We are happy to inform everyone with an interest in evaluation that issue 39.3 of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation is now available online. This issue contains 11 inspiring, motivating, thought-provoking, and stimulating texts that will contribute to your professional development and expertise.
Here are the Editor’s remarks (Jill Anne Chouinard):
This is my final volume as Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation. I am very proud of all of the work we have done with CJPE over the past three years and honoured to have worked with an amazing editorial team. The world is in a very different place than it was three years ago, with increased political, economic, and financial uncertainty defining the current moment. The value of our work as evaluators matters more today, as so much of what we have struggled to achieve in terms of equity, justice, equality, diversity of people, views and perspectives, anti-racism, and collaboration is now under threat worldwide.
This issue of CJPE includes 11 articles and practice notes across a range of program and community contexts, drawing our attention to evaluation’s role in policy-making and its strategic use in the federal government, the intersections between collaborative or culturally responsive approaches and social pedagogy, trauma-informed and recovery-centred practice, and the role of Indigenous approaches in creating a decolonial evaluation practice that creates spaces to foster cultural safety, relationships, advocacy, ceremony, accountability, empowerment, and learning.
There are four submissions in our Roots and Relations section. Erb, Garcia, and Stekia describe an environmental evaluation framework they used with Indigenous regional networks across British Columbia. The article by Johnson, Dancey, Wonneck, and Johnson provides a critique of western approaches in the evaluation of Indigenous programs as they ignore cultural protocols, traditions, and ceremonies that are so crucial to any research conducted in Indigenous communities. Seneca, Mccarn, and Baker discuss the use of an Indigenous evaluation framework used by an urban Indian health institute to empower communities and help them reclaim their narratives. The final article in this section, by Nicholson, Walker-Swaney, Lawrenchuk, Johnson, and Rowe, investigates an Anishinaabe-led evaluation in a maternal-child health integrative care clinic used to support ongoing learning and wellness within the clinic.
There are also three articles and four practice notes included in this issue. The article by Núñez, Janer Hidalgo, and Molina Palencia looks at the intersection between participatory evaluation and social pedagogy based on interviews with 18 academics across seven countries. Mahani, Lyeo, Fung, Husack, Muhajarine, Diener, and Brown explore the role of evaluation in policy-making in a small-to-medium-sized municipality. Both of these first two papers focus on the democratic potential of evaluation. The next article in French by Larivière, Charpentier, Asselin, Michaud, and Gauthier-Boudreault discusses the use of an empowerment evaluation to support a recovery-centred practice in the mental health residential sector in Quebec. The first practice note, by Thiessen and Chouinard, reflects on an Indigenous-led evaluation of a program housed in a non-Indigenous governmental organization, focusing on the need to take a trauma-informed approach in their work. The French practice note by Godbout, Dussault, Fernet, Boucher, and Boileau reflects on the challenges they experienced implementing an evaluation that is mindful and sensitive to trauma. Krasniuk, Lawson, and Crizzle bring into focus a bottom-up approach in the evaluation of a volunteer transportation program in a rural community. Finally, Levesque’s practice note sheds light on the strategic use of evaluation within the federal government.
I want to thank everyone for their work on this volume and for their work on the journal over the past three years. It has been an honour to work with all of you! And thank you to the Editorial Board and to all the reviewers. We could not do our work without all of you!
Also, here is the text of the introduction to the Roots and Relations Section (Larry Bremner, Dr. Nicole Bowman, and Paisley Worthington):
Koolamalsi/Taanishi/Pee-piihtikweek/Welcome Relatives and Allies to Roots and Relations (R&R), a regular special section in the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation (CJPE) that is part of an intentional and intergenerational journey of Indigenous scholars, practitioners, and community members. Truly, the voices and representation of Indigenous evaluators are beautifully diverse and deeply rooted to values and ethics, and they continue to infuse and inspire innovative and effective content for informing the field of evaluation. As we reflect on this journey, we consider ways in which we can work to protect and grow Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing through policy and practice. The editors, reviewers, and mentors of R&R are also walking with the authors who here present and share the good medicine they have experienced in the communities in which they are in service. In this way, R&R highlights the wisdom and diversity that First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and other Indigenous authors and their ally partners are bringing to this publication. We are excited to present the fifth edition of R&R, which was first published in June 2023. To date, R&R has published 17 articles with 50 authors contributing from across the world. We are proud to have published over 40 Indigenous authors with affiliations to over 30 Indigenous nations across Mother Earth.
