If 2023 was any indication, tourism in BC is bouncing back from the COVID-19 lockdown. Domestic and international visitors are starting to come back to the world-renowned landscapes of our beautiful province, all with their own ideas of what they’ll find, and what they’ll go looking for. For many, connecting with local cultures rates high on their list.

Indigenous cultural tourism offers travellers opportunities to connect with the original stewards of these lands, to experience the cultures that have shaped, and been shaped by, BC’s environment. North Vancouver Island is rich in cultural history, and many First Nations are, in turn, looking to engage the people who are visiting their homelands. As a potential hub for Indigenous cultural tourism there is a unique opportunity to strengthen local economies and build relationships that foster meaningful reconciliation.

In November 2023, MaPP hosted a workshop to strengthen the tourism sector in North Vancouver Island and lay the groundwork for growing Indigenous Cultural Tourism. Members of the tourism industry met in Campbell River, collaborating to chart a path forward.

Research from Destination BC and Destination Canada shows that Indigenous cultural tourism is the fastest growing sector of the tourism industry, projected to grow from $1.78B to $6B in direct contributions to the Canadian GDP over the coming years. This research highlighted that visitors want deeper connections with the place they’re visiting and the people who live there. It also emphasized that there’s a fine line to walk.

Nations want tourists to learn and be engaged, but not at the expense of cultural sites, or the very cultures they’re looking to engage with. According to Brian Collen, General Manager of Knight Inlet Lodge, there’s a “fine line between an authentic Indigenous experience and an exploitative one”. For that reason, it’s critical that Indigenous communities are directly involved in these tourism operations. Collen believes that successful cultural tourism is built on “real partnerships between tourism operators and leadership within the Nations”.

Megan Humchitt agrees. As an Indigenous Tourism Specialist at Indigenous Tourism BC, she spends a great deal of time building these kinds of healthy partnerships. “These collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders are key to building a sustainable tourism industry.”

Alongside partner organizations, MaPP is working to support the re-growth of NVI’s tourism economy post-pandemic. At their workshop in the fall, the MaPP partners learned that this re-growth relies on having a prepared tourism sector, with the capacity to build strong partnerships. According to Humchitt, it all starts with “picking up the phone,” but there are still some gaps in the resources available to tourism operators and First Nations alike.

In the coming months, the MaPP partners will be working with the tourism industry to develop those resources and build bridges between First Nations with tourism operators. This is just one of the recommendations from the workshop—those who are interested can contact Nanwakolas Council for the full list of recommendations in the recent report.

Ultimately, Indigenous Cultural Tourism is an opportunity for reconciliation. According to Humchitt, cultural tourism can “open a safe space for education, dialogue, and respectful exchanges.” That is where the rubber meets the road. By strengthening relationships, MaPP hopes to support tourists and locals alike to engage more deeply with the territories they find themselves on. In-turn this can empower Nations to share their stories and lead the way to a future of sustainable tourism in the region.

The brown, translucent fronds of sugar kelp that hover below the ocean’s surface throughout coastal B.C. and beyond are gaining interest as an aquaculture product.

MaPP partners in North Vancouver Island ran a pilot study to learn more about ideal growing conditions for the brown algae, which can be eaten and used in fertilizers, biofuels, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. Their next step is to determine how big a sugar kelp aquaculture operation would need to be to make a profit, and to review these findings with Nanwakolas Council member First Nations whose traditional territories would be affected and who would need to be consulted on any future aquaculture operations.

“It’s easy to grow,” said Don Tillapaugh, the Marine Plant Pilot (TMPP) project manager. In December 2018, Tillapaugh and a team of researchers wrapped single lengths of rope with twine colonized with sugar kelp spores and suspended those ropes underwater in three coastal sites off northeast Vancouver Island: Port Neville, Clio Channel, and Havannah Channel. The spores looked like brown fuzz on the ropes, and by spring, small kelp fronds were visible, mainly between two and four metres below the sea’s surface at each site. By late May, the fronds had reached their peak weight. The kelp at Port Neville grew about twice as big as fronds grown in the two channel environments, and Tillapaugh said he suspects it’s because the Port Neville waters are more nutrient-dense, fed by nearby mud flats.

“It’s a potential economic driver for some of our coastal First Nations, and something sustainable,” said Gina Thomas, a senior member of the Tlowitsis Guardian program, and a researcher with TMPP. She said commercial farming of the kelp allows greater control over conditions, as opposed to harvesting wild kelp. And, she said she hopes the research will encourage bands in the area to pursue kelp aquaculture. “You don’t need a lot of money or equipment up front,” she said.

