Closing the Bundle

Tansi, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. I’d like to take a moment to intentionally close the bundle that we have opened together over the previous chapters, excerpts, offerings, and invitations to reflection and action.

What a journey this has been! When I started the podcast, and when I started thinking about this book, I could not have predicted the amazing outpouring of excitement and support that they would garner. I feel blessed and lucky to have been welcomed with such open arms. I’m so glad that you took this journey through the conversations along with me.

I opened this book, this bundle, by sharing who I am, where I come from and why I do the work I do. I shared the intentional space I hoped that the book could be in gathering voices of those who were walking with vision into the space of Indigenous evaluation, research, and knowledge generation in a way that could inspire and make visible the deeply critical work that they are leading. I did this because I knew at times I could feel alone and challenged in the work that I was doing, and that in community, in collective, and in relationship was where I wanted to turn. These spaces fill me up.

In the introduction, I also shared a bit about what Indigenous evaluation means to me, and I’ll share it here again. Indigenous peoples have always been evaluators and researchers in ways that have been less visible from a Euro-Western perspective. Indigenous evaluation is about learning about transformation, learning about success, learning about shifts to support healing, wellness, and thriving at individual, organizational, and community levels. It does this learning in a way that is rooted in Indigenous knowledges, Protocols, and methods: methods of gathering insights, making sense of the learning, and then telling the stories of learning. And even further, Indigenous evaluation ensures that what is working for Indigenous peoples, organizations, and communities is well-resourced in a way that ensures long-term sustainability is baked into the way we do things now and each and every day moving forward.

In the interviews you’ve read, I usually asked guests to share with me their story and to reflect with me on these questions: What is my story? Why me? Why Indigenous evaluation? Why now? What do I hope for our collective work? And in their stories, contributors, collaborators, and co-conspirators have shared wisdom, fears, hopes, challenges, and calls to action. These conversations have brought me so much joy because I understand the power of story and I’m nourished through story. Stories are possibilities – they’re beacons. They can provide hope and inspiration. Stories help us to learn and make connections, to build relationships, and to counter the us/them dichotomy that serves to uphold colonial systems, white supremacy, and the resulting deep inequities that we encounter in our work within the evaluation ecosystem.

In these evaluation stories, I heard so many people share that they were accidental evaluators, that they mostly stepped into this role while on their way to do other things. That might resonate for you. What called them in and has kept them in this work is love. Love for community, love for something different than what we’re seeing in society right now. Love for Indigenous brilliance and joy. And so when I think about what I’ve gathered from my time with Larry, Michael, Tammy, Melissa, Peter and Paula, Caroline, JoLee, Kim, Marissa, January, Aneta, Sam, Melanie, Terrellyn, Karen, and Nicky, it is this soft, loving, kind feeling of walking alongside someone who understands the experience of what it’s like to be in Indigenous evaluation, to be that person who is moving between Indigenous organizations and communities and funders. And then asking funders to walk a different kind of journey, to think about different ways to commit to walking alongside us on that journey. This truly is beautiful work, and I feel so lucky to be able to walk alongside communities in supporting their priorities for evaluation and thinking about how we can do this evaluation work in ways that are better aligned with community.

As I go back through and listen again to the stories shared by the contributors, the learning settles even deeper for me. The beautiful thing about story is that it shows up for us as we are, when we are, and where we are in that moment, and what this looks like will change as we change. So, if I were to go back to read these interviews again in a year, the meaning I make will have changed because I will have changed. This is the power of story. It can transform us and will continue to transform us as we walk this life’s journey.

There were so many times in the initial recording of these conversations for the podcast episodes that I wished I was sitting directly across from the table from the people who I was chatting with. I wished that the setting was a kitchen table with a beautiful, patterned tablecloth, with tea mugs and a hot pot of tea sitting in front of us, some cookies that I would’ve baked and brought because I love to bake cookies (a legacy of my mom and my gramma). I wished that at the end of these conversations I could have gotten up and squeezed my conversational friends so tightly with all of the love and the joy and the gratitude that I have for the worlds that they opened up in this space and in this podcast. I hope that one of the things that you have taken away is the ability to listen, to build a relationship, to gain insight into different experiences, to learn about the power of stories and the power of stories to transform.

I could go on for much longer about the interconnections and learnings that I’ve made because of the gifts and insights that each guest shared with me, but I’m sure you have your own. So now I am going to invite you to reflect on some questions, and ask you to use those reflections to write a poem. (What!? I promise it will be okay.)

Let’s take a moment to breathe. Welcome again, into this space. I see you, I hear you, and I am so glad you’re here.

This poetic inquiry process will have multiple steps where I ask you to reflect on questions and do a bit of individual brainstorming. I would like to pause here as we start. Please open something that you can use to keep track of your responses, like your notes app or a notebook. For this activity, you might consider taking a deep breath and travelling down into your heart space. Use intuition, gut feelings, what you are pulled to.

I hope that this creative journey has offered you an opportunity to reflect on what may not only been a journey in your mind, but potentially also a journey in your heart, in your spirit, in your body, in your emotions, and all of those other aspects that make you who you are. I hope that this journey has felt nourishing in many different ways, and I hope that by creating this poem, you can see the opportunity that you’ve gifted yourself by taking the time to listen in. In smaller spaces these poems are catalysts for dialogue and make time for people to share and witness these poems and talk about meaning – and so I invite you to connect with someone and share what you have created. Let this be a conversation starter!

And so, in this closing moment, as I have drawn forward what is sticking to my ribs and what I’m carrying in my heart from my time with each of the guests, I invite you to reflect on the same. Thank you for walking this poetic sensemaking journey with me.

Ekosi. Miigwech. Until next time, take care and keep telling stories.