar in evaluation.^[2] Here we have the power to determine what and how and when we will understand what success looks like, what impact needs to be described, and how to tell those stories.

So you know there’s a lot of excitement about Indigenous evaluation right now, gauging by the numbers of queries we get from people who are interested in hearing about it. What are some of the challenges that you are seeing in this excitement about Indigenous evaluation?

Marissa: First, I love how much excitement there is, because it means people are looking and it means they’re starting to listen. I get so excited when people ask me, Do you want to talk about Indigenous evaluation? Yes! Yes, I do! <laughs> I ask, When do you have time and how much time do you have? I am excited about the amount of interest. The challenge is that it feels bright and shiny and, for lack of a better word, sexy for people. People saying, Ooh, there’s this new way! But it’s not new, because we’re trying to reclaim what we’ve already been doing for millennia – the ancestral ways of knowing and being that birthed us, that sustain us, and that will nourish future generations. No matter how excited people are, there’s still so much work to be done for them to truly understand what it means to create and hold space for Indigenous evaluation and impact measurement.

It’s not just a bright shiny thing, it’s a fundamental way of being for our communities. There is still a huge disconnect between people’s intentions and what they are capable of doing, and that’s where I spend a lot of my time trying to explore with people: What is that bridge? What is that gap? What is in that disconnect? Because it’s not as easy as just saying, Hey, I support you, or That sounds great, or Let’s do it. As I said earlier, there’s so much unlearning that has to be done for people to even know how to start to sit in that space. A key theme I’ve seen in my journey is trust. Whether it’s in evaluation, or research, or impact measurement, so many practitioners put an exceptional amount of trust into colonial methodologies, and reallocating that trust and transporting it to something else is a complex journey. An uncomfortable journey of releasing control, stepping back, putting down everything they know to be true, and not only trusting in another way of knowing and being but trusting in a group of humans who aren’t trusted to raise their own babies, let alone do evaluation or impact measurement.

So although there’s lots of excitement, the reality on the ground for the majority of folks is that we’re still situated and working within a hypercolonial context that hasn’t changed. The people in that space might be eager and willing and curious to learn about Indigenous evaluation, but the structures that move those systems still haven’t evolved and they’re actually much farther behind than we think.

I know you had Kim [van der Woerd] from Reciprocal Consulting on one of your episodes recently, and Kim is a dear friend who I love so much. I’ve spent a lot of time with her and her team talking about Indigenous evaluation and impact measurement. I’m actually holding in my hand right now a sticky note that she wrote and gave to me and it says, Dear Indicators, we’re breaking up, XO. Part of the challenge of these colonial systems is that we’re still laser focused on (and we hyper value) the role of indicators, key performance metrics, and quantitative data. I’ve looked at performance measurement frameworks that had hundreds of quantitative data indicators in them! Funders asked, You can just track and report on these, right? Then you watch everyone’s eyes go huge all at once <laughs> as we think, There’s hundreds of them, but also they don’t mean anything to us. These vanity and output metrics are not how we tell our stories, and they grossly miss the mark on showing what success, progress, and impact look like in an Indigenous context.

I’m working on an evaluation right now and all we talk about is indicators, but where are the stories? What have we learned and what have we been gifted from community to tell us how this looks and feels? Not just, How many people have we reached? How many bums in seats? How many services did we offer? How many this, that, and the other thing? Because that doesn’t tell the truth of our experiences, contributions, and stories. You sit as an Indigenous person in an organization for example, and you’ve got funders on one side and you’ve got community on the other. Despite the fact that we know exactly what we need to do and how we need to do it – remember, we have always been evaluators – we are struggling to separate ourselves from colonial models that are accountable to Treasury Boards and replacing them with beautiful models that are rooted in telling the stories of our communities through the words and visions of our people. For the most part, these colonial models are all funders know and, despite best intentions to retrofit them, they’re not telling the story I’m committed to telling. And if I try to share those stories with you but the words I share and the methods through which I was gifted those words are not appreciated, respected, or valued, are you going to hear them? Are you going to listen? Will you use the stories I’m sharing to inform your assessment of our impact and our worthiness of investment? Or is the assessment just based on numbers? Is that all you care about? That’s a really big challenge.

