University of Wollongong Research Online Centre for Multicultural Studies Working Papers Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts 1991 Australian Aborigines & cultural tourism: case studies of Aboriginal involvement in the tourist industry Julie Finlayson Recommended Citation Finlayson, Julie, Australian Aborigines & cultural tourism: case studies of Aboriginal involvement in the tourist industry, Centre for Multicultural Studies, University of Wollongong, Working Paper 15, 1991, 127. http://ro.uow.edu.au/cmsworkpapers/13 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library:
[email protected] Australian Aborigines & cultural tourism: case studies of Aboriginal involvement in the tourist industry Abstract The principal focus of this report has been with issues of direct concern to Aboriginal people and communities involved with cultural tourism. Report recommendations stress the need for greater consideration of Aboriginal cultural perspectives in the development and implementation of government policies. A central question to emerge from the study is whether cultural tourism is merely a novel angle within current developments in tourism and enjoying a good deal of attention and enthusiasm from tourist organisations and operators, or whether it is primarily a context for commercial enterprise development by Aboriginal people? A related matter is the question of what purpose Aboriginal ventures in cultural tourism are designed to serve and in whose interests they are developed? Answers to these issues were not always obvious to Aboriginal people involved in the ventures surveyed nor was it necessarily apparent to some of the non-Aboriginal participants. The purpose of Aboriginal tourism ventures is problematic in public policy and in bureaucratic practice.