Challenges to commercial success, however, exist.

“Growing kelp is like growing cherries,” Tillapaugh said. “It all reaches its peak at the same time and has to be harvested within about one week.”

“It’s a huge risk,” he said, noting the kelp starts to degrade after being picked, and if it’s going to be available throughout the year, it needs to be dried or otherwise processed into a product with a shelf life. “Processing plants don’t exist right now,” he said. Other potential challenges include labour availability in remote locations, transportation, and variability in growth from year to year, he said.

Most concerning, there is no well-defined large market for kelp, Tillapaugh said. While niche markets exist, including high-end restaurants who order small amounts of fresh sugar kelp, Tillipaugh warned, “We need to make sure the market is there before people get into growing it.”

In that vein, the next step for this MaPP project is to research the feasibility of kelp aquaculture, including where it could be sold, in what form, at what price, and what the start-up costs of an operation might be.

In 2016, a MaPP-funded market analysis on shellfish and kelp aquaculture reported some favourable conditions for kelp aquaculture, including that global interest in aquaculture products was steadily growing; and that while several Asian countries are the largest producers and consumers of kelp and other seaweed products, B.C.’s reputation for pristine waters attracts interest in its aquaculture products. The report also suggested that niche marketing techniques, including First Nations branding of kelp products, could bump its selling price.

Although only one company, Canadian Kelp Resources, has been growing and selling kelp in coastal B.C. (since 1982), interest in kelp aquaculture and harvesting has recently surged.

“If you think about future food shortages, kelp may become a beneficial source of sustenance,” Thomas said.

The projected cost of the nine-month TMPP project was $33,000, however, Tillapaugh said the completed project cost less. The Marine Plan Partnership for the North Pacific Coast (MaPP) funded this research after identifying sugar kelp as a new potential sustainable aquaculture opportunity in the North Vancouver Island sub-region.

For two decades, Tlowitsis band member Gina Thomas has been combing the coast and forests of her nation’s vast territory on North Vancouver Island in search of cultural sites that mark her people’s rich heritage. One of her more recent finds triggered feelings of both excitement and frustration.

A cliff dwelling was discovered in Tlowitsis ancestral lands. Heavily protected on all sides by a deep trench, a rushing creek and raised earthen beds or ‘berms’, her ancestors had lived out of harm’s way high on tiers in the rock face.

“For me, personally, I would love to put a timeframe to sites like this…to understand how our people lived, their movement and the time period,” explains Thomas, a Tlowitsis Guardian since 2015. “When we put up signs to protect cultural sites like this, we say we’ve been in the area for thousands of years. But we don’t have an exact date and that’s frustrating for me.”

Also frustrating for Thomas, and others who live and work in the North Vancouver Island Marine Plan Partnership (MaPP) sub-region, are the threats posed to these sites by human and environmental impacts.

“Back in 2001, during the land planning process, we found cultural sites were being disturbed, as the Elders had described,” says Scott Harris, resource planner for the Nanwakolas Council, which includes the Da’naxda’xw/Awaetlatla, K’ómoks, Kwiakah, Mamalilikulla, Tlowitsis, and Wei Wai Kum First Nations. “A decade later, when I began working on marine planning in the region, I was shocked to learn it was still happening.”

The protection of cultural, archaeological and heritage sites is a high priority for Nanwakolas member First Nations, as set out in their “Ha-ma-yas marine plan” for the MaPP region of North Vancouver Island. In 2016, the Nanwakolas Council began a significant two-year study through MaPP to define, identify, verify, and highlight potential protection measures for the rich, cultural and heritage resources within the members’ traditional territories.

As a first step, the existing literature was surveyed to find out what had been documented for more than 2,600 cultural sites in Nanwakolas member territories, many of which are formally registered in the Province of B.C.’s database. “This part of the Northwest coast is known ethnographically around the world – yet we know next to nothing about it archaeologically. Much of the initial research was done 50 to 60 years ago and no one’s really followed up since,” explains Dr. Sean P. Connaughton, an archaeologist with Inlailawatash, a Tsleil-Waututh-owned heritage firm that co-led the study. Inlailawatash submitted comprehensive reports for the study that would include a cultural and heritage assessment, a cultural heritage field program, as well as a vulnerability and sensitivity assessment.

