For The Wild - BANI AMOR on Tourism and the Colonial Project ⧸234

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00:00:30.000 welcome to for the wild podcast i'm ayanna young today on the show i'll be speaking with

00:00:43.700 bonnie amore a gender queer travel writer who explores the relationship between race place

00:00:50.420 and power even through story we're consuming place and that is inextricable from consuming

00:00:56.720 place bonnie's work has appeared in cnn travel voters afar and teen vogue and in outside the xy

00:01:05.600 queer black and brown masculinity and the upcoming where we stand brown and black voices speak the

00:01:13.520 earth follow them on twitter at bonnie underscore amore and on instagram at bonnie amore well bonnie

00:01:21.980 thank you so much for joining me today. Your work is so expansive, you know, touching on issues from

00:01:29.060 extractive tourism to climate change and disaster capitalism. So I'm really excited to weave all

00:01:36.640 these threads into our conversation today. This is so great. Thank you so much for having me.

00:01:43.060 Well, as a starting point, I think it would be really helpful to unpack common narratives of

00:01:49.380 place and travel as a genre. Many of your articles speak to the historical tradition

00:01:55.360 of travel writing that was forged during the period of European imperial expansion and

00:02:01.260 exploration. So could you begin by sharing why we must understand this genre as a subjective one

00:02:10.100 with its roots in colonialism and who defines common historical and contemporary notions of

00:02:16.400 travel, mobility, and movement? We already know who defines it, right? Just like who defines

00:02:24.100 much of the world and the way it works, much of the story that we are given, especially, you know,

00:02:28.940 I'm on Turtle Island, and I just want to, you know, acknowledge I'm on Matinacock and Canarsie

00:02:35.140 land here in Queens, New York. That is the story that we get, you know, what is the old adage?

00:02:41.020 he who wins tells the story it's very that's such a paraphrasing of that term but you know the

00:02:47.180 conqueror gets to tell the story of the conquered and we see that all encapsulated in travel writing

00:02:52.600 more I think than in kind of any other world and travel in general is when all these delineations

00:02:58.720 of power just open up and it's unavoidable and this elephant in the room of the of travel culture

00:03:05.600 that we just are not going to talk about.

00:03:09.040 I mean, more and more we are talking about it,

00:03:11.360 but there's a little bit of a democratization of this,

00:03:15.260 especially on social media I'm talking more about.

00:03:17.520 But the same folks are in power,

00:03:20.080 the ones telling the story.

00:03:21.920 And Faith Adeli, a mentor, she's a travel author.

00:03:25.320 She teaches travel writing for BIPOC.

00:03:28.600 And she says, this is all political

00:03:31.160 because travel writers tell the story of the world.

00:03:34.020 So that is a huge responsibility and it's usually advertorial, right?

00:03:38.600 We're basically selling place and not thinking about that in a critical way

00:03:42.940 Not thinking of ourselves as a part of the world and our place in the world in this critical way and how that

00:03:48.880 impacts

00:03:49.880 the stories we tell

00:03:51.440 So our whole lives are subjective, you know

00:03:54.980 Just being on this earth is a subjective experience

00:03:59.540 But in travel writing, you know

00:04:01.740 you have this dominant narrator who is usually white, who is usually moneyed, who is usually

00:04:06.000 Western and English speaking and all these things. And, you know, that is not, that is such a,

00:04:13.760 what is the word? It's just a delusion, a little bit of a delusion. You know, are we really getting

00:04:18.780 the real story of this world when we're looking in the travel writing section of a bookstore?

00:04:23.820 Absolutely not. We're getting a story of this travel writer, you know, when I'm reading travel

00:04:30.440 writing just like you know a lot of our experiences what we're really reading about or how I feel is

00:04:36.920 I'm not reading about this place I'm reading how this person views this place their writing tells

00:04:41.180 me more about the person than it does about the place and and you can say that about my writing

00:04:44.860 you can say about anybody that's just how we should look at ourselves more but this invisible

00:04:50.340 narrator who is there just to see just to observe and is you know assumed to be objective because

00:04:59.100 often we don't put ourselves in this story and there's a lack of transparency especially with

00:05:04.880 people who are not marginalized a lot of time marginalized writers have to just there's

00:05:09.760 expected of like I'm you know BIPOC I'm queer and you're going to see that in the beginning

00:05:14.520 because we are just so used to being othered to you know being we're not dominant so we're going

00:05:20.160 to put ourselves in the story and that affects the way I travel in all these ways like travel

00:05:23.380 writers of color are often asked you know what is it like to be you know black in blank what is it

00:05:28.480 like to be you know this in blank and it's really like everyone should be talking about race because

00:05:33.600 race defines you know all of our experiences in the world but you know you're just going to ask

00:05:38.640 the other of like how that affects them rather than how whiteness you know empowers people to

00:05:43.680 take advantage of you know this history and and being empowered by this history of colonialism

00:05:50.520 and white supremacy and other forms of domination i don't want to just talk about race

00:05:53.980 and yeah there's not much of looking at that and so we you know we kind of take advantage of the

00:06:01.400 stories that are already there and the dynamics that all have been put in place for hundreds of

00:06:05.800 years as you said you know through this period of imperial expansion and you know there's not

00:06:11.520 much of a difference when you open books up it's just not much of a difference and it's just that

00:06:15.200 gaze is so embedded into the ways that we see the world and not from far away you know where we are

00:06:21.120 right now, like I'm talking about the land I'm on right now. And if we don't have that relationship

00:06:25.700 to where we are right now and understanding how our identities is so influenced by place,

00:06:32.120 you know, then how are we going to go far away and just be like this detached, you know, person

00:06:38.180 who has, you know, no identity. I'm just the observer observing the other in this anthropological

00:06:43.880 way. So travel writing is definitely kind of a continuation of these kind of zoological

00:06:50.980 anthropological colonial stories of I am this year and this is the scene and that dynamic

00:06:57.060 definitely you know is we feel it and we see it in our travel writing today often no matter who

00:07:02.940 is writing it yeah it's so important to understand the objective versus subjective discussion and

00:07:11.680 I just don't think we can be objective whether it's in travel writing science for the most part

00:07:19.380 We're bringing who we are, our experiences, our memories, our traumas, everything into everything we do. I don't know how we can separate that. And I think that's such an important part.

