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Content Warning: this article mentions residential schools and cultural assimilation. 

From the emerald forests blanketing the land, grand peaks standing in the clouds, and turquoise waters rushing in between, the beauty of the traditional lands of the Anishinabe, Aseniwuche Winewak, Dene-zaa, Nêhiyawak, Secwépemc, Stoney Nakoda, and Métis (colonially known as Jasper, Alberta) is a magnetic force. For Joe Urie, it was the aeapaskāw river that brought him back to that land. 

Urie, a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta knew little about his ancestors before moving to Jasper in 1988. In his early 20s, Urie was finishing up a contract with the forestry industry in British Columbia and looking for a new job. Knowing there was tons of work in Jasper, he made the move. “At that time I was 22 years old, and you don’t really think about history, your history or any history for that matter, because obviously you’re in the process of making your own,” says Urie. 

It wasn’t until long after Urie’s move to Jasper that he realized the aeapaskāw river (or Athabasca River), which was integral for his ancestors’ livelihood, begins at the Columbia Icefield — just an hour south of Jasper. About 20 years ago, it struck him: “this is the same river; this is the blood in my veins. This is how we traveled, this is how we made a living, this is everything.” His grandmother was born near the end of the river by Fort Chipewyan; his mother was born somewhere along the mid-way point of the river; and now he has found a home at the “birth of the river,” as Urie describes it. 

Spending more time along this river, Urie began to understand the stories embedded in the landscape. Or as he would describe it, the stories began to speak to him. These weren’t stories of David Thompson, an explorer, who was said to discover northern routes through the Rocky Mountains, and nor that of when Jasper National Park was established by settlers in 1907. Instead, Urie came across the stories of Indigenous people like Ewan Moberly, a Métis man, who lived in the valley with his family; how they lived on the land and later how they were forcibly removed from the area and considered to be squatters. Urie found that the popular narrative about the land didn’t include any Indigenous perspectives.

“Those voices, the voices of the mountains, the voices in the forest and the animals — were gone. [The landscape] was being interpreted from a very biological, geological, ecological perspective — a scientific perspective. And not to knock that off, I still do that in a lot of cases, but I began to include the voices that were missing — and I began to discover that it started to resonate,” says Urie. 

In 2000, Urie became a tour guide and started to share some of these hidden stories with visitors. In 2011, he started the Jasper Tour Company with his wife Patti, and began to show tourists the Rockies through his personal connections to the land. 

“Wherever you happen to reside on the planet, the language that you speak are words gifted to you by the landscape, and therefore you are a translator on that landscape. You are a conduit,” says Urie, describing the way he sees his work.

Indigenous cultural and economic resilience through tourism

For decades, government policies and practices stripped Indigenous peoples of their cultural identity. Children who went to residential schools weren’t allowed to speak their language, wear their traditional clothes, make art — and those who did were severely punished for it.  

Resilience, when it comes to culture, means that a community and its people continue to hold onto their traditions, language, and practices, despite the circumstances which threaten to erase them. The scholar Cornelius Holtorf wrote about the concept of cultural resilience as the “capability of a cultural system (consisting of cultural processes in relevant communities) to absorb adversity, deal with change and continue to develop.” 

For Urie, Indigenous tourism helped him find his way back to learning about and sharing his culture. Similarly, other Indigenous tourism organizations that focus on cultural tourism are creating a platform to preserve and celebrate cultural practices that have been historically silenced. 

At the Elsipogtog Mi’kmaq Cultural Centre in New Brunswick, aside from teaching visitors about Mi’kmaq history, members of the Elsipogtog First Nation can learn how to make traditional baskets from local Ash trees. The Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre in British Columbia teaches Syilx history and culture to local youth from the Osoyoos Indian Band. These spaces are cultural resources for communities to reconnect, learn, and then share with the wider population.

Pre-pandemic, Indigenous tourism in Canada was a rapidly growing industry. Research from 2019 by The Conference Board of Canada and the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada (ITAC) shows that the Indigenous tourism sector rose 23.2 percent between 2014 and 2017, going from $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion in GDP. In comparison, the overall tourism sector saw a 14.5 percent increase in the same time period. 

However, the pandemic has severely stunted Indigenous tourism growth. The ITAC reported last fall that the sector saw a 54 percent decline. The recent federal budget has dedicated $20 million for the Indigenous tourism sector in its first Indigenous Tourism Fund, along with $4.8 million over two years in support of the ITAC. 

Also with the lack of international tourists who make up a large percentage of the visitors with the Indigenous tourism sector, some companies and organizations are seeing a rise in local visitors and Canadian tourists. 

Revitalizing Indigenous cultures can transform communities 

Brenda Baptiste, chair of Indigenous Tourism BC (ITBC), says when they first started about 25 years ago, there was no such thing as Indigenous tourism. 

“We had originally started it as Aboriginal Tourism British Columbia to create tourism businesses because [that sector] requires very little infrastructure…our idea was to create jobs and to create economic opportunity,” says Baptiste.

But surprisingly, they also found a cultural element at play. 

“One of the things that we discovered very early on, though, is that something else happened;  the communities, in order to truly share who they were in their culture, they had to activate their knowledge keepers and Elders, and have them teach the youth and other community members about their culture so they could do these tours. So this cultural revitalization started to happen,” says Baptiste. 

