| Abstract:
Native American communities have been built largely upon an oral histories and have limited written information that has been published in non-Native, mainstream databases. They are just beginning to address information collection, storing, sharing, and dissemination systems for research and evaluation data. Within and across these Indigenous systems, Native American organizations, Tribes, and communities struggle with the collection, analysis, and formative use of evaluation data. The presenter will share empirical data from several evaluation studies that highlight the current issues Native Americans face when setting up comprehensive evaluation systems with departments and across communities. Issues include: tecnology hardware, infrastructure, and software; evaluation policies (or lack there of); information dissemination; human subjects and IRB issues; intellectual property rights; and the massive amount of time, money, and human resources it takes to support the current types of evaluations the state and federal governments are seeking. The lecture will conclude with some successful strategies that have been used in the short term to address these issues.
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