The Future of Indigenous Tourism

We want our guests, our own people and the land to be better because of Mati Crossing.

It's not just do no harm.

It's when our guests come, we want to have them leave as better people.

When you think of traveling to Canada, what do you think of?

I'm guessing most people think about beautiful nature and scenery, ice hockey, maple syrup, and maybe the extreme Canadian politeness that we're apparently so famous for.

But these aspects are just very small pieces of Canada's cultural identity and our tourism identity.

Canada has a long, rich and diverse history that was shaped by the people who were here first, Canada's first nations.

Today we're unpacking the current landscape of Indigenous tourism in Canada.

And here to discuss is Juanita Marwah.

Juanita is a leader and advocate for Indigenous tourism who has transformed Metis Crossing, which is located near Edmonton, Alberta, into a cultural destination.

With a career rooted in cultural tourism and Indigenous leadership, Juanita is passionate about the intersection of heritage sustainability and economic development.

This is Curious Tourism, the podcast focused on making travel better for people and for the planet.

I'm Erin Hines, travel writer and content creator, and I'm joined by my producer, Katie Lohr.

If you enjoy the show, Erin, and I would love you to support it.

If you can do one good thing this year, it is support our podcast by telling somebody about it or just finding ways to interact with us and telling us what you want to hear about.

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All our contact info is in the show notes.

Katie, you told me you had a riveting question to ask me.

Riveting indeed.

Okay, so I came across a clip from a podcast called Loud about Nothing and they were discussing this hilarious question that I have to ask you.

They went into more detail.

But here's the question, Erin.

When it comes to vacation or trip experiences, what would you say is the most has the most learning experience?

Disney, all inclusive resorts or cruises?

I don't have very much personal experience at any of these places.

I've never been to Disney.

Oh my God.

Wait, why am I asking you?

But it is a funny question.

I've never been to Disney.

I've never been on a cruise.

I don't think I'll ever go on a cruise.

And I've spent a total of three days on an all inclusive resort.

I literally left because I was like, I can't be here.

Okay, here's my argument.

So I think Disney is probably the.

Top choice that like, for my limited knowledge, that's where my brain would go to.

Because I feel like they're trying to have educational.

So we unpacked this in a Disney episode in like the first ever days of the iteration of this podcast.

Yeah.

And I think like, if you want to talk cultural education, Disney has an interesting perspective on American colonialism and stereotypes.

I think if you look at it from a very meta lens, then you get a lot of great learning experiences there.

Also, I would argue Disney, you get a lot of interesting learning experiences around movie making, media, storytelling.

So I think the power of capitalism.

The power of capitalism.

So I think Disney's probably number one.

This is not to shit on Disney, by the way.

Everyone I know people really love Disney.

I've never been, so I don't know what the magic is that I hear about, but I'm sure that it's a nice place.

I don't know that I would go every year, but this is.

So in this podcast they said they've created this sort of foundational rule that for every year that you go to Disney, you have to go and pick somewhere that is not a Disney vacation, not an all inclusive and not a cruise.

Counterbalance.

Yeah, counterbalance.

The sort of like Americanized version of travel.

That's sort of the argument there because I will say I have experienced the magic of Disney.

Was it magical?

It was.

It is magical, Erin.

How so?

Like, what was magical about it?

I don't understand, understand people.

I've been wondering this my whole life.

Why is it magical?

I think if you like theme parks or you like like roller coaster parks, then it's.

You're there for.

There's an adrenaline rush.

Like immediately like you kind of go into this magical.

I don't want to use that word again, but you enter a made up space.

I think the forced perspective in Disney is like pretty wild to experience.

There's a lot of just like incredible set building there where if you have interest in moviemaking or movie magic or those kinds of things, like when you walk into sort of the Star wars land of it all, which is where I have personally been, and you see a huge life size scale of the Millennium Falcon sitting right in front of you and you watch people coming off of it.

I think I understand.