This kind of revitalization is transformative in nature, explains Baptiste, because it starts rebuilding a foundation within communities to first and foremost, understand their culture and identity, and then share it with visitors with pride. 

At the same time, Baptiste says cultural sovereignty (to freely express and practice one’s culture) is also vital to allow Indigenous people to have control over their own stories. “We decide as Indigenous people, what we’re willing to share with visitors and what we’re willing to protect and keep within our own communities. And that empowerment is saying ‘no, this is sacred to us and we aren’t going to share this part, but we’ll share these other parts of our culture,” says Baptiste. 

To avoid eroding cultures, Indigenous people need to steer the way 

When Indigenous people — like Baptiste and Urie — aren’t at the helm of tourism organizations that showcase Indigenous cultures, those cultures can be commodified, exoticized, and reduced to stereotypes. The wider tourism industry in Canada has been criticized heavily in the past for appropriating and eroding Indigneous culture in trying to promote the country. Take the 2010 Winter Olympics for example, when Canada used an inukshuk-like symbol as its logo, which stirred up a lot of controversy and criticism of cultural appropriating Inuit culture. Inukshuks were traditionally used to mark the land for navigation and hunting, and are seen as complex symbols of survival. However the Olympics took the symbol and watered down its meaning to represent “Canadian values of friendship and community.” 

Art pieces and sacred items from Indigenous cultures across Canada have also been used in museums for decades without permission from the communities they belong to, while generating profit the communities never saw. But with public pressure, institutions like The Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, B.C. are working on decolonizing their exhibits through consulting with local Indigenous nations, rearranging the displays, and repatriating and conserving artifacts. The museum also acknowledged that some of their exhibits reinforced colonial narratives by framing stories through a European settler perspective, which they will work on shifting to center Indigenous voices. 

Joe Bailey, owner of North Star Adventures in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, founded the first “aurora borealis hunting tour company” in 2007. He incorporates knowledge of his ancestors’ traditional Dene lifestyle when taking guests on tours to spot the ethereal aurora borealis lighting up the sky. The company is 100 percent Indigenous-owned, and proudly states their tagline as “50,000 years of experience.”

But in the last few years, Bailey says there’s been lots of other aurora hunting tours popping up in the area, some claiming to be an authentic Indigenous experience — when they are not. 

Bailey also says that the federal government allows licensing for companies to operate aurora borealis tours even when they aren’t from the territory. People from Vancouver, Toronto, even the United States, can come for the season, then pack up and leave when it’s done. When Bailey got his license to operate in 2007, North Star Adventures was the fourth company in the region to have a tour operating license. Bailey says at the end of last year, that number has shot up to 150 companies.

When Bailey met with the Northwest Territories’ Minister of Tourism to talk about the need to control licensing, he recalls that they said to him, ‘it’s good for the economy and there’s enough aurora for everyone.’

Bailey says non-Indigenous tour operations, particularly those from outside the territory, not only misrepresent the land and culture of the area, but also take money away from the local communities and hinder the growth of real Indigenous tourism in Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories. 

Creating a dialogue on reconciliation starts with culture

Since the discovery of the 215 unmarked burials of children in Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc, Kamloops, British Columbia, non-Indigenous people in Canada have been more keen on having a conversation about reconciliation, says Baptiste. During the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation day last September, she did three presentations, and had an outpouring of people reach out to her, wanting to talk. 

“It’s created a dialogue much deeper than I’ve ever seen in my life,” says Baptiste. 

Indigenous tourism is playing a huge role in this conversation about reconciliation. It simultaneously encourages communities to rebuild cultural foundations and at the same time also serves as a platform to share this knowledge with the rest of the country. 

Olivia Kristoff works as a curator at the Wanuskewin Heritage Park in Saskatchewan where she is in charge of the permanent exhibits and two contemporary art galleries. Kristoff says art and culture are vital starting points for reconciliation. 

One of the sections in Wanuskewin’s permanent exhibit showcases inspiring leaders and youth in the community right now, with a goal to celebrate current culture.

“Each generation is only going to get stronger through the connection with arts, language, and the knowledge being passed down. And that’s just being strengthened through Indigenous tourism,” says Kristoff. 

Unlike traditional museums or art galleries, Wanuskewin’s exhibits aren’t frozen behind a glass case — they’re used as a learning resource by the community. “We are offering this resource to people who maybe want to be closer to their culture; maybe they didn’t grow up in their culture, maybe they grew up in an urban area and they want to learn more,” says Kristoff.

When people step onto the land of Wanuskewin, many feel something ‘different,’ Kristoff says. And then, through learning more about the land and the stories within it, the connection deepens.

Baptiste remembers when she moved to Vancouver from Oliver, B.C., about 20 years ago. She felt alone and homesick. One day, she was talking to a Squamish Chief, and told him she felt like she was living in a different universe and that she missed home. He told her that he would come see her tomorrow, and said, “Wear your sneakers.”

The next day, they walked all around Vancouver; around the seawall, Stanley Park, the downtown area, and False Creek. “He showed me where the clam beds were, where all the fishing spots were, where the sacred areas were, the ceremonial areas, he told me the stories of Siwash rock and the legend around it,” says Baptiste. 

“It transformed the way I looked at the city. But it also transformed the way I felt about the city — it connected me to the lands of these three nations in a way that I immediately felt at home.” 

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