Writing Archives - Gladys Rowe

Indigenous resurgence & [Indigenous] innovation

January 16, 2023 2 Comments

In order to know where we are going, we need to know where we are; to know where we are, we need to know who we are; to know who we are, we need to know where we come from.

–Anishinaabe Elder Art Solomon

Innovation. There’s an air of excitement and potential when you speak this word into a room – let’s innovate – we need to innovate – how can we embody innovation? It seems so many places are embracing the bullet train that is innovation. Moving from entrepreneurial and tech spaces, the innovation buzz has been filtering into the space of systems (education and healthcare, for example), nonprofits, and community organizations. The language of innovation has infiltrated workspaces and organizations (co-creation, prototyping, ecosystems) and I am sure that post it note sales have skyrocketed (IYKYK). I’m all for ways and processes to hold systems accountable to do better, to decolonize, to provide support and resources in a way that aligns with values of equity and anti-racism because the alternative status quo is violent and isn’t meeting the actual needs of people and communities. But does social innovation have the clout to do the heavy lifting that decolonial futures will require?

A recent series of posts from Action Lab founder Ben Weinlick about innovation, social innovation, lab spaces, and unlearning (I HIGHLY recommend reading these deeply reflective and significant contributions) got me thinking about my time in and around innovation and systems change and the tensions of Indigenous research, evaluation, and learning in social innovation. And so, in this blog I set out to reflect on the kinds of spaces where Indigenous grounded evaluation and learning are particularly critical and what I have learned about innovation as a lever/or not for Indigenous resurgence.

The first time I heard the term social innovation was in 2013 through my work at the Winnipeg Boldness Project. I have been embedded in, adjacent to, and moving around the spaces of innovation since that time. I feel like this was a momentum building time for social innovation in Canada specifically within Indigenous organizations and communities. I was excited to hear about new ways of bringing people together to think about the wicked challenges¹ that we face and to commit to new solutions to transform these challenges. Within this excitement I was keenly aware of the power of underlying worldviews and assumptions that often ground these spaces. I was eager to push and expand the thinking and processes of social innovation to consider what it might look like within an Indigenous paradigm/foundation.

In that timespan of learning about and getting to know social innovation, there was certainly a tension – a push and pull back and forth with a healthy dose of skepticism thrown in. What was social innovation? How might this process support communities to thrive? How might social innovation be a parallel process towards Indigenous sovereignty considering the ongoing resistance and advocacy from Indigenous peoples in Canada? Where did the answers to these questions align with the ongoing work of Indigenous communities, leaders, and Nations? This questioning and critical analysis began to come in from all across Canada and was the impetus for the Indigenous Innovation Summit, hosted November 19-21, 2015 in Winnipeg Manitoba. In the sharing of stories during the Summit came a clear message. Indigenous peoples have always been innovators. How we have been in relationship with the environment around us has allowed us to be responsive, flexible, iterative and to generate innovations in response to and in relationship with the land, waters, animals, and systems that we are in relationship with. So what was this new field that everyone was so excitedly offering Indigenous communities and organizations to work with?

To share a little bit about what I have learned about relationships for innovation – and how Indigenous methodologies have been supporting Indigenous innovation, I need to back up a couple of years before the Summit to the beginning of the Winnipeg Boldness Project. In 2013 I had recently accepted the opportunity that transformed the pathway of my career. I had been working on different projects in Winnipeg organizations for a while, and had just begun working on my PhD. I had said I wasn’t going to work through this degree, like I had the last ones, but family and community responsibilities proved me otherwise. It was winter in Winnipeg and I remember the cold snowy day well. Diane Roussin and I sat in the sun drenched space of Neechi Commons in conversation about this new project that she was gathering a team for, in the North End of Winnipeg, where I grew up.

