Speaking at faculty orientation before Dine College's Cultural Center in August 2004, the late Robert Roessel, a founder of Navajo Community College, described hopes that tribal leaders of the 1950s and 1960s had envisioned for tribal colleges. Designing programs of higher learning that work from and advance Native knowledge remains a core challenge at the 37 institutions that now constitute the tribal college movement. In this article, the authors argue that assessment, despite its linkages to mainstream structures and ideologies, offers important opportunities for accomplishing the objectives of the founders of tribal colleges. They report on work both provisional and incomplete in which they have been involved as tribal college insiders, consultants, and consultant-evaluators for outside agencies. To the extent that assessment is framed by Native philosophies of growth and reflection, they believe that tribal college educators may appropriate normative processes so as to promote the original visions and inherent strengths of the tribal college movement.