Reflections on Being a Learner: The Value of Relationship-based Community Evaluations in Indigenous Communities

Abstract

Drawing on Donna M. Mertens and Amy T. Willson’s work on transformative paradigms in program evaluations together with the authors experience working in partnership with First Nations communities in Ontario, Canada this paper explores the lessons learned from the process of moving between assumptions and application using the transformative paradigm in First Nations evaluations; explores the relationships between power, discourse and paradigms in the relationship between Western and Indigenous ways of knowing and Being; and, asks what steps can an evaluator take to ensure that local epistemological and ontological perspectives are respected and captured.