It was a social innovation project, yet to be named, with a goal to change outcomes for young kids in the community, so that by the time they entered kindergarten they would be ready for school (but what if that wasn’t really the outcome or indicator of success that the kids or families were hoping for?? – hold on to that thought…). Enter a year-long community grounding and knowledge gathering process to understand what the community actually hoped for, what the experiences of families with young children were experiencing, and to see where the Winnipeg Boldness Project might fit. For me, this meant connecting with the community in a way that offered multiple mechanisms for engagement, for sharing their stories and eventually culminated in long standing guide groups, including the Parent and Caregiver Guide Group, community members who continue to inform and drive the project today. This linked report speaks to the development of the guide group, diverse mechanisms of engagement, why a guide group was/is critical to a community driven innovation project, and shares some of the learnings about participatory arts based methods of engagement and sharing story. This brings me to one of the first lessons of Indigenous innovation work: who is driving the work matters, and how we begin is key.

The ways that we sat together with the community mattered, how our small team showed up in spaces mattered, and what we were asking of the community mattered. We gathered stories and experiences through familiar community development processes incorporating some newly learned social innovation tools using post it notes, dotmocracy, and values mapping – and other arts based methods such as photo voice. We were listening to the community and we were grounded in Indigenous ways of being with community. We hosted conversations and circles and gathered with food and for ceremonies. The result of this work – building relationships, building trust, and engaging with story and experiences in ways that supported meaningful participation was a project that looked a lot different then the initial vision to ensure children were ready for school. This report, outlining the work of those first two years, shares the journey from that initial vision, to one that was grounded in the community priorities and understanding of what success must look like for their families.

Since my time at the Winnipeg Boldness Project, the examples and invitations into Indigenous innovation have grown. In this article by Kris Archie and Jessica Bolduc, they share the ways that their organizations are living principles and practices of Indigenous innovation – informed by ways of knowing, being, and doing that are grounded in wisdom and traditions that have always been. At the 2015 Winnipeg Summit, noted by the authors, the Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair shared,“Innovation isn’t always about creating new things or creating new ways of doing.” Rather, it “sometimes involves looking back at our old ways and bringing them forward to this new situation.”

The work of the Indigenous Innovation Initiative is another example of the growth of support for Indigenous innovation- they support and empower First Nation, Inuit and Metis innovators and communities to identify and solve their own challenges, transform lives, and drive inclusive growth and health through innovation. There are many stories of the work that they support in their first bi-annual Impact report released in June 2022. To ground the report, they share their understanding of Indigenous Innovation:

Indigenous Peoples have always been innovative. In a Western context, the innovation process is often rooted in the creation of new ideas —usually technology-based— that will bring us closer to the future. In an Indigenous context, innovation is generally rooted in the continuum of all our relations: our ancestors and relatives gift us seeds of change and growth and teach us how to nurture them so that they grow into the relationships, infrastructure, economies, systems, and medicines that will sustain and care for all our relations —past, present, and future. We understand that innovation isn’t always about creating new things, and we prioritize Indigenous innovation as being critical to creating shared futures where all Peoples, and the planet, can thrive. We use Indigenous innovation to reclaim, revitalize, and reapply ancestral ways of knowing and being to new contexts. By doing so, future generations can also feast from the harvest, and enable sustainable growth and wellbeing of their own communities, Lands, Waters, and Skies for generations to come. (p.3)

So, catalyzed by the reflections offered by Ben on the work of the Action Lab and by the experiences I have had since my time at the Winnipeg Boldness Project and in the trajectory of my work afterward I felt like it was an opportune time to mark my own reflections on Indigenous innovation and story. Sparked by knowing that how we frame the work of innovation can come from the way that things have always been done, or it can be different. For me one of the insights that has come forward is that innovation, Indigenous innovation is more than a stand alone set of tools or processes. Rather, Indigenous innovation is how we can work together with a vision that is rooted in resurgence.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is one of the roots of my understanding and journey with Indigenous resurgence. She has been one of those beacons that allow me to reflect on how I want to show up in my work. Leanne speaks of resurgence specifically as it is rooted in her understanding and experiences as an Anishinaabe kwe. What it means to dig deep into a re-engagement with ways of knowing, being, and doing that come from the lands, languages, and worldviews through which we are in relationship. And to nurture those relationships so that they offer us grounding and direction in how to be. How to be leaders, teachers, students, families, communities, and Nations. As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (2021) builds on and transforms from Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (2011). It’s so interesting to see the interconnectedness and expansion of her thinking from one book to the next and I appreciate the ways that she makes visible the threads and weaving of the stories she offers.

