Making place : community tourism at Xat'sull Heritage Village

Scholars often frame cultural tourism in terms of a host/guest relationship between communities and the tourists who visit them. In this thesis, I explore the relevance of the host/guest framework when discussing tourism at Xat’sull Heritage Village (XHV), a small community-based cultural tourism site located in the interior Cariboo region of British Columbia and managed by the Xat’sull First Nation. Throughout, I work to complicate the host/guest dynamic, arguing that a nuanced understanding of tourism at XHV requires acknowledging the role of the land, and in particular the site of XHV itself, as agentive. Ultimately, this thesis examines the notion of Xat’sull Heritage Village as a site where connections between people are made, but also as a site that is in itself inherently powerful and connected to the people who inhabit it. I argue that acknowledging human connections to the land in a tourism setting can be a powerful act, facilitating cross-cultural understandings and helping to correct the damage done by the centuries of colonial violence and oppression First Nations communities have endured.Arts, Faculty ofAnthropology, Department ofGraduat