Welcome to the European Indigenous Tourism Conference EITC 2025!

The World Indigenous Tourism Alliance, together with the Sámi Parliament in Finland and University of Lapland cordially invite you to the Indigenous Tourism Research Symposium to be held on 20 May 2025 in Inari, Finland, and online as a component of the European Indigenous Tourism Conference EITC 2025.

The Organising Committee invites the submission of abstracts for the Research Symposium. We welcome original research work conducted from diverse disciplinary perspectives including tourism and Indigenous research, the wider field of social sciences, economics and law. In addition to academic papers, we encourage grassroots Indigenous communities to submit presentations based on their lived experiences and worldviews. We give priority to presentations based on Indigenous ways of presentation conveying knowledge (e.g., storytelling, vocal music) and presentations that can serve as an empowering source of inspiration for Indigenous communities and tourism entrepreneurs.

Theme and Topics of Interest

The theme of the Research Symposium is tourism and Indigenous cultural heritage. The relations and connections between tourism and Indigenous cultural heritage, and accusations of appropriation, appreciation and excessive restrictions have been eagerly discussed topics. When tourism is Indigenous-led or developed in a respectful partnership with Indigenous local communities, it can play a crucial role in cultural preservation and revitalisation, providing opportunities for Indigenous entrepreneurs and communities. Indigenous tourism can contribute to the economic strength of Indigenous communities by creating jobs and income for traditional knowledge holders and create an opportunity for the young generation to learn and become skilled guides, storytellers, handcrafters and entrepreneurs. For this to happen, Indigenous tourism needs to be embedded within the community from where knowledge is provided. Indigenous people also need to tell their own story in tourism contexts.

Indigenous peoples and research have been criticising the exploitation of Indigenous cultural heritage in tourism for quite some time. Discussions on the detrimental impact of tourism on Indigenous peoples and on cultural appropriation have in recent decades spread to the awareness of the general public. As a result of this, the cultural appropriation and exploitation of Indigenous cultural heritage may have gained more subtle and hidden forms, not only in tourism but also more widely in business and popular culture. Indigenous washing – comparable to green washing – is a new phenomenon that is so far little researched in relation to tourism or other businesses, or with regard to its wider societal impacts.

Green washing is also a pertinent issue in tourism taking place on Indigenous lands. It makes tourism businesses look sustainable, thus masking its destructive impacts on the natural and cultural environment. The green washers are assumed to be responsible, sustainable companies, and this assumption may be extended to the ways in which Indigenous peoples and cultures are treated in the companies. The ongoing climate crisis and the accompanying green transition with its injustices are further threats to Indigenous cultural heritage. For example, in Sápmi (Sámiland), the construction of windmills threatens reindeer herding that is already suffering from land grabbing, mining, large-scale logging and other competing forms of land use, including tourism. Ecolabels and sustainable tourism certifications may hide these and other kinds of injustices. At the same time, Indigenous peoples aim to have a stronger hold on tourism by creating Indigenous codes of ethics and certifications for tourism. Tourism and Indigenous peoples may also have common interests regarding nature protection. Arctic tourism does not flourish without a well-being environment.

Tourism utilises cultural heritage in multiple ways. Museums which, according to their definition, conserve, store and represent cultural heritage, are among the most well-known tourism destinations. In addition to national cultural heritage, a lot of Indigenous peoples’ cultural heritage has been collected into them. The ownership, management and representation of Indigenous heritage has been discussed both within the museum field and with Indigenous peoples already for several decades. Nowadays, Indigenous peoples’ right to their cultural heritage is recognised increasingly widely. The repatriation projects that have started as a result of this have generated wider calls for the decolonisation of the cultural heritage field as well as efforts where the repatriation has paved its way to a wider community-based control and redefinition of cultural heritage based on Indigenous worlds and conditions. Indigenous-based redefinition of the museum is a worldwide phenomenon where the purposes of the museum are reconsidered. The development of alternative community-based models – decolonisation and Indigenisation – is also an emerging topic of discussion in the tourism sector, including tourism research, with the aim to build a more just society, economy and knowledge production. So far, the relations of Indigenous museums and tourism have, however, barely been researched.

The intersection of tourism, Indigenous cultural heritage and the following are topics of interest:

• responsibility, sustainability and justice
• climate change and loss of biodiversity
• cultural appropriation
• colonialism, decolonisation and Indigenisation
• codes of ethics, certifications
• Indigenous museums
• contemporary Indigenous cultural production and cultural revitalisation
• reconciliation
• Indigenous community participation
• Indigenous entrepreneurship and business development
• Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies

Academic Research Abstracts and Community Project Abstracts

We strongly encourage Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and Indigenous community presenters to submit abstracts.

For academic researchers, abstracts are invited with a word limit of 400 (excluding references). Submissions must be original and in English.

The abstract should include:

• a title
• three to five keywords
• a brief outline of the background, methods, results and conclusions
• a summary statement of significance of the work to the symposium theme.

For Indigenous community presentations, an abstract in English of no more than 500 words is invited addressing a community project’s:

• title
• three to five keywords
• brief outline of the background to the project, the community population where the project is being conducted, how it was done, the results and conclusions for the future
• a summary statement of the significance of the project to the symposium theme.

