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Author's Statement on the
Anthropology of Tourism Tourism
studies, in general, have emerged in the past 20+ years as a major turn in academic inquiry. Drawing from both the earliest
literature on indigeneity and the tourism industry and over 10 years of fieldwork with the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation
in North Carolina, I have found a rich area for the understanding of indigenous identity. By working from the perspective
of the "toured" -- not the "tourist" -- there is clearly an "opposite othering" that occurs
to keep the ravenous tourist appetite in check while simultaneously allowing the native population (whether that is Cherokee,
Moari, and Masai or Sami, Welsh, and Sicilian) to keep their own traditions and identities. Public Indians, Private Cherokees:
Tourism and Tradition on Tribal Ground is but a single example of the type of ethnographic work that is possible coming
from this perspective. While I have chosen in this work to stay away from any in-depth discussion of the religiosity and spirituality
of the EBCN per se -- that work is being done by other researchers -- I found that this emic perspective offers a view of
that dimension as well. The phenomena of "dancing for tourists" that occurs in nearly every native setting or the
many sites around the world in which throngs of tourists bedecked with cameras and currency with which to behold and buy the
"exotics" is created by the indigenous for the tourist's benefit. At home, away from the tourist
gaze, identity in the form of language, foodways, spiritual life, or non-Western family systems continue.
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