So you felt going to Star wars at Disney the way that I felt going to the Titanic exhibition in Las Vegas?

Yes.

Okay.

That kind of magic.

Yeah, that kind of magic.

I do Understand and appreciate why people bring their kids to Disney and why people like going to Disney.

Because if, like, it makes you feel really happy.

Yeah, that's an experience you should have.

I didn't have it as a child, so maybe it's because I didn't have it that I don't understand.

I think you go to Disney for like your next milestone.

Like, for you.

I think I'll probably go with my sister's kids at some point.

I think, like, this is.

The kids.

Don't go with the kids.

Don't go with the kids.

Why?

No go with the kids.

But I want to see them happy.

No, no, it's not that fun.

Just go as just adulting.

Just go and be an adult.

Oh, really?

I just don't.

Oh, this is so bad.

I don't think I can bring myself to go.

The irony too is like, Luke's family has a house in Orlando.

We have been there and every time we're like, should we go to Disney?

And we're like, no.

So let's just top tier.

Which is the better cultural experience then cruises or all inclusives?

Disney, we decided, is number one.

Yeah, I think number two is definitely all inclusives because at the very least you can book excursions.

Cruises.

I mean, I don't hear anything good about them.

So I don't know.

On a resort, you're at least in one country the whole time, so you might learn something about that country, especially if you go off the resort.

But with a cruise like you, you're.

You're docked for like a couple hours.

It's not enough time.

Yeah, I think all inclusives.

I personally had a great learning experience when I was staying at an all inclusive in the Dominican Republic.

We went on a excursion that I've probably talked about on the podcast before.

That was a baseball themed excursion.

Excursion.

And we got to see all these, like the homes of players that we knew really well from the Toronto Blue Jays, where they grew up practicing.

We saw a whole bunch of like up and coming baseball players at this like really cool field, just training and practicing.

Like that was really awesome.

And getting some like, context around where these guys come from and where they learned all their skills and like the conditions in which they learned all these skills I think is a huge piece of context that's very interesting to know.

I feel like you could probably learn stuff like this on a two hour quick excursion from a cruise as well.

So it's hard to say, but when you're in an all inclusive, then maybe you book more than One excursion, and therefore you get more time in that country to learn.

Yeah, that's the crux of my argument, is because all your excursions are in the same country, whereas on a cruise, you're bopping around.

So you're going to learn less because you're not immersed for long enough, or.

Are you learning more about more countries?

It's interesting you bring this up, actually, because my godparents went on a cruise and they sent me a long email afterwards saying, we don't think we're cruise people, and this is why.

And it was such an intriguing read.

And they.

For a lot of the reasons that we're talking about, they were like, just.

The excursions were too short.

We didn't like.

We felt like we only got glimpses of places.

They also afterwards did a lot of research about the environmental impacts, which was nice to see, and they were like, oh, we don't know if we feel comfortable, like, supporting this industry.

But yeah, they just said it felt like they only got a glimpse of every port that they docked in and every country that they stopped in.

So, yeah, I think it's pretty firm.

Cruises is in position number three.

Position number three, for sure.

And if it wasn't for any other reason, but sustainability reasons.

Yeah.

Okay.

Should we talk to Juanita now?

Yeah, let's do it.

Okay.

So to begin, Juanita, I'd love for you to share what Metis Crossing is and the goal of Metis Crossing, especially within the context of Canadian tourism.

Metis Crossing is a cultural destination, and it has grown over a number of decades.

And it comes from a desire from the ancestors, our ancestors, to have a place to share and celebrate who we are as a nation of indigenous people.

So the Metis people are one of Canada's three distinct indigenous peoples.

So we have First Nations, Metis, and Inuit.

And we're all a bit distinct.

The Metis people, we are actually children of the fur trade.

So if these European fur traders did not arrive on the east coast hundreds of years ago, the Metis people would not exist.

So the Metis people, our flag is an infinity symbol, which demonstrates the joining of the first nations in the European cultures to create a new nation forever.

