Aboriginal Tourism and that Elusive Authenticity

Abstract

While writing this book, and after spending the best part of a year in Canada, I met a woman who was about to head off from Scotland for a five-week holiday, largely organized by her husband, which would take her up the northwest coast of America from Vancouver to Alaska, and then back across the Rockies to Calgary. When I told her about my interest in that part of the world, she took up an invitation I threw out casually to come round for a cup of tea and hear about some of the First Nations culture centers she might be able to persuade her husband to include in the trip. I spent an hour or so describing vari­ous possibilities, and showing her the photographs I had taken, and she went off cheerfully exuding some of the same kind of enthusiasm I had clearly expressed in my suggestions.

On more than one occasion visitors have arrived at our reception desk and have refused to go into the exhibition halls because we did not “look Indian.”

Tom Hill, Seneca, Fluffs and Feathers