Linking Culture and the Environment

274 Tourism and Indigenous Peoples
The other model of indigenous community development, closely aligned
with principles of sustainable tourism, and the ethics of sustainable development
is indigenous co-management of protected areas. The debates over sustainable
tourism and appropriate use of natural heritage and protected areas
together with models of effective management have been linked to efforts to
restore and address the land rights of indigenous peoples (Scherl et al., 2004;
Fisher et al., 2005). A range of cultural and ethical issues surround the identification,
evaluation and management of cultural landscapes, particularly
those associated with the history of indigenous people and the associated
issues of territory, dislocation, secret knowledge, lost language and sacredness
(Healy, 1997; Harrison, 2004). Co-management of protected areas and
the use of locally managed tourism to generate income for both indigenous
communities and the conservation work has been successful in a number of
countries, notably Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Kenya, New
Zealand and South Africa.
While protected areas generally are national government-managed and
funded, protected area-based tourism is not without its problems for traditional
owners, especially if the ‘protection’ creates exclusion or displacement
(Scherl et al., 2004; Olsder et al., 2006). For example, Machu Picchu,
World Heritage Site has outstanding cultural and agrarian values as a 500-
year-old Inca city. It is one of the most important tourist destinations in Latin
America. For the poor people of this land, it is sacred, yet the system which
declared it ‘protected’, ironically removed these traditional owners and
stewards, and then through virtue of its inscription as ‘world heritage’
because of its outstanding universal values of significance, paradoxically
encouraged hundreds of thousands of visitors, generating vast income while
the asset has been degraded, both spiritually and ecologically, and the indigenous
people experienced loss of basic necessities of food and water
(Andrade, 2000).
A second case study from Australia looks at a co-managed national
park. The concept of aboriginal ownership and joint management of national
parks in Australia has emerged as a response to increasing acknowledgement
of aboriginal rights to traditional lands. Co-management involves the
establishment of a legal partnership and management structure reflecting
the rights, interests and obligations of the aboriginal owners as well as the
relevant government (Bushell, 2005). In 1981, Gurig National Park northeast
of Darwin, in the Northern Territory became the first co-managed park
in Australia. Since then several others have emerged in the Northern
Territory, Jervis Bay Territory, New South Wales and Queensland states
(Smyth, 2001).
The statutory Management Plans under the Australian Environmental
Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act; Commonwealth of
Australia, 1999) for each co-managed park look to tourism to generate significant
income for the traditional owners and for the conservation goals of the
park. Tourism is anticipated to be the key to eventual self-sufficiency for the
indigenous community and provides the pathway for park values to be communicated
to the wider world.