We don't suggest that mixed ancestry means Metis.

So it's not nine months and one day after the first European arrived that the first Metis person was born in what is now Canada.

It happened, and our culture happened and grew over generations.

So we developed our own language, our own art, our own food systems, economic systems, cultural systems, and that happened over generations.

So through a process of ethnogenesis, it was when the children of those mixed marriages weren't accepted into the first nations cultures and weren't accepted into the European cultures three or four generations later.

They're building their own lives and they're building their own communities and their own relationships with the land that they sit on.

It was through that process that the Metis people emerged in what is now Canada.

Now they've been drastically misunderstood.

Unlike our first nations ancestors, we do not claim to be on this land from time immemorial, but we do claim to be a nation of people in this land that is now Canada.

Before Canada was.

So that's our history.

That is very incorrect.

So what we do at the crossing, our goal is to fundamentally change worldviews.

We want people to leave Metis Crossing differently than how they arrived at the crossing.

So we want them to know things like the basic information.

They know that Louis Riel was a traitor to Canada.

I want everyone to leave knowing that Louis Riel was actually a father in confederation.

The Manitoba act that was signed to bring that province into the democracy was actually partially authored by him.

The Metis people and their provisional government gave a list of rights to the federal government, and it was through that process that the Manitoba act was created.

He was actually a father of confederation to us and was elected to the parliament a number of times, but never allowed to actually step foot in the building.

Thank you for that history.

I think that's so important to talk about, especially because so many of our listeners aren't Canadian.

They're living in the US or in Europe or other countries abroad.

And even as Canadians, I think, like.

Especially in the last.

Like, Katie and I have talked about this a lot.

We feel like in our childhoods, we weren't taught so much about Indigenous history.

And this is definitely a gap in my knowledge.

Like, a lot of the learning I've done has been as adult.

And, yeah, I know very little about Metis.

So thank you for the crash course.

I also wanted to ask what led you to work as a leader at Metis Crossing?

So that's a big personal question.

It's related to what I just shared with you, actually.

So I grew up just outside of Edmonton, and my mother is Norwegian, Irish.

My father is French Metis.

So I actually appear very blonde.

And at a very young age, my French Metis grandparents sat down and said, you know, it'll be far easier for your children to prosper in our society if they don't identify.

So I grew up primarily not identifying as an indigenous person.

We would go to multiple different indigenous events, but always as observers, never as participants.

So we remained connected, but not in a deep way.

And it wasn't until I finished my master's degree and I finished a master's degree in Northern Thailand.

I lived with the hill tribes up there, looking at sustainable ethnic tourism.

And when I came back, I was strangely hired by the Department of Rural Economy at the University of Alberta.

And they asked me, they said, if you can survive northern Thailand, you can survive northern Canada.

So they asked me to go into northern Saskatchewan and interview indigenous hunters, mostly first nations, in Metis.

They weren't any Inuit.

They were Dene and Cree, though.

And so I spent the next year of my life interviewing indigenous hunters and trappers on non timber resource values of the forest.

So what did you hunt?

What did you trap?

How did you process these?

How do you use the trees?

What are your sacred areas?

And it was the best year of my life.

And it was at that point that I realized this thing that's inside of me, this Indigenous ancestry that exists in me has been suppressed.

And this just allowed me to realize how beautiful my heritage is.

And so I came back to Edmonton.

I walked into the Metis Nation head office and I asked to do my ancestry improved my lineage, and I became a Metis citizen with that.

My first job was working for a tourism development consultant.

And we did.

We were hired to do the feasibility study for what is now Metis Crossing.

And that was kind of an introduction for me.

And at one point, the president of the Metis Nation of the Day said, okay, enough planning.

We need you to do something.

We don't know many Metis people with your heritage or with your experience.

So I started working on the very early Metis Crossing for a number of years.

And then I left and had four beautiful children and raised them for 12 years.

