Travelling responsibly
This is a long one! In fact you might have to click "read in browser"
Greetings readers! I have some new people here and I am happy to welcome you! To briefly summarize, I write about tourism issues by exploring journals or news articles and sharing interesting links about travel and tourism. For paid subscribers, I will be sending out an extra quarterly issue. My initial plan was to publish a monthly subscriber issue but I have learned that is not manageable.
How are you? There are heavy subjects in the news and I hope that you are all taking care of yourselves. I hope you are doing what you can to either call your elected officials and express your opinions and/or donate to causes you care about, it is the season of giving.
Housekeeping item numero uno: Yoga and next week’s classes
On that note, some of you know that I teach yoga virtually 4 times a week. You can sign up at that link. If you didn’t well now you do! :) Next week is Thanksgiving in the US and I’ll be taking the day off from work to observe it. Last year, I was actually in Peru for Canadian Thanksgiving and then in the Galapagos for US Thanksgiving, so I missed both - this is not a complaint! But, it is my favorite holiday so I will be celebrating this year and cooking a meal. Anyway, 50% of all class fees for next week’s classes will go to the World Central Kitchen. This includes my regular students who have class cards and are not paying per class. I chose the charity because they help all over the world.
“WCK is first to the frontlines, providing fresh meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises.”
Housekeeping item numero dos: Writing Group
I have one more housekeeping note! I recently joined a new writer’s group. New as in the 5 of us created it because we were all working on individual projects on Substack and/or books and were looking for a community. You can meet these other smart, talented, well-written women on their Substacks: Petya, Kaitlyn, Lauren, and Gabriella. Gabriella does not have a Substack yet but we are slowly convincing her, I think. She has a historical fiction novel in the works. We had our inaugural meeting this week and I am so happy that I connected with this group of women.
Something we talked about was having a virtual writing work session in December, and we all agreed that we could invite other writers to join this work session. It will probably be based on the Pomodoro method or something similar, which is 25 minutes of work, 5 5-minute break to chat, 25 minutes of work, 5-minute break, etc. Will it be an hour or 90 minutes? Not sure yet. But, if you are currently writing a book, essay, poetry, your memoirs, or journaling your heart out and want to join a co-writing session that will not have any guidance, you are welcome to join! I’ll be hosting the first one and sharing details here in my next edition. It will be free and likely before the holidays take over and things get nuts for everyone, so probably before the 15th of December.
Now, on to the Tourism Links!
The best way to avoid getting sick on an airplane.
Eco-friendly cashmere from Mongolia. As a knitter and a lover of cashmere (but I don’t currently own any) I would LOVE to knit a sweater in cashmere.
The growth of responsible tourism in Mauritius, which is usually known as a resort destination.
Wondering about traditional clothing and what is considered okay for tourists to buy and wear? Nat Geo explains.
How digital nomads create problems for locals. Yikes.
According to an August report by U.S.-based human resources company MBO Partners, the number of Americans who call themselves digital nomads grew by 131 per cent from 2019 to 2022.
Cool art exhibits worth travelling for, I would love to see all of these!
The recent/current seismic and volcanic activity in Iceland is scary. It is obviously affecting or will affect tourism (remember the eruption of 2014?) but is also splitting homes in half and opening up sinkholes.
I can’t introduce this any better, so “How to Plan an Indigenous Travel Experience—Respectfully”. The article also has a link to the native land map, which tells you which land you’re on!
I have been dabbling at writing a story/book/novel for a year now, as mentioned above with the writing group. Part of it takes place in Argentina and isn’t during the Dirty War, but the story has required research about this period. I found a tour operator’s webpage that has an excellent explanation of responsible travel and all that it encompasses. It is best summarized with the bullet points below that I grabbed directly from the site.
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM TIPS
Support the national parks systems and don’t resent the entry fees. As long as local people, from government to grassroots, can see that conservation equates with burgeoning coffers, they will have another reason to protect the land and the species that live there.
Whale watching is now a big pull for Patagonia. There are many issues around whale watching, but there are good opportunities to do well-managed whale-watching trips from ports on the Península Valdés or just watch from the shore. Punta Norte Orca Research is a conservation organization based in the area, and is a member of the responsible World Cetacean Alliance, which promotes responsible whale watching worldwide.
There are strict laws in wilderness areas like Patagonia about lighting fires. Be careful too with cigarette butts if you smoke. A 2011 fire on the Chilean side burned over 40,000 acres of wilderness, took weeks to contain, and destroyed a vast swathe of flora and fauna. The cause? An illegal campfire.
Waste disposal is also a big issue, especially in remote areas, where an accommodation owner might have to travel for hours to get rid of waste, so take your rubbish with you if you can. Use a refillable water bottle, avoid plastic bags and watch your waste. If you have space to bring rubbish in your luggage, then you have space to take it away.
You may come across places – museums, national parks plus popular tourist places like tango clubs or estancias offering BBQs – that operate a two-tier price system, with prices for tourists in US$ and another price for Argentinians in pesos. This does not necessarily mean you are being charged more! The peso is often in such an unstable state of fluctuating value, many businesses are just keen to be paid in a more stable currency to cover costs and maintain long-term viability.
Tourism appropriation of Sámi land and culture
Disclaimer: I had never heard of the Sámi until about 3 years ago and I still don’t know very much. That is why I picked this article, to learn more. It is unclear if I did learn much more. If you’d like a quick summary of who the Sámi are, here and here are some more in-depth resources. For the shortest explanation possible, I’m using Britannica online for the definition.
The Sámi are an indigenous people who inhabit Sápmi, their preferred name for Lapland, and adjacent areas of northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well as the Kola Peninsula of Russia. They are speakers of the Sami languages, which are endangered.
