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Evaluating programs in remote Indigenous communities requires contextual consideration and a degree of connection that goes beyond the usual focus on output measurement and system monitoring. Evaluators who are experienced with working in remote communities become more and more cognisant of the issues and complexities that impact the quality of evaluations. As this reality presents itself, evaluators rely more and more on the help of the local community to explain and reveal such realities. A learning journey takes place that allows ‘outsiders’ to be accepted into the community and be part of a productive matrix of support and ‘insiders’ begin to assume their legitimate rights to participate, advise, educate and guide evaluators. Without a participative and collaborative styled process, evaluation risks being non-reality based without a guarantee of quality and has the potential to impact the community in a negative way. This paper presents the views and experiences of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ who have been involved in evaluations in remote communities. Their collective views demonstrate the need for a two-way approach that establishes middle ground for a respectful and quality evaluation process. This approach ensures evaluation remains relevant and purposeful for those who are impacted by the program outcomes, providing a focus on the everyday reality that depends on cultural responsiveness and ensures legitimacy for Indigenous people.

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Phonological awareness is a skill which is crucial in learning to read. In this paper, we report on the challenges encountered while developing a digital application (app) for teaching phonological awareness and early literacy skills in Dhuwaya. Dhuwaya is a Yolŋu language variety spoken in Yirrkala and surrounding areas in East Arnhem Land. Dhuwaya is the first language of the children who attend a bilingual school in which Dhuwaya and English are the languages of instruction. Dhuwaya and English have different phonemic inventories and different alphabets. The Dhuwaya alphabet is based on Roman alphabet symbols and has 31 graphemes (compared to 26 in English). The app was designed to teach children how to segment and blend syllables and phonemes and to identify common words as well as suffixes used in the language. However, the development was not straightforward, and the impact of the linguistic, cultural and educational challenges could not have been predicted. Amongst these was the inherent variation in the language, including glottal stops, the pronunciation of stops, the focus on syllables as a decoding strategy for literacy development and challenges of finding one-syllable words such as those initially used with English-speaking children. Another challenge was identifying culturally appropriate images which the children could relate to and which were not copyrighted. In this paper, we discuss these plus a range of other issues that emerged, identifying how these problems were addressed and resolved by the interdisciplinary and intercultural team.