Blue-Collar Scholar

Overview

The Interview

Gladys Rowe: Tansi, greetings, welcome to Indigenous Insights. I’m your host, Gladys Rowe, and I’m so grateful you are here. What is Indigenous Evaluation? Who is doing this work? How are we doing this work, and what have we learned along the way? It is my hope that this podcast will feel like a deep breath, will feel like a space where you can listen and learn, where I invite you to grab a cozy beverage and settle in. Join me and my guests as we open up our evaluation bundles to share the gifts, knowledges and hopes that we’ve gathered in our journeys and bring them together in this space. I hope in these stories you will find resonance in the critical contributions that Indigenous evaluation can make as we work towards decolonial futures and strengthening Indigenous resurgence.

Today I’m here with Dr. Nicole Bowman, president of Bowman Performance Consulting and an associate scientist with the University of Wisconsin Madison. She’s an associate editor and co-founder of Roots and Relations, a permanent section in the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation. In 2018, Dr. Bowman received the American Evaluation Association’s Robert Engel Service Award and was notably the youngest and first Indigenous awardee. She served decades as chair or co-chair of American Evaluation Association’s Indigenous People’s Evaluation Topical Interest Group, in addition to participating in numerous global evaluation initiatives.

Welcome Nicole! Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I’d love you to share any other introduction of yourself that feels important to add before we get started.

Nicole Bowman: Koolamalsi. Good afternoon. Nii ndushiinzi Waapalaneexkweew Neeka ha Newetkaski Lunaapexkwe. My name is Accompanied by the Four Eagles, Flying Eagle Lunaape Woman. Nii noonjiiyayi Shawano, Wisconsin, Turtle Island (USA). Naawalootunmun wundakw Laaweewaposhiish. I follow the ways of my clan, the Lynx. My name is Nicky Bowman. I introduced myself in my Lunaape language. I am Mohican and Lunaape living in Shawano, in northeastern Wisconsin, United States, and I am the things that you mentioned, but I’m also auntie and wife and sister and daughter and niece and trying to do good medicine out in the world. So good morning, crack-ah-low, what’s happening, and I’m looking forward to the visit today.

Gladys: Wonderful. Thank you for bringing your whole self into this space today. I’m excited to spend some time talking with you. Your work in Indigenous evaluation has really been foundational as this field has been building over the last couple of decades. How long have you been doing this work in Indigenous evaluation and where did that start for you?

Nicky: If you ask my family, they would say that I have had an opinion and been a truth teller since birth <laughs> or as soon as I could talk! Formally as a practitioner, scholar using Western words, I’ve been in service to evaluation on behalf of Indigenous communities and First Nations and those needing more voice and visibility for nearly 25 years. I was an elementary education teacher for Oneida Turtle School, that was my first job, which I loved. That’s where I really learned a lot about how culture and language fit into your daily life. They are your roots and it doesn’t matter if you’re a teacher or a plumber or an academic or if you work in trades and manufacturing. Those roots are your values and ethics and show up wherever you are in your personal or professional life. So I had to do elements of assessment and evaluation during earlier parts of my career.

And then it wasn’t until I tried to use numbers – I did use numbers successfully publishing about achievement gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in public schools in the Journal of American Indian Education. I had to take a statistics class and I’m more of a qualitative researcher than quantitative, but I had to get through two statistics classes, and the way that I did that was through University of Wisconsin Madison, where I received my PhD. I was an academic fellow there, so you had to go full time and there were lots of rigorous things to do, but they prepared me to argue and defend whatever I need to very well to a national or global audience. And so I’m thankful they prepared me. But one of my classes there, we had to publish a paper, and what I published was about the achievement gap in Indian country with regard to our students the further along they go in the K-12 system. And the long and the short of it is I thought, Oh wow, I’m using numbers and statistics, I’m using my passion and love for the people, our people, to demonstrate that there are achievement gaps, not these fancy media releases (which I now know are riddled with political statements), and I showed the widening achievement gap using raw data from standardized test scores, for our 11 Tribal Nations in Wisconsin. And it was well received by some and not so much by others. And so that’s where sort of the rubber hit the road. That’s why praxis is very important, not just theory, in my life. With life experience, you learn how to use evaluation for advocacy means, and when you’re starting out as an early career professional, you have to sort of behave and act in ways differently, at least back then, than you do as somebody who’s in her fifties and has a little bit more visibility and voice. Now I can be more powerful in my advocacy and service and less afraid with the colonial and settler-type activities or neoliberal whatever: things that aren’t productive or healing or helpful to our communities. And so I’ve been in Indigenous evaluation a while, formally and informally, and I think my next 50 years, if Creator lets me live to be a hundred, are about choosing projects that are still meaningful, but that are legacy projects. What can I do to contribute so that the work that I have lasts beyond my lifetime? So that Native American First Nations, Alaskan Nnative, Native Hawaiian, Aboriginal, Māori, fill-in-the-blank, our Indigenous people don’t have to be having the same policy, political, or other types of conversations that I’m having to have as a woman in her fifties in 2022.