00:07:33.380 part. And as you've begun to name, the imperial gaze of travel writing extends into present day

00:07:41.600 representations of place as products and commodities. And as someone analyzing these

00:07:49.400 visual and written texts, I wonder if you could speak to what is lost when places are portrayed

00:07:56.020 through the lens of white desirability, as well as the pervasiveness of this marketing in blogs,

00:08:02.480 advertisements, television, Instagram accounts, et cetera, since the travel genre has really

00:08:09.080 proliferated and taken on a new form and shape through online media?

00:08:14.300 Everything, I feel, we're only getting one, you know, part of the story, and that part of the

00:08:20.360 story is already defiled. I mean, you know, who says, it's not just about white people, right? 0.51

00:08:26.360 It's about whiteness, but who says that this is the experience, you know? And when we look at 0.54

00:08:31.820 whiteness and white supremacy, there is an inherent detachment from land, from a self and from

00:08:37.460 culture, you know, a sense of self and a sense of one's belonging to a place. That's what white 0.86

00:08:42.180 supremacy did when it was forged, you know, through chattel slavery and the transatlantic

00:08:45.900 slave trade and genocide and displacement and, you know, forced re-education and then kidnapping

00:08:53.020 of indigenous people. And which, you know, of course, include people from the African continent.

00:08:59.380 and we're we're kind of stepping into these shoes of this you know all-knowing you know kind of

00:09:06.220 omnipotent uh gaze that is like you know who says that this is the story and if that's the story it's

00:09:12.780 it's a um distorted one so we're not getting a lot of it um you know we know how publishing works

00:09:19.900 we know how writing works this whole industry is not diverse and so you have a bunch of people

00:09:25.980 trying to get new stories in and trying to put, you know, put themselves more in and get the mic,

00:09:31.660 you know, so people are disempowered from, you know, having their stories, you know, disseminated

00:09:36.860 in these more widespread ways. So when, you know, in my experience, when I'm teaching travel writing

00:09:41.840 to BIPOC, or I'm in these, you know, small workshops or in these spaces, and like I mentioned

00:09:46.680 Faith Adeli before, being in her workshop or, you know, whatever, I'm able to hear these stories

00:09:51.880 from BIPOC of travel and all of our different entryways into it, whether it's like home

00:09:55.960 going, you know, returnee, you know, refugee stories, you know, exile stories, all of it

00:10:01.460 is migration stories that are not considered travel writing.

00:10:04.340 And I just get everything I need from there because I love travel writing.

00:10:07.880 So let's take this back because there's so much power in this.

00:10:11.240 And people at BIPOC have been, you know, writing travel for so long, even, you know, before

00:10:15.900 colonization.

00:10:16.980 So that's out there. 0.89

00:10:19.000 it's you know a race people be like I don't see this this doesn't exist and that was probably

00:10:24.120 like that in 2011 2012 and then I you know discovered to use that nasty word the canon of 0.92

00:10:30.860 BIPOC travel writing so that kind of did a little bit of a healing process and I realized I had so

00:10:36.980 much to learn and catch up with so what is lost is is a lot of that connection to each other the

00:10:42.620 I'm not saying there's a right way to tell a story but the more we get the more voices we get

00:10:48.340 them more than we can kind of feel, especially people from that place, right? How often do

00:10:52.960 indigenous people tell the story of like traveling around their own place and travel writing? When

00:10:56.720 you see that in the bookstore section, on the travel section of bookstores, right? Or when

00:11:00.880 you're Googling something, you know, all of travel writing is not just told from, you know, the side

00:11:08.200 from people who are from there. That's just not what travel writing is considered to be. So we

00:11:14.160 lose a lot. And especially because travel writing has been wielded as a tool of settler states.

00:11:21.280 It's just a capitalist enterprise, right? You know, they're not going to have the interest of 0.86

00:11:26.160 the most oppressed people in their places, you know, the interest of getting, you know, appealing

00:11:31.280 to a foreign audience and, you know, getting money from them, getting them to come and just kind of

00:11:36.500 like hustling, you know, in indigenous culture or stereotype of it to, you know, bring people in 0.90

00:11:42.700 and consume, they're not going to have those interests at heart. They actually have, you know, 0.95

00:11:48.740 there's a vested stake in whiteness and travel writing and in tourism of not telling those 0.54

00:11:54.220 stories and not having those people at the table. And maybe this whole industry shouldn't work

00:11:59.280 because if that's, you know, inherent part of it, of silencing and erasure and displacement that

00:12:03.940 tourism causes. And that's why, you know, moving toward decolonization and reparations and

00:12:08.900 abolition and repatriation of land or rematriation of land is how we're going to get like that

00:12:16.220 holistic experience of place and of people that I think a lot of travel writers or travelers

00:12:22.280 purport to want. But if this is the way we're going, you know, about it, that's, that's just

00:12:26.940 ain't it. Even if you take out some words, even if you, you know, doing some, you know,

00:12:31.040 quote unquote ethical travel stuff, um, it's not getting us there, I feel. So that is what is lost

00:12:38.100 as far as social media, I don't think much has changed at all. And that is really sad.

00:12:43.480 Like I said, you know, 2013, 2014, I mean, I got on Twitter. At that time, you know, I started

00:12:49.400 being more public, you know, of course, because I had started freelancing. So I had to have more of

00:12:53.400 a public kind of social media presence. And I didn't have any or interest in any before that.

