Sustaining local language relationships through indigenous community-based tourism initiatives

This research explores and explains the vital role of language relationships as foundational to supporting culturally appropriate, culturally relevant language use within indigenous community-based tourism settings. Significant language theories broadly posit a nature versus nurture perspective on how people acquire this uniquely human ability. Indigenous perspectives hold that language is place-based: an expression of their relationship with the land, the ancestors, and to each other – that language comes from the land. Both perspectives consider language central to individual and collective cultural identity. The progressive loss of indigenous languages globally is a serious threat to sustaining indigenous peoples' life ways and cultural heritages. This article stems from research exploring language and tourism related issues in Haida Gwaii, Canada drawing on the experiences and insights of those with knowledge of these issues in Hawaiʻi and Aotearoa (New Zealand). This research employed an indigenist methodology drawing on narrative inquiry and participatory action research to develop the methods used. The paper examines the centrality of language as the defining construct or relationship to which community-based tourism initiatives must be oriented – an expanded space wherein the connection to place, through language, provides the cultural basis for integrating language into tourism products and services.