Project Details
Northern Aboriginal-Indigenous communities are well positioned to develop successful tourism initiatives given their proximity to unique natural areas suitable for ecotourism and the growing demand for cultural tourism experiences. Many communities have taken advantage of this double opportunity, but Aboriginal tourism development in Canada lags behind that in other countries.
The risks are that the phenomenon of mass cultural tourism may result in a weakening of traditional cultures or the destruction of fragile ecological systems, and that cultural tourism may give rise to a new form of imperialism, with the resultant loss of Aboriginal-Indigenous control of the industry to non-local stakeholders and the relegation of Aboriginal-Indigenous communities to dependent relationships with their visitors [Smith 2003: 45-61].
From a theoretical perspective, it is critical to uncover if and how Aboriginal-Indigenous tourism can contribute to Aboriginal-Indigenous autonomy and the overall community health and wellness. One way to do this is to develop tools to monitor the industry.
Since there is an international dimension to tourism, it makes sense to bring together Aboriginal-Indigenous communities - and specifically circumpolar Aboriginal-Indigenous communities - from around the world to share information, ideas, and models that will benefit the Aboriginal-Indigenous tourism industry locally, nationally and internationally.
The four communities selected for this project are:
- the Caribou Inuit of Baker Lake (Canada);
- the Nine Cree First Nations of Eeyou Istchee (Canada);
- the Saami Reindeer Herdrs of Övre Soppero (Sweden); and
- the Nenets of Northeastern Russia.
These four communities share a number of specific issues born from their Aboriginal-Indigenous identity, their Northerm remote location, and their cultural and economic interests in their environment, including the caribou/reindeers. The four communities all face major environmental and economic changes due to global warming, petroleum and mineral exploration and extraction, hydroelectric development, atmospheric transport of contaminants, and timber harvesting. The disturbances caused by climate changes may increase in frequency and severity [Tews J, 2000] and will have a major impact on high Arctic and sub-Arctic ecosystems in the future, and on the populations of caribou/reindeer which form the basis of subsistence economies of so many northern Indigenous peoples [Wollfe SA, 2000].
In addition to the impact of global climate change on their ecosystems, these communities have other similar concerns:
- to sustain their traditional lifestyles;
- to generate new jobs for the young;
- to preserve the knowledge of the elders;
- to regain and recapture their own culture and language.
Alternative "tourism" scenarios have been studied briefly, and communities have expressed a strong interest in developing these scenarios further [Kruse J. 2004: www.taiga.net/sustain.] To this end, the communities have demonstrated their willingness to work in partnership with a team of researchers in order to discover if and how Aboriginal-Indigenous tourism can contribute to Aboriginal autonomy and overall community health and wellness (as mentioned above), and in order to develop tools to monitor an industry that has become an integral part of the life of these communities. It is hoped that, by collaborating, the stakeholders will produce new strategies for Aboriginal-Indigenous tourism development. Such strategies, if successful, can then be applied to other projects and other communities.