[Anthropgrad] CAEPR Occational Seminar: ANKE Tonnaer FRIDAY 29 AUGUST; 12.30pm AD Hope

[Katarina Ferro]

Friday 29 August; 12.30 to 2pm

Entangled dreams: A discussion of the intercultural appeal of Australian 
Indigenous tourism
—Anke Tonnaer (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands)

*Abstract:* In Australia Indigenous cultural tourism is presented as a 
treasure trove for economic, social, and cultural opportunities, praised 
as it is in policy documents, advertising campaigns, travel brochures, 
and, for instance, in the hospitable invitation of an Aboriginal tourism 
enterprise in north Australia to 'come share our culture'. The question 
I will especially address in this paper is: to whom does 'our' refer?
On the basis of ethnography on several Indigenous tourism enterprises in 
northern Australia I will discuss the nature of the intercultural domain 
in cultural tourism. I assess the pervasive belief in the benefits of 
tourism for Indigenous people as a rather straightforward road to 
economic and cultural empowerment – a belief which underlies much of the 
upbeat and pivotal rhetoric on 'sharing culture'. However, I do so 
without disregarding the interest for tourism consistently expressed by 
Aboriginal people I encountered in this environment; rather I try to 
explain the active role many Aboriginal tour guides and cultural 
performers often played in sustaining the appraising view of tourism. In 
order to gain an understanding of the capacity of tourism, either 
positive or negative, it is necessary to view Indigenous people as 
agentive in trying to delve its potential 'riches', at least on the 
level of everyday life.

*Where? *Humanities Conference Room, First Floor, A.D. Hope Bldg #14 
(opposite Chifley Library),
The Australian National University, Canberra.
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