Academic Research Abstracts and Community Project Abstracts should be submitted as a Microsoft Word document and include nomination for either the academic or the community presentation category and full contact details for the author(s), including their:

• name(s);
• Indigenous affiliation(s) if any,
• organisational affiliation(s)
• email address(es).

It is the submitter’s responsibility to ensure that all spelling and grammar has been checked and is correct. At least one of the named authors must attend the symposium on-site or online for the paper to be accepted in the final program.

To submit your abstract, please email the abstract to:

The symposium language will be English.

Review Process

Each abstract submitted will be subject to a peer review process. Reviewers will evaluate abstracts and make recommendations to the Organising Committee for selection. The Organising Committee will make a decision on whether particular abstracts will be accepted, revised or rejected. The decisions of the Organising Committee are final.

Outputs

Academic and Community Abstracts accepted and presented in the Indigenous Tourism Research Symposium will remain the copyright of the authors. An Abstract Book will be published in pdf format on the conference website prior to the symposium.

After the symposium, opportunity will be available to academic authors for their papers to be published in a special issue in an international high-quality academic journal. Papers submitted for the special issue will go through the normal peer-review process of the journal and, therefore, the Organising Committee cannot guarantee their publication.

Selected Community Projects will be offered the opportunity to publish a summary of their project in a conference report that will be published open access in the TemaNord publication series online after the conference. The publication will be produced by the Sustainable Indigenous Tourism in the Nordic Arctic project <linkki projektin sivulle, kun se on saatu valmiiksi> funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Arctic Cooperation Programme and related to the conference.

Registration

Registration takes place here. For online participants, there is no registration fee. For onsite participants, there is a fee to cover lunch and coffee costs. The onsite participants also pay their own travel and accommodation costs. Information on available accommodation options can be found on the registration page.

Important Dates

30 November 2024: Call for abstracts closes
15 January 2025: Notification to authors of Organising Committee decision on their abstracts
31 January 2025: Final date for authors to confirm their agreement to present their paper
20 May 2025: Authors to present their paper at Indigenous Tourism Research Symposium

Contact for Enquiries:

The symposium is funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.

Event is organized as hybrid, participation is possible both onsite in Inari as well as online. The onsite conference venue is the Sámi cultural centre Sajos. Maximum number of onsite participants is 200. All participants, guests and speakers must register for the conference. There is no registration fee but organizers are collecting fees for catering (coffees and lunches marked in the programme). Catering fees have to be paid in advance. Lunch is available in three restaurants, Sajos, Siida and Wilderness Juutua. The registration deadline is 5 May 2025. Please register for the conference as well as for social programme by using this online registration form.

The conference catering fees are:

• Coffees and lunch in Sajos: 26 €/day
• Coffees and lunch in Siida: 29 €/day
• Coffees and lunch in Wilderness Juutua: 32 €/day
• Dinner on Tuesday 20 May: 51 €
• Dinner on Wednesday 21 May: 77 €
• Dinner on Thursday 22 May: 51 €

Airport transfers

Organizers have arranged private bus transfers for conference participants for these flights:

• Mon 19 May, flight Helsinki – Ivalo at 21:45-23:15
• Tue 20 May, flight Helsinki – Ivalo at 8:10-10:20
• Tue 20 May, flight Helsinki – Ivalo at 20:15-21:45
• Fri 23 May, flight Ivalo – Helsinki at 22:00-23:30

Price is 20 €/way, please register in advance via registration form.

Payments

The catering fees include the VAT 0%. Please note that all payments must be made in advance and in euros (€).

Please choose your payment type on the online registration form. The options are

• Online bank transfer (Finnish banks)
• MobilePay
• Online credit card payment (Visa, MasterCard, EuroCard, Amex)
• Invoice

Invoice will be sent to you separately by the conference office. Please remember to
specify the invoicing address on the registration form. Invoicing fee 10 € will be added to all
invoices. You can request for group invoice by sending email to congress office
().

Cancellation terms

Cancellations must be made by email to Rovaniemi-Lapland Congresses (). Dinner fees will be refunded if the cancellation is received by 14 April 2025 and lunch and coffee fees if the cancellation is received by 5 May 2025. No refunds will be made for cancellations received after these dates. Please note that a processing fee of 20 € will be deducted from all refunds. Transferring registration to another participant is free of charge.

The World Indigenous Tourism Alliance, Sámi Parliament in Finland and University of Lapland organise an international Indigenous tourism conference in Inari, Finland, in May 2025.

The main theme of the conference is ethically sustainable Indigenous tourism. The conference focuses on tourism in the European Arctic.

The conference is organised with the support of the funding granted by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.

The project strengthens sustainable Indigenous tourism development in the Nordic Arctic
through networking and co-operation between Indigenous tourism entrepreneurs in Finland, Greenland, Norway, Sweden and other countries, the Sámi Parliaments in Finland, Norway and Sweden, universities, destination management organisations and the World Indigenous Tourism Alliance. The project activities take place in the frame of the European Indigenous Tourism Conference EITC 2025 in Inari, Finland in May 2025.

The project goal is to strengthen sustainable Indigenous tourism development in the Nordic Arctic by:

• building and strengthening cross-Arctic collaborative knowledge co-creation and capacity building
• supporting the local destination management organisations and private entrepreneurs in their strategic goals regarding sustainable business solutions

The project is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Arctic Cooperation Programme.

Project partners