Holly Spence: Building Manitoba's Indigenous Tourism Industry

Indigenous Tourism Manitoba's work runs in two directions at once: on one side, indigenous business owners who need support getting market ready, connected to funders, and connected to each other. On the other, a public that often can't name a single indigenous-owned business. As CEO, Holly Spence has spent her career building the links on both sides, work she ties directly to what reconciliation actually requires.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gaxjg3M09u8

We're talking:

• Holly's own experience learning to walk between two systems, from Peguis First Nation to the city, and what that taught her about the barriers other business owners face

• A persistent myth about who pays taxes, and what the numbers actually show

• Tourism as a form of self-determination: who controls the story determines who profits from it

• Her case for why indigenous-led tourism might be the strongest driver of reconciliation in the province

Holly also talks about what it took to get here, including a system that wouldn't count $400,000 in business equipment as collateral because it sat on reserve land. But the throughline of the conversation is bigger than her own path: it's about who gets to tell the story of a place, and who profits when they do.

Learn more about Indigenous Tourism Manitoba

Episode Transcript:

Stuart Murray  00:00

This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands on Treaty One territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and the Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Metis Nation.

Amanda Logan (Voiceover)  00:19

This is Humans on Rights, a podcast advocating for the education of human rights. Here's your host, Stuart Murray.

Stuart Murray  00:30

Holly Spence is the CEO of Indigenous Tourism Manitoba, an organization dedicated to growing and developing the indigenous tourism industry across this province. In her role, Holly leads efforts to implement the Manitoba indigenous tourism strategy, focusing on developing sustainable, market-ready, and export-ready indigenous tourism products, while increasing demand for Manitoba's indigenous tourism experiences. Under her leadership, the organization recently helped launch Explore Indigenous, a new discovery space at the forks, designed to build awareness of indigenous-led tourism experiences in Manitoba. Her work sits at a powerful intersection: economic development, cultural preservation, and self-determination, making her a compelling guest to discuss tourism through a human rights lens. Holly Spence, welcome to Humans on Rights.

Holly Spence  01:28

Thanks for having me.

Stuart Murray  01:30

Yeah, so Holly, if we talk about things like economic self-determination as a, you know, kind of a human rights lens, as you look through that from your perspective, I'm often just interested to find out that indigenous tourism is often framed as an opportunity, which it is, but it's also tied to the right of self-determination. How do you see tourism development as a vehicle for indigenous communities to exercise control over their own land, stories, and economic futures, rather than having those shaped by outsiders.

Holly Spence  02:04

Yeah, well, I believe that indigenous tourism is leading the way when it comes to indigenous communities and people being able to tell their story on their terms and also be able to create an economy from it, you know. We have travelers all over the world who are curious about indigenous people in the history here in Canada, and we're prepared to tell our story and lead that now, and that's something that not that we didn't have the capacity to do in the past, but now we're building relationships with those channels that are able to hit an audience on a larger scale, and for example, building those relationships with Travel Manitoba and Tourism Winnipeg and Destination Canada, and also being able to talk to our members about what is needed in order for them to elevate themselves to be on that level to tell those stories. When we were talking about being market ready, a lot of our businesses were still in development here. So, what does that mean to be market ready, right? So that's kind of what we do, is we go in and we talk about that, we talk about the industry, and you know there are these standards that need to be met for your voice to be elevated in the industry. What are some of the barriers you're experiencing in order to, you know, meet some of those standards, and how can we help you, and a lot of it is building that bridge when it comes to those relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous. How do we walk in your world, but also ensure that we're being true to ourselves and leading in a way that we see fit for ourselves and our communities? Yet tourism and being able to tell our stories on our terms is now being used for to grow that economic reconciliation piece. There's still a lot of work to do. We still very much are in, you know, the beginning stages, but we're building a really strong foundation here in Manitoba, for us to continue to accelerate that, and just it's all about awareness, right? So it's really important to have these conversations, such as this, and be on your podcast, and you know, just continue to build those relationships and those, those understandings.

Stuart Murray  04:39

And so, Holly, one of the things I'd love to do is that's such a great answer to the question. What I'd love you to do is sort of back up a bit and just talk about your personal experience. I mean, if I understand correctly, you were born and raised in Peguis First Nation.

Holly Spence  04:55

Yes.

Stuart Murray  04:55

Okay. So, Holly, walk us through, you know, just your. For your journey, you know, your journey that has taken you to this position of being a leader in this whole area of indigenous tourism. Just kind of walk us through how you got there.

Holly Spence  05:12

Okay. Well, I don't know how much time you have.

Stuart Murray  05:16

This is your podcast, it's all good.