And we are now one of Canada's leading cultural destinations as a place to really have transformational experiences and to learn about the Metis people in a very deep way.

And it's a Beautiful thing for people coming to Canada.

We have over 160 different indigenous nations, and each one of us is different and each one of us has beautiful stories to tell.

So it's really wonderful to have a place that is ours as Metis people, where we can.

We never say that the history you know about Canada is wrong.

It's just woefully incomplete.

So we're adding a whole other perspective that most people have never even considered.

I talked about my parents, my grandparents, making a decision that it would be easier for me to thrive as a non Indigenous person in the landscape of Canada.

The main reason that I do what I do is so that no parent, no Metis parent ever has to make that choice again.

So that all Metis people can really stand proud.

Because Metis people are across our homeland and they're doing so many different things.

And it's nothing that we need to be ashamed of to have this Indigenous heritage.

And I want Indigenous people to be able to truly stand tall in who we are.

Yeah.

This leads nicely into what we want to chat about next.

Because we've spoken on this podcast many times about how, at least, like in our own experience, we feel that there is not much Indigenous representation in the Canadian tourism landscape, at least here in Ontario, where we're based, it feels like you really have to seek out tourism experiences that focus on Indigenous learning or Indigenous history.

I work as a content creator.

All the tourism boards DMOs I talk to, I always say, like, can you please include Indigenous tourism?

And it's been wild to me how many respondents say, oh, we don't have anything for you in that department.

We would love to see Indigenous tourism experiences be front and center when Canadians are planning domestic travel, but also for visitors from abroad too.

And of course it would be great to see more Indigenous communities benefiting economically from tourism.

So I'm curious, curious about your thoughts about the current landscape of Indigenous tourism in Canada.

Do you feel that you're seeing improvements over the course of your career, over the course of working in the field?

And do you feel like Indigenous tourism is becoming more prevalent and maybe, I don't know if we want to use this word, but maybe more trendy in recent years?

Yes, to all of it.

So I mentioned that I had started working for Metis Crossing early on.

There was lots of interest in the tourism community, however, very little commitment to it.

So the landscape that we have right now in terms of Indigenous tourism, particularly in Alberta, but I would say across the country, is far more supportive than it ever was before.

I would say that it is primarily driven by a few key events.

And this is my personal opinion, one, certainly within Canada, is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I think before that work was done, people did not really understand.

They thought that Indigenous people were whining.

But I think when you hear the outcomes of the actual Truth and Reconciliation Commission, you understand the depth of the pain and some of the challenges that Indigenous people had endured in our history before.

It just wasn't real because we weren't learning about it at school.

So it wasn't real.

And then the other thing in Western Canada in particular that I think really drove interest in Indigenous tourism was when they uncovered the graves in the residential school in British Columbia.

That opened the eyes and opened the interest of so many Canadians all of a sudden saying, I don't know the truth.

I don't know what happened.

And I think there's a genuine interest now in learning more about the history of Canada.

So I would say those are two really big events.

And then I think the third just is an economic driver.

There is a real economic benefit for countries, for provinces, for Indigenous nations to support Indigenous tourism.

It is a huge opportunity where Metis Crossing is located.

We're driving a visitor economy.

We brought $35 million of investment into this community, and we're continuing to bring visitors from Germany, from France, from the uk From Australia, from the US So we are driving an economy now because visitors from around the world are really interested in learning more about a destination and learning deeper about a destination.

So tourism.

Indigenous tourism is providing economic impact not only for the Indigenous entrepreneur community, but for the province and the country around us as well.

I think this is something that I just fundamentally don't understand, because as someone who travels a lot, Indigenous history and culture and heritage is, to me, so much more interesting than not to shit on our current tourism in Canada.

But to me, that's a lot more interesting than what is on offer.

When I speak, like, I have family in Europe, and when I speak to them about, like, what they think of, when they think of Canada as, like, a place to travel to, they never say anything about, like, going to a Powwow and experiencing that, to me that's like, what is so beautiful about this land?