00:12:59.080 So it was really cool to find, you know, other folks talking about this stuff, even if they

00:13:03.700 weren't travel writers, it's just, you know, people like me from places who hadn't traveled much

00:13:07.820 who, you know, I include gentrification and displacement within these stories of decolonizing

00:13:12.860 travel culture. And we're talking about, you know, what it's like to be in a place in Ecuador

00:13:17.920 and see these people come in. There's all this uncomfortable, tense situations when I'm traveling

00:13:24.860 in my own country. And so I got a lot of, you know, hearing from people who are having this

00:13:31.280 experience. It was all there and it was just not academic and it was just not people who are,

00:13:37.100 you know, travel writers who would consider them to be. And a lot of BIPOC shun the label of travel

00:13:43.520 writing because it has been so historically exclusive. So I think social media has allowed

00:13:49.300 us to talk more to each other and particularly in the travel world and non-travel writing, just,

00:13:55.360 you know, on Instagram, you can go and every single kind of traveler is there. You know,

00:13:59.400 you have the indigenous hikers and the fat hikers and the Muslim folks, and you have like all these 1.00

00:14:03.400 BIPOC doing all this cool stuff but as far as travel literature goes that's not really changing 1.00

00:14:08.780 a lot you know maybe you see more like freelance pieces a lot more especially after this summer

00:14:13.160 when a lot of magazines were like you know what black people exist all of a sudden and now we

00:14:17.360 want to publish our stories you know no offense I think some great came out of that but

00:14:21.700 so when we look at social media and social media influencing you know we have this ability to

00:14:28.760 actually, you know, leave these, you know, Condé Nast and the National Geographic and travel and

00:14:34.360 leisure-ness of it all. And, you know, right in a way that is not, you know, pure advertorial,

00:14:39.900 pure advertising for corporations that put people, you know, travel writers out on fam trips,

00:14:45.520 which are PR trips, you know. And we haven't taken it, folks haven't taken advantage of that

00:14:52.840 as much as they could. You know, if you're an influencer, you get sponsored. How is that

00:14:56.940 different from something you would see and you know this huge corporations you know royal you

00:15:01.560 know caribbean cruise lines or whatever you have this this power to kind of tell this in a different

00:15:07.540 way but i don't see that happening i i see you know especially mainstream um social media travel

00:15:15.400 world as a complete continuation of what we're seeing in magazines and what we've seen in books

00:15:20.960 before that like so long ago the white saviorism that is on display the anthropological

00:15:26.240 National Geographic of the other on display within travel photography on social media.

00:15:31.760 It is so much the same, and that's really disappointing, but it is not surprising.

00:15:38.340 Yeah, absolutely. 0.62

00:15:40.220 And you've also clarified that women and femmes are particularly targeted in the fetitization

00:15:46.820 of place.

00:15:47.520 Can you speak to this as well?

00:15:49.600 this is how colonization works and how genocide works you know we again we don't have to go far 0.93

00:15:58.380 away to see how this happened i mean i believe you know the earth or la pachamama is a feminine

00:16:04.720 being and here we are you know pillaging you know ecocide genocide and femicide they're not

00:16:11.740 separate from each other it's all at once um and so i mean look at you know if you're you're reading

00:16:17.860 this or even talking to elders or whatever the case may be. And, you know, missing indigenous 1.00

00:16:22.780 women. I mean, you know, these are the most targeted people. And why? Because it's a form

00:16:27.680 of domination over place and over land. You have people who, you know, are holding on to, you know,

00:16:33.460 quote unquote, endangered languages. You have people who, you know, within their bodies and

00:16:38.160 with each other are carrying a part of their land, even if they have been displaced or,

00:16:42.620 you know deported whatever the case may be and when you harm a person when you you know sexually 0.52

00:16:49.460 abuse a person and when you kill them you know trigger warning for all of this you know you're

00:16:54.440 also kind of killing this culture you're there's so much that is lost um and that is not the point 0.89

00:17:00.400 right this is harming humans and it has been you know for since 1942 so like i mean since 1492 um 0.90

00:17:08.880 So, you know, like this, this is a full on attack on women. Like, again, you know, I'm not going to go through all these things that have happened, but we read, we listen and you see these horrible stories of how these settlers came in and what they did from town to town.

00:17:22.820 It's disgusting. And we see the same in chattel slavery, how black women and indigenous women are singled out as like, we can't dominate a place until we dominate your body. And it's the same thing. 0.58

00:17:37.220 When we see this in travel writing and in travel media, through advertising, through photography, through the whole, you know, visual aesthetic of it, you know, there's all these statistics on it when folks have studied the advertising of how Indigenous women, Black women are really the visual, you know, logo for a place. 0.51

00:18:01.540 you know i mean jamaica the sexualized you know kind of like really selling the sex worker and

00:18:07.940 the sex um tourism of it all you know through a woman's body we don't often see them looking

00:18:14.480 toward the camera they're all usually looking away we usually see men um more looking toward

00:18:20.260 cameras and being centered um we don't know the names of these women and you know femmes non-binary

00:18:26.240 people. These are just static images. We look at Hawaii, and I mean, come on, the hula girl, 0.99

00:18:34.020 you know, this topless chick who's just so sexualized and completely, you know, out of 0.90

00:18:40.660 context cultural tradition of hula. I mean, I think there's another word for it that is actually more 1.00

00:18:46.780 of an original word that I actually don't have. I apologize right now. That is just, she could be

00:18:52.060 anybody, she looks the same, you know, she's not an actual person, so, you know, she has to, she is

00:18:57.260 Hawaii, and when we go there, when those land was quote-unquote annexed not so long ago, and what

00:19:03.380 continues to happen to Hawaii through, you know, militarism, you know, this is the U.S. military

00:19:08.160 plus tourism, the two biggest industries there, you know, it starts with women, and it kind of

00:19:13.440 ends with women, with how they're treated, and how we, how they're sold as part of the product of

00:19:18.300 place. So yeah, this is, it's not just the imagery, right? I want to bring in the, the military part

00:19:25.440 of the militaristic part of it and the violent part of, of settler colonialism and just looking

00:19:31.160 at it completely separating and it just be like smiles and fun and sun, these cruises and all

00:19:36.420 inclusive resorts. It's just a complete continuation, if not a tool that is inseparable

00:19:45.000 from the project of domination.

00:19:47.080 I mean, we need travel writing for these ideas

00:19:49.940 and these processes of domination

00:19:51.880 and colonization and progress to continue. 1.00

00:19:54.480 That is intentionally the point of the woman, 0.95

00:19:57.600 the femme, the non-binary, feminized person 0.57

00:20:00.420 as being the face of the product that is placed

00:20:04.460 to further colonization.

