Reclaiming Our Narratives: An Indigenous Evaluation Framework for Urban American Indian/Alaska Native Communities

Abstract

Aligning with the Western Door—Do Good Work, this article outlines Urban Indian Health Institute’s (UIHI) Indigenous Evaluation Framework, created to explicitly include and empower urban Indigenous communities to reclaim their narratives by using evaluation as a tool to tell their stories and to build capacity to take ownership of research and evaluation. The framework includes the following core values: Urban Indigenous People Create Communities Wherever They Are, Resilient and Strength-Based, Decolonize Data, and Community Centered. The authors provide an overview of how they applied the framework in collaboration with 18 urban Indian organizations through the UIHI’s community grants program and include a first-hand example of implementation of the framework from the Native American Youth and Family Center, a community grantee. The authors highlight the importance of including urban Indigenous people in evaluation contexts, as evaluation is not just an exercise in methods or logistics but also a political act and an assertion of Indigenous values and sovereignty, one that defines who is counted, how people are counted, and what decisions are made. The UIHI’s Indigenous Evaluation Framework aims to decolonize data to reclaim urban Indigenous narratives from colonial understandings and tell the stories of our communities.