And I just wish that it was like more represented in, in like our outward facing identity as a, as a place to visit to other people.

Yeah, I think it's.

I think it's getting there.

I know certainly with Travel Alberta and Destination Canada and the new tourism Federal Tourism growth strategy, all of them have identified indigenous tourism as one of the pillars of growth moving forward.

And so it's growing there.

But there's a whole new system that has to be built up around that to support it.

Part of it is our work as indigenous nations to provide the product.

And I'm using that product word in quotations.

When I was in Northern Thailand, one of the things I noticed is that the tourists came right into a community and they were, I would, you know, flat out, they were rude, they were obnoxious, they were walking like right into a hut.

I was sitting there with a woman who was nursing her baby and someone walked right in the front door and just looked around and I'm like, what are you doing?

So the indigenous community ourselves, we have to be ready and prepared to decide what we are and are not going to share with those guests and then to develop the product that is both authentic and honest to who we are, but also welcoming to visitors.

Because I think visitors are becoming more aware and more cautious about how they enter into communities.

So we have to provide the structure that allows them to feel safe and to feel welcome.

And also, like just speaking from my own experience, I attended a pow wow last summer for the very first time.

And a big piece of the experience for me was the pre education that was given to me.

Like, I was handed a pamphlet when I entered, explaining to me like, everything I needed to know to like, respectfully and responsibly experience the powwow.

And I think that's like a big part of it as well.

I imagine in like indigenous tourism in general is just like figuring out how to educate people who aren't part of these communities so that they can participate in a way that's helpful and not rude 100%.

And how you find the guests to do that as well.

Right.

You as a content creator probably had a whole system built up around you to welcome you into the community.

But for other people, more random members of the community or even with tour groups, making sure that we're finding the right ways to communicate that.

And it is about feeling safe and welcome when you enter into those spaces because they can be so beautiful and so Enlightening.

When you get into a pow wow or any kind of cultural celebration, what.

Would you say are the main challenges that are facing Indigenous entrepreneurs and organizations?

And do you have ideas as to how these challenges can be overcome?

I think there are a few.

And one of them you had mentioned in the last questions, is it becoming trendy?

And I think there is that danger.

Metis crossing is 100% owned by the Metis Nation within Alberta.

The leadership is primarily Metis, but I have hundreds or not hundreds, tens of other people working with us that are non indigenous.

So we are very authentic.

We are authentic in how we develop our programs.

We have a building that was designed by a Metis architect that was also built by Metis general contractor.

But there are lots of other organizations out there who teeter on the wanting to be an ally and wanting to share indigenous stories, but maybe doing it in a way that's really more economically beneficial for themselves than for the indigenous community.

So I would say ensuring that it is the indigenous people or the Indigenous nation or the indigenous entrepreneur that is actually benefiting from the economic exchange that does happen.

We have a number of great allies out there that are trying to be more respectful of their relationship, of how they share Metis or other indigenous groups stories.

But we have to be very clear that it needs to be Indigenous led.

The stories.

I mean the phrase is nothing about us, without us.

But it's not just consulting us in those stories.

It's making sure that we're the ones sharing them.

So if you are in a public sector museum or center that you have Indigenous people sharing those indigenous stories because it can become trendy very quickly.

Another challenge certainly from at Crossing for us to share our stories authentically, quite often it's happening on a land base that is not inside an urban center.

So the infrastructure to get people there can be very challenging.

Whether that infrastructure or the roads we had to install, potable water treatment, wastewater treatment, broadband, all of these sorts of things.

Because many indigenous people live further from the urban centers, there's often more straight infrastructure that needs to be developed, which isn't very sexy when it comes to kind of funding programs and stuff.

People don't want to fund that kind of thing, but it is very important.

Without the proper infrastructure, it's really challenging to move forward.

And then I would say the third challenge we face is human resources.

It is hard.

Well, tourism in general is struggling to get enough people trained and working in our sector.