00:20:07.520 And that is very real as we see it today.

00:20:15.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:20:45.000 Thank you.

00:21:15.000 yeah thank you so much to speaking of that I was going through my memory thinking of all the 0.96

00:21:31.940 images I've seen of the yeah this sexualized woman who has no name but it's just her body

00:21:41.120 and her smile inviting alluring people to this place it's um yeah it's definitely been

00:21:48.340 burned into my psyche for all these years of conditioning in this very strange and um 0.54

00:21:56.520 yeah destructive dominant culture and i also think about how this settler mindset

00:22:03.780 revolves around the fantasy of bringing the far away close up. And that is the tourist desire to

00:22:11.420 appear close to place. This yearning drives people deeper into wild spaces like natural reserves,

00:22:18.800 wildlife parks, and remote backcountry areas, you know, hoping to catch a glimpse of, say,

00:22:24.340 the last grizzly bear or take a photo in front of a disappearing glacier, you know, whether by

00:22:29.980 cruise ship or car or trail. And this kind of travel can greatly impact fragile ecosystems,

00:22:37.100 leaving behind a path of human waste, soil erosion, overfished seas, polluted water, etc.

00:22:44.160 And so I'm wondering what does the fetidization of land and the spectacle of wildlife say about

00:22:52.060 our insatiable cultural hunger to connect with place? I don't think that it has to do with

00:22:58.760 connecting with place at all I think it has to do with dominating place and you know we see it's

00:23:04.400 just another tick off of another country another you know stamp in my passport you know people

00:23:10.320 you know brag about this so I don't think it's about connecting with place if we you know truly

00:23:16.140 wanted to we wouldn't go through this way and I don't mean to demonize anyone who travels I travel

00:23:20.280 but again we're not really if we're not really looking critical at these ways then we know we're

00:23:25.720 not understanding just how problematic our places are within this. So the zoological gaze, I mean,

00:23:32.520 we're talking about animals. I mean, going back, you know, to genocide, to the time of human zoos

00:23:38.240 and not to genocide, but colonization and creating the other and their environment as this kind of

00:23:46.520 theme parky thing through human zoos where, you know, you know, black folks were taken and put 0.89

00:23:53.300 on display as these animalistic beings that were just so spectacular it was just the whole 0.93

00:24:00.500 spectacle spectacle excuse me of culture where people indigenous folks we see you know throughout

00:24:06.380 the world were brought to france to united states to belgium to all these places and put on display

00:24:12.360 in the circus act of you know you're not in your place but we're gonna put this little fenced in

00:24:17.940 area and put little teepees and you're gonna be there and just like pretend to go about your life

00:24:22.320 like a you know museum kind of just like one of those you know kind of exhibitions if you see in

00:24:28.220 you know the museum of natural history so that gaze of just equating someone not equating someone

00:24:35.680 because you know non-human animals are are great you know shout out to them at it but but you're

00:24:40.440 dehumanizing you know folks um that is the whole point of the human zoo and i think it's

00:24:46.000 i think it has a lot to do with travel today um when you go places people are kind of performing

00:24:51.960 their cultures in very real ways when we see from place to place again you know you have the hula

00:24:57.740 dancers in every all-inclusive resort you maybe go to the southwest or new mexico and you go to

00:25:03.680 these places and you know you'll have native folks put on a dance or put on some clothes that they 0.87

00:25:09.420 may not wear every single day anyway so it is a dehumanization and a kind of demodernization of

00:25:16.840 kind of like putting native folks and i'm including you know black folks in this uh

00:25:21.640 encapsulated you know distorted story in our minds of like just living in the past of like

00:25:31.560 this land before time but that is what's really sold in travel media a lot is just people in

00:25:37.040 native garb which a lot of folks wear native stuff and that's that's great you know traditional

00:25:40.620 clothing but if it's put on as a show just for the foreigner that is not a culture and that is

00:25:46.700 not truly connected to a place. That is like viewing it, looking at it, looking at the Maasai,

00:25:51.600 doing the Adamu, the jumping dance, and just going about our way. So that is dehumanizing.

00:25:59.680 That is not wanting to see them as a fully fledged people and their experiences today,

00:26:04.500 especially because I was touching on earlier, settler states do not, you know, they want this

00:26:09.580 to happen. They don't want people to connect people in this true way, where how often do you

00:26:14.720 hear you know folks when you aren't traveling actually connecting with them it's more over a

00:26:20.280 transaction rather than anything how is that a true experience um so i believe that you know

00:26:27.360 through those these kind of continuation of the human zoo and what this actually does still exist

00:26:31.700 like people are put on display and against their will and yeah it's about dominating them through

00:26:38.780 kind of bringing them down from uh from humanity and dehumanizing them which is the point of the

00:26:44.380 of colonization. No, it's all so good to hear this and just kind of be

00:26:55.120 grounded in what you're saying, because it's true. And it's easy to overlook this for

00:27:06.980 some of us who are just trying to get a quick trip out of town and not consider all of these.

00:27:14.380 pieces. And, um, yeah, drawing from what you've shared around the politics of representation,

00:27:22.140 I'd like to think about extractive tourism as an extension of the colonial project on the ground.

00:27:30.020 You know, there are so many entry points into this conversation, though one that comes immediately

00:27:35.580 to mind is the vast economic inequality that undergirds our fast growing international tourism

00:27:42.540 industry. And I think many travelers might think that the money they're spending is helping boost

00:27:49.020 local economies when they travel. But you've shared that in a tourism-dependent country like

00:27:54.880 Thailand, nearly 70% of all money spent by tourists leaves the country, a figure that's

00:28:01.300 even higher at 80% for the Caribbean. So could you speak to the business model of tourism as

00:28:07.740 extraction and perhaps the ways it mirrors the dynamics of resource colonies? Yes. I mean,

00:28:16.740 even through story, we're consuming place and that is inextricable from consuming place,

00:28:22.140 the resources, the water, you know, the people and their time and labor, their energy. I mean,

00:28:28.380 that is an extraction. I do feel like, I think with black folks in particular, you know, the 1.00

00:28:32.980 part of white supremacy is just extracting their energy and their labor through all of

00:28:37.640 these emotional ways, spiritual ways,

00:28:39.760 and just draining folks of energy

00:28:41.500 to live their own lives and self-determine,

00:28:43.840 which is how we see,

00:28:45.440 this is what decolonization is about.

