Tourism
Authentic Alaska
Cultural tourism creates a “pure real” experience for visitors
By Amy Newman
Alaska Native Heritage Center
I

n the waters surrounding Hoonah, the small Tlingit village located on Chichagof Island west of Juneau, fishermen used to watch cruise ships sail by, carrying thousands of visitors in and out of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. As the same scene unfolded each summer, it planted the seed for what would eventually become Icy Strait Point, Alaska’s only Native-owned and operated port of call.

“For many years, people would be in their fishing boats and watch as tourists came to visit the homeland but weren’t really experiencing the home of the Hoonah people,” says Mickey Richardson, director of marketing for Huna Totem Corporation, which owns and operates Icy Strait Point. “And so, it was kind of like, ‘Why are they going to visit our homelands and not coming to visit us?’ is really where the idea started.”

It’s an idea that has taken root across the state. As tourists show a growing interest in gaining a deeper understanding of the people and places they’re visiting, tribal organizations and tour operators have begun offering an increasing variety of activities to accommodate that demand.

And that makes cultural tourism a big part of Alaska’s overall tourism industry.

According to the Alaska Travel Industry Association’s 2019 Alaska Tourism Economics Fact Sheet, 39 percent of visitors participate in cultural activities, which encompasses more than sixty museums and cultural centers around the state, making it the third most popular visitor activity, tied with day cruises. A 2017 report prepared by McDowell Group found that 12 percent of visitors specifically participated in one or more Native cultural activities or tours, spending an average of $997 per visitor.

Richardson believes that the interest in cultural tourism springboards off ecotourism and its focus on responsible, sustainable travel. The real draw for tourists, he says, isn’t the tour itself, but rather the authenticity it lends to their travels.

“People are just hungry for what I like to refer to as ‘pure real,’” he explains. “It’s more about engaging in the local culture. They just want authentic experiences; that’s what people are just craving.”

Falen Mills of Kake Tribal Tourism in Southeast Alaska understands the sentiment.

“I know when I travel, that’s what I go for,” she says. “I look for people who have lived there all their lives; I want to know more about it.”

“People are just hungry for what I like to refer to as ‘pure real.’ It’s more about engaging in the local culture. They just want authentic experiences; that’s what people are just craving.”
Mickey Richardson, Director of Marketing, Huna Totem Corporation
Exploring and Perpetuating Alaska Native Culture

Alaska’s cultural tourism industry is borne from a desire to ensure that the state’s full history, which began “10,000 years ago, not when they struck oil,” is preserved and shared, says Emily Edenshaw, president and CEO of the Alaska Native Heritage Center (ANHC) in Anchorage.

“Alaska always has been and always will be a Native place,” she says. “Cultural tourism is really an avenue for Native people to preserve and to perpetuate our culture while sharing it with the world.”

That simultaneous desire to provide a full portrait of Alaska’s indigenous cultures and share them with visitors raises the question: are cultural activities created specifically to draw tourists in, or are tourists attracted to them because they already existed?

The answer is a bit of both.

ANHC lets visitors experience Alaska’s five major indigenous groups through artist demonstrations, exhibits, and artifacts housed in the Hall of Cultures; authentic, life-sized Native dwellings erected around Lake Tiulana (a small body of water on the property); and traditional dancing, drumming, storytelling, and other demonstrations performed at The Gathering Place. It is arguably one of Alaska’s most well-known and, with more than 100,000 visitors each year, most visited cultural centers.

Sitka Tribal Tours offers wildlife and rainforest tours as well as storytelling and dance demonstrations at its cultural center.

Sitka Tribe

Sitka Tribal Tours offers wildlife and rainforest tours as well as storytelling and dance demonstrations at its cultural center.

Sitka Tribe

Sitka Tribal Tours offers wildlife and rainforest tours as well as storytelling and dance demonstrations at its cultural center

But when Alaska Federation of Natives passed a resolution in 1987 calling for its creation, its purpose was to create a “safe place for [Alaska Natives] to come together and be in community in a healing place,” Edenshaw says. “It wasn’t created to attract tourists.”

The tourism aspect, she says, is just a small part of ANHC’s overall mission, which is to perpetuate and revitalize the Alaska Native culture and support the population, whether through language programs, culture clubs, outreach, or entrepreneurship classes and support for Alaska Native artists.

The same is true of the Sealaska Heritage Institute’s (SHI) Walter Soboleff Building, which opened in downtown Juneau in 2015. Designed to serve as a cultural and research center to promote Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian heritage and promote cross-cultural understanding, the draw for tourists is a secondary benefit.