This edition features four articles in which the authors demonstrate approaches taken for empowering Indigenous communities through evaluation that builds on cultural principles, ethical practices, and community-centered objectives. Seneca, McCarn, and Baker discuss the development of an organizational model—the Indigenous Knowledge Informed Systems of Care—that places traditional medicine at the centre. The article provides an overview of a training program that focuses on achieving impact through workforce development and epidemiology, research, and evaluation. The evaluation was guided by the organization’s Indigenous Evaluation Framework. This article provides the readers with a contextually and culturally rooted framework that is valued, meaningful, and utilized, which are critical for applications to evaluation.
Erb, Garcia, and Stelkia conducted a meta-analysis of data generated through the Network Environments for Indigenous Health Research (NEIHR) to enhance research leadership across First Nations, Inuit, and Métis (FNIM) communities in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Four overarching themes came forward for BC NEIHR improvement: addressing power dynamics; using methods based on Indigenous epistemologies; redefining success metrics and indicators; and prioritizing the idea of becoming rather than having done. This paper also presents the Environmental Evaluation Framework (EEF), a set of core principles that guide BC NEIHR’s annual evaluation reporting. To support the growing landscape of Indigenous evaluation, their analysis concludes that the key to future Indigenous evaluation is in relational systems thinking as well as principles of self-determination, reciprocity, and mutual benefit. The authors explain how they are working to improve the framework to better serve Indigenous researchers and evaluators as well as Indigenous communities, collectives, and organizations. The process, founding principles, traditional knowledge, and decolonizing and anti-racist stance of the EEF provide another example of FNIM communities’ readiness and capacity for creating innovative evaluation frameworks which integrate program values, evaluation principles, and evaluation indicators and areas of inquiry which deeply support the evaluation.
Johnson, Dancey, Wonneck, and Johnson discuss their collective work to highlight the unseen labour that is consistently overlooked in assessments of Indigenous community-based research and evaluation. They suggest that the invisible work of preparing for evaluation in Indigenous communities is not appreciated or acknowledged as tangible research because within academia this work is seen as merely day-to-day tasks. For the authors, overlooking these preparations is devaluing precisely what makes it possible for evaluations to be undertaken in ways that respect the goals, objectives, and protocols of Indigenous communities. They argue that by overlooking the preparations which reinforce commitment to community, we fail to see not only the deep-rooted connections to the people, but also greater connections with the land, the ancestors, and the generations that follow.
Nicholson, Walker-Swaney, Lawrenchuk, Johnson, and Rowe describe an evaluation approach founded upon the work of a community-based clinic which aims to provide Anishinaabe-led maternal child health and family wellness services to community members in northern Minnesota. The authors emphasize the importance of the restoration of Indigenous practices, languages, and governance structures as acts of resistance and reassertion of sovereignty. They conclude that their journey reinforces that evaluations grounded in cultural values are not just methods of measurement but pathways to fostering sovereignty, relational accountability, and community-driven change.
The authors submitting to Roots and Relations continue to inspire us, and we hope they inspire you as well! We give our gratitude to the Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners who are continuing to make the vision of R&R a reality. We look forward to future editions to continue uplifting and illustrating Indigenous contributions to community and the broader field of evaluation. As appropriate and with permission, we also share ways that authors braid Indigenous approaches to evaluation with other supportive approaches. R&R highlights these Indigenous, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit voices and the ways in which Indigenous knowledge is used in evaluative thinking, design, methods, and theory. It is truly exciting to be part of a movement that is focused on publishing Indigenous voices and celebrating Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing.
As always, we encourage Indigenous evaluation practitioners, academics, and students as primary authors to consider R&R as a place to publish your work. Ally partners (secondary voice) are welcome support to these Indigenous authors as they build capacity for finding their voice and publishing it in R&R in whatever creative ways they are able. Together, our healing way is part of the truth and reconciliation work we are called to do, and is rooted in ethics, culture, and humanity to make the field and world safer places in which to heal, grow, and thrive.
However, to continue to move forward we need your help, not only as contributing authors but also as reviewers. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, please email cjpe@evaluationcanada.ca and/or create a reviewer profile in the online system here https://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/utp_cjpe. And if you are new to or curious about editing, please contact Larry at larry@proactive.mb.ca or Nicky at Nicky@bpcwi.com for future consideration. Anushiik/thank you for helping to be part of the R&R kinship in ensuring that our collective can continue to move forward celebrating and publishing Indigenous voices and practices.
Maarsi, Anushiik, Merci, Thank You!