00:28:47.800 We need the self-determination

00:28:49.500 for folks to really tell this true story of place

00:28:52.380 and their experiences within it.

00:28:54.320 And if you can't like, first of all,

00:28:57.340 access the beach in front of your house

00:28:59.200 because this all-inclusive, you know,

00:29:00.820 put in these rules that are just like,

00:29:02.680 you can't, this is our land.

00:29:04.760 This is our stretch of beach.

00:29:06.140 when, you know, people's homes are bulldozed in Jamaica over and over again to put in these

00:29:11.960 resorts and have the prime real estate of living in front of the beach or, you know, visiting a

00:29:17.020 beach that is taking something from them. And that is colonization. Like it's just still

00:29:24.220 happening through tourism. So this is a way that land itself is still being taken and people's

00:29:30.140 energy and labor is still be taken and paid so less. If you're talking about the inequality when

00:29:35.460 it comes to money i mean come on google google like how do i travel for cheap google budget

00:29:41.420 travel how do i live afar you know for cheap how do i you know become a travel writer all of it

00:29:46.200 will say go to some place where people are poor and live like a king that is how you do it you

00:29:52.240 don't have to pay someone you know 300 to do like this whole like four week coaching thing of like

00:29:57.300 this is how you break into travel writing or this is how you live as an expat it's just go somewhere

00:30:02.080 where people are globally poor,

00:30:04.660 where, you know, the economy is just like not as,

00:30:09.400 you know, not this developed world

00:30:11.300 or whatever the hell we're going to talk about,

00:30:12.900 we're going to use those terms, economy.

00:30:15.800 If your dollar can stretch longer,

00:30:17.480 then you can live like a king anywhere.

00:30:20.300 And that is supposed to be some sort of hack.

00:30:22.900 And it's not, it's just you're globally rich

00:30:25.000 and people are globally poor within that context.

00:30:27.840 So people are taking advantage of that dynamic.

00:30:30.040 BIPOC all the time as travelers and expats taking advantage of that dynamic so that you can live

00:30:35.100 there and can you know in this socially way do live above people in a higher class and enjoy

00:30:42.360 those privileges and turning people into a service class which also gentrification does

00:30:47.620 you know who's taking care of people's kids who's walking their dogs who's cleaning their houses

00:30:52.120 who who's you know washing their dishes all these things when you you know you have an expat culture

00:30:57.500 or tourist zone it's or tourist ghetto everyone around it is not living for themselves it's not

00:31:05.640 self-determining they might this just lessens the ability to strengthen local industries and 0.88

00:31:12.020 economy for oneself and just turning it into this economy that is for a foreigner so I mean what is

00:31:20.220 the word for that I mean is it imperialism colonialism but there there is like a specific

00:31:25.300 word. I don't want to just put all these into a mishmash. But that's how domination works. I mean,

00:31:31.040 how is that really different from we're looking at like spice trades or anything else? You know,

00:31:35.220 this economy is for someone else and not for you. And we don't like to talk about child labor

00:31:41.760 or sex tourism. We just see kids, you know, selling souvenirs to us and they're like,

00:31:46.620 oh, that's very cute. Like all of our kind of, you know, pseudo, I'm talking about the United

00:31:50.780 States in particular, this kind of pseudo liberal thing, especially with travelers who are,

00:31:54.280 I'm a traveler, not a tourist, go somewhere. And then that social justice mind just goes on

00:31:59.460 vacation, literally. And we just want to be a part of this experience. I mean, you're going to go

00:32:05.200 to a hotel, you want to go to a jacuzzi, you know, you want to go to Indonesia, you want to go to

00:32:09.700 Bali, and you want to have this whole, I don't know, all of these kind of, I'm talking more

00:32:15.500 about the, you know, alternative spiritual tours, you know, nature, holistic, whatever that whole

00:32:21.100 world is and who purport to want these things and then you're you know you're getting in this big

00:32:25.580 tub of water when you know this this this resource is dwindling i mean it's getting stolen from

00:32:30.920 people so that you can just soak when you could do that at home i'm not saying this is happening

00:32:35.400 everywhere i'm singling out bali and the the water shortage is terrible um and it just gets used more

00:32:42.220 and more i think that figure is 80 and i just i want to you know point out that the figures that

00:32:46.160 you used before that i pointed out in other pieces are like pretty old like really old i'm talking

00:32:50.800 I think it's like 2000 or so. So think about how the economy has changed since then globally.

00:32:56.980 So people getting poorer. And when we go places as expats and have expat culture and tourist

00:33:03.680 cultures, we are keeping people from upward mobility. We are keeping them in that service

00:33:08.780 industry. We're not asking them how much they're getting paid. Like there is not any of that kind

00:33:13.600 of like working class solidarity. When you travel, you are of a higher class period. I mean,

00:33:17.900 that is different when you are black. Definitely. It's definitely different when you are like a 0.97

00:33:22.500 BIPOC woman or feminine, non-binary person. Um, however, it is a little different to a lot 0.99

00:33:29.780 different. I mean, you know, when it comes to white folks, you are treated as VIP wherever you

00:33:34.500 are on earth. Okay. Even if people feel like they're fetishized, um, it's, it's not because 0.77

00:33:39.700 whiteness can't be a fetish. It is dominant. Um, maybe sexualized because whiteness signifies 0.51

00:33:44.840 wealth um but yeah that that dynamic of i can just take because i brought i bought a ticket

00:33:51.060 like i paid my money i want to get my money's worth i want to do all these things it keeps people

00:33:55.800 in economic instability uh tourist economies are so famously unstable look at covid you know people

00:34:03.040 had to mexico ecuador other places but you know puerto rico um open themselves prematurely to

00:34:09.240 uh foreigners tourists because they needed that money even though people are like dying and super 0.78

00:34:14.960 sick and you know again you know there is this story in travel writing of this is what we want 0.99

00:34:20.700 we want to connect to people we love culture and that whole mark twain quote about you know travel

00:34:26.160 being um i guess the opposite of you know intolerance and these kinds of in bias and stuff

00:34:33.480 But when we look at it, no, I mean, tourists are acting a mess in these places.

