Indigenous Heritage Tourism Development in a (Post-)COVID World: Towards Social Justice at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, USA

Jeff Wahl, Seunghoon Lee and Tazim Jamal
Additional contact information
Jeff Wahl: Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences; Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2261, USA
Seunghoon Lee: Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences; Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2261, USA
Tazim Jamal: Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences; Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2261, USA

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 22, 1-23

Abstract: While a growing body of literature explores tourism impacts in search of sustainable outcomes, research on justice in diverse tourism settings is nascent. Theoretically informed studies drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives are just beginning to emerge to help examine contestations and injustices such as addressed in the case study presented here. The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (or “Custer’s Last Stand” as some know it; LBH) is a protected heritage tourism site that commemorates a battle between Native American tribes and the U.S. military in 1876. Indigenous stakeholders have struggled for decades with the National Park Service to overturn a long legacy of misrepresentation and exclusion from the commemoration and development of the site for heritage tourism. Site closures and other effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic present additional challenges for Native American stakeholders like the Crow Tribe. Guided by Nancy Fraser’s principles of trivalent justice ( redistribution , recognition , and representation ), this qualitative study traces the conflict over heritage commemoration, and explores the potential for praxis through ethical tourism development and marketing. Fraser’s trivalent approach to justice demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinary research to examine historically entrenched discrimination, redress injustices, and facilitate healing and well-being of diverse groups at sites like LBH.

Keywords: Little Bighorn Battlefield; commemoration; heritage tourism; social justice; Indigenous Tourism; recognition; Nancy Fraser (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9484/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9484/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:22:p:9484-:d:445162

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().