ABSTRACT

The Cree Village eco-lodge, on Moose Factory Island in Northern Ontario, Canada, is an example of community-based tourism that has worked to create sustainable livelihoods through capacity and skills development in the community. The MoCreebec Aboriginal tribe decided to invest community funds and open the Cree Village eco-lodge in the year 2000. The eco-lodge has served as a means of bringing tourists to the community, which has created a tourism-based economy on an otherwise economically weak island. It has also led to the employment of several Cree peoples and serves as a place for social gatherings on the island. In addition, a community that had been poor and lost much of its culture in the past, has, through tourism, revisited its ideologies regarding land and Aboriginal culture and has integrated these values, shifting from an otherwise culturally and economically impoverished community to a success story.