00:34:38.500 So when you become economically dependent to a foreign power, how is that, you know, empowering people?

00:34:45.320 That is that is such a lie. You know, you don't we see this with the language.

00:34:50.420 And I'm going to end here. I know I'm talking a lot about supporting black owned businesses.

00:34:54.160 No one supports black white owned businesses. Right. We just buy and we just assume, you know, this is all men own all these corporations, white people and all these corporations that we're buying from. 1.00

00:35:03.480 all the time, but we're going to go out of our way and think we're doing a charitable thing 0.94

00:35:07.060 by paying Black people for things. That's just how labor works. You pay people, you get something. 1.00

00:35:13.700 So you're not helping nobody. You're just a consumer. That is such a way to, I think,

00:35:19.220 just as travel writing does and the travel world does, is to lull us to sleep and make us feel

00:35:24.200 better of this whole dynamic that we are taking advantage of, that a lot of us are still

00:35:30.040 marginalized by and these ways no one is just like this person has power and this person doesn't

00:35:34.840 but um in travel it is so very stark that i think the function of of travel writing historically

00:35:43.240 and of now and of travel culture is to take that whole violent colonial project and and extract it

00:35:54.100 the fun and the sun and the leisure out of it and the escape and the wanderlust and of it all

00:36:01.740 as if it's completely separate the fun side the nice side the pretty side

00:36:06.580 enables the whole project to continue

00:36:09.580 yeah I hear you and just so many memories popping up and thinking about

00:36:18.620 how that relates to experiences I had growing up and now. And one thing that you mentioned

00:36:28.000 was the spiritual tourism. And I'm curious to ask you about the phenomenon of what might be seen as

00:36:38.420 more alternative modes of travel, like say, ecotourism or humanitarian travel and volunteerism

00:36:46.600 or spiritual tourism. Different from, of course, all-inclusive cruises, these are often sold as

00:36:52.960 more authentic experiences under the guise of spiritual enlightenment or doing good or personal

00:36:58.840 exploration. But of course, they too often revolve entirely around consumption. I recall you also

00:37:05.540 framing this as heritage tourism, where a price is put on one's proximity to indigeneity and

00:37:12.060 indigenous cultures. So I'm wondering how are these trends currently manifesting in this decade?

00:37:19.420 And in the case of spiritual tourism, what happens when sacred sites, rituals, or medicines are

00:37:25.420 maintained only as fetishized products to meet the tourist's demands? Well, I don't think that

00:37:32.660 spiritual traditions of indigenous folks and those cosmologies and how they're relating to them now

00:37:39.040 are completely, you know, for the other way, a lot of it can be taken, but folks still hold

00:37:44.720 on to things for themselves. It's just not the same, completely out of context. I look at Ayahuasca,

00:37:50.020 which I've written about in the context of spiritual tourism and how, when I talk to folks 0.64

00:37:55.580 again, you know, BIPOC as well, who are not from the Amazon, I am not either. I don't have, you 1.00

00:38:00.880 know, roots there to my knowledge. My family is from the coast of Ecuador. And, you know, I want

00:38:06.100 know focus more on the ecuadorian amazon which is what i know most about people will have this life

00:38:11.840 changing experience and i don't and that's valid that i'm i can't tell you what your experience is

00:38:17.460 but it's just this told as this cure-all you know my time living in ecuadorian and if i you know i

00:38:22.520 have engaged with tourists or like maybe argentinians and and their whole like just weed

00:38:27.880 smoking dreadlocked or you know we can call them mats they're not actually dreads um their their

00:38:32.920 whole, you know, scene as like, you don't need pills, Bonnie, you know, with your disabilities,

00:38:38.180 you know, ayahuasca will cure you or ayahuasca or nothing. And some different words that folks

00:38:44.160 use in different, you know, indigenous groups in the Amazon, you know, it's completely seeing

00:38:49.140 it out of context as this life-saving, it's ableist, right? This life-saving, you know,

00:38:54.440 product. When it's really just when you talk to folks who are from there, you know, it's,

00:39:00.280 you can do it habitually it is definitely spiritual you're not separating you know the

00:39:04.460 spiritual natural world from the quote-unquote modern world like it's not supposed to be a cure

00:39:10.080 all it's a way to communicate with the amazon particularly i think uh trees and plants and

00:39:17.880 that is not what people are getting there they want to save their own lives and their own souls

00:39:22.560 you know maybe and again i don't want to invalidate people's experiences you know

00:39:26.320 my mother died or I'm depressed or work sucks. So I'm going to go far away and take something else

00:39:33.060 from the ground, have someone mix it up, have this super authentic experience with a shaman or

00:39:38.080 usually what people just think are shamans. And that is going to like save my life. I'm going to

00:39:45.500 go back and I'm going to, you know, tell everyone else that this is the cure, but it's just the

00:39:51.000 trend for now. You know, it just, that's what it is right now, or maybe even five years ago. And

00:39:55.500 then it just keeps changing um so that extraction is horrible for the earth it's horrible for the

00:40:00.120 amazon the amazon is suffering why would anyone continue to go there and be a tourist and you

00:40:04.960 know full disclosure i've done ayahuasca after so much of this internal kind of um conversation as

00:40:11.520 well as external with you know my indigenous friends who are amazonian and being there and

00:40:14.980 seeing how that market works and what my place would be within it as someone who again has you

00:40:21.040 know roots from the coast um or you know it's from it's from the coast of equity and uh and

00:40:26.760 taking part of that um also there you know this conversation just with myself of just not being

00:40:31.380 ready to kind of do something like that um but but yeah it's just for you so how are you gonna

