Encounters in touriculture: Indigenous cultural tourism in contested domains

Michael Gerard Parsons

This thesis is a contribution to the field of imagined historical geographies of tourism. It examines Indigenous cultural tourism, as evolving within shifting political economies of the sign in colonising and decolonising environments, and various contesting domains. It demonstrates that Indigenous cultural tourism may be approached as a mode of production, like traditional agriculture. This mode of production may be called 'touriculture' - the 'cultivation', as it were, of the symbolic landscape in response to a demand from a non-traditional market. In Australia, for example, prior to European contact, there was an extensive traditional market for all forms of art, weapons and utensils, that came to be consumed by an evolving non-traditional tourist market. The source of traditional meaning for all these products has been the symbolic landscape, and ultimately the land itself. Notably, as a consequence, without access to this source, and the knowledge it allows to transmit, the traditional forms of reproduction of these meanings becomes difficult. The non-traditional market for Aboriginal cultural products was jointly established, in the first instance, by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people as a negotiated outcome of the colonial encounter. This negotiation is viewed as a hallmark of Indigenous cultural tourism. It is argued that it demands a dialogical analysis that allows both host and guest to speak, and for both to be heard from the historical record. The historical record is opened up to reveal by this analysis how host reflexive commentary on contemporary host-guest relationships, has been an essential part of touriculture from its very beginnings. Such an analysis allows for the modelling of the guest demand for authenticity as an interactive process within a framework of host cultural 'self’ disclosure, and as applications and assertions of contesting domains by host and guest. In the political economy of the sign indigenous cultural tourism 1s defined as a negotiated overt exchange of host cultural capital, for guest economic capital, at the level of the tour encounter. Such an exchange mirrors the traditional markets for the transfer of cultural capital by host to host. However, the new framing is intercultural, and acting within larger framings of host-guest relations by the actions of colonialism, covert transformations take place within the cultural capital of both host and guest. While first setting out this process, this thesis moves to concentrate on the wider framings in which indigenous cultural tourism is sited. It demonstrates that Indigenous cultural tourism acts to express covert control over one's domain. It documents how colonial imaginings continue to endure in the decolonising environment that characterises the contemporary locus of Indigenous cultural tourism in Australia. The dominant guest-framing is seen to be a whole set of prior imaginings of the Primitive, that persist in reflexively locating 'outlandish' peoples in the 'outlands'. In Australia and the South Pacific in the nineteenth century such gendered imaginings expressed and re expressed themselves as the Noble Savage and Nubile Savage, to Stone-Age Man and Dying Race. The framing of the Aboriginal supply of touricultural performance became the struggle for physical and cultural survival given rapid depopulation, separation of families and denial of access to traditional lands, goods and services. The nature of the historical demand for such products was to be uneven and contested in non-Aboriginal society ranging from promotion to appropriation to restriction through the application of policies of social control, and consequently their supply was to be similarly uneven. The thesis will reveal how in the nineteenth century Mission and Government officials conspired to prevent Aboriginal corroboree performers and their non-Aboriginal joint venture partners or employers from developing the nascent Aboriginal dance theatre industry into something more substantive. Aboriginal performers appear to have been unable to build careers in the mainstream theatre and other sections of the non-itinerant entertainment industry in major cities. They were forced to pursue busking in country towns or, often openly forsaking their cultural heritage, acrobatic careers in roving vaudeville or burlesque bush shows. Some became famous as stars of touring colonial circuses, such as Mango Mango of Ashton's, while Con Colleano became one of the world's greatest circus tightrope performers, after performing in Australia as a 'Royal Hawaiian.' The current upsurge in supply of Indigenous cultural tourism, particularly in the Northern Territory, can be sourced directly to the recognition of Aboriginal rights, and in particular, rights to land, and the concurrent upsurge in the demand for an exposure to Aboriginal culture by international visitors. The renewed desire amongst Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians for reconciliation (re-unification), and an end to the era of cultural displacement, has also been significant. Cultural tourism has become a currency for Aboriginal people to realise their land needs, and for their need to reconnect with their cultural heritage. Aboriginal cultural tourism continues to express for both host and guest, in different ways, belonging to the land, and the longing to belong. The market for the products of the Aboriginal symbolic landscape has broadened into the mainstream and the range of products has deepened, penetrating the new upmarket international art scene. National Parks are becoming the latest fashionable framing for Indigenous cultural tourism, but the thesis questions, is this framing simply an old colonial re-imagining in modern dress? Alternatively, Indigenous peoples in Australia and the South Pacific are looking at using their own land management strategies to service tourism enterprises Today Indigenous cultural tourism, in defiance of market demand, still remains something of a side show to mainstream tourism. Many budding Indigenous community tourism enterprises with a good potential for success die off early, through the lack of the application of a system of professional assistance to those cultivating the symbolic landscape for non-traditional markets. The remedy is for tertiary institutions teaching tourism management to develop courses similar to those developed for agricultural extension workers, combining skills in social and economic anthropology, small business systems

Encounters in touriculture: Indigenous cultural tourism in contested domains

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Encounters in touriculture: Indigenous cultural tourism in contested domains

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