Indigenous tourism is on the rise in 2025

Western Australia is one of the most exciting destinations of 2025, with a slew of forward-thinking initiatives like a 4,300-mile electric vehicle road network and new cruise itineraries to the rugged Kimberley region.

However, the state is also looking inward to reclaim its Aboriginal history. And it’s not alone: Indigenous tourism is experiencing an upsurge around the globe, with experiences that move beyond cultural pageantry and allow communities to tell their own stories (the good, the bad and the ugly) while, perhaps more importantly, economically benefiting from the experience. According to a World Travel & Tourism Council report, Indigenous tourism could contribute $67 billion to the global economy over the next decade.

“Increasingly more Aboriginal communities are utilizing tourism as a platform for authentic storytelling and cultural representation,” says Rob Taylor, a Nhanda Yamaji man who serves as CEO of the Western Australian Indigenous Tourism Operators Council. “They are addressing misperceptions and clichés, raising awareness of cultural diversity, and strengthening public understanding of the (less-known) fact that, across Australia, Aboriginal communities comprise a wide variety of tribal groups speaking more than 250 languages, each with their own distinct traditions and lifestyles.”

Last year, the Western Australia capital of Perth welcomed the new EverNow festival, with five nights of art, culture and pyrotechnics to celebrate Kambarang, the Aboriginal season of birth and renewal. And on the state’s Coral Coast, Toni Roe (aka “The Bee Lady of Carnarvon”) is even putting an Indigenous spin on wildlife-watching with her new Burrowing Bee Dreaming tour, an introduction to the Mungurragurra, a species of burrowing bee with deep connections to local culture.

Reclaiming Indigenous narratives

Aboriginal culture traditionally holds that certain practices, including specific ceremonies and lore, are sacred and should not be shared between communities, or even between genders in some cases. However, there appears to be a new openness taking place. “Aboriginal tourism operators are now more empowered to share their stories on their own terms,” says Nicole Mitchell, executive officer of Discover Aboriginal Experiences. “Who better to introduce travelers to Australia’s vast wilderness and vibrant urban centers than those who hold 65,000 years of history and wisdom about the land?”

At the same time, though, the type of stories operators are telling is undergoing a tonal transformation, one that veers away from the typical luaus and powwows travelers might have experienced for decades and toward a more realistic, sometimes painful view of the past and present. “As part of that storytelling, there has been a shift towards ‘truth-telling’ — a process of openly sharing historical truths in an insightful and educational way,” Mitchell adds.

It’s a change happening across the globe, including in the U.S. In South Dakota, for instance, the Lakota-owned Tatanka Rez Tourz focuses just as much on the economic and historic hardships on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as on the natural and cultural beauty of the surrounding Black Hills. Visitors, it seems, are moving beyond the need to glorify a sugarcoated past and are more interested in the current reckoning with bygone tragedies.

Back in Western Australia, Mitchell points to Kimberley Cultural Adventures in Broome as a company doing it right. Founder Robert Dann isn’t afraid to talk about the darker side of Australian history during his tours, and as he explains it, “I tell very intimate stories. They’re not always happy, but they’re the truth. And people like that honesty.” In addition to his tours, Dann has sold didgeridoo ringtones and even launched a new superfoods company called Bindam Mie, with drinks, ointments and oils made from traditional foodstuffs like boab nuts, gubinge, wattle seed, eucalyptus and more.

Inviting visitors to stay awhile

Indigenous communities have also begun providing overnight experiences, often in unique accommodations that speak to the local culture. Next year marks a decade since the debut of Tangulia Mara, the first Maasai-owned lodge in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, and other Black-owned safari companies are starting to pop up slowly around the region, including Tanzania’s Kantabile Afrika, owned by a member of the Chagga tribe, who come from the Mount Kilimanjaro foothills.

Elsewhere, you can now stay in a riverside hut hosted by the Emberá of Panama, join in conservation projects at a thatch-roofed village/research station in the Guyanese interior, or even share a tent with a family of Sami reindeer herders in Norway.

In Western Australia, the trend has been more formalized through a statewide initiative called Camping with Custodians at seven Aboriginal-owned campgrounds. The newest, Lombadina, opened in April 2024 in the Kimberley, and the Bard people who live here take guests mudcrabbing, whale watching, kayaking and snorkeling. Visitors can find a similar experience in Canada at Manitoba’s Turtle Village. Indigenous-owned with off-the-grid cabins in Riding Mountain National Park, travelers can try ice fishing, learn how to bake bannock or listen to stories about war chiefs, knowledge keepers and fur traders.

