Date: Tuesday, October 14, 2025
Yá’át’ééh (hello) fellow evaluators! I am Alex Jauregui-Dusseau (Diné and Mexican), DHSc, AEA Indigenous Peoples in Evaluation Program Chair, and Research Evaluator at the Center for Community Engaged Evaluation in the Institute for Community Health Innovation at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
For my work as external evaluator with the Center for Indigenous Innovation and Health Equity (CIIHE), I traveled to Alaska to attend two partner’s events in August. One was the Traditional Foods Gathering hosted by Southcentral Foundation in Anchorage and the second was the Elders Mentoring Elders hosted by Denakkanaaga and the Center for Alaska Native Health Research – University of Alaska Fairbanks. Today, I will share a brief reflection about those site visits and how it deepened my connection to culture and Indigenous Evaluation.
Each event was unique in its own way, but each emphasized the importance of sharing traditional knowledge, our relationality to the land and animals, and honoring the Elder’s voices. During this trip, I felt such a connection to the Native people around me and I felt as if I gained so many aunties, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. I was also reminded that Diné bizaad (the Navajo language) is an Athabaskan language in the Na-Dené family and connects me to the Dene people. Feeling and seeing these connections reminded me how important it is to be connected to culture, the land, and each other, and how that extends to evaluation. Every aspect of an evaluation is connected and each part relies on the others to tell the story of a project. I’ve experienced when an evaluation is siloed in a project and it suffers as a whole. The connections are what tell the story.
Storytelling and sharing circles occurred at both events and it made me reflect on how Native people have been using qualitative methods and conducting research since time immemorial. Storytelling and sharing circles are no different than focus groups and listening sessions. Prioritizing and honoring Indigenous values with data collection methods is vital to restore and promote culture. Visiting these partner sites and seeing the work being done on the ground renewed my spirit as a Native person and as an evaluator. I encourage the readers to deepen their connections with others and to the land they inhabit and to reflect on the stories they are telling in their own work.
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