00:40:37.820 get well how are you gonna heal how do any of us heal through harm you know so it's just it's just

00:40:45.260 this really basic way of of seeing other people's medicines and thinking that the cure for your

00:40:53.300 you know what was called you know first world problems and i'll use it in this context

00:40:58.360 is hidden in someone's forest far away rather than again where is the the land that you're on

00:41:05.900 you know there's healing things all over the place and maybe what needs to be healed is whiteness

00:41:10.080 itself. I mean, decolonization for white people is more about reconnecting to your humanity that 0.73

00:41:15.840 was taken through the project of white supremacy. I mean, you cannot hold on to that humanity when

00:41:21.740 you, you know, steal land, harm people, have them, you know, force them into labor and extract that

00:41:29.860 capital from their labor. So when you have folks perform their culture for others, for foreigners, 0.98

00:41:37.360 it it takes it out of context for themselves and it puts a dollar sign on it and it's something to 0.89

00:41:43.940 be consumed and that is really gross for me i don't think anyone should be using palo santo

00:41:49.440 if that's not part of your culture i think in social justice cool alternative healing justice

00:41:53.640 people think it's cool as well um and sage as well over harvested crystals are unethically

00:42:00.000 sourced a lot of the time i mean this is about all of us right and even how yoga itself completely

00:42:06.600 taken out of context a cure-all you know this this whole eastern medicine thing i mean if you're in

00:42:12.160 the west and you're western i mean it's western medicine i mean we're acting like science hasn't

00:42:16.640 been you know proven these things about ayahuasca and proven things about acupuncture and ayurveda

00:42:21.200 and all these things so so putting this really kind of western and orientalist you know view

00:42:26.260 on what healing is and what medicine actually is um is just basic it doesn't serve what i think is

00:42:33.740 the purported intention of healing and having connection to oneself and to one's earth. We can

00:42:39.960 only truly heal through decolonization is how I feel, that healing through place and with land

00:42:45.160 and with ourselves. So maybe folks are running away from whiteness and want to cure from whiteness

00:42:51.520 itself and the privileges it brings, which they may find oppressive, and go to a forest somewhere

00:42:56.560 and do this, but you're really just continuing to take. It's not connecting you to your

00:43:04.160 humanity. It's just causing more harm. And how does that heal you? And how does that

00:43:09.960 heal anyone else? Because if we're doing this, it's really selfish. It's just, I'm doing

00:43:15.340 it for me. So, you know, kind of whatever happens to anyone else, I'm just not really

00:43:20.360 going to think about it or their culture or their land. I'm going to go in. I'm going

00:43:23.780 to do it for me, I'm going to leave. And that is not the point of a lot of these spiritual

00:43:28.480 traditions. It's more about connection. And if you don't have any kind of connection to the land

00:43:33.120 that you're, you know, of that place that you're going to, you're going to take something from it,

00:43:37.800 you're going to use it for yourself. I mean, there's a word for that. And so I think a lot

00:43:43.140 of, a lot is lost to those cultures, as well as to the people who I think want to heal through

00:43:50.860 them. It's just not really happening. I think it's a social placebo effect.

00:44:20.860 Thank you.

00:44:50.860 This conversation really does challenge me

00:45:18.660 to think about the legacy and impacts of the physical journeys of settlers and how people

00:45:24.600 in the West have really benefited from, quote, seeing the world. But that action has opened up

00:45:30.700 a Pandora's box, wherein places and people have become commodified for consumption. And there's

00:45:37.320 no reciprocity in that. So I'd like us to sort of explore and challenge this notion that wisdom

00:45:43.420 can be extracted from so-called other places without ramifications, and how can one make

00:45:51.280 reparations for the long-lasting effects of spiritual tourism?

00:45:58.380 Mm-hmm. I think when it comes to people creating social currency over having the access to travel

00:46:08.140 is like i was saying before with you know the stamps and a passport you know it's i didn't

00:46:16.200 really i haven't really gone into the erotics or the sexualization of a lot we're talking about

00:46:21.000 land and women and femmes and all these things and the message that travel read media kind of

00:46:26.420 exports um it's a very sexualized one and a very kind of erotic one and i think people can't

00:46:32.720 satiate they they can't hold themselves back from that kind of entitlement and that is you know

00:46:39.080 inherent in whiteness and settler colonialism it's just as I was saying before you buy a ticket then

00:46:43.620 you have the right to do whatever you want in that place there's all-inclusive consent right so

00:46:49.700 going somewhere especially for I would say especially for white men or like white people

00:46:56.120 it's something you can put on your resume like you're worldly you've traveled like wow you've

00:47:00.960 seen the world you're like a different person it just makes you better you know what is that other

00:47:06.240 quote you know those who don't travel like have only read one page of the book you know what i

00:47:11.400 mean and it's like nah you know people who don't travel might have like a better connection to

00:47:15.900 their place which it's amazing you know knowing your community you know uh being in solidarity

00:47:21.760 with people around you i mean this was the kind of year for folks who maybe weren't already doing

00:47:26.000 that, to do that, to really like, who are my neighbors? You know, who are the native folks

00:47:30.920 from the place I'm in? Where are they? And what can I do for them? As far as, you know, more of

00:47:36.320 like earning my place and on this land, or doing what I can to help them, you know, to the goal of

00:47:43.600 decolonization and self-determination, as far as, again, land taxes go and other things.

