This case study is an exploration of the potential restorative and healing qualities of inquiry. The co‐authors—a university‐affiliated researcher, a Kaqchikel Maya community leader, and forensic anthropologists—document their stories navigating a participatory action research project as co‐researchers. Using visual ethnography, we illustrate how we approached inquiry from a place of restorative validity, which challenges inquirers to reclaim and restore the humanity of researcher, researched, and the research process itself. Through a culturally sustaining frame, we grounded our interpretations in the Maya cultural elements of land, community, and attachment to place. We demonstrate how we intertwined our various ways of knowing and methods, from Indigenous oral tradition to interactive techniques such as ripples of change, to co‐create a form of inquiry rooted in relationships, justice, and liberation. As peace, conflict, and justice researchers and practitioners work with those who have been subjected to and witnessed atrocities, we problematize whether our methodological practices are in line with our values as a community of care. In moving toward restorative validity, we ask: If the outside world robs people of their humanity, identities, and memories, do we simply observe and document these injustices; or can our inquiry work toward reclamation and restoration?

What evaluation criteria are appropriate to assess the relevance and efficacy of rights‐based initiatives? In this chapter, the author argues that evaluations of rights‐based programs must themselves espouse human rights principles, and methodological decisions must be assessed against these principles. The design and implementation of the evaluation must thereby promote the dignity, liberty, and equality for and of participants. Against these criteria, top‐down evaluation approaches are often inappropriate or insufficient for the evaluation of rights‐based programs. The chapter discusses how many evaluations use top‐down mechanisms, and then—through critical self‐reflection in case studies—assesses how three evaluations either did or could have benefited from infusing rights‐based principles within design and implementation.

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