Dr. Karen Alexander (Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians) on Values in Indigenous Evaluation

It was in the back of my mind, you know, what am I going to do my dissertation on? So I thought about that for a while and after a while I thought, Really, what is it about us? What is it about Native people that is unique to who we are? And the more that I thought about that, I kept thinking about values. Our values are distinct to who we are, and mainstream values are not the same as our values. And we have some of those values too, but certain values are distinct to Native people and values are at the core of who we are as people. So that was how I got really interested in values research and that’s what I studied. The main thing that I wanted to find out was, What are the values of a certain Indigenous group? And my tribe – it’s my tribe and I have an in, so what values are of most importance to my tribe? And if these values were included in evaluation, you know, would that increase utilization of evaluation?

I’d like to see other Native researchers and evaluators do some more values research with Native people. Because what I did is specific; some values are generalizable to other tribes, but I’d like to see other people, other Native researchers, do values research with other tribes.

And then also something else that came out of this, it was just kind of a little side byproduct, was about meta-evaluation and the need for cultural meta-evaluation. Because part of my research that I didn’t talk about much was at first I was just doing some document reviews, I was just looking to see what was out there and if anybody was focusing on values when they were doing evaluation with Native tribes. And I found that there was some of that happening. But I think if we want to do meta-evaluation with the evaluations that have been done with Native American tribes, we need to develop a cultural meta-evaluation model.

About the author

name: Karen Alexander, PhD, LMSW (Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians)

institution: Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians

Karen L. Alexander, PhD, LMSW, is a member of the Sault Ste Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Dr. Alexander received her Master of Social Work degree from Grand Valley State University and her Doctorate in Evaluation from Western Michigan University. Her dissertation study explored the use of cultural values in the evaluation of programs with Native American Tribes. Dr. Alexander specializes in qualitative evaluation utilizing culturally appropriate methods such as talking circles with an emphasis on storytelling. Dr. Alexander has spent most of her career working for her Tribe’s behavioral health department as a Therapist, Clinical Supervisor, Manager, and Evaluator. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with family and attending cultural events and ceremonies.