Decolonizing Minds and Hearts: Integrating Indigenous Evaluation Stories for Critical Reflexivity

Decolonizing Minds and Hearts:

Integrating Indigenous Evaluation Stories for Critical Reflexivity

What is your evaluation origin story? What stories have shaped how you show up today? How might these stories offer us space for relational evaluative practice?

This 90-minute session invites you into a grounded space of story, reflection, and imagination. We will explore how Indigenous evaluation stories and principles support learning and unlearning, guided by the values, relationships, and responsibilities we hold.

Through storytelling, poetry, reflection prompts, and a screening of the animated film, When we say evaluation, it isn’t the same thing, we will engage in critical reflexivity about where we come from, what we are accountable to, and the futures we are helping to shape through our work.

The session will conclude with dedicated time for small group discussion and brainstorming, focusing on the capabilities and capacities needed to practice evaluation "in a good way" by decolonizing minds and hearts.

If you need any accommodations to participate, please let us know at least one week prior to the event. Thank you.

Dr. Gladys Rowe (she/her) is Muskego Inninew (Swampy Cree) with membership in Fox Lake Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba, Canada. She also holds relations with ancestors from Ireland, England, Norway, and Ukraine, and carries these lineages with respect and responsibility in all of her work. Gladys’ educational background is in social work, and she holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies (Social Work, Indigenous Studies, and English, Film & Theatre). She is the Director ofIndigenous Insights Collective.

Gladys has over 19 years of experience as an Indigenous community facilitator, program designer, educator, researcher, and evaluator. She has been consulting full-time since October 2020, providing evaluation, learning, and strategic support for projects and organizations across Turtle Island. This builds on her long-standing work since 2008 in leading and supporting learning, evaluation, development, and innovation initiatives that bridge community knowledge and institutional systems. Her roots in Winnipeg are deep with her experience as the founding Research and Evaluation Director at The Winnipeg Boldness Project and her work with Huddle South Central and Huddle Manitoba being pivotal projects to support organizations serving youth and families in Winnipeg. 

As an Indigenous evaluator and artist, Gladys integrates arts-based methods—including poetry, collage, zine-making, and visual storytelling—to support reflection, data storytelling, and collective meaning-making. Her approach is rooted in Indigenous, decolonial, and anti-colonial frameworks. Ceremony and land-based practices shape how she designs, implements, and makes sense of evaluation processes. Gladys approaches the work as a respectful guest rather than an insider, centering accountability to the communities and lands where the work takes place. Her practice recognizes that systems transformation happens through relationships, dialogue, and creativity—holding space for complexity, healing, and emergence.

She also hosts Indigenous Insights: An Evaluation Podcast, launched in Fall 2022, which has released over 50 episodes and received more than 27,000 global listens. Through this platform, Gladys uplifts stories of Indigenous and decolonial evaluators, artists, and community leaders who are reimagining what evaluation can be when grounded in values, stories, and shared humanity. Season 5 has recently launched!