Another important challenge I see is around finding the people who will come on that journey with you as co-conspirators. Some people might call them allies, some people might call them something else, but I’m referring to that partner who is going to come on that journey with you and carry that weight with you and for you. Who will stand up alongside you, so you’re not carrying the responsibility to fix systems that were purposely made to exclude you? It does feel very lonely and isolated sometimes and, if you get too far into the day-to-day you might feel like giving up. It’s always a challenge to make sure you’re surrounding yourself with people who are going to step up for you and be co-conspirators in a way that’s not performative and that’s not self-serving. They’re going to sit in the complexity of that space with you, they’re going to love you, they’re going to wrap that love around you when the journey breaks you, they’re going to make sure people respect and compensate your invisible labour, and they’re going to take that labour from you when you need a break. When you are on that pathway with the right people, it’s a beautiful journey that’s fuelled by radical love, compassion, and collective liberation and that allows you to take care of yourself and surround yourself with the things that will nourish you. “Another important challenge I see is around finding the people who will come on that journey with you as co-conspirators…. Who will stand up alongside you, so you’re not carrying the responsibility to fix systems that were purposely made to exclude you?”
_{– Marissa}

Gladys: Yeah, thank you for sharing both of those. And really what I’m hearing are invitations: invitations to funders, invitations to co-conspirators or allies, to pick up some responsibility.

What does it mean to support Indigenous evaluation, which is in a super exciting time? I feel like there is this moment of awareness that’s happening. And what are the next steps? And who needs to pick up some of that responsibility?

Marissa: I had a dream recently that I was asked to do a keynote and I just said all the words I really wanted to say. Verbalizing all the pain and frustration and anger about how difficult it is to just do the work we know how to do, in the ways we know are right for the community and the Earth. How de-humanizing it is that we can’t just be trusted to use money in a good way and evaluate and measure the impact of our work and tell our own stories, without having to prove our way into it. Then the next day I saw this video of an Indigenous man in Australia who stood in front of a room of people just like I was dreaming about and asked, Why are we doing this work for ourselves? Where’s everybody else? Why are we carrying the weight of fixing generations of colonial harm and violence in these spaces? Why are we the ones carrying the weight of making space for our communities to heal? Where is everybody else? He had a lot of expletives that I will exclude <laughs> but he called attention to this exact issue. We need to bring together the co-conspirators who bravely step into that journey and who can’t fathom a world where we do this alone, a world where we are responsible for transforming the systems that are hurting and silencing and killing us.

I think we also bring an invitation for funders: We’re not asking you to come to the table and reimagine evaluation and impact measurement regimes to be a pain in the ass. We’re not here to make your life harder. We have babies, languages, Protocol, and ceremonies to reclaim. We’ve got communities, Lands, Skies, and Waters to protect and heal. We don’t have time to sit around tables and talk about impact and evaluation metrics, but here we are. We’re here to do the right thing for the communities we serve, and the Earth, so we can reclaim our stories and so we can create a world that values what we have to say and how we say it. We are here to create a generative space where we can all sit in that mess, sit in that chaos, sit in that discomfort together and be in a relationship that is rooted in love and respect, despite it all. Because that is who we are as Indigenous People, and that is how we show up.

Gladys: Yes, so many things that want to be said, need to be said, and still the gentle invitation there as well. <laughs> So when you think about those invitations to others to pick up responsibility – and also I heard you share sometimes you’re the lonely Indigenous person between organization and community – I’m wondering if you have anything that you’d like to share with other Indigenous evaluators, emerging Indigenous evaluators? What are your hopes for them? What are your insights that you’d like to offer in this space for them?

Marissa: That’s a really important question. I’ve spent time chatting with folks and they say, It feels scary. It feels like really hard, complex work. Am I ready for that? Is that for me? And one of the things we talk about is not letting imposter syndrome stop you. We are here, we have always been here, and we will always be here. We don’t need permission to be in these roles. We don’t need permission to be in these spaces. I think a lot of people feel it’s not a place for them, even though they want to be there. Pathways into evaluation and impact measurement may be welcoming but are not always built for Indigenous People. It’s like we’ve been invited to the party but haven’t been given the key to the door, or the key goes in but jams when you turn it. So I say, If it’s a place you want and need to be, then be there. It’s a place for you. Surround yourself with the people, the ceremonies, the Medicines, the songs, the teachings that will lift you up on that journey.