When you're working in Indigenous tourism, I think it's just a little bit harder because the population is smaller, and there hasn't yet been a lot of training programs directed at them.

I am hiring, for example, a number of people who are non indigenous into particular positions that are then helping to mentor others into that role.

The human resources is a big challenge, but also the absolutely most vital element of our success because Indigenous tourism is based on its interactions with indigenous people.

And so we have to have people that are confident in sharing our stories and also supported to do so.

So I guess it involves a lot of mentorship within the community as well.

Absolutely.

We have a very strong focus at Metis Crossing to have elders and youth working together.

I mean, that's part of the beautiful thing with Indigenous tourism, as well as a cultural preservation and sharing that goes on through the different generations.

But it's not always easy to have that happen.

It's not only just the 60 scoop, it's also the whole residential school system.

There was lost generations, but what we find is the remaining elders or knowledge holders that still have the information are so excited to share it.

So when they have it, they're pretty open to sharing it with other people who have open hearts to receive it.

And I think many of them were just seeking to find a place like Metis Crossing where they can be in a completely safe space to share it with the next generations, because they don't want it to be lost any longer.

They want to revive the traditional ways of knowing.

It's not just knowing how to bead or knowing how to weave or make a set of moccasins.

It's about a way of thinking and a way of being that takes time to learn.

It can't be learned in a workshop.

It takes days and weeks and months and years of just listening and talking.

And places like Metis Crossing, and there are more, really provide that safe space for that to happen in a way that indigenous people have had to hide and do things in private or in hiding for so long, are now able to do it on a very public stage.

It's kind of amazing.

We used to be roadside allowance people, and now we're voted as one of the top 50 places in the world world to visit.

That's a huge evolution for us, and it's a beautiful thing for all of us to be proud of.

It's sad that it has to be so intentional for us to create these spaces where Metis people feel truly celebrated and accepted.

But it gives me hope that these spaces are arriving and then hopefully younger people who maybe don't have parents who are teaching them or have knowledge to share with them.

Maybe young people will have an easier time finding their way back to their heritage.

We have multiple calls or people reaching out in a month saying, I just learned that I'm Metis.

I have no idea what that means.

I don't have a kokum.

I don't have a mushum.

I don't have an auntie.

And they come and they sit and they sit with our elders and our knowledge holders.

And multiple times I walk into the gathering center and there'll be people crying, which is beautiful.

That's, you know, it's a release.

It's a safe space for that to happen.

And then at the same time, I'll walk in an hour later, and a group from Germany will walk in laughing, enjoying things.

So it's just such a neat place to see the exchanges.

And we're all human.

We all eat.

But how we share that and the way we prepare our food is different.

And when people can connect on that level, the basic human level, and then learn to appreciate each other, it's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

And then I guess, like, on the note of the future of Indigenous tourism, because we've touched a little bit on reconciliation already, I'm curious how you feel that tourism can play a part in reconciliation.

Whether you think it can be a piece in fostering community and cultural understanding and just like general learning between Settler Canadians and Indigenous communities.

I think absolutely.

I think it's one of the best tools for that one.

Just the learning that happens when you attend an Indigenous tourism experience, whether it's an individual entrepreneur taking you out onto the land or an individual artisan teaching you a traditional skill or coming to somewhere larger scale like Metis Crossing or Wyandake or the Squamish Lolowat.

There are a number of us out there, those interactions.

I think we want to fundamentally change worldviews.

We want you to see what Indigenous people are capable of, but I think it goes beyond that as well.

So as an operating business, particularly where we are, we have business partners.

At Metis Crossing, for example, we have a joint venture which we call Visions, Hopes and Dreams at Metis Crossing Wildlife park.

That is a joint venture between a non Indigenous rancher and Metis Crossings.

Buffalo are a huge part of our history, a huge part of our story in terms of how we built our governance systems, how we built our economic systems, our food systems, obviously.

