ABSTRACT
Tourism is considered to play an important role in strategies for both sustainable development and environmental conservation, while Lanfant, refusing to see tourism as simply as an exogenous force, has argued that some communities are not always passive but ‘often seize upon tourism as a means of communication to display their existence and to establish their own power’. This chapter discusses the development of tourism in Alaska and considers indigenous involvement in the tourism industry. While the wildness of nature is packaged as something to be experienced, Alaska is perhaps more famously marketed as ‘the last frontier’, and several writers have commented that the image of Alaska as the last frontier has long been a potent one for many Alaskans and for people living elsewhere in the United States. Increasing numbers of tourists to Alaska cite indigenous culture as the main attraction of the state after scenery and wildlife.