That’s why I emphasize the collective and this conversation around doing these heavy things together, because it’s way too much for one person or a small group of people to carry. If I’m a new person coming into this space for the first time, I want to know that I’m not walking into it alone and that there’s a collective that can nourish me and guide me and be my helper when I need it. We’re all on different paths, but we can be on them at the same time. We can walk together. We can lean on each other and share the abundance of what we learn along the way. We can open up our bundles to each other and offer forward what we have. For community members who are storytellers and dreamers and who want to come into this space, please be here. We’re here. We’re ready. We want you here. We love you, and you are good Medicine. You are worthy of being here.

In those moments where it gets uncomfortable and scary, that’s when we want to run away. Those are the moments we need to lean into the most. Right now I think about Asha Frost and her cards, and the weight of buffalo. I imagine leaning into buffalo and thinking, Okay, I’ve got this. There’s this big strong weight of that collective around me. Buffalo’s got soft, warm fur, and so leaning into it you’re not alone. Together we are creating change slowly and quickly all at one time, and our voices are being called on and our leadership is being invited into these spaces because we have something important to say. We have something important to offer forward to the evaluation and impact measurement world, and that’s a sacred, beautiful thing.

I imagine this contemporary colonial regime of evaluation and impact measurement shifting into this beautiful butterfly, and that moment of transformation when it is a place for everybody and where it is a place where all ways of knowing and being flourish and nourish each other. Where they grow and evolve alongside each other, and where Indigenous methodologies are valued equally to all others. I just imagine this bright, colorful space like a butterfly blanket that wraps around everyone. I think about what it would feel like where instead of clawing our way into the spaces we deserve to be and instead of spending our sacred energy trying to transform systems, we are respected and cared for as truth-tellers. As storytellers. Where we’re doing the heart work that makes our ancestors’ wildest dreams come true, and that plants the seeds that future generations will thank us for. “I imagine this contemporary colonial regime of evaluation and impact measurement shifting into this beautiful butterfly, and that moment of transformation when it is a place for everybody and where it is a place where all ways of knowing and being flourish and nourish each other. ”
_{– Marissa}

Gladys: You truly have a gift with visual metaphors. <laughs> I was closing my eyes and imagining this brilliant vision that you have. Thank you for sharing that. Ekosi.

We’re coming to the end of our time together and I want to check in. Is there any final thought that you’d love to leave listeners with as they move forward in their day and carry and reflect on the gifts you’ve shared with them?

Marissa: First of all, a big chi-miigwetch, a huge thank you and a huge offering of gratitude for everyone who shows up in this space in big ways, small ways, all the other ways. If you’re here for a little time, a long time, no matter what it is, just a huge offering of gratitude for folks who come on this journey and keep showing up. The hope I have, the offering I have, the dream I have, is that we keep standing up beside each other, in Circle. That we keep walking with love and compassion, no matter how hard it gets. We keep being brave, keep standing up. We’re finding the places and spaces that are for us, and we are recreating, reimagining, and reclaiming.

So please keep coming to this space and please keep showing up! I have so much gratitude to be part of a generation of people who for the first time can reclaim so proudly and so bravely. We can stand up in these spaces, reject what does not work, and request – with love and compassion – what is rightfully ours so we can be well and heal each other and the Earth. When I look at my daughter, I’m looking to that future where the butterfly has been birthed. That is only possible if we keep coming together and if we keep showing up and if we keep moving with love and compassion. Wherever that next step is for each one of us, whatever that vision is folks have, is good Medicine.

Gladys: Ekosani, Marissa, and thank you for being such good Medicine. I’m so grateful to have you alongside me today in this space. Many thanks for your time.

Marissa: I really appreciate it. I look forward to following your beautiful journey and to all the folks who will come along and teach me! Chi-miigwetch.

Footnotes

About the author

name: Marissa Hill, (Métis)

institution: Liberated Impact

website: https://www.liberatedimpact.com

In honour of her grandfather, George Hill, Marissa walks a path that refuses complicity in silence or neutrality – both of which kill. Marissa’s bundle of teachings, Protocol, relationships, tools, and practices centre ancestral ways of knowing and being and her core intention is to cultivate systems that reclaim, restory, rematriate, and recentre Indigenous knowledge systems. Her work takes place within the realm of impact measurement, evaluation, data sovereignty, and intellectual property; is guided by Elders and takes place through ceremony; and centres art as witness, record keeper, storyteller, and disrupter.