As soon as this project received official approval from the Ministry of Education and the National Literacy Secretariat, an advisory group was formed. After hiring the initial project coordinator, the group did not meet again but maintained awareness through various communications channels, in order to continue guiding the research process.

The original plan and timeline was twice revised, as the first project coordinator was not hired until December 1999. Dawn Maracle worked on the project from mid-January to mid-September 2000. Sally Gaikezheyongai was hired to complete the project. An extension to January 31, 2001 was granted to allow for completion of the final report.

The first project coordinator developed three survey questionnaires: for learners, practitioners, and executive directors/steering committee members. Literacy workers in attendance at two Wednesday-morning meetings held in October noted that the learners’ questionnaire could be rated as being at literacy level 5 replete with the jargon used by literacy practitioners, although staff at Native Women’s had added pictures and symbols to somehow improve readability. It is possible that this contributed to our receipt of fewer completed learner surveys. Given that the questionnaire had been in use for 10 months, it continued to be used in order to provide consistent data.

The Data Collection Process

For a period of 12 months, data was collected through the following methods:

• a review of literature pertaining to Native literacy and adult learning principles;
• meetings with stakeholders and members of the public;
• surveys from learners (current, past, and potential);
• two focus-group discussions with learners at two Native literacy programs;
• surveys and interviews with current and former Native literacy workers;
• surveys with executive directors and steering committee members; and
• a community meeting held as part of a visioning process.

At least 60 different people were consulted throughout various stages of this project. Some people contributed to this process in more than one way. Anonymity was assured to anyone contributing information in any forum, in order to facilitate frankness. While the voices included here are predominantly female, males did add their voices to this project throughout the various arenas, in smaller numbers.

In addition, data was collected from 39 surveys including 24 past/present/future learners, 11 past or present literacy practitioners, and 5 Native agency representatives. Both Native literacy program sites (NWRC and Council Fire) hosted a focus group. The participants consisted of a total of 4 practitioners and 6 learners. Ten interviews were conducted with various interested key stakeholders. Two meetings were conducted with several other literacy workers who wanted to participate in the discussion of the initial findings of the needs assessment and wanted to help with the outreach for the community meeting. Finally, a community meeting was held, attracting 8 attendees: 6 literacy workers and 2 learners.