My dissertation work gathered stories as I sat in conversation with Indigenous full spectrum birth workers to learn about how they incorporated traditional knowledges and practices from their Nations into the way that they supported people in their reproductive wellness. This was firmly planted in the stance that fundamental relationships with body sovereignty, traditional knowledges, and strong relationships with self, family, land, and community have the ability to transform the health of this generation and all of the generations to come. This is Indigenous innovation. This is a catalyst for Indigenous resurgence.

When I think about Indigenous innovation, social innovation, and Indigenous resurgence some challenges come to mind. First of all my worry goes directly to the danger of co-option of processes that are so disconnected from the roots and vision that what results is surface level changes that don’t transform systems but rather entrench inequities. That’s my doom and gloom scenario. This makes me think of the work of Adam Gaudry and Danielle Lorenz (2018), Indigenization as inclusion, reconciliation, and decolonization: navigating the different visions for Indigenizing the Canadian Academy, where they explore Indigenous inclusion, reconciliation Indigenization, and decolonial Indigenization. At the beginning of this post I spoke about the leeriness to new buzzwords – my leeriness comes from witnessing institutions pick up the work of reconciliation and decolonization in ways that do not fundamentally transform but rather offer a new coat of paint on buildings that will continue to process Indigenous students and knowledges without critical shifts. What are the visions for Indigenizing the academy? Is this the space that needs to be Indigenized or do we need to start fresh from a new foundation? I ask some of these questions in my first episode, Making Introductions. And so too, I bring these same questions forward into the innovation and learning space.

So how can we stay connected to context, content, process, and relational accountability in order to take the time and to make sure that visions of Indigenous resurgence (and therefore Indigenous sovereignty) are beacons for innovation? For me there are fundamental questions that need to inform and anchor how we are thinking about and then actioning systems change/transformation/innovation work include:

Who is (collectively) leading this work, and how are they being resourced/supported?
What are the values underlying innovation?
What are we trying to make better and why?
What processes and structures are informing the development?
What worldview and principles drive the search for new ways of knowing, being, and doing?

For me, these questions align well in not only innovation foundation building and implementation but also in the evaluation and learning. Whether we are co-creating, prototyping, or iterating new approaches or whether we are evaluating the process, progress, or outcomes, or whether we are embedded in the learning – we must always be reflecting on the transformation as it is taking place. The questions are the same, and the critical reflection must be the same. In the last blog post, when I spoke about how and why the stories we tell matter, these questions help us to get to the root of action that can be taken to build new scaffolding by telling new (old) stories.

A solution, strategy, or pathway will always be driven by how we define the issue that we are working on together. And so back to Indigenous resurgence – if, as evaluators, researchers, scholars, leaders, funders, activists we are looking to support the re-engagement with ways of knowing, being, and doing that come from the lands, languages, and worldviews through which we are in relationship and ensure there are diverse opportunities to nurture those relationships so that they offer us grounding and direction in how to be (Simpson, 2021) then innovation needs to listen, unlearn, and listen again. What if the values and assumptions underlying innovation began from here:

Decolonial
Anti-Racist
Equitable
Participatory
Community Driven
Relational Accountability
Being Good Relatives
Towards Liberation, Collective Wellness & Thriving

What if Indigenous innovation and (decolonial?!) innovation was resourced to be led by BIPOC leaders, activists, communities, and organization? What transformation could be possible? What if the starting point was not only that systems (education, social work, health) needed to be fundamentally transformed but that we also needed NEW systems from these new foundations? And what if these same values were the measures through which we learned about and evaluated systems change/ innovation/ transformation? Reflection begets questions, begets reflections, and so on and so on. But that is the very point of evaluation and learning isn’t it?