Gladys: Nicky, I really appreciate how you shared the roots where you started and then explained how that is leading towards the next part of your career. You mentioned a couple of things there that sparked for me. One was making sure that you can advocate for the changes that need to happen. In my experience in research and evaluation over the last couple of decades I’ve seen this gap where studies or evaluations are completed and then they sit on the shelf or they’re not relevant or there’s this gap in translation where the knowledge isn’t used to actually do something. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts around that. How can we make sure that what we’re producing within Indigenous evaluation is put to use in a way that is meaningful, that is responsive, that is able to be used right now?

Nicky: I think you need a good foundation, first in who you are, who your relatives are, who your ancestors are, what those origin stories and songs and language are. Those are your roots. And as a person who is striving to be traditional every day – who practices culture and language every day before I get to work, during work, and after work – I’m always learning. I know but a thimbleful of what my Elders and ancestors know. So some of the tracks I’m laying down are based on origin stories and teachings. That’s part of my Waapalaneexkweew (wah-pah-lah-nay-wook), my spirit name, part of my responsibility as I’m told by my Elders and the linguists and the leaders. The things that you see me put out there that I’m saying today or publishing or otherwise, all are things that my Elders and leaders and other linguists help vet and shape.

We have online class weekly, we have ceremonies and these types of things. And being able to be one person in this academic lodge (if you will), to contribute, is a good way to be. And so part of my preparedness and that knowledge transmission comes from resting, being in ceremony, writing things down that that small voice inside of me is talking to me about. I am not a medicine person in terms of seeing things or whatever, but I do get inclinations and instincts, intuition which my Elders have told me to nurture. And then I write stuff down and it usually gets a bunch of revisions and sometimes it takes years and years and years before it ever sees primetime ’cause there needs to be time to process and reflect. But first and foremost I would say, Who are you? And why are you doing this?

And part of the who are you and why are you doing this is understanding both traditional origin stories and oral knowledge, as well as the history from pre-contact to post-contact of your communities and the communities you serve. You don’t have to be an expert in that, but you have to have integrity and cultural and academic humility while you’re doing that. And I believe with those roots, that gives you a solid foundation then to move into the field of evaluation (and you could say of education or engineering or medicine, whatever). But I really believe that it doesn’t matter what winds are blowing in terms of what’s the latest, greatest fad or thing people are using in whatever field or discipline they’re in. But knowing who you are and why you are doing it – and it should be obviously beyond your own agenda, that’s where the humility part comes in – that teaching helps give you the foundation you need to move forward. And then once you are in the field, you do a lot of, reflecting, listening; hopefully you’re taken in by those who have years more experience than you do.

I’ve been lucky to have many good mentors who have become Elders, teachers, friends, comrades, however you want to say it, of all colours of the medicine wheel: straight, young, old, LGBTQ2S and all races and ethnicities. So I feel very fortunate to be embraced by global north and south in this work that we’re collectively doing together. And so the preparedness comes in constant work in community contexts, work within yourself, having humility to test things out and tinker with them. Some of my best teachings are when I’ve gotten things wrong <laughs>, but I figure Elders or others wouldn’t tell me if I need to fix stuff if they didn’t feel I was open to it. So that I look as a good metric – if  you want to use process evaluation, it’s a good metric if people are giving you feedback and if it’s sort of uncomfortable feedback. But everything Elders tell us, everything you experience in life isn’t good or bad, it just is and it should be your teacher. And so that’s sort of been my pathway to knowledge transmission. Let’s talk about access to knowledge. If you act right, you get more access to things, because the folks you are in service to have trusted you. So you may get more teachings inside or outside of ceremony, you may be asked to do things in an informal way or a formal way that’s more visible and public. And as you go along this path, you’re patient and you take stuff in. I’m in my fifties, I’m not an Elder yet, I’m an Elder-in-training. <laughs>

And I tried to figure that out but that sort of to me isn’t linear, it’s a circular process. And so you just keep going with knowledge access, knowledge development, knowledge sharing, knowledge transmission. And I try to take a lot of our traditional teachings and apply them to contemporary practice. And one of them is if you situate ourselves as the caretakers of knowledge instead of the owners of it, you act very differently. People who are worried about faculty tenure pathways or money being more important than people sometimes get caught up and forget about that teaching around humility. I’m not saying I’m perfect by any means, but I try to remember: be a caretaker of knowledge, not an owner of it. Now don’t get me wrong, I write a lot about nation-to-nation work and Tribal researchers or Tribal evaluators and Tribal Nations or Tribal nonprofits or Tribal foundations. When they’re entering into agreements, whether it’s receiving money, whether it’s a partnership, and they retain their sovereign rights as owners and governors of information, I very much advocate for that, so they’re in charge of their human subjects data, their cultural and intellectual property, and so on. But as a traditional person, the way that I use being caretaker of knowledge rather than owner of it is when Western folks aren’t involved. So it sort of has a double meaning. I hope I’m communicating clearly and people understand what I’m saying.

