Ferguson says the HCTC will return to Sitka on alternate years. She hopes to take the annual event to places like Juneau, Ketchikan, and Anchorage in the future.
Alaska has scenery and wildlife – staggering amounts of both, in fact. But over the years it became clear to Camille Ferguson that visitors to the state were interested in something more than good views.
“We’re not a bygone people,” said Ferguson, the Economic Development Director of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. “We’re here, we’re still here, and we have something to share, and it’s our history, it’s our art, it’s our language, it’s our song and dance. So it’s a bigger than economics,
Ferguson co-founded the Heritage & Cultural Tourism Conference with tribal Business Manager Sandy Lorrigan ten years ago. Ferguson had been involved with tourism for decades, when the Sitka Tribe purchased its first tour buses in the 1990s.
She says cultural tourism can be a means to an end for Alaska’s over 200 recognized tribes.
“Cultural tourism is a means of perpetuating our culture, utilizing tourism as a means to do so,” said Ferguson, “and we’re also utilizing – and I say ‘we’ loosely as tribes – are developing cultural tourism so that it’s a means of sustaining our ability to provide cultural teachings to our children.”
Over 100 attendees from around the state registered for the conference, which included three-full days of presentations, trainings, and breakout discussions on topics ranging from storytelling to caribou tufting. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has put in an appearance at past conferences; this year she sent a video message.
“Just last month, I reintroduced amendments to the NATIVE Act that expands opportunities for Alaska tribes by clarifying the law allowing them to access grants through other agencies, and these grants help create and support cultural tourism efforts, allowing indigenous communities to share their stories, their art, as well as their traditions with the world,” said Murkowski.
The NATIVE Act was originally passed in 2016 to provide grants, loans, and other support to spur the development of tourism capacity in tribal regions across the country.
Looking forward, the plan is for the Heritage & Cultural Tourism Conference to continue moving around the state, returning to Sitka on alternate years. That means people like the Sitka Tribe’s Operations Director, Serena DeTemple, will have to carry home the education she receives at the conference, to pass on to the Tribe’s seasonal hires.
Like Ferguson, DeTemple recognizes the importance of sharing education about cultural tourism around the state.
“I enjoy being able to help, share, and teach our culture to people who come to see us and the people who come to work for us,” said DeTemple. “And it’s a huge passion. And so in order to be able to help with the training of our people, I need the Heritage & Cultural Tourism Conference. It’s a big part of some of the things that I do. It’s networking and being able to work with other tribes, bouncing ideas off of each other and helping collaborate and help another tribe to be able to establish tourism in their area.”
Although the conference is now ten years old, there is a consensus that there is significant room for growth in cultural tourism in the coming years. Both Camille Ferguson and Sen. Murkowski quoted Emily Edenshaw, a co-author of the Alaska Native culture guide, that “Alaska’s Tourism Industry is a sleeping giant that we’re all ready to wake up.”