Next week I will release an episode with Terrellyn Fearn of the Turtle Island Institute. TII is one of the spaces that has emerged as a result of resources and support for Indigenous voices to lead the work of innovation that is grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing. To be able to look back at the old ways and to bring them forward into today – to shift the way that systems are structured and relate to Indigenous peoples. To dream into being new systems. Until then – be well – Gladys

¹For more on Wicked Challenges check out: https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/wicked_problems_problems_worth_solving & https://medium.com/@ldunn_24152/wicked-challenges-cb58f08db367

The Stories We Tell Matter…

January 6, 2023 No Comments

When I was in my 20s and early 30s and people would ask me what it was I did, I had a hard time putting my work into words. I would stumble – I’m a social worker, but certainly not that kind of social worker, I’m a researcher, but not that kind of researcher. I work with communities, but not in that way. I had better luck describing what I was not, than what I was. Nowadays, I have more clarity to find the words for what I carry in my spirit, for what thrives through taking care of the spirit of the work that I do: I work at the intersections of relationship and story. I sort through and make sense of the relationships we have with ourselves, with communities, within institutions, and as Nations. I help to question, uncover, strengthen, and transform relationships (or lack thereof) in these spaces – and one of the ways that I do this is through making visible implicit and explicit stories accepted as truth. As if there could be a singular truth…¹

At the beginning of December I had the opportunity to spend time at Kent Monkman’s Being Legendary exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. It would be the first time I would witness Monkman’s work in person. I first came to know about his work in the 8th Fire Series, Indigenous in the City. His subversive artworks re-telling memorialized Canadian histories. His piece, The Scream (2016), still lingers in my brain, indicative of truth telling necessary to unsettle the polite narrative that is reinforced within the education systems. I had been using the 8th Fire series in my social work classrooms as the series and Monkman’s work were powerful catalysts for dialogue. Since that introduction I have followed Monkman’s storytelling, moved by his ability to make visible the stories we tell and the stories that need to be told. He is one of many Indigenous artists who inspire me to go deeper – using storytelling mediums to disrupt, unsettle, and reframe stories of Indigenous experience in Canada. He reinforces a message that is a beacon in my own work, the stories we tell matter.

There are many types of stories, ways of telling stories, and even more purposes that stories serve in our lives as community members and in society overall. Stories can be used to build community and to gain a deeper understanding of who we are and where we come from. In Indigenous evaluation the use of story can come through in how we gather information about what it is we are evaluating and gathering these stories can take many forms. Each of these types of stories build on and reinforce the other – the stories that we tell ourselves and the stories that we are told by others.

The kinds of stories I am reflecting on in this post, and in relation to the Kent Monkman installation at ROM are the higher level stories that are told about the world that we live in. The stories we hear, repeat, and integrate can reinforce or they can make visible the absurdity of accepted social narratives in our country. The stories that stick in our bones, whether we know it or not. As I entered the Being Legendary exhibit I was ready to witness these stories firsthand. As I stood in the expertly lit space, the immensity of the experience caught my breath. Monkman’s invitation into the gallery – offered in Cree and syllabics, English, and French points to another starting point in the stories of the land now called Canada – stories that were missed in the generally accepted narrative:

This is my story. Some of it is true. Much of it is truer than your truth.

“This âcimowin—this story that carries history and knowledge—begins in the stars and is about the land. We’ve been here for so long. There is too much to tell, and much I cannot say.

Those of you who are our people know that we have many different kinds of stories, for learning, to guide us forward, sacred stories, and of course âcimowina, true accounts like this one (although I do like to add a little something extra to make my stories more interesting). Our stories and language hold the knowledge that our peoples have carried since the beginning of time, before the light, before the first sound, before the land we stand on—the rock, the mountains, valleys and plains, oceans, lakes and rivers. Our stories honour the past and guide us forward.

I am Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. I am fluid with many forms. I am legendary. This is my story. Some of it is true. Much of it is truer than your truth. It is the âcimowin of our peoples. It is also your story, for we are all relatives.”

–Miss Chief Eagle Testickle

The vibrant detail of the Mimikwiisiuk (little people)² and the thunderbird petroglyph image embedded in the paintings brought me joy. The familiarity sparked hope. To witness the unsettling and re-telling of stories prior to invasion and settlement of what is now Canada through Monkman’s playful and critical lens penetrated my spirit. I couldn’t anticipate the way that each of the paintings sat in the center of my chest as I walked through the gallery. His art counters Indigenous erasure and offers me hope that new (old) stories will continue to elbow into spaces (and hearts and minds) that need unsettling – that are sparks for deeper dialogue and action.