Gladys: Yeah, thank you. That makes a lot of sense to me and I appreciate that you made that delineation between caretakers and sovereignty over Tribal or nation data and the difference between the two. You shared a lot there about what I’m hearing are values or principles or ways of being that really form a foundation so that you can do your work in a good way. Like you said, whatever that work is, to have a solid foundation is important. What really stuck out for me around humility is its similarity to something that I think of as “taking care of the spirit of the work,” which means that I carry myself in a good way, that I attend to the responsibilities that I have. And so much of what you’ve just shared, Nicky, really resonates for me, so thank you.

You said a couple of things that I wanted to ask a few more questions about. I’m wondering if you could share what you mean when you say academic lodge?

Nicky: The way I look at it is when you have a lodge or a ceremony, that’s something that’s very traditional, it’s not recorded, it doesn’t have an agenda, it usually doesn’t have any time constraints other than if you go in before sunset or go in before sunrise, everyone’s got different ceremonies. And so I try to think about the spirit of what our lodge is and modify that, call it an academic lodge. There are other authors who write about using the circle as a way to share information, as a way to gather information. The reason I say academic lodge is to give a teaching about what our lodges are about, but also what an academic lodge is not. It’s not traditional. An academic lodge, if everyone gives permission, can be recorded and used so that it benefits everybody who participated. If people don’t want it to be recorded, if one person doesn’t want it to be recorded, we don’t record it. Or if someone gets emotional, we shut off the recording. But we’ve used it both as a method for data collection and as a framework or a process to gather people around in a different way other than “let’s have a Zoom meeting.” In an academic lodge, we may come together for a “fireside chat,” that’s another name the Western folks use. You come together and everyone gets to contribute. We ask that if people are comfortable they contribute, because we believe everybody has something to give to the circle. And together in that circle things come up inside of people, and we have more deep and meaningful discussions if it’s facilitated properly. And hopefully by sharing and sometimes being vulnerable – that’s what happens in these academic lodges – then we can get into deeper, more meaningful discussions that actually may effect transformation and change.

And so we sometimes use academic lodges for our non-native allies and for our white brothers and sisters who are more comfortable in sharing their journey to decolonize and their understanding of being the beneficiaries of colonization. These are important conversations to have, and you have to have a sensitive, tender space to let people feel comfortable to share, especially when things are unknown or confusing or uncomfortable. We have this colonized settler state going on and yet Indigenous people are most often called on to help non-Indigenous people sort of, I don’t know if feel okay is the right word, but “understand.” So it’s hard for us ’cause we get tired and we’re victimized by these systems and colonization, but here we sit. And so that goes back to that teaching about humility: How can I be here to be good medicine and to contribute in a good way to this conversation no matter who shows up? And as long as people are showing up and being authentic, we may talk about journal articles or we may just talk about what’s going on in their life or in the world at the moment. And that’s sort of how I conceptualize an academic lodge. I have a handout on what an academic lodge is and is not, which may be a helpful supplementary piece of information.

Gladys: Yes. Thank you for taking the time to go deeper into what an academic lodge looks like and the purpose of it. I really appreciate that.

I wanted to ask about this term of Indigenous evaluation. It’s this term that’s out there and has been increasingly becoming more popular, I would say maybe in the past five or seven years in Canada. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that rising popularity of this idea of Indigenous evaluation, but it’s something showing up within Western frameworks, within Western funders and programs. Yet I know that Indigenous evaluation is actually something that’s been around in our communities for a very long time, ways of understanding and assessing and making sense of the world around us. And so the question that I have for you is: When you think about that term Indigenous evaluation, what does it mean to you? What does it include and what does it not include? “Indigenous evaluation is whatever the local Indigenous people say it is. And that’s not meant to be evasive, that’s meant to be in the most open mind, heart, spirit, and of greatest service.”
 _{–  Nicky}

Nicky: Indigenous evaluation is whatever the local Indigenous people say it is. And that’s not meant to be evasive, that’s meant to be in the most open mind, heart, spirit, and of greatest service. And that’s sort of how I start out conversations or trainings or technical assistance sessions. Of course I’ve published about it, so there’s a much more – what do I want to say? – frequently cited definition and application and examples out there through some of my earlier publications. But first and foremost it’s how do the local Indigenous people or First Nations governments define evaluation? What does it mean to them? How has evaluation been used? In a good way? In a traumatic way? Has evaluation been confusing? There’s a lot of questions that I ask. We call it co-constructing. I have an idea about what it is and I know what the literature says it is. But really what’s most useful and interesting is to ask those who will be affected most by the evaluation what it is. And from there – let’s say I was coming into to your community, your Cree community – you’re Cree, right?

Gladys: Yes, I’m Cree.

