Indigenous Tourism. The Commodification and Management of Culture

310 Pages·2005·33.922 MB·English

by  Chris Ryan and Michelle Aicken (Eds.)

ADVANCES IN TOURISM RESEARCH
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Advances in Tourism Research series publishes monographs and edited volumes that comprise state-of-the-art
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Published:
PIKE
Bridging Theory and Practice
THOMAS
Small Firms in Tourism: International Perspectives
LUMSDON & PAGE
Tourism and Transport
ERR
Tourism Public Policy and the Strategic Management of Failure
WILKS & PAGE
Managing Tourist Health and Safety in the New Millennium
BAUM & LUNDTORP
Seasonality in Tourism
TEO, CHANG & HO
Interconnected Worlds: Tourism in Southeast Asia
ASHWORTH & TUNBRIDGE
The Tourist-Historic City: Retrospect and Prospect of Managing the Heritage City
SONG & wI?T
Tourism Demand Modelling and Forecasting: Modem Econometric Approaches
RYAN & PAGE
Tourism Management: Towards the New Millennium
Forthcoming titles include:
SIMPSON
Back to the Future: In Search of an Effective Tourism Planning Model
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Contributors
Michelle Aicken graduated from the University of Otago and subsequently worked in
Japan and the United Kingdom in a variety of posts. Currently she is completing her
doctoral studies at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She was a co-organiser
of the conference, Taking Tourism to the Limits hosted by the Department of Tourism
Management. Michelle is able to claim affiliation with Ngai Tahu of the South Island of New
Zealand.
Jeremy Buultjens lectures at Southern Cross University and is the course administrator of
the Degree of Bachelor in Indigenous Tourism Management offered by the University in
conjunction with the College of Australian Indigenous Peoples. He holds a doctorate from
Griffith University. His research interests include indigenous tourism, tourism in protected
areas and regional tourism.
Dean Carson is the Head of the Centre for Regional Tourism Research, Southern Cross
University. His research interests include managing regional tourism for economic and
social gains and the use of information and communications technology in tourism product
distribution. Dean has degrees in history, communications, tourism and science. He has
worked in rural and regional Australia researching topics as varied as: infrastructure and
housing needs in remote Indigenous communities; health workforce retention in rural areas;
and the role of Local Government in tourism management.
Jenny Cave lectures in special interest and cultural tourism at the University of Waikato.
She had a distinguished career in Museums, having served for many years with the Canadian
Museum services before being “head-hunted’ back to the land of her birth, New Zealand,
to establish Capital Discovery Place, Wellington. She was then subsequently Director of
Library and Museum Services for the City of Hamilton. Having a Master’s degree from
the University of Ottawa, she is currently completing her doctorate at the University of
Waikato.
Johan R. Edelheim lectures at the International College of Tourism and Hospitality,
Manly, Australia, and is completing his doctorate at Macquarie University, Australia.
Johan is a member of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia and his research
interests relate to imagery, identity and culture. His Ph.D. is entitled “Special Interest
Tourism as a Contributor to Cultural Identity Formation” and the methodology he is
using is a triangulation of Narrative analysis, Sociological deconstruction and Hermeneutic
Phenomenology.
xviii Contributors
Maribeth Erb is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology of the University of
Singapore. She obtained doctorate from the State University of New York. Her research
interests lie in anthropology, kinship relationships and social anthropology, and urban
anthropology. She has published research relating to tourism and Indonesia including work
published in the Annals of Tourism Research.
Vicky Gerbich grew up in Western Springs, Illinois, a suburb outside of Chicago and
obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Geography from the University of Illinois
and a M.Sc. in Geography (Environmental Planning and Policy) from Southern Illinois
University. She began to research and study the environmental land ethics of Native
Americans and reservation development for her undergraduate thesis, and throughout
her education and professional experience, continued to be interested in sustainable
development within different socio-cultural contexts. After working for an open-space
county agency outside of Chicago, she moved to American Samoa in the South Pacific.
