Indigenous tourism research, past and present: where to from here?

Abstract

Indigenous tourism is a global phenomenon, encompassing a range of complex, multi-layered issues. The foci of Indigenous tourism research are multifaceted, reflecting a plethora of stakeholders with differing perspectives and values about the direction, development and sustainability of the sector. The academic literature consistently highlights the need for a more comprehensive understanding of Indigenous tourism and, specifically, one that takes into account the interests and values of its stakeholders. This paper provides a global overview of Indigenous tourism development and its international and national institutional links, concomitantly identifying and examining the trajectory of scholarly interest in Indigenous tourism from 1980 to 2014. An analysis of 403 published journal articles is supplemented with the perspectives of Indigenous tourism researchers. The results reveal that sustainability issues underpin and shape a substantive proportion of published Indigenous tourism research to date. The challenge now is to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Indigenous tourism from the perspective of Indigenous stakeholders, approaching its complexity in an iterative, adaptive and flexible style, and with affected stakeholders involved in the research process, knowledge creation and its outcomes. This is both an ethical imperative and a pragmatic approach to ensure the outcomes of research facilitate the sustainability of Indigenous tourism.

Indigenous participation in conservation and tourism development: A case of native people of Sabah, Malaysia

“…In addition, this study has been conducted among indigenous residents in Malaysia. Most indigenous tourism studies to date have been conducted in the developed countries, such as Australia, Canada, the United States, and New Zealand (Whitford & Ruhanen, ). This makes it difficult to generalize the results to other indigenous communities in different parts of the world, especially in developing countries.…”

“…Efforts to promote the participation of indigenous communities in the management of protected areas often fall short of their goals because of the gap between conservation organizations and indigenous peoples. The ideological policies pursue by government ignore the economic and social development of indigenous people and their claims over their customary lands (Ruhanen et al, ; Subramaniam, ; Whitford & Ruhanen, ). For the indigenous people, the forest is considered a living entity, with its own soul and spirituality.…”

Indigenous peoples and tourism: the challenges and opportunities for sustainable tourism

“…The initial papers in the special issue synthesize and review common issues in Indigenous tourism research (Whitford & Ruhanen, 2016) and provide international case studies with implications for best practice (Fletcher, Pforr, & Brueckner, 2016;Pereiro, 2016;Reggers, Grabowski, Wearing, Chatterton, & Schweinsberg, 2016;Whitney-Squire, 2016). Other contributions present research that ranges from visitors' experiences of Indigenous events (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2016) to reflections on how policy-makers or managers can influence the recognition of Indigenous cultural manifestations and values within tourism settings including protected natural areas (Hillmer-Pegram, 2016;Shultis & Heffner, 2016;Walker & Moscardo, 2016).…”

“…The first main paper by Whitford and Ruhanen (2016), sets the scene for the following contributions through an analysis of Indigenous tourism research published in 153 journals over a 35 year period from a variety of disciplines including anthropology, geography and tourism, among others. They chart the historical development of Indigenous tourism including product development, changing market demand for Indigenous tourism and government policies in countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada.…”

Stories of reconciliation enacted in the everyday lives of Sámi tourism entrepreneurs

“…Studies of tourism in Aboriginal Australia emphazise that cultural tourism can be an important catalyst to dissolve barriers between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and to achieve reconciliation (Galliford 2010). Whitford and Ruhanen (2016) further argue that indigenous tourism could expand the concept of sustainable tourism away from its Western epistemology to embrace different scenarios. Seeking to avoid essentializing different epistemologies, we argue instead to address different ontological practices which are currently performed.…”