Sustainable tourism in indigenous communities in the Amazon

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine how tourism can become a tool to promote sustainable development in indigenous communities, as well as knowing the position of indigenous and non-indigenous institutions for the development and regulation of activity. The paper also analyzes the potential environmental, social and economic activity coming from, considering that the activity requires strong interaction with the environment and indigenous communities. This exploratory study is based on qualitative analysis of both secondary data (documents, reports and published material) as primary (structured interviews applied to leaders and members of New Hope Indian community and representatives of indigenous agency). The choice of this community has given up on the basis of the same conduct entrepreneurial introduce and develop the tourism industry since 2001. It was observed that indigenous leaders see in tourism a way of earning income, appreciation of culture and improved quality of life. Some leaders said they have difficulty implementing tourism due to the positioning of FUNAI, who repeatedly forbade them to receive visitors. The New Hope community experience with ecotourism as an economic activity can be considered emblematic in Brazil. As a result we identified the community satisfaction and differentiation of quality of life promoted by tourism, as well as his concern for the environment and appreciation of indigenous culture. It was also observed that entrepreneurship thinking this or other communities, eventually cause discomfort to the authorities, which in the absence of information, knowledge and sensitivity not see, tourism as an important economic activity for the Amazon region, preferring to maintain dependence on the government.