The unapologetic ‘aunt’ of indigenous data
‘Transforming Spaces’ is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.
Data has long played a role in Abigail Echo-Hawk’s life. Growing up in rural Alaska, she remembers hearing stories about native data collectors, like an uncle who counted beavers every spring so he knew how many beavers could be hunted sustainably the following winter.
But it wasn’t until she was in her early twenties that Ms. Echo-Hawk realized that data was not just information, but also power. After reading a report from the Urban Indian Health Institute on infant mortality in Washington State’s indigenous community, Ms. Echo-Hawk shared this with a volunteer committee she served on. That led to a Seattle Ordinance of 2012 protecting the right to breastfeed in public, as breastfeeding is linked to reduced infant mortality.
“A story in itself makes it easy for someone to say this was just one person’s experience,” said Ms. Echo-Hawk, who lives outside Seattle and is a citizen of the Pawnee Nation. Data, on the other hand, makes people pay attention.
Mrs. Echo-Hawk has since become a leading voice of the Indigenous data movement. She now directs the Urban Indian Health Institute and is executive vice president of its oversight body, the Seattle Indian Health Board. She uses data as a tool for racial equality, to dismantle stereotypes, highlight inequities and fight for funding.
While Ms. Echo-Hawk admitted that even her own mother doesn’t really understand what she’s doing, a big part of it comes down to Indigenous people being included.
“Her work in addressing health inequities and drawing attention to troubling gaps in tribal public health data is nationally recognized,” Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, said in an email. “Abigail is a change maker in the truest sense of the word.”
Mrs. Echo-Hawk stood up national protrusion in 2018, when she released data on the high rates of sexual violence experienced by indigenous women. That was followed by a much-cited report on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. Although Mrs. Echo-Hawk was far from the first or only person to draw attention to the issue of missing women, well over a dozen states created corresponding task forces or reports in subsequent years. Congress also passed two related laws.
In an email, Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, credited this report with raising national awareness of missing and murdered indigenous women. “Abigail Echo-Hawk will go down in history as one of the great Indian leaders of the 21st century,” she said.
In 2020, Ms. Echo-Hawk made waves again when she called out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for failing to share data on the spread of Covid-19 among Indigenous communities. The agency acknowledged there was a “significant miscommunication” and a promise that tribal epidemiologists would get the data they needed. The following year Mrs. Echo-Hawk came in Fashion after making a traditional dress from body bags sent to her organization instead of the personal protective equipment she requested.
Ms. Echo-Hawk, 44, comes from a well-known family of Indigenous advocates. Her adopted grandmother fought for fishing rights for private use all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. One uncle helped find the Native American Rights Fund; another helped write the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act. A sister ran for mayor of Seattle in 2021.
Sofia Locklear, a member of the Lumbee Tribe and an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto-Mississauga, said Ms. Echo-Hawk, her former mentor, had forced researchers to reconsider fundamental questions, such as: Who are we collecting data about? Who collects it? And what story are we trying to tell?
Because the country’s American Indian and Alaska Native population is relatively small – 9.7 million people – some studies downgrade it to an asterisk: “not statistically significant.” Still, some public health experts say this is harmful.
The lack of data is “a way of removing Indigenous people from dominant society,” said Melissa Walls, who is of Anishinaabe descent and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health. “Many policy decisions are made based on data. And if there is no data that can tell the story of a particular community, the money won’t flow our way.”
Good data, on the other hand, can lead to changes in policy – and in mentality. As an example, Ms. Echo-Hawk pointed to her organization’s report on sexual violence. “That changes the perception of what’s happening,” she said. ‘We don’t all commit suicide because there is something wrong with us. We have a high rate of suicide due to trauma.”
Ms. Echo-Hawk is a trauma survivor herself. She was sexually abused for the first time at the age of six, and attempted suicide for the first time at the age of nine. In her late teens she moved to Seattle, where she married and became pregnant with the first of two sons. After feeling stigmatized at the local hospital by a medical assistant who checked her arms for signs of drug use, Ms. Echo-Hawk found her way to the Seattle Indian Health Board.
“They gave me food stamps, they gave me medical services, and they did it in a culturally based way,” said Ms. Echo-Hawk, who is now divorced. “I was able to start this healing process.”
For the next ten years, Mrs. Echo-Hawk cut her hair during the day and took classes at night. In 2016, she joined the research department of the Seattle Indian Health Board. In the years since, the annual operating budget for her departments has increased from about $1 million to $9 million, an increase attributed to her.
In addition to publishing studies, Ms. Echo-Hawk teaches researchers how to include Indigenous peoples in the data. She also helps hospitals and law enforcement agencies change their data collection practices to reduce 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 on the death certificate because no one asks you.”)
While several people were effusive in their praise for Ms. Echo-Hawk, one Indigenous public health expert suggested others had made more measurable impacts on the ground but attracted less attention. That’s both a criticism and a compliment, because many say this is exactly what Ms. Echo-Hawk excels at: capturing public attention.
“If you’ve ever been in a room with her or seen her talk in person, you’ll never forget it,” Ms. Locklear said. Many called Ms. Echo-Hawk “bold” and “unashamed,” traits reflected in the animal prints, high heels and “big native aunt smile” she is known for.
Mrs. Echo-Hawk now spends much of her time doing what she does best: talking. Over the past four years, she has testified before Congress numerous times and consulted with various lawmakers to make the language of their bills more inclusive. She answers dozens of emails every month from tribes interested in starting their own data collection projects. She serves on a dizzying array of committees, including at the National Institutes of Health and at The Lancet, a leading medical journal.
“She asks the questions people shy away from,” says Dr. Aletha Maybank, Chief Health Equity Officer of the American Medical Association and co-chair of The Lancet’s Anti-Racism Committee, on which Ms. Echo-Hawk sits.
Mrs. Echo-Hawk still cuts hair for loved ones: a throwback to her days as a young mother putting herself through school. She loves the opportunity to be creative, but also the ability to know when the job is done.
“You have to have something in your life that you can, you know, see to completion,” she said.