04 Apr Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada
“Leadership is about strategy and vision. We need to be more aligned, like we need to align access to capital, to strategic planning, support, to partnerships and whether it is in tourism, or whatever the sector.” Keith Henry, President and CEO of ITAC T O U R I S M ITAC’s success has really been the fact that we have shown industry indigenous art, culture and authentic Indigenous tourism- essentially that Indigenous tourism is a force to be reckoned with.” ITAC is building, Indigenous capacities to be really truly competitive in tourism. We built that within our management team staff, and through our Indigenous provincial, territorial partners network. And of course, our main focus is trying to help the actual businesses on the ground, to really build their capacity to know how to compete and understand the sales channels, and tourism has travel agencies you work with. They’ve got wholesalers and different international markets. We’re just trying to help build capacity because that’s actually what’s helped us grow so much in the last five, six years and um, you know, I think that’s the most important to us in the work we’ve got right now.” Henry shared that leadership is about strategy and vision. “It’s working with others to come up with that strategy and that vision, and then it’s also knowing how to execute it. It’s not, it’s not enough to just say this is what needs to change. It’s also looking at what you have right now and taking that and turning it into using that to get what you need. That’s going to turn into what you want. So, you know, if I want 1000 homes built in the next 10 years, that’s, that’s what I want.” Henry thinks as National Economic Development bodies, “We need to be more aligned, align access to capital, to strategic planning support to partnerships and whether it’s tourism, forestry, mining fisheries, whatever the sector, is there needs to be more of a team, economic development approach, in my opinion. So, that we’re all working together to build this and I think that’s for us to get to $100 billion, it’s going to rely heavily on us working together as partners, that we should be giving each other a helping hand and we’ve been starting to do more and more. I really feel it economic development yes we’ve been at it for a number of years now but, there’s been only pockets of nations and communities and entrepreneurs that have been really successful. When we know the markets are there to actually make probably every nation successful. The question becomes how do we rally together to give everyone the same information and research the same. So, we help all of the nations elevate and I think that’s a big challenge for all of us. ITAC understands we are all collectively building the 100-billion-dollar Indigenous economy. The commitment to bringing Indigenous tourism forward in the Indigenous economy is a testament to Indigenomics in Action!