There she is trying to establish a system whereby the public sees the value of preserving
the natural resources and implementing a land use system that adopts more enforceable
regulations to promote economic and cultural development through environmental
stewardship.
Sasha Graham is a research assistant with the School of Tourism and Hospitality
Management, Southern Cross University. She is currently completing a Bachelor of Social
Science at Southern Cross University.
Freya Higgins-Desbiolles lectures at the School of International Business in the University
of South Australia. She served on the Management Committee of the Responsible Tourism
Network in Adelaide and was the Coordinator of the Global Education Centre for a number
of years. She is now on the Management Committee of the International Institute for Peace
through Tourism (Australia). She has worked with the Ngamndjeri community of South
Australia for over seven years.
Jeremy Huyton spent several years in the hotel industry holding various managerial
positions before resuming his education and gaining a doctorate from the University of
Birmingham in the UK. He currently lectures at the University of Canberra after holding
posts at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Charles Darwin University and the Australian
International Hotel School. In addition to his teaching Jeremy has sought to establish training
schemes for Australian Aboriginals, has business interests in China, and still finds time to
develop his olive trees outside Canberra.
Gloria Ingram is currently completing her doctoral studies at Edith Cowan University,
Western Australia. She has long had an interest in Aboriginal Affairs having previously
undertaken research and also has a sustained interest in phenomenology as a research
process. Consequently she has contributed to the Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology
including research on farm stay tourism.
Henare Johnson is Postgraduate Researcher in the Centre for Maori and Indigenous
Planning and Development, Lincoln University, New Zealand. His main research interest
is Maori tourism and Maori economic development.
Contributors nix
Joseph E. Mbaiwa is a Research Fellow in Tourism Management at the Hany Oppenheimer
Okavango Research Centre, University of Botswana. He has a BA (Environmental Science),
Post Graduate Diploma in Education and an M.Sc. (Environmental Science), all of which
qualifications were obtained at the University of Botswana in 1992, 1993 and 1999
respectively. He is presently pursuing a doctorate degree in the Department of Recreation,
Park and Tourism Sciences at Texas A&M University, United States. His research interests
centre on sustainable tourism development in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, and he has
contributed to projects relating to local people participation in the tourism industry and the
implementation of the Community-Based Natural Resource Management programme in
the Okavango Delta.
Alison McIntosh is Associate Professor at the Department of Tourism Management,
University of Waikato Management School. She obtained her doctorate in the United
Kingdom, and migrated to New Zealand in 1997. Her main research interests are in tourists'
experiences of heritage and culture, and the sustainable development of indigenous tourism.
Some of this latter research has been funded by the New Zealand Foundation for Research,
Science and Technology, and by the New Zealand Ministry for Maori Development, Te
Puni K8kiri. She has obtained publications in leading journals such as Annals of Tourism
Research and Tourism Management.
Dieter K. Miiller lectures at the University of Umei in Sweden in the Department of Social
and Economic Geography. He has a number of interests pertaining to tourism and its use of
space, and recently completed research into patterns of holiday home ownership in addition
to work completed with Robert Pettersson on Sami culture and its role in Swedish tourism.
Sanjay Nepal is Assistant Professor at the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism
Sciences at Texas A&M University. He holds a doctoral degree from the University of Bern,
Switzerland. He is currently researching the involvement of local communities in tourism
planning in British Columbia, Canada and in several protected areas in Nepal. He is also a co-
author of Great Himalaya: Tourism and Dynamics of Change in Nepal and is a recognized
expert relating to the impacts of tourism and environmental impacts in the Himalayas. In
Canada he has obtained grants from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council for research on biodiversity, human impacts and conservation.