“We knew we wanted guests to come here and learn, but I don’t know that we understood the level of demand,” says Ricardo Worl, SHI’s marketing and development director. “Cultural tourism is part of our mission, but it’s probably a lower priority.”

For other organizations, attracting tourists was intentional from the start. Kake Tribal Tourism was the first to begin offering cultural tours in the early ‘90s, Mills says. Sitka Tribal Tours offered its first tour in 1994 after its director questioned why cultural opportunities were lacking and worked to create them, says Dale Lindstrom, tribal tours manager.

“We want to tell our stories,” Lindstrom says of the rationale for offering cultural tours. “We don’t want someone else telling our story.”

With more than one-third of Alaska’s tourists seeking cultural attractions, cultural tourism makes economic sense as well, providing a financial boost to local economies through an infusion of tourist dollars and seasonal jobs.

“We’re putting our community members to work and providing economic growth to the community,” Lindstrom says. “All of my staff are either Tlingit themselves or they were born and raised here in Sitka and they are from another Native entity here in Southeast.”

In Hoonah, Icy Strait Point creates more than 260 jobs each season, roughly 80 percent of which are local and Alaska Native hires and, one year, almost every high school student, which Huna Totem Corporation president and CEO Russell Dick considers “a significant point of pride.”

ANHC’s Edenshaw says supporting cultural tourism and, for non-Native tour operators, partnering with Native organizations not only makes business sense but—from an ethical standpoint—ensures that depictions of Alaska are accurate.

“Why wouldn’t you want to do it?” she says. “Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s better for business. There’s so much research out there that shows when people experience cultural tourism, they stay longer, and they spend more money.”

Activities Inspired by Culture

Tourists have numerous cultural tours and activity options available, from traditional museum displays and cultural demonstrations to typical Alaska adventure activities, like wildlife viewing or guided hikes, that tour operators imbue with Alaska Native history.

Icy Strait Point is centered around the restored salmon cannery, which Huna Totem acquired in 1996, and houses a museum, arts and crafts displays, and restaurants. In addition to Alaska Native dance performances and other demonstrations, Icy Strait Point offers typical Alaska adventures, like bear viewing, whale watching, and a 5,330-foot-long zip line. Though the latter wouldn’t be considered traditional Native activities, each carries a cultural perspective.

“All of our development is built around Native values; it’s about wilderness, it’s about the environment, it’s about who we are, with a little bit of excitement as well,” Richardson says. “Every tour that we run has some Native cultural element built into it. Whale watching, ziplining, kayaking, there’s always a story that’s built into that activity.”

Visitors to the Walter Soboleff Building—its design is inspired by a traditional Tlingit tribal house and includes art that symbolizes the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people—can take a 40-minute tour and view artifacts and artwork depicting the tribes’ culture and history, Worl says. Sealaska also hosts traditional ceremonies and is expanding the building to include an arts campus that will allow it to host demonstrations and an outdoor art market.

Visitors to Kake typically watch a carving or weaving demonstration, hear guides share Tlingit legends at the village’s two totem poles, and watch a dance performance before joining a wildlife viewing or hiking tour. Guides also board the boats, which carry fewer travelers than the ships that visit larger ports of call, to welcome their arrival and talk to visitors.

Traditional Tlingit drummers greet cruise ship visitors at Icy Strait Point, the only Alaska Native owned and operated port in the state.

Huna Totem Corporation

Traditional Tlingit drummers greet cruise ship visitors at Icy Strait Point, the only Alaska Native owned and operated port in the state
Traditional Tlingit drummers greet cruise ship visitors at Icy Strait Point, the only Alaska Native owned and operated port in the state.

Huna Totem Corporation

Alaska Native Games participants demonstrate the Eskimo Stick Pull at the Alaska Native Heritage Center’s The Gathering Place.

Alaska Native Heritage Center

Alaska Native Games participants demonstrate the Eskimo Stick Pull at the Alaska Native Heritage Center’s The Gathering Place.

Alaska Native Heritage Center

Alaska Native Games participants demonstrate the Eskimo Stick Pull at the Alaska Native Heritage Center’s The Gathering Place
The Gathering Place at the Alaska Native Heritage Center offers visitors a chance to watch traditional Native activities, such as the one-hand reach.

Alaska Native Heritage Center

The Gathering Place at the Alaska Native Heritage Center offers visitors a chance to watch traditional Native activities, such as the one-hand reach.