Alas, I wasn’t in Toronto simply to witness Being Legendary, I was in Toronto for work, and it had been a long week of travel and meetings. I have been lucky to gather with a team thinking about systems transformation. A team thinking about how to support new stories to be birthed to support Indigenous youth to achieve mino-bimaadiziwin, the good life, in a way that they define – that they are in charge of, and that is supported by the transformation of systems to meet those visions. And at the end of that time together there was something about that exhibit that drew the threads of the past few months together for me. I had an A-HA moment that felt like a tying up of the threads of conversations over the days we gathered. Stories are the oxygen that allow sparks of transformation to take hold, to build into roaring fires that guide new futures (to riff off of a reflection of a brilliant colleague). Story – disrupting the stories we tell, are told, and are consumed by plays a central role in holding Canada, as a nation state and all of the people who benefit from the structures that maintain Canada – accountable to a different and more equitable future.

Sounds like a lot of power for something as simple as a story.

However, it’s not really simple when we understand the way that stories build a scaffolding – layered one on top of another – until they become the bricks building an almost immutable structure. This understanding helps to make visible the power of singular and collective stories. And why the kinds of stories that we tell matter for these generations and the generations to come. The stories that are passed on through to new generations, building new scaffolding include the kinds of stories shared by Mishiikenhkwe (Autumn Smith) (She/They) an Anishinaabe (Ojibway/Odawa) artist in this interview about their work, about how they came to tell stories through their paintings, about the painting Community Care, and the demonstration of the complexity of stories and what they have to offer us.

Back to my time at the ROM, one of the paintings at the end of the exhibit is of knowledge keeper Wilfred Buck, a Cree knowledge keeper from Northern Manitoba. It was a delightful surprise, a cherry on the sundae that was my time in the exhibit. When I was working on my master thesis I sat in conversation with Wilfred, learning about how I (we) can come to know who we are and where we come from as Swampy Cree people who also have ancestors/relations from other spaces and lands. How we can strengthen connections to identity and belonging. As I sat with Wilfred he shared teachings about the stars and the power of stories to help us understand who we are. In the conversation Wilfred he shares:

“I guess for everybody this is a different path you follow that links to your personal experiences, growing up, what happened to you, how you feel you become disconnected, and what it is you are looking for. When people talk about identity, identity it’s a very broad concept. But for people who want to grow it’s Ne-na, it’s me, that’s where you have to start. Like your grandfather said, you have to remember. So the first thing you do is you have to remember. And from that base it’s built. So the memories of what we have, of what happened to us when we were young, the things, like when I remember right away, I remember my grandparents, and some of the things that they taught me and how they made me feel.
And they’re the ones that brought me back.

It starts with remembering your grandparents, remembering who your family are, if you have that opportunity to remember. The place, the physical place is not that important. It’s your space in pimatsiwin, your space in life, and that connection you have to it. So the space can be anywhere, the physical surroundings can be anywhere. Just as long as you have that connection with that spirit. Because Atchak is everything, the spirit is everything. It’s the starting, it’s the ending, it doesn’t matter where. Because it’s everywhere. That’s the connection. And once you get that, because everybody has that, it’s just that a lot of the times we haven’t worked at it, to make it strong. And once you get it strong, then the other spirits will know, and they’ll be put in front of you to help guide you along in what you’re supposed to be doing. Because we all have something to do in our lives.
That’s the job we have, we have to find out what that is, and we have to do It.”

(Rowe, 2013, p.105-106)

For me, listening to Wilfred allows me to see myself in relation to the stories of where I come from, who I come from, and what my purpose is. The role of stories in intergenerational connections, bonds, and attachments are discussed in this video with Madeline Dion Stout and her granddaughter Miyawata Dion Stout. Stories have the power to influence health and wellness – they have the ability to transform our futures. These stories contrast those other scaffolded stories that have been allowed to set into concrete. The stories that have forged systems such as education and social work. And so, what can (must) we do?

