Despite 11,000 years of honing evaluation skills in order to thrive in some of the harshest climatic conditions on the planet, there are few Alaska Native program evaluators and until a recent exchange with New Zealand Maori, there was no collective vision for building Alaska Native capacity in program evaluation. This article tells the story of a recent project that represents the first concerted attempt at building the evaluation capacity of Alaska Natives. It is written by Alaska Native and Maori people involved in that project. This evaluation capacity building story is shared with the international evaluation community in the belief that others can learn from our experiences in attempting evaluation training across cultures and across the globe. The authors also hope that it will encourage other indigenous evaluators to share their stories so that a wider audience can benefit from the considerable knowledge about evaluation held by indigenous peoples.