Holly Spence  05:18

I was born, born and raised in Peg with First Nation, I grew up there. I was raised by community aunts, uncles, you know, our teachers and coaches and our elders. And when we graduate from the community, they actually send us off to get our post-secondary education, so I moved immediately after graduating to the city, and when I moved to the city, it was a huge culture shock, like I didn't know how to get from where I lived to my new apartment, I didn't know the streets, and then when I went to university class, all of a sudden, you know, there was these huge classes with 100 plus students. I didn't know anybody. It was a huge culture shock. I didn't know how to take a bus from my apartment, too. I didn't know anyone for someone who was being raised in a community, and everyone I knew, right? I actually failed my first year of university, just based on not knowing how to live in the city and whatnot, right, but I didn't want to move back to the community, and if I came back to the community, everyone would have known that I had failed. So I was like, committed, I'm going to stay in the city, even though I failed my first year, I'm going to find work, right. So I worked several different, you know, minimum wage jobs, and I landed at KFC for quite a few months, and that's where I really learned, you know, how important education was, and it's really, I really learned what I wanted to do moving forward, and I wanted to be an entrepreneur, so I did go back to my community, I said, "Look, I messed up, I failed, can you give me another chance? Right, there was a little process to that, but they ended up giving me another chance, and I went to school for Business Administration at Red River College, and I knew that that's what I wanted to do, so I started a concession stand, and I called it Nietzsche treats, and I sold like First Nation tacos and bannock burgers, and I would follow the powwow trail and like indigenous community events, and so that's where I really got into entrepreneurship and learning about business, and I was only 19 years old when I started that that concession stand, and then a little bit later on I also opened up an auto parts store in the community, so I moved back to Peguis, and I opened up an auto parts store, and it was the first auto parts store operating on a reserve like anywhere that we, that we heard of, so it was a brand new industry that we were bringing to the community, and I learned a lot from that, but that's where I really developed a passion about helping other indigenous people, especially from my community, start their own business, so because I had started my own business, a few of them, and I was kind of like a younger person in the community, I had a lot of people just knocking on my door and saying, How do I do this? Like, what's the first step, right? And so people would, I would sit down, okay, let's register a business, you need a business plan, and so I just started volunteering, helping people develop businesses, and I became really passionate about that, and it's something that I wanted to do on a larger scale, so I seen a job ad for the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada as this regional representative, and I applied for that position, and I got it just based on my experience in my community, and building business, and volunteering, but like going back to your question, you know, it wasn't an easy road, going back to that culture shock, these systems are something that you know we're not used to, where we live in a different society, I guess, being brought up in the community and different values and just a different way of living, right?

Holly Spence  09:30

So you almost have to know how to walk in these two different worlds, you go and you learn, you know, Western society systems, because a lot of that knowing is how you have to walk in this world like there's no other way, but also keeping your community connection and trying to stay grounded and keeping up with your cultural values, and it's not easy just living or. Are learning a whole new way of life, right? And I think that's what people don't understand, is that there's not just one way that these systems that were built, we need to adapt to them, we need to learn them. It's not something that just comes as a first nature to us.

Stuart Murray  10:17

So, Holly, just a couple of things there, just get some background on what you said when you went to university, and you didn't have a great experience, you know. It's a fascination that you know you wonder from your perspective why there wasn't sort of a bit more understanding of just giving you a sense of here's what's going to happen when you go to university, or here's what's going to happen to go to the city, because, as you say, you arrive there, and it's a culture shock, as it would be. But you mentioned that, because things didn't work out well for you at university, you didn't, you weren't successful, but you went back to the community and asked for a second chance. What does that mean? Were they helping to support you financially to go to university?

Holly Spence  10:59

Yeah, so when you are brought up in the community and you go to school, you graduate from the community, you're given an opportunity to go for your post-secondary education. Now, we don't have that option in community, right? We have to move away in order to achieve post-secondary. I mean, this was 20 years ago, right? Things have changed now. Red River College does come out to community and offer specific programs, but if those programs that you're interested in aren't available, then yes, you do have to move to the city. And when I'm talking about a second chance, it's, you know, you get that initial chance, and you do have to maintain, like, a grade point, a GPA. I can't remember what the GPA is that you need to maintain in order to basically keep your scholarship, right? Right. And if you, if you mess up and you fail, you know, then you're not awarded, like, a second year.

Stuart Murray  12:00

Yep.

