Indigenous people and tourism

Planeta.com, a website promoting “conscious travel”, has designated the 7-13 August as Indigenous Peoples Week, when it aims to promote news, social media and storytelling about indigenous peoples and tourism. Like many themes in tourism, this is one where there is both a positive and a negative side. Where tourism development is led and managed by indigenous people, it can not only be a source of income, but help to maintain traditions, culture and crafts. But all too often tourism has instead exploited vulnerable populations, with the most extreme cases being the ‘human safaris’ where tourists are taken to places such as India’s Andaman Islands to view and photograph tribal populations as if they were animals in a zoo. Indigenous peoples in the worst examples can suffer from diseases newly introduced by visitors, or be vulnerable to both financial and sexual exploitation. Indigenous peoples with little economic or political power can also be displaced from their traditional territories to make way for tourist development, or prohibited from using natural resources in areas designated for conservation and ecotourism.