The Unapologetic ‘Auntie’ of Indigenous Data

“Transforming Spaces” is a sequence about girls driving change in generally sudden locations.

Data has lengthy been within the background of Abigail Echo-Hawk’s life. Growing up in rural Alaska, she remembers listening to tales about Indigenous knowledge gatherers, like an uncle who counted beavers each spring so he’d know what number of might be sustainably hunted the next winter.

But it wasn’t till her early 20s that Ms. Echo-Hawk realized that knowledge was not simply info — it may be energy. After studying a report from the Urban Indian Health Institute about toddler mortality in Washington State’s Native neighborhood, Ms. Echo-Hawk shared it with a volunteer fee on which she served. That led to a 2012 Seattle ordinance defending the appropriate to breastfeed in public, as breastfeeding is linked to decreased toddler mortality.

“A story by itself makes it easy for somebody to say this was just one person’s experience,” mentioned Ms. Echo-Hawk, who lives exterior Seattle and is a citizen of the Pawnee Nation. Data, alternatively, makes individuals concentrate.

Ms. Echo-Hawk has since develop into a number one voice of the Indigenous knowledge motion. She now directs the Urban Indian Health Institute, and is the manager vp of its overseeing physique, the Seattle Indian Health Board. She wields knowledge as a device for racial fairness, utilizing it to dismantle stereotypes, spotlight disparities and vie for funding.

Though Ms. Echo-Hawk admitted that even her personal mom doesn’t actually perceive what she does, a lot of it boils down to creating positive Indigenous individuals are counted.

“Her work tackling health inequities and bringing attention to the disturbing gaps in public health data for tribal communities is nationally recognized,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, mentioned in an electronic mail. “Abigail is a change maker in the truest sense of the word.”

Ms. Echo-Hawk rose to nationwide prominence in 2018, when she launched knowledge on the excessive charges of sexual violence skilled by Native girls. That was adopted by a much-cited report on lacking and murdered Indigenous girls and ladies. Though Ms. Echo-Hawk was removed from the primary or solely particular person to attract consideration to the problem of the lacking girls, greater than a dozen states created corresponding activity forces or stories within the years following. Congress additionally handed two associated legal guidelines.

In an electronic mail, Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, credited that report for heightening nationwide consciousness round lacking and murdered Indigenous girls. “Abigail Echo-Hawk will go down as one of the great Indian leaders of the 21st century,” she mentioned.

In 2020, Ms. Echo-Hawk made waves once more when she known as out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for failing to share knowledge about Covid-19’s unfold amongst Native communities. The company acknowledged there had been a “significant miscommunication” and promised to get tribal epidemiologists the info they wanted. The following yr, Ms. Echo-Hawk landed in Vogue after making a standard gown from physique baggage that have been despatched to her group in lieu of the non-public protecting tools she had requested.

Ms. Echo-Hawk, 44, comes from a widely known household of Indigenous advocates. Her adopted grandmother fought for subsistence fishing rights all the best way to the U.S. Supreme Court. One uncle helped discovered the Native American Rights Fund; one other helped write the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. One sister ran for mayor of Seattle in 2021.

Sofia Locklear, a member of the Lumbee Tribe and an assistant professor of sociology on the University of Toronto-Mississauga, mentioned Ms. Echo-Hawk, her former mentor, had compelled researchers to rethink elementary questions like: Whom are we gathering knowledge about? Who is gathering it? And what story are we making an attempt to inform?

Because the nation’s American Indian and Alaska Native inhabitants is comparatively small — 9.7 million individuals — some research relegate it to an asterisk: “not statistically significant.” Yet some public well being consultants say that’s dangerous.

The lack of information is “a way to erase Native people from dominant society,” mentioned Melissa Walls, who’s of Anishinaabe descent and is the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health. “A lot of policy decisions are made based on data. And if there’s no data to tell the story of a given community, money’s not going to flow in our direction.”

Good knowledge, alternatively, can result in modifications in coverage — and in mindset. As an instance, Ms. Echo-Hawk referred to her group’s report on sexual violence. “That changes the perceptions of what is happening,” she mentioned. “We are not all killing ourselves because there’s something wrong with us. We have high rates of suicidality because of trauma.”

Ms. Echo-Hawk is a survivor of trauma herself. She was first sexually abused at age 6, and he or she first tried suicide at age 9. In her late teenagers, she moved to Seattle, the place she married and have become pregnant with the primary of two sons. After feeling stigmatized on the native hospital by a medical assistant who checked her arms for indicators of drug use, Ms. Echo-Hawk discovered her option to the Seattle Indian Health Board.

“They got me on food stamps, they gave me medical services, and they did it in a culturally based way,” mentioned Ms. Echo-Hawk, who’s now divorced. “I was able to begin this healing process.”

For the subsequent decade, Ms. Echo-Hawk minimize hair through the day and took lessons at night time. In 2016, she joined the analysis arm of the Seattle Indian Health Board. In the years since, the annual working finances for her departments has surged to $9 million from round $1 million, a rise credited to her.

Besides publishing research, Ms. Echo-Hawk teaches researchers the best way to embody Indigenous individuals within the knowledge. She additionally helps hospitals and legislation enforcement businesses change their knowledge assortment practices to cut back racial misclassification. (As Ms. Echo-Hawk put it: “A common saying in Indian Country is that you’re born Native and you die white — that’s what they mark you as on the death certificate because nobody asks you.”)

Though a number of individuals have been effusive of their reward of Ms. Echo-Hawk, one Indigenous public well being skilled instructed that others had made extra measurable impacts within the area, however had garnered much less consideration. That is each a critique and a praise, as many say that’s precisely the place Ms. Echo-Hawk shines: in drawing the general public eye.

“If you have ever been in a room with her or seen her talk in person, you will never forget it,” Ms. Locklear mentioned. Many known as Ms. Echo-Hawk “bold” and “unapologetic,” traits which might be mirrored within the animal prints, excessive heels and the “big Native auntie laugh” she’s recognized for.

Ms. Echo-Hawk now spends a lot of her time doing what she’s finest at: speaking. In the previous 4 years, she has testified in entrance of Congress quite a few instances, and has consulted with a number of lawmakers to make their payments’ language extra inclusive. She solutions dozens of emails every month from tribes interested by starting their very own knowledge gathering tasks. She serves on a dizzying array of committees, together with on the National Institutes of Health and at The Lancet, a number one medical journal.

“She asks the questions that people shy away from,” mentioned Dr. Aletha Maybank, the chief well being fairness officer for the American Medical Association and a co-chair of The Lancet fee on antiracism on which Ms. Echo-Hawk serves.

Ms. Echo-Hawk nonetheless cuts hair for family members, too: a throwback to her days as a younger mother placing herself by college. She relishes the chance to be inventive, in addition to the flexibility to know when the job is completed.

“You have to have something in your life that, you know, you can see to completion,” she mentioned.