Celebrating Indigenous culinary heritage

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OWAMNI – BY THE SIOUX CHEF/FACEBOOK

Part political act and part old-fashioned hospitality, many Indigenous communities have sought to revitalize traditional foodways and reclaim endemic ingredients. Oglala Lakota Sioux chef Sean Sherman of Owamni by the Sioux Chef in Minneapolis and Mashpee Wampanoag chef Sherry Pocknett of Sly Fox Den Too in Rhode Island both recently picked up James Beard Awards, and they represent a new generation bringing Native American ingredients to the forefront in creative, contemporary ways.

The movement is also picking up steam north of the border in Canada. “The reclamation of Indigenous foodways has major positive impacts for First Nations, Inuit and Métis people,” says Jenni Lessard, a Cree Métis chef from Saskatchewan who’s serving as interim executive director of the Indigenous Culinary of Associated Nations. “It is especially empowering for youth to see chefs from their communities thriving in the Indigenous culinary space as chefs, cooks, food producers and educators.”

In many areas, Lessard says, communities never stopped harvesting seasonal plants and raising animals despite centuries of forced assimilation at the hands of Canada’s abusive residential school system. But these foodstuffs have taken on new relevance when recontextualized for a wider audience. “To see these same ingredients being presented in restaurants by Indigenous chefs and restaurateurs like Scott Iserhoff of Bernadette’s in Edmonton and Inez Cook of Salmon n’ Bannock in Vancouver adds another level of culture,” Lessard says.

At Bernadette’s, which opened in May, you’ll find dishes like raw elk, risotto-like ocheshishak and brisket with Saskatoon berries atop grilled bannock, a type of bread introduced by Scottish fur traders. The space is decorated with a cheerful botanical mural by Kayla Bellerose, a Cree-Métis painter who goes by the artist name bb iskwew.

Hands-on Indigenous culinary experiences are blossoming elsewhere around North America, too. In Oaxaca, Mexico, for example, the Indigenous woman-owned Zapotec Travel presents food tours and cooking classes through a pre-Hispanic lens, including stops at founder Liliana Palma Santos’ native-corn-focused restaurant Criollito Tlacolula.

New cultural institutions

At the 2024 Venice Biennale, Indigenous artists made a grand showing. An artist collective from the Brazilian Amazon, MAHKU, painted an enormous mural on the central exhibition hall, and the lineup included artists from the Yanomami, Navajo, Maori, Greenlandic Inuit and Aboriginal Australian communities, among many others. Increasingly, new institutions and exhibitions are popping up to showcase Indigenous art and culture on their own terms.

Among the most notable was the 2023 opening of the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum in Palm Springs, California, which occupies a gorgeous curved building inspired by the traditional basket-making of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. The plaza also includes the new Spa at Sec-he, which takes advantage of the hot mineral springs that gave the band its name.

In 2025, the recently renovated and expanded Denver Art Museum will kick off a year of programming to celebrate the centennial of its Indigenous Arts of North America collection. For decades, the Denver Art Museum has worked with Pawnee and Oglala Lakota community members to shape its policies regarding collections use and repatriation of culturally sensitive materials. Upcoming shows include “History is Painted by the Victors,” the first U.S. solo exhibition for Kent Monkman, a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation known for his audacious, large-scale takes on colonialism that incorporate his gender-fluid, stiletto-wearing alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle.

Other major exhibits in 2025 include “We, Native Deaf People, Are Still Here!,” which will be on view at Washington, D.C.’s Gallaudet University through 2026, and the reopening of a gallery dedicated to arts of the ancient Americas at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Abroad, newer museums dedicated to giving more platforms to Indigenous artists include Sao Paulo’s Museum of Indigenous Cultures, which opened in 2022 and is covered in Guaraní motifs; the National Ainu Museum, which debuted in Hokkaido, Japan, in 2020; and the Canadian Canoe Museum, which moved into shiny new digs in May 2024 and features text in English, French and the local Anishnaabemowin dialect to honor the original inhabitants of this part of Ontario.

A major part of the discussion around Indigenous art also involves repatriating stolen artworks and cultural artifacts. This May, for instance, the Harvard Peabody Museum returned five ancient Greenlandic Inuit mummies to the Greenland National Museum & Archives, where they are expected to be reunited with other 500-year-old mummified remains already on display. As Greenland opens up to the world with a new airport and increased air and cruise service, it’s an exciting time for the Inuit community to reshape its own tourist experience after centuries of Danish rule.

Bottom line

Indigenous-focused tourism has been bubbling under the surface for decades in various destinations, but it has finally started coming into its own in recent years. While previous iterations may have focused on finding new ways to talk about history, this latest generation of lodge owners, guides, artists, chefs and more proudly showcases what the present and future might look like for Indigenous folks worldwide. And with Native-owned experiences touching nearly every part of the travel world — from ecolodges to art museums, fine-dining restaurants to safaris — you can add a touch of Indigenous culture to nearly any vacation without looking too far.