Caroline Davis (Diné/Navajo) on Western Evaluation Catching Up

Indigenous evaluation should be thought of more as an ecosystem, as an approach involved in every part from start to finish. You know, evaluation isn’t research and it should be for your community. It needs to be something that’s going to be helpful. And that’s often where I start when consulting with tribal communities, just asking the question, What do you want to know? What is going to be helpful for you and your community to know? And as an Indigenous evaluator, I view myself as an advocate for these tribal communities, because I happen to be in this space where I have the opportunity.

And I think that that’s an approach that Western evaluation approaches are catching up to. I’ve seen a lot of evaluation consulting firms that push this approach, saying, Oh, we really focus on usability and utility and we really focus on the community. They market it like it’s this novel concept, that they’re being really progressive and forward-thinking, but Indigenous evaluation has already been there. I like to say that Western methods are finally catching up to Indigenous evaluation methods! There’s definitely a lot more use of mixed methods in some inquiry methods in evaluation in general now, but that’s something that has always been true for Indigenous evaluation.

About the author

name: Caroline Davis, MPH (Diné/Navajo)

institution: Beehozin Consulting Group LLC

website: https://www.beehozin.com

Caroline is a public health professional with experience working with a diverse range of individuals/populations. Her specific subject areas of expertise in public health include mental health, Native American health, maternal/child health, policy/systems/environmental approaches to health and health communication across many areas. She has extensive experience in program evaluation, and is a recognized subject area expert in Indigenous Research and Evaluation. She is trained in providing facilitation to organizations in strategic planning, action planning and building organizational capacity.