So we wanted to share that story, but we didn't have any internal buffalo capacity anymore.

But down the road from us is a Ukrainian rancher who happens to be Alberta's largest buffalo rancher.

So together we created something better than either one of us could have done on our own.

And those interactions, that rancher is now one of our greatest advocates.

At the local coffee shop in the morning when people are asking questions, you know, it's those day to day business interactions as well.

It's not just about the public face of what we share at Metis Crossing, but everything that happens in the background is an operating Indigenous, successful Indigenous business that I think also fundamentally changes worldviews.

We are leading the visitor economy in our region again.

So there's not very often that you see across Canada that Indigenous nations are leading any industry.

Usually we're hanging on to other organizations that are leading an industry on our land, but now we're leading that and we are supporting other entrepreneurs, indigenous and non, all around Metis Crossing to thrive as well.

So I guess like building the partnerships within communities is also creating sort of like cultural learning between both and appreciation.

Yeah, I completely agree about learning.

Like I did a couple Indigenous tourism experiences last summer, some in Ontario and some out on Cape Breton and.

And like throughout all of them, my husband and I were just like, how did we not know this?

How are we in our 30s, like living in Canada and not aware and like one of the really important moments for us was we were taught and invited to participate in a smudging ceremony.

And this obviously is like a practice that has been.

What's the word?

It's been taken by white people and transformed into other things.

And so our concept of what a real traditional smudging ceremony was was completely wrong.

And it was through that experience that we learned actually like what they're meant for, how they're practiced, how to practice it properly.

Yeah, I think it's just such a beautiful way to learn and to be taught with Indigenous people how to do it properly was just.

It was a really special experience.

I'm curious about the educational activities that are happening at Metis Crossing.

Are there like specific programs that you're running that are design to teach people who come visit?

Yeah, we have them at a number of different levels and scales.

One of the ones that we've just recently brought online is Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

So the University of Alberta had that massive MOOC and it was so successful and they actually created a professional development course from that.

Now we're licensed to offer that Indigenous Peoples in Canada course at Metis Crossing.

But we do it over two nights and three days and we engage the participants in deep learning about who we are as Metis people.

So our Metis foods, our signature experiences, like Tales of the trap line or visions, hopes and dreams at Metis Crossing Wildlife Park.

So they take the book learning and then they experience it.

And we do special things, like as they go through the course, our elder, Lily Rose, has them make a wall pocket.

And a wall pocket is a traditional Metis craft that we use scraps.

So whatever we had, we used.

Nothing went to waste in our society.

So they make these pockets and hang them on the wall.

And then at the end of the day, you'd put your change or whatever it was that you had in this, but we make these.

And then as people are going through the course and they're learning about residential schools and treaty processes, they're taking their learnings and putting them inside the wall pocket.

So we just take these beautiful existing courses and deepen them.

So we do that for professional development.

We have a whole series of field trips for school children.

And we have that as an amazing resource.

And then we have worked with another partner, Relay Education, that does renewable energy courses for kids.

And so we combine the book learning of the relay education with our Indigenous knowledge of how we located the solar field and how we're now producing this energy in relationship with the land that it's sits on.

So our very purposeful learning programs go right from early learners to professional development, and then there's just fun things we do as well.

This is a nice segue into talking about sustainability.

How do you think sustainability and tourism can coexist, especially within the model of Indigenous tourism?

I think it has to.

To do it, to be authentic in what we do.

And actually, we try to talk a little bit more about regenerative.

We want our guests, our own people and the land to be better because of Metis Crossing.

It's not just do no harm.

It's when our guests come, we want to have them leave as better people.

When our team members come to Metis Crossing and our own community members, we want them to leave as stronger Metis people.

I can list a number of times when we've had different events, and myself and our team here, we really struggled to be proud to be Metis until this day.

Now we're here at Metis Crossing and we're seeing the beauty of who we are, so the beauty of connecting to our culture, but then also the land.