Holly Spence  12:01

So I I knew that, but I also, there is like a process that you can go through, like if you do mess up, you know, you can come back and explain to us why, what did you do to improve yourself, what have you learned, what are you going to do better, and maybe they keep a closer eye on you the next go around, so I was awarded a second chance, basically, and I'm really thankful for that, because it was the mistake that I learned from. Okay, this is what happens if you mess up. I was working at KFC, right? This is the job that you're going to get, so I had to experience personally experience what would happen if you fail again, right? And I did. That's basically the process that you go through.

Stuart Murray  12:48

Yeah, yeah. No, fantastic. And again, I'm just curious about, is you know, you spend some time at KFC, and the next thing you know, you're involved in the auto parts business, you know, back in Peguis, how did you, what made you get into that, getting into auto parts? How did that start?

Holly Spence  13:08

Well, so I've always, like, been an entrepreneur. I ran the concession stand for several years, especially throughout the summer, doing different events and following the pow wow trail, you know, I've tried just a few different things, but my brother is actually a heavy duty diesel mechanic, and he actually moved to the back to the community not too long before I did, and he discovered that there was a huge need for auto parts in the community, and he discovered that he was driving up to town, is what we call it, the nearest town for his auto parts, and you know they were charging a lot. He was constantly driving to Winnipeg to get a better deal, right.

Stuart Murray  13:55

Yeah,

Holly Spence  13:55

so he said, you know, we really need our own auto parts tour, so he said, Well, why don't you partner with me? You have the administration side of things, I'll know what part to order, because he's a mechanic, right? Right,

Stuart Murray  14:12

yeah.

Holly Spence  14:12

And so the two of us said, okay, this is not being done, let's just take a leap and let's see if we can make something of this. So we opened up auto parts store in Peguis First Nation, and if you know anything about indigenous communities, like there's a lot of lack of infrastructure, right, because we don't get funding for infrastructure the same way that, like, a municipality would, or a city, and whatnot, so we're basically, you know, have a hard time with, like, buildings and renting space and things like that. So we actually rented out a space in the old, an old condemned building where we grew up going to school. It's now condemned, but we have no other choice, we. We have different departments, like housing department, lands, even like our land settlement department, were operating out of this old condemned building, so they had an extra space, and they allowed us to operate our auto parts store out of the very back of this building, so we had to draw in our community members to come in and buy their auto parts. There, I think that answers your question.

Stuart Murray  15:26

Yeah, I mean, it just.. it was interesting. I mean, that's quite a shift from selling KFC to, you know, bringing auto parts, but it more touches on the basis, the fact that you're an entrepreneur. I mean, you know, you're selling something, you know, whatever you're selling, right? I mean, it doesn't chicken, or whether it's auto parts, you're selling, so it's all good. So, Holly, transition us now into your role as CEO of Indigenous Tourism Manitoba, because they're selling there too. I mean, you're trying to get, you know, kind of members of the community to be market ready, and again, this is all new development, right? I mean, this is all something you're developing, working on, but maybe just share for those that are listening, saying, you know, that sounds fantastic, that there's, you know, an effort being made to get these indigenous tourism elements sort of market ready. What does that mean for somebody listening? What does it market ready mean, and how do you get there?

Holly Spence  16:23

Okay, so yeah, working in my community and opening the auto park store, like I mentioned, I had community members coming in wanting to start their own business, so I would guide them through that process, and I also was an advocate for supporting local, like purchase from your own community purchase from your own community members, that money stays in the community, you help create jobs, so just like bringing that understanding to the community of what economic development means and what it looks like and how supporting local can increase that, so after you know some of my advocation and whatnot, we had seen a huge increase in the number of private businesses from community members spike, and that was just like something that I was even more passionate about that than I was being an entrepreneur, right. So again, when I had seen this ad out for a regional representative for the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, that was basically what it was asking for, but on a provincial scale. So they wanted someone from Manitoba to go out and grow businesses specific to indigenous tourism. I didn't even know. I've never heard of the term indigenous tourism before. I didn't know it was a sub industry or anything like that, but just the requirements. I was like, oh, I would love this. I would love to travel throughout Manitoba. Now, going beyond my own community, I'm talking to those communities and their members, how to grow their business, and then how to grow their tourism business specifically. So, when we talk about market ready, there's the standards that need to be met when you're in the travel industry, and some of the examples are like you have to have a website, you have to respond within 24 hours, you have to have like specific pricing, you need to have liability insurance, so usually liability insurance and maybe the website, and then it gets a little bit more advanced when you talk about export readiness, because you have to have like net pricing, so you offer different pricing to a walk-in customer, as opposed to a tour operator who you partner with, and commission, and there's a lot to it, right. So, just going out to these communities and talking about, you know, this is travel trade, this is tourism, this is indigenous tourism. And I'll give you an example. So, when I first started, I had this fact sheet that was given to me from the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, and it had a pie chart, and it had 2 billion GDP, and all of these numbers, and all of these statistics. Right, so I was going out with this fact sheet, and I was setting up these booths to talk about Indigenous tourism, and as soon as I would bring out the fact sheet, and I would talk about 2 billion GDP, and, and their eyes would glaze over. They didn't know what I didn't even know what I was talking about, right. So, so then I, I put the sheet away, and I said, listen, this is what indigenous tourism is, and I would give them examples, or I would tell a story. I would talk about there's this, you know, Elder, who's in this specific community, and he goes out on a canoe, and he'll take a visitor with him, and he'll talk about the history of the waters and the waterways and his community, and the history of that community, and he'll tell stories, right, so then they're like. Like, oh, well, my cousin does that, and you know, I'll give me your card, I'll give.. so I put the fact sheet away, and I just started talking to them, like on a grassroots level, and just really, you know, talking about this industry, and, and whatnot.