Nicky: Yes, so I would ask everyone – from your Elders and traditionalists to elected officials, to your education program, the families or Tribal education board or whatever, what it was to them. And then hopefully by going in and listening first and visiting, you get a working definition of what it means for the Cree context for this specific program or department or grant. When I think of Indigenous evaluation, it’s Nan Wehipeihana from New Zealand, she’s one of our Māori Elders, she writes a lot about by us and for us, and she says that the best definition is whatever the community says and understanding what the roots are.^[1]

Going back to my origin story: What are the roots, what are the really important values and ethics and things that have to be in evaluation? And then how it might look for an education program, economic development program, or workforce evaluation may change a little bit here or there, due to whatever the programming might be or the questions you’re trying to ask when you do an evaluation. But it’s always nice to have those roots – ’cause I don’t know about Cree, I don’t know your origin stories, your values, Protocols and things, and it’s nice to listen. So that’s what I would say what Indigenous evaluation is, that’s what it would include.

What Indigenous evaluation does not include is an outside person coming in and acting as an expert, including Nicky Bowman who is Lunaape and Mohican. (Lunaape is our word for the Western word Delaware. But our origins come from the northeastern side of Turtle Island – New York, New Jersey, Ontario, that area. We have multiple communities throughout North America due to colonization and just trying to survive.) Anyhow, it wouldn’t include me as an Indigenous person coming in and telling your community what evaluation is. So it does not include somebody from the outside acting like the big boss apple sauce. It’s that humility again, and it’s listening and being in a circle and co-creating what evaluation means.

“One of my pet peeves is people, whether it’s researchers, evaluators, policymakers, or fill in the blank, talking to you about a bunch of statistics, whether it’s a presentation, a meeting, PowerPoint, whatever  talking about all the things that are wrong. I want to know what’s right and what’s strong here.”
_{– Nicky}Indigenous evaluation also means what’s working. One of my pet peeves is people, whether it’s researchers, evaluators, policymakers, or fill in the blank, talking to you about a bunch of statistics, whether it’s a presentation, a meeting, PowerPoint, whatever – talking about all the things that are wrong. I want to know what’s right and what’s strong here. That’s how you have strengths-based evaluations. So Indigenous evaluation must be strengths-based. It must understand the context and the history. It must use culture, it must use language, it must involve ages from youth to Elders, if at all possible, and not just a few key decision makers, ’cause we want to have good representation, full and comprehensive representation. Indigenous evaluation also means Indigenous people and Tribal or First Nations have the right to decide how the data is used, what kind of data is generated, what data is kept inside the community and what data may be shared and disseminated outward. They get to decide where it’s shared and disseminated, who gets to share and disseminate it, and how that message is crafted. And then of course the piles of raw data that you get belong to the community. Hopefully that gives you at least a broad framing of what Indigenous evaluation means. I think when we get stuck in “Here’s the definition of it” and that’s very Western. I think things should be able to have good roots, but they can move and change and grow over time as things change, as you have changes in leadership or programming. It should be flexible.

Gladys: Thank you for sharing that. And really one of the issues that I’m hearing there is that, like you said, who is defining the work? Who is driving the work? Whose priorities are central? That’s really the starting point, and it’s the community. Going in to facilitate the community to be able to co-create what will work for them based on their knowledges, their language, their context, their Protocols, is key.

Nicky: And I think one of the things that I did miss is – and I started doing this just more recently, and we’ll see how it goes, I’ll keep you posted – Indigenous evaluation needs to have equitable resources, right? Equity. I’m starting to say if you want a run-of-the-mill Western evaluation, that’ll be 10 or 12 percent of the overall project budget plus travel, right? And if you want a culturally responsive evaluation or if you want an Indigenous evaluation or if you want an equitable evaluation, something specialized, then that’s going to be 15 percent or more of the budget plus travel. It’s very specialized and I think that some people are well-intentioned and then others are just hiding behind the latest diversity, equity, and inclusion movement within evaluation or the world. You can tell real fast by the resources. Do we have enough time or are we rushed? Do we get to co-create instruments or are they given to us and they say, “This is what you’re using”? Do we have shared data agreements where we own the data? Do we have Indigenous people leading or co-leading efforts for data collection, study design, writing the report, whatever? Do we have enough funding? So if you’re asking Indigenous people for information, whether it’s a survey or interviews or focus groups or talking circles, are you making a donation to the community? Or are you giving honorariums? There’s gotta be a reciprocity in that we cannot continue mining Indigenous hearts, minds and spirits, like they mine the earth. It’s a colonized way to do things and I call it out. I try to be polite and professional about it, but I am very direct when it comes to that. And that’s part of the advocacy work. I understand that PhD behind my name has power and I will use that power for good medicine.

I make no bones about it. I state my positionality. There’s privilege in whiteness, white fragility and white supremacy, being a straight person is privilege. Being over 50 is a privilege versus younger voices in evaluation or LGBTQ2S voices in evaluation, these are all components of privilege. And so I think that we need more white and male and/or privileged types to declare their positionality because when they do that, then you are able to get down to the brass tacks and say, Okay, what are we going to do to address that? What are we going to do to make sure that we’re building in enough time, human commitment, and financial resources to do this work the right way? Because most often, 99 percent of the time, with hundreds and hundreds of projects I’ve worked on, we often have to build in time to teach the non-Indigenous people how to act right, or what Indigenous evaluation 101 is, or the fact that there are even Tribal Nations, sovereignty, First Nations, or Indigenous people still on the earth. It’s amazing the ways that equity comes in. But I’m not here for somebody’s kumbaya. It’s gotta be that plus equitable resources, and I stand firm on that. And if that’s not available then I’m not available, ’cause I will not be a tool for colonization and harm.