And I think with all Indigenous nations, you'll see that, that we have traditionally lived in relationship with the land, our foods, our Arts, they all come from the land on which we reside.

And that's why you see such diversity across the different nations in Canada, is because the landscapes, in many ways that we live on are different as well.

So Metis Crossing has always tried to incorporate that in everything that we've done.

Very early on in our engagements with the elders, I remember sitting down and they said to me, we need a Metis Crossing already exist.

Our ancestors have walked on this land.

Our ancestors have chosen this land.

All you need to do is now make it accessible to the public so they understand us.

So every building, every trail, everything that we've done has tried to be in relationship with Mother Nature.

We don't fight Mother Nature.

If she wants the water to flow this way, we let the water flow that way.

We move the buildings over.

So we spend a lot of time on understanding the land.

All of our landscaping is done with species that are natural to the area and most of them are edible.

So we actually go out and we pick the rose hips that are planted around the buildings and the different berries.

We know that as we grow, we're going to have more and more guests, and it's going to be harder to do that.

So we've actually taken some of those traditional species and planted, like a thousand Saskatoon bushes so that we can go out, we can harvest, and we can do those teachings and make jam with people.

We.

And our.

Our rationale there was to also buy a buffalo herd.

So we've also bought the buffalo herd, and we're putting the buffalo back on this land that has been fairly intensively farmed for the last 200 years.

We're trying to live in relationship by having cultural, sharing, cultural activities.

We will absolutely be eating these buffalo, restoring their role as a main food source for us.

We'll probably sell some of the buffalo meat as well so that we have a meaningful economic system that is all in relationship and balanced with the land that we sit on.

It seems like a lot of, like, your approach to sustainability at Metis Crossing is shaped by Indigenous belief and Indigenous life and culture.

What do you think, like, would be the main takeaways for settler Canadians that are working in tourism?

I think it can be done.

And I think for me, that's so important is that there's a mindset sometimes that we have to.

If we want to succeed economically, we have to rape the land that we're on to make that possible.

And then we're going to leave there and go on to the next thing.

We don't think that way.

We think in generations.

We think about.

We want to make sure that we're going to be here in 100, 200, 500 years.

So generations to come.

So to think that way, we have to know that we're living in relationship with the land that we're sitting on.

We can't consume.

We have to live in balance.

Absolutely.

We can consume some, but not so much so that it's doing damage because we need to consume again in five years and 10 years and 50 years.

We need, as Canadians, to change our mindset so that we're all realizing that we have to live in balance and relationship with the land that we're on.

And whatever we're doing, it's not to say that we don't need gas, we don't need fuel, we don't need forestry, we need all of those things.

But how do we do it in balance?

Yeah, I think that's a really good takeaway that we should all be thinking about in every aspect of our lives, truly.

Well, thank you.

To wrap up, I have one final question.

I'm wondering if you could share some indigenous tourism experiences that you recommend people go out and have across Canada.

So at Metis Crossing, but any others that you know of as well that you think people should know?

There are so many and they can continue to grow.

I think as a young student when I was doing my tourism degree, I always wanted to go to Wendake, which is in Quebec, the Wendat First Nation.

And I think they've done a wonderful job.

I did have the privilege of going to see them last year.

I think that's a beautiful experience.

The Claqus Lodge on the west coast as well is a beautiful experience.

Closer to home, we have some great little ones as well.

So there's Hideaway Adventure Grounds, which is just an hour north of Metis Crossing.

Painted warriors and Mohican Trails are two other operators closer to the Rockies.

So I think that the number of operators is growing.

The woods is a new one between Edmonton and Jasper, and they have an indigenous spa there, which I think is.

Is just coming along beautifully.

And I think, like, the number of operators in Alberta in particular, I think we're trying to take over B.C.

in terms of the number of operators and good operators.

But it's wonderful to see because everyone's sharing their nation, their indigeneity in a slightly different way, which just adds to the beautiful woven texture of the sash of Canada.

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