Looking Back, moving forward: the place of evaluation at the Tangentyere Council Research Hub

Tangentyere Council is a very important organisation for Aboriginal people living in Alice Springs. The Tangentyere Council Research Hub has been going now for more than ten years, based on two core philosophies: ‘researching ourselves back to life’ and ‘no survey without service’. We rely on Aboriginal research practices and Aboriginal understandings of evaluation as part of this practice. In this paper we will talk about our organisation and its history as well as the research work we do. What we hope to do is to set out what evaluation means for us in terms of the work that we do, and how being aware of this helps us to keep our knowledge and organisation strong. We also hope that it might help others working with Aboriginal people to think differently about evaluation and maybe even approach it differently in the future.