Gladys: Definitely. And that connects to what you shared earlier about what you want to leave behind and the kinds of projects that you’re wanting to work on. And I think it also connects to this popularization of Indigenous evaluation and this feature of so many requests for proposals: “How will your approach include Indigenous evaluation?” at the end of RFPs. There’s a danger that it will continue to replicate itself, like you said, with people who are just moving forward with the status quo. And so I appreciate the point that you make around advocating for equitable resources to actually transform the expectations around how evaluation will be done, and for people who are non-Indigenous ultimately to step aside and speak to how capacity for Indigenous evaluation can be embedded and supported within Indigenous communities.

And that leads to my next question. Why is Indigenous evaluation important?

“My personal take is that Indigenous evaluation is the next civil rights movement in terms of asserting sovereignty and having our voices count.”
_{– Nicky}Nicky: My personal take is that Indigenous evaluation is the next civil rights movement in terms of asserting sovereignty and having our voices count. There’s a big evidence-based practice movement – practice-based evidence is the way they flip it, I just roll it into evidence-based practice; you can call it whatever you want, but if it hasn’t been tested and vetted and co-created with the communities I serve, then it’s not evidence. It’s just us trying out some new program to see if it’ll fit our community. And we know how that has worked. One only needs to look at hundreds of years of policy and programming, whether it’s residential boarding schools, whether it’s the separation of families and children through child welfare, forced removal. I mean you could continue this list both in the Canadian context and the United States, or other Indigenous contexts globally, and it hasn’t worked.

I call myself a blue-collar scholar, and the simplest argument I make to people is that I know what the data says; our educational outcomes, our health outcomes, our economic outcomes haven’t changed much in hundreds of years. So why don’t you make room for having Indigenous scholarship in there? And that Indigenous scholarship could come from our Elders or intergenerational families who are protecting the earth or the water or who understand economic development and always got a good hustle going, and making sure there’s resources in the community so people can make a good living. Or it might be people who know how to grow things and are part of the decolonization of food, the food sovereignty movement. Make room for the people who have known how to do the things they do over many generations, whether they have a PhD or not. I’m interested in how we make more of that. I don’t know if I completely answered your question, so please feel free to redirect me, but that’s where my mind went.

Gladys: One of the things I’m thinking about lately is knowledge generation and knowledge production and who gets to say what knowledge is, which links to who gets to say what evidence is. My background’s social work, and this evidence-based practice is a big thing in social work. Indigenous Knowledge Keepers that I work with have said it’s really about promising practices because the context of where we work is important and the community where we work is important. And so it’s going to change, but we can share promising practices in our communities. And that looks different than what’s framed within Western academia as evidence-based practice. I agree that Indigenous evaluation holds an important role in pushing back against the imposition of evidence within our communities.

And that’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone say that Indigenous evaluation could be likened to the civil rights movement, but it makes sense to me.

Nicky: Well, what is produced as evidence is where the rubber hits the road, because researchers and evaluators, there’s a difference. And some of us do research and evaluation. I do mostly evaluation, but I understand the difference because I have to teach the difference between research and evaluation. We may share similar theories and methods, but the types of questions we ask and the ways we use data and the types of data generated are different than what researchers use. And so evaluation gives an opinion about whether something’s working or not. It doesn’t have to be that black and white, so to speak. You can have a developmental scale to say, “That’s sort of working, we need more time to…,” or, “It’s amazing, let’s replicate it and try it in different communities,” and all along that continuum. But to me it’s an ethical and moral responsibility.

That’s how strongly I believe in Indigenous evaluation to go beyond doing no harm to being a good relative or being good medicine. This minimum standard of “Do no harm, do no harm,” whether it’s in social science, medical sciences or wherever, is bullshit. You’ve done harm! Let’s come on now. And I know it’s an uncomfortable truth, but it’s one that I will utilize to help educate and hopefully reach and transform and change people, meaning the non-Indigenous, until I have my last breath. I’m learning as an older woman, a middle-aged woman, how to try to speak into the listening. My African-American Elder, Dr. Hazel Symonette, who’s been at the forefront of the civil rights movement using evaluation, she’s at the University of Wisconsin Madison and is one of my beloved mentors, sisters, reminds us that we have to speak into the listening.