In the summer of 2016, Connaughton, guardians, and other First Nation representatives took to the field to verify the accuracy of the literature. What they found did not match up. “Most of the registered sites were not recorded accurately, and the size and significance of the sites in the recorded documentation were also inaccurate,” Connaughton reports.

First Nations need accurate site measurements and other data to better protect cultural sites and to explore cultural tourism opportunities, explains Thomas, who took part in the field survey. “It allows us to advise where development can happen and to inform local kayak operators and tourists where they may or may not visit.”

In June 2017, the Nanwakolas Guardians Cultural Heritage Field Program helped train participants to assess the vulnerability of specific cultural sites in protection management zones (PMZs) and special management zones (SMZs) identified in the MaPP North Vancouver Island plan.

What they found was alarming. Cedar burial boxes were smashed open, burial blankets removed, and bones or skulls placed disrespectfully. In an ancestral village, kayakers had set up camp in ancient house depressions on white shell middens – important sites where First Nations lived and often interred their dead. A culturally significant pictograph was found at risk due to weathering. Fish weirs, clam gardens and canoe skids were exposed to impacts from climate change and marine-based activities.

Protection of these sites is important for many reasons; of particular significance, is the way in which they connect current generations more deeply to the past with their ancestors. “I can’t stress enough how personally we take it when we find a burial cave ransacked,” says Thomas. “I believe that most people would feel as we do, if they found their ancestors’ resting places disturbed or damaged.”

Recommendations for site protection were made at a joint meeting of Guardian and Stewardship program representatives and the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development (FLNRORD) on Harbledown Island in October 2017.

Education in the form of site signage and community outreach, as well as on-the-water monitoring by guardians are included in a three-tiered strategy developed by the MaPP plan partners – Nanwakolas and the Province of B.C. – to protect and manage these cultural sites. Connaughton points to the daily conversations guardians have with people on the water about their ancestral places. “As knowledge holders, education is one of the biggest tools the Nations have.”

“Education is working,” Thomas agrees. “People want a story. That’s why they come and visit.”

Due to the number and density of First Nations cultural and archaeological sites, the strategy also calls an area-based management approach – to offer long-term efficiency over individual site-by-site protection. Discussion is underway with the Province and Nanwakolas on development of a pilot project to test the strategy in a high traffic area of the Broughton Archipelago. This would include strong participation by First Nations guardians on the water.

“As a First Nations people, we want to protect our archaeological sites. The status quo used to be that we were left out – I’m really excited that times are changing,” says Thomas.

Harris says it’s encouraging to see First Nations and the Province work together on cultural issues important to the communities. “MaPP has been a great step in helping get this work done.”

MaPP co-leads in the North Vancouver Island (NVI) Marine Plan area are carefully reviewing a trio of newly completed reports that suggest critical roles for First Nations in economic development and conservation activities.

“These studies show that we’re serious about implementing this plan, and that there are economic opportunities for everyone here—even in stewardship,” says John Bones. As marine coordinator for the Nanwakolas Council, he helped design the scopes of work for the reports, which were completed as part of MaPP implementation in this sub-region.

One report explores opportunities for development of key sectors: coastal forestry, seafood processing and marketing, research and monitoring, marine-based renewable energy, aquaculture and tourism. It suggests actions to advance them and ranks these by potential impact, approximate cost and time frame.

It offers no “silver bullet” solutions but suggests many opportunities could be unlocked by greater collaboration, both among First Nations communities and between aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities. It identifies ways to strengthen individual communities’ access to economic development expertise and to bolster connections among economic development experts (and investors) in communities around the sub-region. It also recommends development of an NVI economic development plan to identify synergies between multiple local planning processes.

Tourism is seen as especially promising. Low-cost actions with potentially high impact include greater cooperation between MaPP partners and Vancouver Island North Tourism, development of aboriginal and cultural tourism, and better promotion to international markets of the sub-region as a whole.

Shellfish aquaculture is the focus of a second report. It analyzes biophysical capabilities of 22 areas that the NVI Marine Plan zones for Special Management–Cultural/Economic Emphasis, using extensive datasets from government and salmon farms in the region. It also considers factors like nearness to services and labour, and likelihood of local acceptance.

The result? “Shellfish aquaculture could supply some local markets, but large-scale commercial aquaculture of Pacific oysters or Manila clams probably won’t fly in North Vancouver Island,” says Bones, citing the key obstacle: frigid waters. “But it does suggest potential for aquaculture of blue mussels, and kelp for huge Asian markets.”