Alaska Native Heritage Center

The Gathering Place at the Alaska Native Heritage Center offers visitors a chance to watch traditional Native activities, such as the one-hand reach

“Sometimes they want to know all about the language, sometimes they want to see demonstrations, sometimes they want to flat out know what it’s like to live in Southeast Alaska,” Mills says.

Small, subtle details and personal accounts lend richness and authenticity to tours and give guests a glimpse into what life was like—and still is like for Alaska Natives.

At Sitka Tribal Tours, regalia is woven into staff uniforms, and guides share tidbits about Sitka’s history and offer Tlingit place names on hikes and bus rides, while Native dancers often greet tourists disembarking at Icy Strait Point.

And guides are encouraged to share their stories, which can turn any activity, from a bus ride to a hike, into an opportunity to teach about Alaska Native history, values, and culture.

“We encourage every employee out there, even our facility folks, to engage with guests and share a part of who they are and their own story,” Dick says. “We’re not going to script anything. It’s personal to them, how they interpret their culture. And that’s a real experience, and [guests] are taking a real piece of somebody home with them. That’s where it becomes real and authentic.”

Mills agrees that personal stories have the greatest impact.

“The stories that I tell for the most part are my personal stories from growing up, putting up subsistence food with my mother and grandmother, and now my kids are doing it,” Mills explains. “That’s what I think makes it feel genuine.”

Even tour companies that don’t specifically offer cultural activities are incorporating Alaska Native culture into their tours. Worl says there has been a “growing demand” in recent years from small tour operators asking for Tlingit place names to use throughout their tours, so Sealaska is “working on creating sort of a cheat sheet that any tour operator can have for their guests to look at for Tlingit vocabulary.”

Native Values in Mind

Discussions about cultural appropriation, exploitation, and who is entitled to share indigenous stories have become more prominent in recent years. Native organizations are not immune to these discussions.

By encouraging guides to share their personal stories, Icy Strait Point ensures that guests learn about Alaska Native culture and values even when participating in activities like its ziprider, the longest and tallest in the world.

Huna Totem Corporation

By encouraging guides to share their personal stories, Icy Strait Point ensures that guests learn about Alaska Native culture and values even when participating in activities like its ziprider, the longest and tallest in the world
By encouraging guides to share their personal stories, Icy Strait Point ensures that guests learn about Alaska Native culture and values even when participating in activities like its ziprider, the longest and tallest in the world.

Huna Totem Corporation

Guides at Icy Strait Point are encouraged to share their personal stories, turning even a bus ride or the zipline into a cultural experience.

Huna Totem Corporation

Guides at Icy Strait Point are encouraged to share their personal stories, turning even a bus ride or the zipline into a cultural experience.

Huna Totem Corporation

Guides at Icy Strait Point are encouraged to share their personal stories, turning even a bus ride or the zipline into a cultural experience

Lindstrom says these are internal conversations that Sitka Tribal Tours has before offering any new activities to ensure that everything offered is done “appropriately, respectfully, and that we’re following our cultural protocols.” Edenshaw says ANHC consults with cultural advisory committees before displaying artifacts or creating exhibits to ensure the historical aspects are accurate and that they are not sharing sacred artifacts the tribe doesn’t want to be displayed.

When conversations for Icy Strait Point first began, Richardson says the cruise line’s initial approach was to “build it out sort of like a Disneyland.” But Huna Totem was firm in its resolve to not go that route.

“If we’re going to build something like this, it’s going to be with our own Native values in mind and in a very authentic way,” he says. “What we want is for people to come visit Hoonah in our homeland and walk away and talk about who we are as Native people, what our culture is, what our heritage is.”

What keeps tours and activities offered by Native groups from being exploitative, Lindstrom says, is the ownership.

“For us, everything that we do, we own,” he explains. The traditional Tlingit Clan House where the Naa Kahidi dancers perform, the tour buses, even the content of Sitka Tribal Tours are created and owned by the tribe. “And so, there’s really no exploitation of the Tlingit tribe from somebody who is not of Tlingit descent or Native descent.”

Collectively, cultural tourism activities, in whatever form, offer tourists a fuller and more complete understanding of Alaska and its people.

“The Tlingit people have been here as long as these trees and these bears, and we’re part of the human ecology,” Worl says. “We view ourselves as part of the land, the same as the animals.”

Edenshaw agrees.

“I live in a state where there are more than twenty Native languages,” Edenshaw says. “There’s a rich community to be proud of. It’s not just glaciers and brown bears and mountains. There’s history right in your backyard.”