So you can’t always run around with a baseball bat, even though at my heart and hard core, I love being on the front lines <laughs>, I like protesting and I like getting in people’s face, saying, “This is wrong.” Because on the back side, when we’re in community, when you’re really engaged in community, not as Dr. Nicky Bowman, but just as Nicky Bowman in ceremonies or in helping families in time of need or crisis or seeing some of the things that our communities see on a very regular and disproportionately high basis, you understand how important it is for you to be out there then as Dr. Nicky Bowman to advocate for different policies, for different ways. People are trained and educated to speak back to literature that is not accurate or appropriate. So it becomes a moral and an ethical obligation. I mean, it’s part of my spirit name, that’s what I need to be doing.

And so that’s what I try to do. And I’m trying to find different ways to communicate that, so we can bring more folks in, more allies in. ’Cause there’ll never be enough Indigenous evaluators. There simply aren’t enough of us. And so where I can find allies, non-native allies, “I am ride or die!” But then they have to keep earning trust and they have to be respectful and have humility and help to make room and resources so that more of this work can be done. That’s my expectation for the reciprocity and that relationship. And I’m very upfront about that too.

Gladys: You said it’s important to be a good relative in this work. So what does being a good relative in Indigenous evaluation look like? What does that feel like?

Nicky: One of the practical ways I practice wëli elànkumachi (which means good relatives, good relations) is because many of our First Nations or our Tribal foundations or our Tribal non-profits do not have a Tribal IRB (institutional review board), or Tribal research or Tribal evaluation oversight and advisory board. People call it different things depending on where you are. But most of our communities, our organizations or governments do not have that. So part of being a good relative is when I’m making a contract with folks, I’m like, What does this mean? And I actually use the medicine wheel, the Lunaape medicine wheel, and I talk about the eastern door, the southern door, the western door, and the northern door. And we make up agreements. It means I come to work rested and not rushed. It means I use culture and language whenever I can. It means that the community owns the data, not me. And everything will be returned or destroyed by X number of days. It means in the future I do not publish unless there’s a co-author with me from your community, and we’ve agreed that this is something that would be good to share for education or other purposes. A good relations agreement is part of what I literally attach to my contracting document or inside the contracting language.

So for instance, we do work with missing and murdered Indigenous relatives in the state of Wisconsin and we’re a subcontractor. We’re the native subcontractor and the primary contractor is non-native. And I said, If I get any data from native folks from surveys or whatever else we’re doing, you don’t get any of it and neither does the state of Wisconsin. I need that in my contract because I have to be a layer of protection. And I found out, I don’t know, maybe eight or ten months after that from one of the co-chairs of the movement in Wisconsin, that they used my contract language for all eleven Tribal Nations so that they would also be protected. So if Tribes got data, they wouldn’t have to fork it over, because we don’t know what data has been used against us by government agencies and others. And so that’s what it means, being a good relative. It also means when you have to receive constructive feedback, it means you take it with humility and you adjust your team, resources, timelines, instruments, whatever it might be. You don’t hold data hostage. You don’t try to act like you’re some big shot, and use a lot of technical language to create additional barriers or frustrations.

And it means if the communities have folks that want to actually learn more about Indigenous evaluation or help with data collection analysis, you open the door to say, Okay, if you want to be part of that, let us know. We really love when communities have somebody who almost functions like an internal evaluator to help because that’s on-the-job practice, you get to practice Indigenous evaluation on a real project with the community. So those are all different ways being a good relative shows up. There’s lots more, but those are the ones off the top of my head.

Gladys: Such great examples. Thank you so much. Based on your experiences and the reflections you’ve shared with us today, what is needed to support or strengthen the field of Indigenous evaluation?

Nicky: I think there need to be more opportunities for voice and visibility in meaningful positions. So for instance, the American Evaluation Association has a working group – they have lots of working groups, but this is a standing group that is right in the board policies and it’s called the Evaluation Policy Task Force. We now have an Indigenous person on this group, it’s me; and we also have LGBTQ2S on this group. It’s Dr. Gregory Phillips III. And it means that – how can I say this? Professional organizations and government agencies or programs or departments are requiring all evaluators to have skills and competencies in culturally responsive Indigenous and equitable evaluation. I mean, if we were asked to do a social network analysis and evaluation, we wouldn’t send somebody in who didn’t know what they were doing. There are skills, knowledge, and competencies around these technical things besides having lived experience to understand appropriate ways to act in a cultural and community context.

And so we definitely need more resources put into these efforts, whether it’s professional development that everybody is required to go through. I know that First Nations has OCAP® (principles of ownership, control, access and possession with respect to data collection). If you become a credentialed evaluator for the Canadian Evaluation Society, you must know about treaty rights. You must understand about data protections and agreements and things about Indigenous evaluation. They’re the only professional evaluation organization on the planet that does that in order to be certified. So others need to step up.

