The fascinating evolution of Indigenous tourism

Walking through the sage and antelope brush at Nk’Mip (“in-ka-meep”) Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos, B.C., manager Charlotte Stringam points out a problem with the location of the village’s pit houses, causing one to flood regularly, rotting the posts. “When we built the village, it was put here because the flat land looked like the sort of place a village might go,” she explains.

But a few years ago, when a renewal project for the cultural centre was planned, Stringam looked to the University of Victoria and the Canadian Museum of History. “We used to think of museums and archives as places that stole our culture, but after Truth and Reconciliation we’re starting to see them as something that belongs to us,” she says.

By gathering archival information and combining it with stories from Elders, clues from her reclaimed language and archeological evidence, Stringam says they saw the mistake: Winter-use pit houses were traditionally built into the landscape in higher places, away from the creeks that run past summer teepees. It might seem like a minor detail, but Stringam says the information reminded them how wise their ancestors were. “They built comfortable, dry homes that lasted.”

Museums and archives were never built for Indigenous people, says Karen Duffek, a curator at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. “Most collections were assembled during colonization, during the period of the potlatch ban, when residential schools were in full swing and land was being removed.” The grand displays of cedar totems and supernatural masks were presented as the art of a technologically inferior and dying culture.

Because of this, many Indigenous people had little idea just how many pieces of their culture are held by museums, a discovery that’s often deeply painful. The process of decolonizing museums often focuses on returning artifacts — but it’s also changing who interprets and uses materials. “It’s critical for museums to do some good by confronting racism and establishing meaningful connections with communities,” says Duffek.

Inviting community members in for hands-on workshops is one technique. Winnipeg artist KC Adams, whose pottery is featured in the new Prairies Gallery at the Manitoba Museum, recalls the first traditional pottery class she took. “It was in the basement, under fluorescent lights, and we got this booklet and talked about our ancestors’ work. We learned the archeology but not the oral history. I walked away kind of disappointed, because I couldn’t understand why my ancestors created pottery that was so simple and plain.”

But digging the clay from a riverbed, while deconstructing how the vessels were made with an experimental archeologist, made Adams rethink her assumption. Seeing how they were built inside woven bags out of rough clay, using precise amounts of sand, granite or mollusk shells as temper, she realized “how much innovation and knowledge was put into each vessel.” While on one level she was learning about pots, on another she was gaining wisdom into the connections between her people, the land and the water through the clay.

As Adams learns more, she’s felt compelled to share her discoveries, an element of Indigenous knowledge based on the idea that learning and teaching are intertwined. “That’s how our ancestors did it. They would be working and others would be mimicking,” Adams says. “It wasn’t about doing it perfectly. It was about working alongside and just trying it.”

Not every object in museums was acquired without consent, but Duffek says even when it was voluntary there was often duress. Hesquiaht (“hesh-kwi-ut”) language teacher chuutsqa Layla Rorick explains that in the 1960s and ’70s, when cultural loss and grave robbing were at their peak in her remote western Vancouver Island community, the Hesquiaht Cultural Committee was formed to safeguard the heritage.

Knowing that museums could also protect precious things, the committee created an archive with the Royal BC Museum where they deposited more than 700 audio recordings of Elders speaking and telling stories.

Rorick had heard talk of the recordings and confirmed their existence in January 2020, when Tim Paul, the last surviving committee member, suggested making them available to language learners. Before then, her language classes had been built around communicative speaking techniques and a small handful of fluent Elders (who are between 78 and 90). She had a single, handwritten, colonial-era Hesquiaht dictionary, found at a Roman Catholic archive, to use for reference.

Getting access to the tapes and having them digitized was a complex process. But last year, Rorick and the Elders were the first people in almost 50 years to hear the voices of their loved ones. Hearing the language is a good refresher, but more important are the traditional stories, which reinforce the Hesquiaht world view (and sense of humour), something that works its way into Indigenous tourism.

“You wouldn’t think that somebody who’s a respected Elder now would waver in sharing what they know,” says Rorick. “But for them, hearing stories from a late Elder is like having your grandpa say, ‘Oh, yes, you’re doing the right thing.’”

Due to the pandemic, the Prairies Gallery at Manitoba Museum opened without fanfare. Bird calls and personal stories echo through a space dominated by a teepee, which is set up to show both its cosiness and the cleverness of the airflow. The gallery invites people into a more complete view of the region, blending the natural and human story of how the abundant marshy grasslands, once criss-crossed by trade routes, became a patchwork of farms. One display shows Adams’ pottery, and how well it works for cooking.

At the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre, Stringam says they’ve used time during the pandemic to refine their plans. She also revisited her dream of building an archive on-site so they could bring home even more of the scattered fragments of their culture.

She explains that putting together the pieces of the past has been a way to heal. “Knowing who we were has taught us we can go into the world with our heads held high,” Stringam says, “and tells us we have some beautiful teachings that could be shared with the rest of the world.”

The Star understands the restrictions on travel during the coronavirus pandemic. But like you, we dream of travelling again, and we’re publishing this story with future trips in mind.