Ensuring greater access to justice in criminal court processes for indigenous1 peoples2 usually involves judicial officers and legal players taking notice of cultural, systemic and background considerations that might have impacted on an individual’s commission of an offence, adapting court processes to make hearings more meaningful for indigenous participants, and being mindful of the need to reduce the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples in custody. Therefore, the focus of critiques of criminal court processes is usually on judicial reasoning and practice, without much focus on how changes in legal doctrine and processes are researched and evaluated to determine their impact. With the growing number of culturally appropriate court processes (particularly in the realm of sentencing) being introduced and the continuing development of indigenous-focused jurisprudence and legal doctrine, one would expect a corresponding increase in access to justice leading to an eventual decrease in indigenous reoffending and overrepresentation in custody. Impact studies and evaluations of what are normally considered culturally appropriate, albeit resource intensive criminal court initiatives, find little or no impact on indigenous reoffending. These impact studies and evaluations do not, however, fully analyse how and why access to justice is affected. This paper explores how evaluation, and indeed, research in general, of Indigenous-focused criminal justice processes can be improved to assist in the attainment of greater access to criminal justice for indigenous peoples. It explains how paradigms and theories can influence the conduct and findings of the research and why understanding the significance of choosing an appropriate research methodology is important for planning how to undertake evaluation that is with or involves indigenous peoples. Australian, New Zealand and Canadian guidelines for ethical conduct and good practice research are compared to further inform how the implementation and adoption of culturally appropriate criminal justice processes need to be evaluated to ensure governments can fully understand whether access to justice is being realised.