I also think that publishing houses, those who publish our journals, the professional associations, and white and male and/or privileged can step up. This is part of true healing reconciliation to me, part of active land acknowledgement and it’s part of self-acknowledgement to not continue to cause more trauma and harm. When you’re publishing a journal article, when you’re publishing a book, if you’re Indigenous, all the rights should be yours. They should not become the publishing house’s rights. You’re not going to get rich. It’s not a New York Times bestseller, you know what I’m saying? But if you’re on stolen land, you should not add more to the trauma pot, if you will, by also expecting us to write for free and then you own our information. And so I can tell you that in 2022 some of the biggest wins for me that will live well beyond Nicky Bowman’s years of life, the Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation and the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation (which are both open access journals, that’s another thing. Journals could make things open access to Indigenous people and be cosponsoring events where non-Indigenous are learning things that they don’t get in college regarding this type of evaluation) both now have brand-new agreements that will start at the beginning of 2023 that if you’re an Indigenous author and you have to sign an author agreement before your article or your submission gets published, you will own it. Indigenous people will be 100% owners of that article. It will no longer be given to the publishing house or the journal. So I’m really happy to hear about those things, but those are some of the things that need to change.

We need more people calling others out. So it’s not just on the backs of Indigenous people to do it. We’re evaluators who are also Indigenous. So we know evaluation stuff plus our Indigenous stuff or what has been given to us and that we practiced and learned and refined over the years. But I mean, when the United Nations has their global gathering of how to save the Earth,  evaluators are there, so why are there not any Indigenous evaluators or Indigenous caretakers of the earth who know how to protect and save our planet? And by scientific studies, the healthiest places on earth are those where Tribes have sovereign status and are able to use their sovereign status to protect our natural resources. But they’re not at these big summits. I don’t understand. I don’t understand why the permanent forum isn’t busy. The United Nations Indigenous Permanent Forum isn’t busy engaging with funders and with corporations and these people who are supposedly trying to solve global problems. It’s amazing to me. We need to be there. And I don’t mean be there just in terms of, Okay, let’s have a prayer in the native tongue and be done with it. Like nation to nation – Tribes are nation states, First Nations governments – and folks need to start inviting Tribes. For us, 578 First Nations, and if you count all the First Nations in Canada, it’s over 1200. When there are national policies being created, why aren’t all Tribes invited to the table? If you go back to treaty rights, we were supposed to have representation. Where is that?

It’s rough. It’s rough out there. But all you can do is keep working and keep questioning and keep hoping you find the right persons inside of these funding or government agencies or corporate agencies that are truly engaged in liberatory work, and want the world to be a better place and to be sustainable for many future generations. I got on a soapbox, but I mean all of it.

Gladys: <laughs> I love it. And you know, you made some connections there that I hadn’t thought about before, particularly around OCAP and Indigenous evaluators’ presence and the opportunity when we think about advocacy within funding spaces to support Indigenous evaluators at a global scale, contributing to some of the transformation that could be possible if our voices were in those spaces.

Nicky: Yep.

Gladys: We’re getting to the end of our time together. This has gone by so quickly and you’ve shared so many amazing insights that I know listeners are going to be excited about. I want to give you an opportunity to express any hopes or words of wisdom or experience or something that’s just burning within you that you really want to share with listeners as they sit with everything you’ve shared so far around Indigenous evaluation.

Nicky: The first thing I want to say is believe in yourself, and quiet yourself down to listen to your inside voice or your intuition. Build in regular time to rest and to be in ceremony. And sometimes ceremony might just be driving an Elder around who’s old and can’t get around easily and it’s winter, and you clean their house or you do their groceries. You know what I’m saying? The ancestors find a way to get things to come to you if you’re doing the right things here on earth. I truly believe that.

I think the second thing is to remember frontal lobes and footnotes are only going to get you so far. We need to have more Indigenous people publishing. So I will say, Larry Bremner and I, past president of Canadian Evaluation Society, we’re the co-editors for the Roots and Relations section, that’s the Indigenous-only section inside Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation. We’re having another call for proposals in January and anybody who provides a submission will be published, that’s part of that academic lodge. Nobody gets turned away, and you can turn in songs or artwork, or a regular journal article or whatever. But I want to see more people with and without PhDs publishing and sharing their insights, their stories. I mean, I’ve seen people do beadwork and ribbon skirts around climate change. Tell me how you evaluated that, and why this regalia was important. These beautiful medicines that we have buried in our DNA need to be woken up and applied to the field.

And for those of you who don’t have a spirit name, don’t be ashamed if you’re mixed. I’m mixed. Get your spirit name, use it. Use the tools that you have. Something I’ll remember the rest of my career is I had a student come up to me – and I visit, I don’t care if you’re a big name or a no name so to speak, I love visiting with emerging and new evaluators, especially Indigenous evaluators, or just young evaluators – they said, “Dr. Bowman, I always wanted to publish in my spirit name, and I told my advisor, Well, if Dr. Bowman can do it, then why can’t I?” And I thought, you never know how using your medicine is going to help. And in academia they always want you to be thinking about the literature, quoting someone or what’s the latest thing? And I say, Well, let’s balance that out. ’Cause balance is a teaching, right? Go inward. Recover your language. Even if it’s just saying hello or learning how to introduce yourself in the language, learning how to make cedar tea, or whatever it is that’s your jam. Do that. Who knew that me publishing my name, using my spirit name, or organizing my information according to our Lunaape Medicine wheel, and using language was helpful? That really still gets me, and that comment was shared a long time ago.

