How Abigail Echo-Hawk Uses Indigenous Data to Close the Equity Gap

“Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.

Data has long been in the background of Abigail Echo-Hawk’s life. Growing up in rural Alaska, she remembers hearing stories about Indigenous data gatherers, like an uncle who counted beavers every spring so he’d know how many could be sustainably hunted the following winter.

But it wasn’t until her early 20s that Ms. Echo-Hawk realized that data was not just information — it could also be power. After reading a report from the Urban Indian Health Institute about infant mortality in Washington State’s Native community, Ms. Echo-Hawk shared it with a volunteer commission on which she served. That led to a 2012 Seattle ordinance protecting the right to breastfeed in public, as breastfeeding is linked to reduced infant mortality.

“A story by itself makes it easy for somebody 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.

Ms. Echo-Hawk has since become a leading voice of the Indigenous data movement. She now directs the Urban Indian Health Institute, and is the executive vice president of its overseeing body, the Seattle Indian Health Board. She wields data as a tool for racial equity, using it to dismantle stereotypes, highlight disparities and vie for funding.