Robert Pettersson gained his doctorate in Human Geography from Umei University in
Sweden. His thesis related to the development of Sami tourism in Northern Europe, which
is also the subject of his book Sami Tourism in Northern Sweden - Supply, Demand and
Interaction, published in 2004. He works as a researcher at the European Tourism Research
Institute, ETOUR, in Ostersund, Sweden. His research interests are currently centred on
indigenous tourism, tourism in peripheral areas, attitudes, accessibility and cultural events.
He has published various papers on this issue, and has also published papers on second
home ownership in Sweden for the Cerum Research Institute.
Chris Ryan holds a doctoral degree from the Aston Business School, United Kingdom. He is
the editor of Tourism Management, an elected member of the International Academy for the
Study of Tourism and Professor of Tourism at the University of Waikato Management School
and Visiting Professor at the Centre of Travel and Tourism, the University of Northumbria.
xx Contributors
Currently he is completing an audit of New Zealand's tourism research strategy for the New
Zealand Ministry of Tourism.
Birgit Trauer is completing her doctoral studies at the University of Queensland having
graduated from Griffith University with a BA and the University of Waikato with a Post
Graduate Diploma in Tourism Management. She has worked for a variety of businesses
including Air India and other airlines, and as a consultant. Her teaching experience includes
work at Lakehead and Queensland Universities.
Iain Waller spent several years as a manager of properties and businesses before returning
to do some post-graduate study where he accidentally ended up as an academic for a decade.
After about 30 publications and a lot of fun with various research partners and topic areas,
he has now returned to the business world and is enjoying the challenges of starting his own
business and putting his theories into practice.
Takayoshi Yamamura gained his doctorate in urban engineering from the Department
of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo, Japan. He is currently Associate Professor in
Heritage Tourism Planning and Management at Kyoto Saga University of Arts, Japan and
is a researcher at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. Additionally he is a member
of the ICOMOS International Committee on Historic Towns and Villages. His research
interests pertain to culture, heritage, historic towns and for several years, since 1998, he
has been monitoring changes in Lijiang, China; the subject of his contribution in this book.
Other contributions on the same topic include his chapter entitled Authenticity, ethnicity
and social transfonnation at World Heritage Sites: tourism, retailing and cultural change
in Lijiang, China In Derek Hall's book, Tourism and Transition: Political, Economic and
Social Issues, while he has also published various other papers relating to the same topic in
journals such as Tourism - an interdisciplinary journal and Acta Scientiarum Naturalium.
Preface
At the time of writing, May 2004, the issue of the rights of indigenous peoples remains
salient. In the editors’ country, New Zealand, a debate over Maori claims to the foreshore
under the Treaty of Waitangi has sparked a national debate about the constitutional position
of Maori in an increasingly multi-cultural society. The then current Government was
tending toward the establishment of a Royal Commission to assess these issues and their
constitutional implications, but even as we write in early May 2004, the issues remain
unsolved and contentious. Further, but a matter of months prior to our completion of the
text, in March 2004, Australia again faced the problem of the marginalization of Australian
Aboriginal peoples and more particularly an urban-based, economically-deprived grouping,
as Aboriginal people noted in the streets of the Sydney suburb of Redfern following
the death of Thomas Hickey in a police car chase. In Kuala Lumpur, in February 2004,
indigenous peoples made representations calling for a full recognition of indigenous rights
to their traditional territories, genetic resources and traditional knowledge at the Seventh
Conference of the Parties (COP-7) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
held under the auspices of the United Nations. In Canada, in February 2003, the British
Columbia Court of Appeal, in what has come to be known as the Haida Decision, upheld
the right of indigenous peoples to be involved in and give free prior informed consent to
developments initiated by governments and private corporations as they affect traditional
territories.
It thus seems that a world of turmoil exists with reference to the rights of indigenous
peoples; and yet it exists in face of a curiously indifferent and unknowing population
given that generally so little of the issues emerge in the news on occasions other than
those of riots or specific conclaves that initiate public exhibitions of dissent. Thus, on
many occasions, the public face of indigenous peoples is one of anger and of claims that
to many seem extreme. Rarely do the media seek to rationalize such sentiments and at
times it appears that debate comprises the utterance of slogans on both sides of the issue.