Four areas are flagged for deeper investigation: Booker Lagoon, Kalogwis, Minstrel Island/Call Inlet/Havanna Channel, and Port Neville. Pilot-scale projects, adapted from models used by other First Nations to identify viable growing sites and train people, are recommended.

A third report investigates opportunities to power up the five guardian programs that make up the sub-region’s Ha-ma-yas Stewardship Network. They and their counterparts in other MaPP sub-regions engage First Nations in activities that support conservation and resource management.

The report lauds the “significant progress” of Ha-ma-yas and recommends partnerships with relevant B.C. government agencies. For example, guardian watchmen could conduct joint patrols with conservation officers and park rangers. Opportunities for collaboration could be explored by B.C. Parks, the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations’ archaeological branch, and Nanwakolas member nations that have conservancy agreements and marine protected areas.

Provincial government staff interviewed by the researchers identified several potential barriers to collaboration with guardian watchmen programs, including complexities associated with overlapping territories.

Andy Witt, the B.C. government MaPP co-lead for NVI, sees scope for the Guardian Program to support implementation of the NVI Marine Plan. “To capitalize on the opportunities identified in the report, the key challenges for the MaPP partners to address are issues associated with liability, personal safety, and provincial jurisdictional limitations in the marine environment,” says Witt.

In fact, all provincial interviewees viewed collaboration with guardian watchmen positively in the areas of ecological monitoring; compliance promotion through presence on the water to “observe, record and report”; and provision of data to support enforcement activities. They stressed the importance of building trust and relationships through joint actions as a starting point.

Bones is hopeful about possibilities. “We really appreciated that B.C. government tenuring agencies were so supportive of this study and so forthcoming with the researchers, and that B.C. Parks seems quite open to exploring a bigger role for guardian watchmen,” he says.

The three reports were shared at a MaPP implementation advisory committee meeting in October 2016.

People create borders but oceans flow right through them. So when it comes to marine planning, it seems natural to cross borders to share ideas, knowledge and goals.

In June 2014, five members of the Smith River Rancheria Tribe of Tolowa Dee-ni’ from California/Oregon visited the Nanwakolas Council of North Vancouver Island to learn about the Nanwakolas approach to marine planning with its MaPP partners. The Tribe is spearheading collaborative tribal marine planning on the U.S. Pacific coast.

Since 2010, the Nanwakolas Council has travelled south to make two presentations: one at the indigenous ocean science forum, hosted by the Tribe, and one at an event hosted by Point 97, an Ecotrust company. Then last month, the Tribe’s delegation traveled north to gather information to share with coastal tribes in Washington, Oregon and California. Ultimately, the Tribe hopes to facilitate the establishment of a West Coast Tribal Regional Ocean Partnership that would explore ways to approach marine planning, develop policy and participate in the implementation of the planning work.

“We’re at the very beginning stages of trying to figure out how do we communicate across state lines,” said Briannon Fraley, self-governance director for the Smith River Rancheria, Tolowa Dee-ni’.

The Tribe’s territory straddles the California/Oregon state line, one-third/two thirds respectively. Nearly 100 miles of coastline connect the two. This means the Tribe communicates with two state governments as well as the federal government.

Nanwakolas means “a place we go to find agreement.” And with many years of land and marine planning experience, Dallas Smith, president of the Nanwakolas Council, has much to share about working to find agreement – both among collective First Nations and in government-to-government relationships.

We shared some of the hurdles that we’ve gone through, through collaboration,” said Smith, “But we also hope that they saw some of the successes that we’ve been able to build as a result of being able to collaborate.”

“I keep hearing, that the provincial government and the First Nations have a really good working relationship,” said Fraley. “And so that is going to be one difference for us and we need to figure out a way to communicate and collaborate better.”

What advice did Nanwakolas have to offer? “We advised them to build a strong government-to-government relationship that exists at three levels: technical, bureaucratic and political,” said Smith. “And the other piece is patience. You know, someone picks an arbitrary timeframe, like planning should take two years. Planning takes what it takes because you need the community buy-in, so you have to have that patience for your community to engage so you can build those robust grassroots community plans.”

Smith explained that a plan is only as good as its implementation. “Your implementation is only as good as the capacity that you have at hand. So, through the info sharing we’re going to help each other build on each other’s capacity as we go forward.”