ABSTRACT
This chapter explores on the idea of a tourism experience of 'temporary belonging' to provide some insight into the encounter between communities and visitors in the context of participatory indigenous cultural tourism. It takes an 'in-between' approach to a cross-cultural sense of community belonging in the context of tourism. The chapter focuses specifically on the growing trend of Indigenous community art centres that offer participatory cultural tourism initiatives. It offers more extended participatory cultural experiences than other attempts to temporarily involve visitors in community life. Temporary belonging is perhaps intrinsic to the concept of tourism itself, but it assumes greater significance in an age of global translocation. The condition of temporary belonging obviously refers to the tourist perspective as opposed to that of the host communities, however the concept of place, and belonging to a place as a stage for the performance of the tourism encounter, intrinsically involves both perspectives.