The researcher and writer of this article interviewed Sámi people who are employed in the tourism industry and he also “made observations of the tourism landscape and public discourse in Northern Norway.” The interviews touched on sensitive tourism, which meant different things to different people, as you might guess. The Sámi people have not been treated well by the governments of the countries they inhabit and some countries tried to erase their culture entirely at one point.
“For centuries, Sámi and Norwegians lived side by side more or less all-over northern Norway (Andresen, Evjen, and Ryymin Citation2021). However, the authorities were Norwegian, and at a certain point, it became state policy to erase the Sámi culture. Today, the authorities have asked for forgiveness for the humiliating policies of the past, and in most respects, the Sámi have equality with Norwegians. However, the history of suppression and patronizing of the Sámi is not forgotten, and the authorities are often mistrusted” (Viken, 2022).
The bulk of the article discusses cultural appropriation and touches on land and space appropriation and tourism. The researcher defines cultural appropriation with the following statements “The essence of cultural appropriation is when somebody from outside is exploiting the culture. Presenting and exposing the culture, and even making money thereof, by members of a cultural group, is not seen as cultural appropriation. Culture as a resource for business is widely accepted” (Viken, 2022). That is a definition that I think we can all agree upon.
However, it seems like there are a lot of elements of Sámi culture like clothing and patterns, hats, art, handicrafts, musical instruments, and songs that are for sale in tourist shops but it seems unclear to me whether the Sámi interviewees are okay with this. The researcher, Viken, writes “The cultural appropriation aspect of trading of cultural items as souvenirs is that the interpretation and control of the items are transferred to people who are external to the culture. This happens even before the purchase” (Viken, 2022). That is a subject that I would guess each culture has a different answer to, whether or not recreations of their sacred items as souvenirs is something they can stomach. Viken does write that throughout Norway, the Sámi knife and tent are widely used and not just by the Sámi.
This article left me wondering if the Sámi who were interviewed would prefer to not have anything to do with tourism. That is entirely their right. Since that does not seem like an option since the cat is already out of the bag, the researcher suggests that tourism in the region be “aware of previous struggles, and struggles about the present and the future, [and] should be part of the tourism agenda, as well as establishing terms and worldviews in which people are equally valued” (Viken, 2022).
Equally valued is important. I think that most would agree with that. No one can change history or past actions. Going forward, tourism agencies and state-sponsored tourism agencies can and should do better and treat indigenous tourism so that the land, culture and space of the Sámi, or any group, are not appropriated. Viken emphasizes that if tourism appropriation is offensive or “perverts culture” then actions need to be modified. However, I don’t think he has any one solution since it would need to be specific to the particular culture and situation.
I am going to leave it at that for this article. I think I have more questions and more reading to do about the Sámi, indigenous tourism, and sensitive tourism. I would love to know if anyone has a book, article, or podcast they recommend in regard to any of those three, please share. Do I have a secret Sámi expert in the readers? Do I have a reader who has been personally affected by tourism cultural appropriation? If you read that long article in full, feel free to comment if you disagree with me about anything. That’s all. I hope I’ve approached this article and topic in the right way. I can breathe now.
Source: Acta Borealia, A Nordic Journal of Circumpolar Societies, Volume 39, 2022 -Issue 2, Tourism appropriation of Sámi land and culture, Arvid Viken, Pages 95-114 | Published online: 20 Jun 2022
Consuming
Books: Since the last issue I read Yellowface and Bright Young Women. I thoroughly enjoyed both and read both in 7 days total. They’re fast and interesting reads. Yellowface is about two author friends, one successful and one not so much. The successful one dies in a freak accident and her friend takes a finished manuscript from her house, makes edits, and submits it to her own publisher and becomes a best-selling author. That is all in the book description so I have not revealed any spoilers.
Bright Young Women is fiction and imagines the lives of the women, friends, and families who were victims of Ted Bundy. The author never names him though and calls him The Defendant. I liked that. The story was good and also very sad, obviously. I finished Land of Milk and Honey, mentioned last time as my current read, and it did not end how I thought it would. But, overall I enjoyed it. It was a post-apocalyptic story about a utopian settlement on a mountain in Italy run by a wealthy father and daughter interested in genetically engineering a perfect ecosystem. Why? To survive on the smog-covered Earth that was becoming increasingly hostile to life. They funded their experiment with their own money and by wine-ing and dining rich investors. The story is told from the viewpoint of a young chef they hire to work in their kitchen to cook with all of the genetically engineered and reintroduced extinct plants and animals.
Watched: Because I didn’t know that much about The Defendant mentioned above (he shall not get any more attention or mention from me) I watched Netflix’s Conversations with a Killer about him. What a monster. Gross. I found it interesting but also want my time back and also think law enforcement was completely inept.
Audiobooks: From the library, I checked out Dickens and Prince by Nick Hornby (of High Fidelity and About a Boy, movies and books I’ve loved) and it was a quick 3-hour listen. I learned so much about both artists/legends and perhaps I’ll give Dickens another chance beyond A Christmas Carol. We had to read Great Expectations and Hard Times in high school and I did not enjoy them one bit. Hornby discusses that children and teens should not be reading Dickens so perhaps that was my issue. B-O-R-I-N-G to teenage Sonya. However, I finished that book wanting to read anything and everything about Prince! So I’ll be on the lookout for that and currently accepting suggestions.
That’s all for this edition. I’m not a gift guide person but if there is anything travel-related that you’re shopping for this holiday season, I am happy to put together my favourite useful items. What types of articles would you like me to review? What kind of links? I have decided to focus on holiday tourism next month and I am going to set up a content calendar for 2024 like an organized and civilized publication.
Thank you for reading and subscribing.
-Sonya