Holly Spence  20:17

So that's kind of where I started off going from being in my community now working for a national organization with the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, and when I had started the role, they had given me a an inventory list of all of the Indigenous experiences that were located throughout Manitoba, and at that time they had 81 of these experiences on this list, and they were spread out all throughout. There was a, there was an accommodation here, and there was a restaurant over here that was indigenous owned, and there was this experience over there, and now we have almost 200 businesses since that time?

Stuart Murray  21:00

Wow,

Holly Spence  21:01

so we grow both, and that's kind of where Indigenous Tourism Manitoba came into play. Okay, now we have all of this growth, over 100% growth, and we need our own provincial body now to represent, because I was working for ITAC, their local, their head office is out in BC, you know, partnering with Travel Manitoba, but we needed an indigenous-led provincial organization to carry the work forward, it was too much for ITAC and for Travel Manitoba, so this is where Indigenous Tourism Manitoba was incubated by Travel Manitoba and the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada. It was funny because they, they approached me initially and said, "Do you want this role as the lead of this new provincial organization? And I honestly didn't feel ready. I didn't think I can't lead a provincial organization, right, and I actually turned it down at first, and I said, you know what, I'm really comfortable in my current role. I love my job. That sounds like a lot of work that I'm just not prepared. I'm not prepared to do, but you know, it came back to me almost a year later, and they said, listen, like we're going to re-approach you here, and we really think that you should be the lead for this organization, so you know when something comes back around at you a second time, I don't think you're supposed to turn it down, so and I did have a lot more confidence in knowing that I can do a good job at that, so Indigenous Tourism Manitoba was incubated in 2023

Stuart Murray  22:44

Oh, wow. Okay.

Holly Spence  22:45

And, or was it 2022 We're going on our fourth year this month.

Stuart Murray  22:51

Okay. So,

Holly Spence  22:52

I think it was 2022

Stuart Murray  22:54

Yeah.

Holly Spence  22:54

Um, and when I had taken on the role, Indigenous Tourism Manitoba didn't even have a bank account. And so, okay, where do we start, right? And that was the first order of business. Well, we need our own bank account, and we need to come up with our strategy, and we need to, you know, talk about the growth of the industry and the value that we bring. So that's kind of where it all started.

Stuart Murray  23:20

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Just on acronyms for a second, Holly, you mentioned ITAC, Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, is that correct?

Holly Spence  23:28

Yeah,

Stuart Murray  23:28

okay, just wondering when you say ITAC, okay, so that's great. So, Holly, it must be interesting to look at organizations that are in communities, First Nations communities that you know they have the ability, but they don't necessarily have the tools or the infrastructure to put something in place to get it to this market ready, so that they can invite guests and visitors and sort of to experience whatever element of indigenous tourism they want to do. How do you help people get market ready? Like, what sorts of things are you, are you doing? Because you know this is all learning, right? This is all in development, this is all new. Do you have a strategy of how you can get people, because a lot of people might, you know, when you mentioned you weren't sure that you had the confidence to take on the role you have now, it's fair to say that a lot of people in the communities that you talk to might sort of say, oh, I'm not sure that people would be interested in what I'm doing. You're going, they would line up to see what you're doing. You just have to sort of get yourself organized to make that happen. So, how do you work with organizations through partnerships to make those things move forward?