This is the big leap and impetus for how I show up in my work in general, and in the work of Indigenous evaluation specifically. I believe that if we can shift how we are in relation with stories that are other than what has been normalized, socialized, and consumed, that we can transform how we relate to one another. And this transformation, in Canada – as Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, is long overdue. Being in spaces where we can hear and build relations with new (old) stories will help to transform how we understand the relationships and accountabilities we must hold with all of our relations. Because we need to imagine new futures – and this isn’t possible with the stories that are normalized as truth… To breathe life into futures that transform the gritty realities of colonial violence and stark inequities that allow our lives to be swept aside.

Stories of who we are and where we come from help us to see the responsibilities we hold. The stories we tell, the ones we are invited into, and even more starkly the stories we refuse to engage with are powerful acts of resistance. So, what happens when someone else defines our stories? What happens when eyes that observe the story see a vision of a world painted in colours unfamiliar and incongruent to what is being experienced? What if those eyes don’t have a context (through worldview, language, relations) for what they are seeing in front of them? It can start to feel like a bad game of telephone. You know, the game where one child starts off saying a phrase and it is passed from one ear to another sometimes innocently transforming and sometimes a kid in the group decides to throw a wrench in the production offering something inappropriate into the circle. What emerges on the other end is a completely turned around statement. Giggles and laughter ensues and the game starts again.

In evaluation or research with Indigenous peoples and communities this is not such an innocent turnaround. It’s not so innocuous of an ending. When the findings are tallied, reports are written, and presentations are made – if these stories are told in a way that erases complexities and nuances of experience and context, whether intentionally or not, it is harmful. Carrying on as things have always been done adds another brick to the scaffolding that we are trying to tear down. So, in Indigenous evaluation, and other knowledge production activities, what are the stories that need to be told and who needs to be telling them?

When I decided to jump into Indigenous Insights: An Evaluation Podcast it had been after over a year of back and forth about the kinds of contributions I wanted to offer into the circle³. I wanted to contribute to the unsettling of a field that needed to be challenged – and to be held accountable. And I knew stories were a way to do this.

I didn’t quite anticipate the warm and excited welcome I would receive in this adventure so far. Those so willing to share their experiences into the circle and those who were willing to listen deeply to what was being shared. I’ve received emails and messages from dozens of listeners and so many more conversations are scheduled. In the first two months there have been over 530 listens and each day the number keeps increasing. It’s exciting to know that these stories are reaching the ears and hearts of others who also think it’s important to reflect on Indigenous evaluation work, just like I do.

Our stories, Indigenous stories hold power. I’d like to offer a final invitation as I close off. You and I, we are not the ones responsible for getting ourselves into this (colonial) mess that we find ourselves in, surrounded by immutable structures of indifference⁴. But, we are the ones who need to dig ourselves out. Different stories, ones led by Indigenous voices, will lead us into these new spaces. Once we hear these stories, we cannot say that we didn’t know. The alternative, to do nothing, is a conscious choice and one I hope less and less people will consider viable. Because, the stories we tell matter. The stories that are shared in this podcast matter.

Kinanaskimotin (I am grateful) to share this space with each of you. Until the next story, be well.

Gladys

¹Check out the viral TedX video featuring Novelist Chimamanda Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story if you haven’t seen it already, and maybe again if you already viewed it before… you know that we collect meaning in a different way each time we listen to a story – from where we are and who we are in these moments of time.

²Check out this CBC article on stories of Little People from Cree and Mi’kmaq artists with Rosanna Deerchild on UnReserved.https://www.cbc.ca/radio/unreserved/mysterious-tales-of-little-people-intrigue-new-generations-of-cree-mi-kmaq-1.6370300

³I will speak of the circle, as noted here, in another future blog post – and the power of the circle as a process for relational accountability.

⁴See the book Structures of Indifference An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City by Mary Jane Logan McCallum & Adele Perry https://uofmpress.ca/books/detail/structures-of-indifference

Coming Soon!

October 31, 2022 No Comments

Check back here soon for articles published by Gladys Rowe.