The constant creation of aboriginality: a commentary on indigenous being and becoming

This chapter targets the politics of recognition for Indigenous populations. It constitutes a critical foundational commentary on the almost habitual and totalised knowledge of tourism (and tourism studies) and related industries and fields in representing Indigenous peoples today. It stands as an illumination of many of the commonplace ways in which Indigenous peoples have been misunderstood and misrepresented in and through tourism by various non-Indigenous bodies and agencies over the decades. This chapter thereby argues strongly against the reduction of ‘Indigeneity’ (itself) to a mere ethnic designation that significantly undervalues the sociocultural, existential, and cosmological vibrancies of Indigenous realms. In this respect, this chapter comprises an invitation for those who work on or with Aboriginal groups to reject the thinking that is contained within dominant Western-centric categories and appreciate instead how the so-called distant and removed (Indigenous) populations have so frequently been subjugated under unengaged and ontologically poor classifications of being.