Holly Spence  24:39

What we do is, we do it's called one on one development support, so we actually go out to community and we're invited. We don't go and show up and impose anything. There's still a lot of communities who don't want tourism in their community, right? Right, so if a community is interested in having tourism as an economic driver for their community, they'll invite us in. So we have to be invited in. Then we go in and we just learn about the community and we build relationships, and we, what ideas do they have? Do they have any existing businesses who are in tourism, and then we really just educate them about the industry itself, right? Like, again, they're not really sure that there's these market-ready standards that need to be met, and so, where, where's the starting point? Where are they in their journey? Maybe they do already have a website, and you know some of those things, but like, where are the gaps in order for them to reach those market ready levels? Who are the players in the game? Do they know who Travel Manitoba is? Do they know who the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada is? Do they know like what this industry is, and the players in the game, in order for them to elevate themselves, right? So we really just go in, see where they're at, and help them with this one on one, because every single business and every single community is different. Some communities are in the South, and they have, like, better road access, and you know, maybe there are communities that do have really great structure, right, because not every single community is without that, and then there's communities who are located in the north, they're going to have a different set of issues that we have to kind of work through them with so the one on one is the most successful factor that we have at ITM in helping each of those businesses grow,

Stuart Murray  26:52

so one of the things that you've spoken about is the the kind of the barriers of running a business both on and off reserve from a human rights perspective, because this is a human rights podcast, Holly, talk about things like access to capital, infrastructure, land title can be unequal, I would say, you know, just from your experience, and tell me if I'm wrong about that, but I think that's probably accurate, and sort of when you think about some of the biggest obstacles that indigenous entrepreneurs face in entering the tourism sector, and just obviously, how is your organization working to remove some of those? Well,

Holly Spence  27:30

I'm not an expert in this area, but I'll speak to it the best that I can, and just give some personal examples, so you know when you're especially when you're on a reservation, it's really hard to get access to capital, like when you go to a bank, for example, they want to see that you have, like, some type of leverage, right, and in off of the reserve, usually you would have a mortgage or your equipment would go towards something, so to give, like a personal experience example, for my auto parts store, we actually named it Treaty Auto. We wanted to go to the bank and ask for a loan for a building. We needed a new garage, we needed a new storefront, and we were in operations for around four or five years, and in those four or five years, without taking any loans out or anything like that, we grew our inventory and our equipment from zero to $400,000

Stuart Murray  28:35

Wow,

Holly Spence  28:36

okay, we had $400,000 worth of the inventory auto parts on the shelf and computer equipment and garage equipment. When we went to the bank to use that as leverage to borrow, it didn't qualify because the equipment was sitting on a reserve,

Stuart Murray  28:53

right?

Holly Spence  28:54

So they wouldn't use it as an asset, whereas if we were off of the reserve, that could have easily been used as an asset to leverage going for a capital loan for a building, and it's the same thing with a house, like you can't mortgage a house on the reserve, right, because there's no value, even if we did, we even if we were able to build a house and put it on the reserve, there's no market, right, so that's kind of the barriers on the reserve, is just basically that access to capital,

Stuart Murray  29:30

you know, this kind of becomes a little bit of a bigger conversation around reconciliation and all of the elements that you know you are involved in through, you know, indigenous tourism, Manitoba, are you finding that banks who traditionally have not been maybe as supportive, are they starting to understand the opportunities to partner with what your organization, Indigenous Tourism Manitoba, is doing, because they see, you know, the growth that you've shown, I mean, you've gone from 80. Be market ready to some 200 I mean, there's an industry there, and I think banks typically want to look at how they can support, I mean, obviously they want to make money, I mean, that's part of their deal, but the fact that prior to maybe your involvement they weren't supporting, are you finding that that's changing today?

Holly Spence  30:17

Yeah, it's slowly changing, and not only like banks changing, but also like we're learning these systems and how to navigate them, and just understanding them a little bit more, and maybe how we can, I guess, figure things out to kind of meet what the bank is looking for, right? So it is changing, it's a slow change, but it's changed quite a bit in the last five years, for sure, and we're also like our communities are investing in our own paying those loans back, so I think it's all about building extend with funders, and when they see a success, they're more willing to partner with you again, so I think that's kind of like what's playing a huge part here are those relationships that are being built,

Stuart Murray  31:06

and one of the things you know we talked a little bit about it when I did the intro, the powerful intersection that you sit at, whether it's around economic development, cultural preservation, self-determination, when you look at the whole issue around reconciliation, Holly, I mean, you've decided to do something at the forks called Explore Indigenous, and you've got a, you know, an office there. What brought you to the Forks to decide that you wanted to set up an office there?

Holly Spence  31:35

So it's all about, like, the awareness piece. A lot of people weren't aware that there was an indigenous tourism industry here in Manitoba. Who were the players in that industry? Who are the indigenous businesses creating those offerings? Where are they located? What are they offering? Right, so you walk around the forks, and you talk to, you know, a few people there. And have you heard of indigenous tourism? Oh, yeah, I've heard of it. Can you name one business that's an indigenous-owned tourism operation? Ah, no, I can't.

