The Pacific Ocean may be vast, but for the Indigenous peoples of its islands and shores, the water connects rather than separates them — as does the painful legacy of colonialism. But thanks to a rising wave of Indigenous travel providers, visitors can learn about beautiful homelands and history’s ugly truths alike, while taking inspiration from those preserving their cultures today.
British Columbia
“Cedar takes away your stress. If you’re ever having a bad day, just rub against it,” advises Janet Wilson, my guide on Homalco Wildlife and Cultural Tours’ half-day excursion from Campbell River on Vancouver Island’s west coast. In between ogling humpback whales and bald eagles, we’ve landed on Aupe, a small, hilly island where Wilson’s Homalco people experienced decades of bad days before the last residents left in the 1980s.
Forced off their land and into Western ways by Catholic priests who arrived in the late 1860s, the Homalco were resettled twice, first to a site subject to the brutal “wolf wind” in winter and then across the inlet to Aupe. There, government agents started seizing children ages 5 and older to send to residential schools, “and not everyone came back,” Wilson says.
Those who did often bore the scars of physical, emotional and spiritual abuse, she adds, while an on-island school run by nuns and priests further proved “a nightmare.” Noting the current injustice in the number of missing Native women, Wilson sings a song in their honor while beating a precious elk skin drum.
But at least the island has become a place of renewal: The dilapidated school will soon be replaced by a wellness and addiction recovery center. Wilson and her cousin Ronny, the captain of our boat, have already created trails where she finds salmonberries and blueberry-like salal for us to sample, and points out the Homalco version of Halls cough drops, licorice fern. Wilson also explains a continuing spiritual tradition the Catholic priests overlooked. “We go early in the morning, face downriver and let sad things go, and then facing upriver, we let all good things in,” she says. “That’s how come we survived and are so resilient.”
Go: From Vancouver, hop on a 40-minute flight to Campbell River. Stay at the new Naturally Pacific Resort, a boutique hotel with golf course, luxurious spa and fine dining, from $193. Homalco Wildlife and Cultural Tours offers various experiences (from $198), including grizzly bear watching, through October.
Fiji
One of the fastest and most pleasurable ways to learn about an Indigenous culture is to try some of its food, ideally with the folks who made it. At the InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort and Spa on Fiji’s main isle of Viti Levu, guests can take a class on how to make the traditional dish of kokoda, diced marinated fish in coconut milk that tastes like poisson cru with a chili kick. While grating fresh coconut meat to squeeze for milk, I discover my chef is part of a small Polynesian minority here, hailing from one of the farther-flung archipelagos of this predominantly Melanesian island chain.
A much larger minority — some 47% — of Fiji’s citizens are of South Asian descent, many of whose ancestors worked on sugar plantations after Fiji became a British crown colony in 1874. Following Fiji’s independence in 1970, tensions over ethnic, religious and language differences have led to multiple government coups, but the two groups largely live in peace. On the airport shuttle to the resort, my Fijian host has no problem stopping at a colorful Hindu temple and equally vibrant Indian snack stall. English, one of Fiji’s official languages along with Fijian and Fiji Hindi, is the lingua franca.
We also stop at one of the many Indian restaurants in Sigatoka, a half-hour from the resort, before taking a jet boat to travel into Fiji’s hilly interior. The peaceful scenery contrasts with the violent history of warring chiefs, exacerbated by the arrival of missionaries and plantation owners, that our guide recounts. The colonial period helped quell the warfare, but did little else to improve the lives of villagers.
They still face economic challenges today, so the Australian and Fijian owners of Sigatoka River Safari designed a tour that rotates weekly visits among 16 traditional villages and donates a portion of proceeds to them for infrastructure projects and other priorities. We participate in a kava drinking ceremony, gorge on a Fijian buffet laid out on a sarong and watch ebullient dances before friendly kids help push our boat from the dock for the zippy ride back to Sigatoka.
Go: Fiji Airways flies nonstop from San Francisco to Nadi, where you can transfer by car or helicopter to InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa, from $470. Sigatoka River Safari, from $100.
Australia
“I’ve found you a koala,” Delvene Cockatoo-Collins whispers to me, shortly after I step off the ferry from Brisbane, Australia, to Minjerribah, the world’s second largest sand island.
An award-winning artist, Cockatoo-Collins is one of several guides of Quandamooka heritage who lead private tours of their ancestral home, also known as North Stradbroke Island. The iconic marsupial she spotted dozing in a bayside tree is just the first native wildlife of my half-day tour — a clutch of kangaroos, several breaching humpback whales and one enormous swimming sea turtle followed — and hearing her stories linking flora and fauna to her forebears makes the sightings even more special.
At leafy Myora Springs, we listen to native birdsong as Cockatoo-Collins collects freshwater reeds, used to create the traditional purses for collecting food known as dilly bags. Her grandmother’s grandmother wove the one on view at the North Stradbroke Island Museum on Minjerribah, while another of hers remains in the Smithsonian, according to Cockatoo-Collins. “I’m hoping they’ll return it to us,” she notes.
Long used for sand mining, and for 80 years before that as a government home for the elderly and destitute, Minjerribah and surrounding Moreton Bay only returned to native hands in 2011, thanks to a federal ruling. Nicknamed “Straddie,” the island has become popular for surfing and beach holidays. Encouraging signs of new growth are everywhere, from the plantings of eucalyptus to support the threatened koalas to Quandamooka-run enterprises, including Cockatoo-Collins’ textile and prints boutique.
Go: Fly nonstop to Brisbane from San Francisco via United and stay at the artsy, riverside Crystalbrook Vincent, from $294. For Minjerribah ferries and educational tours (from $100), see North Stradbroke Island.
Travel writer and guidebook author Jeanne Cooper lives in Hawaii, where she volunteers with the Hawaii Island Humane Society and St. James’ Community Meal.
