ABSTRACT
Indigenous tourism is a global phenomenon, encompassing a range of complex, multi-layered issues. The foci of Indigenous tourism research are multifaceted, reflecting a plethora of stakeholders with differing perspectives and values about the direction, development and sustainability of the sector. The academic literature consistently highlights the need for a more comprehensive understanding of Indigenous tourism and, specifically, one that takes into account the interests and values of its stakeholders. This paper provides a global overview of Indigenous tourism development and its international and national institutional links, concomitantly identifying and examining the trajectory of scholarly interest in Indigenous tourism from 1980 to 2014. An analysis of 403 published journal articles is supplemented with the perspectives of Indigenous tourism researchers. The results reveal that sustainability issues underpin and shape a substantive proportion of published Indigenous tourism research to date. The challenge now is to gain a more comprehensive understanding of Indigenous tourism from the perspective of Indigenous stakeholders, approaching its complexity in an iterative, adaptive and flexible style, and with affected stakeholders involved in the research process, knowledge creation and its outcomes. This is both an ethical imperative and a pragmatic approach to ensure the outcomes of research facilitate the sustainability of Indigenous tourism.