Stuart Murray  32:16

Right,

Holly Spence  32:16

so did you know that we have almost 200 indigenous owned businesses here in Manitoba, I had no idea they can't even name one, right?

Stuart Murray  32:25

Right.

Holly Spence  32:25

So the forks was really a solution to increasing that awareness that there's indigenous tourism, here's the players in the game, even as far as here's how you can book them, right?

Stuart Murray  32:40

So, in other words, what you've done is you've created sort of a storefront for people to access and find out what through Explore Indigenous, how they might sort of access indigenous tourist opportunities. Some of the folks that are running these businesses,

Holly Spence  32:57

yeah, another thing that we do there is we sell our indigenous artisans product right out of that space. Another issue that we have is like authenticity, right. So we do see a lot of indigenous product being manufactured, like in China, for example, by non-indigenous people and shipped over, and so where do you find authentic product that's made by indigenous people? So we actually also offer that out of the space, explore indigenous space as well. We also offer another barrier to some of our smaller operators who are offering these like smaller group experiences, let's say anywhere between five to maybe 12 people, because they're a small operation, they're not going to have the infrastructure like their own building, where people can come and offer these or take part in their experiences, so we also seen this space as an opportunity to offer space to our operators to offer the hands on experiences, so they can actually come and experience like a soapstone, the soapstone carver comes in and he'll have a group of 10 to 12, we have Metis Beaters. We actually have also like indigenous puppy yoga out of the space, indigenous

Stuart Murray  34:27

puppy yoga.

Holly Spence  34:28

So we have like a business by the name of Unique Adventures, and they're out of St. Malo, and they have these puppies, and they do their dog sledding and dog carting, but now they're getting into an indigenous yoga provider, will come in with the puppies, and they'll talk about, you know, like spirituality, and you have puppies running all over you, so that's another experience that that's a new experience. And set the space as well, so yeah, we just, we see the barriers, and IPM is there to just try and just create less barriers for our businesses to have access to the market,

Stuart Murray  35:15

so for example, Holly, if I came and I was in, so I'm a tourist in town, and I'm going through the forks, and I see, wow, this organization here, Explore Indigenous. I'm very interested in it, you know. I like to hunt and fish. Is there somebody at that would say, okay, if you're interested in that, here's some First Nations opportunities, or Indigenous-led businesses that you could go to to see, is would they provide that kind of information right at the desk there.

Holly Spence  35:45

Yeah, so we actually have like inspiration guides available for pickup there, and in the inspiration guide, you'll see that we have a whole whack of options to choose from. Um, we also have businesses who bring by their brochures, you could pick up individual brochures of the businesses, our team members at Explore Indigenous. Anyone has any questions, we can guide them through it. One of the things we don't do right now is actually do the booking, so we kind of just refer,

Stuart Murray  36:13

got it,

Holly Spence  36:13

refer to, and we do see that it's working, like we have Northern businesses where customers are showing up at their doorstep, and they're like, How did you hear about us? And they said the Explore Indigenous Space at the Forks, so we know that it's working. We don't have any like concrete measures that we're taking, but it's just the businesses themselves are saying, I'm getting business from the awareness that's being raised at the forks,

Stuart Murray  36:41

and talk a little bit, Holly, if you can, about some of the partnerships that Indigenous Tourism Manitoba is working on.

Holly Spence  36:49

Well, like we have an excellent partnership, like I already mentioned, with Travel Manitoba. We work very closely with them. They're huge advocates for our industry. I think they see the value in what we're doing. The Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, Tourism Winnipeg, and we have a whole whack of industry partners. We have 23 of them, and I'll just name a few of the more closer partnerships that we have, like Frontiers North,

Stuart Murray  37:16

right?

Holly Spence  37:16

Frontiers North is packaging our experiences in their packages, not have their packaging our experiences. We have Clear Lake Country out in Riding Mountain National Park, and we, we have a 23 of them. I don't have the list in front of me right now, but yeah, that's kind of some of the industry partners that we have, and of course we're always looking for more industry partners who support our work, and you know, like what we do, and want to become involved. And I'll just, like, I'll mention one more thing that we do at ITM, and something that we didn't even realize that was a need or priority was we act as bridge builders, like relationship builders, right? So, if there's an industry partner and they're in a specific area and they say, "You know what, we don't have a relationship with any indigenous operators in our area, want to get more involved, we want to build these relationships. Could you help us reach out to so and so, right. So we'll go to that indigenous operation, and we'll say, "Hey, listen, there's an excellent opportunity for partnership, and like, even the language is different. So when you talk to indigenous business and you say partnership, they think that someone wants to partner with their business, and they want to take a cut of the sales and things like that, right. Whereas we're like, no, this is what partnership is like. Here's a, it's just working together, so just those two different. So we act as like, oh, this is what it means when you use this word, right, even like when we talk about product product development. Well, we had to change that. Now we talk about experience development, so even though language is a little bit tricky, but we really act as like a middle person in helping bridge the relationships between the indigenous and the non-indigenous industry,

