Touring ‘Country’,Sharing ‘Home’: Aboriginal Tourism,Australian Tourists and the Possibilities for Cultural Transversality

Abstract

This paper discusses the capacity of Aboriginal cultural tourism to effect change in the perceptions and attitudes (and lives) of Australian tourists towards Aboriginality and their own national identity. Following research, it was found that the relational effects of the experience between hosts and tourists often surpassed the tourists’ enjoyment of the expected material displays of Aboriginal cultures. These displays are what most tours are based on, yet this relational context was based on degrees of intimacy that some tourists reported valuing more than simply experiencing demonstrations of a different culture. The importance of intimate engagement on the ‘meeting grounds’ of these cultural camps has a significant role to play in the current socio-political relations between Aboriginal people and settler Anglo-Australians. By visiting these camps, Australian tourists can engage (even if unintentionally) in practical and personal instances of reconciliation that can additionally effect a transversal, or becoming-minor, of the tourists’ subjectivity and thus potentially reordering the tourists’ sense of national identity and belonging.