And I think the last thing is, don’t forget to think about the legacy that you want to leave. Build on origin stories, build on what you know others have done, but don’t be afraid to be your own person and to let that person out. Find a good mentor or mentors, a circle that will keep you strong, and just be brave and put yourself out there. Because to me that’s what’s innovative, that’s what’s exciting, and that’s what really hits home. I may have used a medicine wheel, for instance. Not all Indigenous communities have medicine wheels. So what is it that you use? What is the teaching, or something that you have permission and responsibility to share? How do you apply cultural Protocols or symbols or teachings to evaluation? Don’t be afraid to share.

“…I know that timeless wisdom will produce things that will create true and lasting change. Not just more information. More information, the Western way, got us to where we are. We want wisdom applied so that we solve things, heal things, transform, and move to whatever the next thing is that our communities need.”
_{– Nicky}My model isn’t the be-all-end-all. It’s just to say, here’s one way that I use it. And I hope that inspires others to do the same, because I just love seeing what else is out there. There’s so much timeless wisdom that’s in our traditional knowledge, that’s transferred through ceremonies orally, by singing. And I know that timeless wisdom will produce things that will create true and lasting change. Not just more information. More information, the Western way, got us to where we are. We want wisdom applied so that we solve things, heal things, transform, and move to whatever the next thing is that our communities need. So that is about as wise as I can be right now. <laughs>

Gladys: You certainly are leaving some deep footprints for others to follow. I appreciate the invitation to be brave and to step out there and to show up as our whole selves because we never know who we will be inspiring in generations to come. And you are an inspiration. Nicky, I appreciate you so deeply for taking the time and for speaking sometimes hard things into spaces that need to change.

Nicky: I’m sick of shame. We carry so much shame that we share and we don’t share, and I want more sassiness and more love and applicability out there. Let yourself out, share with us the medicine that was put in you.

Gladys: I’m going to leave the audience with the beauty of your wise words, and ekosi, thank you so much for spending time with me today, Nicky.

Nicky: Wanìshi, thank you.

Gladys: Thank you so much and wishing you a lovely rest of your day.

Listeners, I’m grateful you spent time with us today. I look forward to sharing the space with you again soon. Until the next story, ekosani!

Footnotes

About the author

name: Dr. Nicole Bowman, PhD (Lunaape/Mohican)

institution: Bowman Performance Consulting

website: https://bpcwi.com

Nicole “Nicky” Bowman, PhD (Waapalaneexkweew) Ndulunaapeewi Kwe | Indigenous Evaluator | Policy Advocate Dr. Nicole “Nicky” Bowman (Lunaape/Mohican), Waapalaneexkweew (“Accompanied by the Four Eagles, Flying Eagle Woman”) of the Lynx and Wolf Clans, is a nationally and internationally recognized Indigenous evaluator whose leadership advances equity, sovereignty, and justice across systems. A traditional Lenapexkwe (Lunaape/Mohican woman), she has served Indigenous communities for nearly 40 years and worked as an Indigenous evaluator for over three decades. Her work braids Indigenous knowledge with scientific methods to support transformational evaluation, systems change, and sustainable, self-determined solutions. Nicky is founder and president of Bowman Performance Consulting (BPC) and Associate Scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s WI Center for Education Research. Dr. Bowman leads a diverse portfolio of multi-sector, multidisciplinary initiatives focused on Indigenous, culturally responsive, and equity-centered evaluation. Her work spans local, national, and global contexts—supporting federal, state, Tribal, nonprofit, for-profit, and philanthropic partners. As a strategic and compassionate learning partner, she provides technical assistance, training, and policy development to strengthen evaluation frameworks and metrics rooted in justice and community-defined success. Dr. Bowman received the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Robert Ingle Service Award in 2018 as its youngest and first Indigenous recipient, and the 2024 AEA Presidential Award for exemplifying the conference theme. Since 2010, she has held leadership roles with AEA, the Center for Culturally Responsive Evaluation and Assessment (CREA), Indigenous Peoples in Evaluation, and EvalIndigenous. She also led the Indigenous Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) from 1999 to 2012. She is a Research Affiliate with CREA, a long-time member of AEA and nearly 10 of its state affiliates, and a member of the Canadian Evaluation Society (CES). She also serves as a Trustee of the International Evaluation Academy. Her editorial leadership centers Indigenous scholarship and sovereignty in evaluation. She co-created the “Roots and Relations” section of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, is Associate Editor for Decolonization at the Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation (2024–2027), and Section Editor for Ethics, Values, and Culture at the American Journal of Evaluation (2023–2026). She collaborates with publishers to establish decolonized legal standards in evaluation, including protections for cultural and intellectual property. Dr. Bowman earned her PhD in Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis as an Academic Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (2015), her M.Ed. from Lesley University (1997), and her B.A. in Education from St. Norbert College (1993). She resides in Lenapahoking (Wisconsin), Turtle Island (USA) with her family and the Mohican Nation and community.

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