Stuart Murray  39:22

so one of the things that I'd be interested in, your thoughts, Holly, is, and it's not necessarily through partnership, but when you talk about reconciliation, you know, in terms of understanding the importance that reconciliation is for us, Canada, to understand our history and understand where we're going working with indigenous communities. Do you see that there is a direct relationship between what indigenous tourism Manitoba does and reconciliation?

Holly Spence  39:53

Oh, 100% Like, I feel like indigenous tourism, and this is just my. My opinion is the number one driver of reconciliation, and it has to be indigenous tourism that's authentically owned by indigenous people, because when you, when you experience indigenous tourism, you're hearing from the indigenous people themselves their story straight from their mouth, and that's what creates that understanding. So, for me, like reconciliation is relationships you create these relationships and they develop, and there's this sense of understanding that comes from those relationships, you get to know that indigenous person, you get to know their story and their history, and you know that takes time, because trust needs to be built, especially by indigenous people. There's been so many times where relationships, they come and they say that they're here to help, right. Well, we know how that went. Yeah, so that it takes time. You have to like mend and care for that relationship for it to grow. And I think that's the number one factor when it comes to reconciliation, hearing those stories and building those relationships and coming to that understanding is what indigenous tourism does, and I think that, you know, we're a huge driver of reconciliation here in Manitoba. One

Stuart Murray  41:31

of the things that I did want to sort of explore with you is, you know, the notion of even Manitobans understanding more about the indigenous tourism in Manitoba, so non-indigenous people, are you finding that there is starting to become a relationship of people from Manitoba wanting to learn more about indigenous tourism?

Holly Spence  41:52

Yes, definitely. And I think it's just it comes with that awareness piece, right? Like, what is indigenous tourism? Who are the players in the game? How do I build a relationship with them? But there's definitely like a lot of interest, especially from well, in my area in the industry, like travel trade tour operators. They want to know more about how to work with indigenous operators, how to build those relationships, and yeah, there's just a lot more awareness out there, and you know, we're really trying to help them build those relationships, and our indigenous operators are keen, they want to build relationships, and they're looking for more of it, right, so we're really, we really look at ways to bring the industry, both indigenous and non-indigenous, together to build those relationships. How can they create packages together? Because it's not a competition, like we're enhancing the overall experience that people are coming to Manitoba for. So we really need to work together to make that happen, and we're not in competition, we're in collaboration, and we're learning how to collaborate, you know, better every day.

Stuart Murray  43:12

So, Holly, just, if you were to look at, and I don't know if you have this statistic or not, but out of interest, if you were to look at and say that the number of visitors that are experiencing indigenous tourism, have you tracked it, or are you in a position to track to say the number of people who live here in Manitoba who are experiencing sort of indigenous tourism versus people from outside of Manitoba and maybe outside of Canada? Have you been able to sort of get your arms around any data that would show those numbers at all?

Holly Spence  43:46

So, like, for Indigenous Tourism Manitoba, we're more of like a development organization, and like our capacity is pretty limited in what it is that we do. We have, you know, three staff members, and we have a few contracts, like a few contractors, so we really look to the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada to do that research on our behalf, as well as Travel Manitoba, so they're the ones to kind of handle that research, but just based off of, you know, word of mouth and whatnot, I'll speak to the research that we did in 2013 We did an economic impact study because I wanted to know, and you see a lot of like different organizations when they go to the government and they ask for assistance and funding, and you know the importance of their industry and whatnot. What they do is an economic impact assessment to show the government this is how much we contribute to the tax, the taxes, and we want to return on that. Right. Sure. So I was like, we, we need to do that, and I felt like there was a misconception that our industry, because we're indigenous, that we don't contribute to tax revenues for. Our province or for for Canada, right. So, at the time we had 170 businesses, and those businesses create over $180 million in revenue every year, and of that $180,000,000.40 7 million of it was going to taxes, they were going to the provincial government, and they were going to the federal government, and that was really surprising, and I thought, wow, let's take a little bit of a deeper look at that, right, and so only 5% of our indigenous businesses of the 170 fall within that parameter, where they don't pay tax, and that's because you have to be operating on a First Nation, you have to be a status person, a status First Nation, and you have to be a sole proprietor, if you incorporate, if you don't have a status card, or if you are operating off of the reserve, you don't fall within that tax exemption, right? So 95% of our businesses operate off of the reserve, you know, maybe they're not, maybe they're a community-owned venture, so they're, they're taxable. We have a lot of Metis who don't fall within that as well. So, I think it was a really big eye opener when the economic impact study came back to say, okay, we have 170 businesses, they're creating $180 million in revenue, 2000 jobs. Well, and they're giving back to the government almost $50 million a year,

Stuart Murray  46:48

right.

