Cultural Tourism in Nunavut

How can such failures be avoided? The answer is subtle but straightforward when seen from the community's perspective. The cultural experience offered to visitors must be a genuine reflection of the community's life, with Inuit participants doing what they really do and visitors invited to share in that experience. What this means is simply that the cultural programs must be developed for the community's sake, not just for the tourists. For example, drum-dancers and pisiq-singers must be engaged to involve community members in a program designed to serve their desire to preserve and celebrate these traditional activities. That is genuine cultural activity. The visitor who is invited to share in the experience, even as a detached observer, is witnessing a living part of the community's cultural reality. If the cultural programs are real, are alive, then the "cultural tourism" will be sustainable. If the first key to a sustainable cultural tourism program is that the individual elements must be "alive" as cultural entities within the community, the second key is that all of the cultural components of the program benefit if they are coordinated and supportive of one another as a network within the community. They are best offsinging from the same songbook, some would say. To be effective, the "cultural network" must have a central coordinator (whether individual or organization) to act as a nexus, a focal point within the community. This goal can be achieved in a number of ways, but by one means or another, the cultural elements of the program should be drawn together as a community network for the cultural tourism program to be sustainable. For that to happen, cultural leadership from within the community must be identified and empowered in a coordinating role for the longer term.