Sámi Indigenous Tourism and Snow & Ice in the Arctice

The 37th International Symposium on the Okhotsk Sea & Polar Oceans. Executive Committee of Symposium. 19 February 2023 - 24 February 2023. Mombetsu Arts & Culture Center, Mombetsu Municipal Museum, Mombetsu Machinaka Art Museum, Mombetsu Citizens’ Public Hall, Okhotsk Sea Ice Museum of Hokkaido, Arctic Research Center, Hokkaido University. Hokkaido.

Recently, the global warming causes rapid environmental changes and Covid-19 pandemic affected the tourism industry as well as the local communities in the Arctic. In northern Finland, for example, traditional reindeer herding practices have suffered from difficult winters and the pandemic prevented the visits of foreign tourists. While tourism is generally regarded as “fragile,” these environmental changes indeed posed a challenge to both sustainable tourism and community resilience. In the field of indigenous tourism, on other side, questioning concerning authenticity has attracted attention for long time, not least because of the cases where indigenous cultures have been misused when creating improper services to tourists. According to our understanding, the interactive matching both desires of supply side and demand side are at the core of authentic tourism experiences as well as sustainability and resilience of the field. Thus, this study examines the authentic experience through a case study of Sámi indigenous tourism in Inari region in Finland. We also clarify how the global warming affects the Sámi reindeer tourism practices under the snow & ice thaw situation, and consider it as future challenges based on relationship between the authenticity and snow & ice in the context of Sámi culture.