Sustaining local language relationships through indigenous community-based tourism initiatives

ABSTRACT

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.

通过本土旅游活动来维持当地语言

本研究探讨和解释了语言关系在支持与文化相适应的、与文化相关语言运用的土著社区旅游设置中的基础作用。重大语言理论大致断定了人们如何获得这种独特的人类能力的先天与后天的观点。土著观点认为，语言是地方型：他们与土地、祖先和其他语言的关系表达来自于土地。两个角度都考虑了以语言为中心对的个人和集体的文化认同。土著语言的逐渐丧失对于维护土著人民的生活方式和文化遗产是一个全球性的威胁。本文源自加拿大夏洛特皇后群岛语言和旅游的研究探索， 吸收利用了夏威夷和新西兰奥特阿罗相关问题的知识经验和见解绘图。本研究采用叙事探究和行动参与开发使用的新方法。本文考察了以语言为中心的定义结构，以社区为基础的旅游活动必须以此作为方向进行扩展，这其中通过语言关系到地方，将语言集成转化为旅游产品和服务。

Keywords:

• community development
• cultural tourism
• sustainable tourism
• language relationships
• indigenous tourism
• accessibility
• visibility to language

关键词:

• 社会发展
• 文化旅游
• 可持续旅游
• 语言关系
• 本土旅游业
• 交通方便
• 语言能见度

Acknowledgements

This research would not have been possible without the purposeful insight of community participants in Haida Gwaii, Hawaiʻi and Aotearoa. The author would like to acknowledge the many voices that contributed their traditional knowledge, experience, and insight to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. There are three dialects: the southern dialect in Skidegate (HlGaagilda), the northern dialect in Old Massett (Gaw), and the Alaskan dialect in Hydaburg/Ketchikan (K'iis Xaat'aaay Tlagaay) (Steedman & Collison, 2011). This research was confined to the dialects used in Skidegate and Old Massett. Xaayda kil or Xaad kil are the words for Haida language in Skidegate and Old Massett, respectively.

2. The Haida Heritage Centre at Kay Llnagaay and Haida Gwaii Museum are located in Skidegate, British Columbia, Canada.

3. Indigenous community-based tourism: Defined as development based on the establishment, or re-establishment of relationships with the land, with one's personal aspirations, with one's immediate and extended family, and with one's associations (Bell, 1999).

4. The term “life ways” is credited to Kii'iljuus, a Haida elder who feels the phrase reflects diversity by choice (Interview, 2012).

5. Several sources note Haida Gwaii as the Islands of the People, including Gill (2009), Dalzell (1973), and Boelscher (1989).

6. Established in the late1970s, the Haida Gwaii Watchmen guard the ancient villages from careless visitors (www.pc.gc.ca). The ancient village of SGang Gwaay or Ninstints (Nans Dins) is located on a small island off the southwest tip of Moresby Island (whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/CA/).

7. A key observation made in Hawaiʻi is the need to acknowledge and account for those in the community who, for many reasons, do not speak their language (Kimura, Interview, 2012).

8. Hard linguistic determinism (Whorf) is predicated on the belief that language delimits (defines) one's experience of the world (Sera, 2000).

9. Soft linguistic determinism (Sapir) is predicated on the belief that language shapes (informs) cultural variations, that is, “is an acquired function of culture” (Language and Linguistics, 2013, para 3).

10. The Quw'utsun’ Cultural and Conference Centre is located in the Cowichan tribal area of Vancouver Island, Canada, in the City of Duncan. The local Hul'q'umi'num’ (language) is endangered with 150 fluent speakers.

11. Language vitality: the measure of factors assessing the level of endangerment including, intergenerational transmission, absolute number and proportion of speakers to total population, shifts in domains of language use, response to new domains, availability and quality of educational materials, community attitudes towards language, and government / institutional attitudes toward the language (www.unesco/org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-language/vitality/).

12. The author acknowledges this framework is a highly categorical representation of the major themes. The thesis uses Haida art form to appropriately depict these relationships (see Whitney-Squire, 2014).

13. Personal names are used with the informed consent of participants.

14. SHIP: Skidegate Haida Immersion Program (www.haidanation.ca/Pages/langauge/skidegate.html).

15. The terms Native Hawaiian or Hawaiian are relatively current and commonly used terms referring to the indigenous peoples of Hawaiʻi (Diamond, 2008).

16. Language domains are used by linguists to describe the social areas in which a language is used, for example, the family domain, the workplace domain, the ceremony domain, the education domain etc. (Fishman, 1972).

17. Similar competitions and halau hula (hula schools) support traditional and modern forms of hula in Hawaiʻi, for example, Eo o Emalani i Alakaʻi Festival held annually in Kauaʻi is considered one of the most powerful cultural experiences in the state (www.kokee.org/festivals/the-emalani-festival/). The festival draws large numbers of cultural performance groups incorporating tangible and intangible forms of language in the celebration of Queen Emma (Field journal, October 2012).

18. Broadly, the majority of participants in Haida Gwaii considered themselves language learners (10) or semi-speakers / language proficients (4).

19. In Old Massett, the Haida Language Society (Xaad Kihlgaa Hl Suu.u Society) plays a similar role supporting the preservation and revitializaiton of the Xaad kil.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kelly Whitney-Squire

Kelly Whitney-Squire completed a doctorate with the University of Otago in New Zealand, specializing in cross-cultural studies, community-based tourism development, and indigenous language and tourism issues. Her interest in language began while exploring the relationship between aboriginal ecotourism and community-based tourism as a master's student at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Northern British Columbia, working on the implementation of a language-based tourism program in Haida Gwaii, and continues to live and work in the Haida community.