That this need not be so was exhibited by the New Zealand Herald’s examination of New
Zealand’s foreshore debate, the customary title of Maori to coastal waters and the nature of
the Treaty of Waitangi in many long articles in February and March 2004. Given that the
media help shape perceptions of place and peoples, the role of not simply the news media,
but that media associated with tourism promotion might deserve examination, particularly
if the relationship of tourism to the wider social issues is to be understood.
There then exists a paradox. On the one hand there appears little public concern over
such issues as indigenous peoples’ claims to rights over biological diversities and DNA
xxii Preface
that emanate from their traditional lands until some “news-worthy event” usually based on
discord occurs. However, on the other hand, tourism promotional bodies both: (a) exhort
the importance of tourism based on indigenous people’s cultures in the portfolio mix of
tourism product that a country has to offer as meeting a growing demand in “cultural
tourism”; while (b) simultaneously holding out a promise that tourism can generate
income and employment for communities traditionally marginalized from the economic
mainstream.
Therefore there appears little reason to doubt the importance of tourism based on
indigenous peoples’ cultures, either as part of tourism itself or as part of a wider social
movement, and that in itself would justify a book looking at these issues. That this specific
book emerged was due to a much more prosaic reason. In December 2003 the University of
Waikato Management School’s Department of Tourism Management hosted a conference
entitled Taking Tourism to the Limits. One of the approaches suggested to potential delegates
was to consider issues pertaining to liminality, especially with reference to indigenous
tourism. This topic was selected for a number of reasons, including the interests of
the conference convenors and the University’s location and tradition. For example, the
University is a leasee of land awarded to the Tanui tribe under a land settlement, while one
of the evening events was a visit to the Rotowhio Marae where delegates were hosted by
representatives of the Te Arawa people at the New Zealand Institute for Maori Arts and
Crafts. This evening proved both enjoyable and interesting, particularly as our hosts patiently
dealt with questions from 100 or more academics about what it meant to be Maori in contem-
porary society. Essentially the answer that emerged was that it was a personally enriching
experience as those concerned enjoyed the advantages of living in both Maori and non-Maori
societies.
For whatever reasons, one of the best subscribed themes in the conference was that
dealing with indigenous peoples and tourism, and thus for the most part the book
comprises chapters derived from those papers. Additionally papers have been included
based on published works, and the due recognitions are formally recounted in the
acknowledgements.
The purpose of the book is therefore to complement earlier collections edited by
colleagues and friends, notably those of Dick Butler and Tom Hinch (Tourism and
Indigenous Peoples, 1996) and Mike Robinson and Priscilla Boniface (Tourism and
Cultural Conflicts, 1999). In doing so it represents an update of research while perhaps
illustrating that the same themes of control and presentation still exist. This book perhaps
differs from the others by endorsing a strict definition of indigenous peoples as defined by
the United Nations. By reason of the location of the conference the book is slanted toward
experiences in Australasia, if only because of the experiences and research of the editors;
but cognizance of a wider global phenomenon is provided with reference to research in
China, Scandinavia and Canada. In an attempt to provide some coherence to what might
otherwise appear to be a disparate group of papers, the editors have provided some linking
text seeking to contextualize the individual chapters, and it is hoped that contributors
will not look askance at such attempts. Finally, the book would not have come into being
were it not for the kindness of immediate colleagues both during the conference itself and
subsequent to that event as the editors “escaped” the rigors of daily office attendance. The
Preface xxiii
support of Stephen Page as editor of the Elsevier series must also be noted as he smoothed
the path toward publication, of Tom Clark at Elsevier for trusting in the project, and finally
to the co-ordinating editor at Elsevier, Hannah Collet. For their support, the editors are
truly thankful!
Chris Ryan and Michelle Aicken
Editors