00:47:48.280 um so yeah we see how travel is used to bolster one's brand um but as far as you know reciprocity

00:47:58.100 when it comes to spiritual tourism you know this is what i'm saying i think before we even go

00:48:01.780 somewhere we have to have that conversation with ourselves and with each other and with people who

00:48:05.520 are from that place um because you don't have to go far away to know how people may be living

00:48:10.380 or to hear their stories you know people there's native folks all over social media who can tell

00:48:15.040 you exactly you know what is up and you can read books and you can watch movies and there's people

00:48:20.360 in your community who I promise and not everywhere right I mean I'm from Queens there's people from

00:48:24.620 all over the world here but who are you have access to talking to people even in English you

00:48:30.760 know who are from all these places you don't have to go somewhere so far and then be like how can I

00:48:36.020 help once I'm here we have to have that conversation before we go and I know a lot of folks want

00:48:40.760 to know what to do once we go somewhere and I think a lot of part of my work and just the

00:48:47.820 voice I want to have in this conversation is don't or think about not going at all think about how

00:48:55.640 this mass migration of white folks to BIPOC you know historically or majority BIPOC land

00:49:01.140 and that's a that's I'm like drawing this you know really black and white thing but it it is 0.52

00:49:07.960 kind of black and white how is that going to lead to anything positive you know when white folks

00:49:12.940 have traveled in mass it always is just not a good thing it doesn't bode it doesn't it's not

00:49:18.720 it's not great for local folks uh in in this general way of talking about colonization and

00:49:23.960 such right um so you know the more folks more white folks go to a place if you even look at

00:49:28.900 you know crown heights 15 years ago to how it is now more white people come it just becomes more 0.90

00:49:33.980 safer and more welcoming to, again, I'm singling out white folks and whiteness, to go somewhere 0.75

00:49:39.880 once a white person is there. And it just grows and grows and grows. And that's how we see the 0.94

00:49:44.940 tourist zones and the tourist ghettos and the expat enclaves that completely, you know, create

00:49:50.260 their own suburban worlds and their own, you know, beach towns somewhere far away. So yeah, I'm just

00:49:59.640 saying that we're if we're doing that we're just adding to those problems and i'd rather that not

00:50:05.940 happen when it comes to spiritual tourism as far as you know reciprocity and reparations go i mean

00:50:12.720 again i think it's withholding i think it's less like how about not take it all rather than take

00:50:18.860 in a way that um maybe a little bit better than the way i wasn't i don't know if that's what

00:50:24.380 you're talking about but i i do feel reparations need to be paid i mean i think that all of us can

00:50:28.740 have. And there's very concrete ways, you know, parts of our bank accounts, you know, just for

00:50:35.820 like paying, you know, black folks back. And, and, you know, there are projects, like I'm saying, 0.95

00:50:40.160 to pay reparations and to pay land tax to original folks to do that, where exactly where we are right

00:50:46.680 now, because that's the most important. So I might not know what that answer is, as far as, you know,

00:50:52.020 what can people do once they're there rather than, other than just not doing it. Maybe I shouldn't

00:50:59.620 actually go through with this plan that I had to, to have this experience when it comes to

00:51:04.220 spiritual tourism or, you know, how, yeah, I don't know. Sometimes it just has to do with,

00:51:09.600 you know, going to the right place and paying the right people sometimes rather than a white-owned, 0.82

00:51:14.180 you know, resort. And, you know, again, you know, how much are people getting paid? You know,

00:51:19.020 how can you tell those owners? Um, maybe that's not enough, you know, learn about what the minimum

00:51:23.900 wage is in a place. And, and again, are people doing contract labor? Um, are they getting a

00:51:29.800 salary? You know, how far do they have to travel to actually come to this place? Can they afford

00:51:35.060 for their kids to go to school? You know, all these things, um, I'm taking from them and I

00:51:40.220 don't even know if they have enough in their own place to have these things that I'm taking

00:51:43.660 advantage of when I go far. So yeah, I think that's a little bit of a conversation rather

00:51:50.560 than an answer that I have for you. Well, there's so much there. And I really appreciate

00:51:58.200 all the places you took us in our mind and, and just, yeah, really asking the folks who are

00:52:06.860 listening to sit with the complexity of travel and don't just go about our lives without

00:52:17.760 considering all of the ramifications and ways of being in better relationship with the world

00:52:25.640 because I think ultimately all of us tuning in, that's what we want. We want to be in right

00:52:30.920 relationship. And this is such a huge sector that we really can't ignore. It's not just

00:52:36.000 flying on planes and it's, it's not just the, um, gosh, I could, I could kind of go on with,

00:52:43.280 it's not just the like dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Here's a long list, but, um, yeah, I really

00:52:48.660 appreciate the time that we were able to spend today and start to deep dive into the world of

00:52:56.640 travel. That's great. That's great. Thank you so much for having me. I just want to shout out,

00:53:01.540 uh, Dr. New Taraneth. I mean, just, just from that one thing you said, I can share so many

00:53:05.880 authors and resources and websites and stuff, but her book, Beyond Guild Trips, Mindful Travel in

00:53:10.880 Unequal World, is probably something that I think your listeners would be interested in, and you

00:53:15.360 just touched on just being uncomfortable. Let's do it. It's okay. You know, we can have these

00:53:21.280 conversations with ourselves first and, you know, become, kind of develop our palette for this and

00:53:27.780 our language for it and our fluency in it, right, really by just sitting with ourselves, which,

00:53:33.100 again, I think is something that we should take advantage of more this year, rather than just

00:53:38.240 fighting it and fighting it. I know it's hard, but we need to be able to sit with ourselves in

00:53:42.100 the discomfort in order to have this. And that kind of hostility or defensiveness towards looking

00:53:48.080 at our privilege and our power is not, you know, the most beneficial, neither is guilt. That's why

00:53:54.400 her book is called Beyond Guilt Trips. So let's sit in it together, be honest, be transparent,

00:53:58.900 not be like these people are bad and these people are good but like this is all problematic you know

00:54:04.180 how can i bring my full self to the experience of being alive where i am i know it's very general

00:54:10.880 and very vast but that's that is decolonizing travel culture and that's why i like to uh

00:54:16.820 write about it and think in this world because travel is basically everything it ties everything

00:54:21.220 together so um yeah thank you so much for letting me you know rant in in all these little different

00:54:27.260 zones that, that are entry points into this conversation. And yeah, thank you so much for

00:54:32.340 inviting me and for your time. Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast. The music

00:54:45.540 you heard today was by Juan Doragoza, Peels, and the Fabian Almasan Trio. For the Wild is created

00:54:52.200 by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, and Francesca Glaspell.

00:54:57.260 Thank you.

For The Wild - May 19, 2021

BANI AMOR on Tourism and the Colonial Project ⧸234

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