Holly Spence  46:48

So we're just as important as any non-indigenous industry when it comes to contributing to the economy, and I think that what is still a huge misconception.

Stuart Murray  47:02

I, I'm so glad you cleared that up, Holly, because I think it's a huge misconception. You know, I think there's a sense that, and as you say, if you're operating on reserve, I mean, there's no taxes to be paid, that's part of the act. I mean, that's just how it is. Off reserve, you're paying taxes, making contributions, that should be acknowledged. And I think the fact that you brought that forward, I appreciate you bringing it forward on this podcast, because people should know that. I mean, that's the education part of indigenous tourism, you know, just getting people to understand that. Holly, I have two two more questions before the hourglass runs out. One of them is just along the notion of not being in competition, but in collaboration. When you have the opportunity, how do you ensure that monies that are generated through indigenous tourism, that it ensures that it goes back to the community, that it stays in the community, and helps to develop the community from an economic standpoint? Is there any issues around that at all?

Holly Spence  48:02

Well, I think we kind of take care of that when the requirement to be labeled as an authentic indigenous tourism experience is that you have to be a minimum of 51% indigenous owned, and if to be honest, I I don't know of any business that I'm working with in our industry who is just the 51% like everyone we work with. We're there 100% indigenous owned companies, right? They hire indigenous people there, so we don't, we don't see an issue in our industry when it comes to that, but there are like other industries that don't maybe have that requirement of being a minimum of 51% indigenous owned.

Stuart Murray  48:55

Yeah, but you're always making sure. I mean, I think one of the things is, you know, that funding goes back to communities, so you can continue to grow. I mean, that's the whole purpose of growing your business, right? Is that to make sure that you have that that funding that goes back, and you don't see that as being an issue at all, in terms of the moneys coming back to the community, reinvesting, growing, getting more market-ready tourism opportunities, indigenous tourism opportunities for the public to experience, you don't see that as an issue,

Holly Spence  49:22

not in our industry. It's not an issue, like everything goes back to our people, not only communities, but like our Metis citizens, our private owners who own their own tourism businesses, and then, as well as community-owned ventures, as well, right, so it's all going back to indigenous people, and you know, not only that, like through partnerships as well, when there's an indigenous attraction and someone is interested in experiencing that, they'll stop at a non-indigenous restaurant, or they'll stop. A convenience store, there, you know what I mean. So it also trickles out. It doesn't only just support indigenous business and communities and people, it also contributes to the overall economics of Manitoba.

Stuart Murray  50:15

Yeah, because this is what people are interested in. You see, travelers, they want more authentic stories being told by the indigenous people themselves, and that doesn't only serve our industry, it serves the overall industry. Yeah, yeah, perfect. No, it's great. The last question, Holly, thank you so much for obviously taking time to jump on this podcast and talk about all the great work you're doing under your leadership with Indigenous Tourism Manitoba. When I asked you to come on this podcast, I just not sure if there was sort of a question you were saying. I hope you asked me about this. I hope you asked me a question about something. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you would like to share with listeners about the good work that you and your organization are doing here through Indigenous Tourism Manitoba.

Holly Spence  51:04

I would say just come and visit us, come to the forks, come to explore Indigenous, come in and talk to us, ask questions. We're not scary, we're open. We want, we want to build relationships, you know, we want to work together with all walks of life, all types of people. We're here to not only, you know, better our circumstances as indigenous people and our children and the next generations, but we're also here to work together and build those relationships, and yeah, come and visit, and we're looking forward to, we're looking forward to continuing to build up those relationships.

Stuart Murray  51:49

That's fantastic. Holly Spence, CEO of Indigenous Tourism Manitoba. Thanks for taking some time to talk about all the great work you're doing here in the province of Manitoba, and continued success in what you do.

Holly Spence  52:04

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

Matt Cundill  52:07

Thanks for listening to Humans on Rights. A transcript of this episode is available by clicking the link in the show notes of this episode. Humans on Rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray, social media marketing by Buffy Davey Music by Doug Edmund. For more, go to Human Rights hub.ca

Produced and distributed by The Sound Off Media Company.