Perspectives on Precedents: Viewing 2020 in a Larger Historical, Cultural, and Political Context

In 2020, Kim and Michael Quinn Patton speaks about the conversations that framed the Evaluation for Social Change and Transformational Learning Program at Simon Fraser University.

"Kim van der Woerd and Michael Quinn Patton worked together in 2016 as part of a team that created the Evaluation for Social Change and Transformational Learning Program at Simon Fraser University. This interactive blog illustrates and updates the kinds of conversations that framed the generation of that program"

Exerpt

KvdW: First of all, Gilakas’la, thank you for making the space to have this conversation with me. I would like to start by positioning myself, I am a proud member of the ‘Namgis First Nation from Alert Bay BC. My family gave me the name T,łalisam in our first family Potlatch after the Potlatch Ban in Canada. I want to mention that throughout this blog, I stand on the shoulders of the phenomenal team I work with who teach me every day, and the ancestors who stand behind me and ask me to speak up and speak out.

I promised myself that I would speak up every time I saw these words – “unprecedented year.” It evokes the invisibility of Indigenous people here on Turtle Island. What we are going through right now is very precedented. Indigenous communities (my community, communities around you, communities all over North America) have gone through terrifying pandemics since colonizers came to this continent, and intentionally spread pandemics. Indigenous communities have gone through everything we are experiencing right now - the fear, pain, loss, all of it.

Forgetting that our continent has this history, and using the terminology of “unprecedented” is most definitely a roadmap of our culture for the invisibility of brown and black people.

Click here to read the original post on the Blue Marble Evaluation website: https://bluemarbleeval.org/latest/perspectives-precedents-viewing-2020-larger-historical-cultural-and-political-context