Sleep in traditional Wigwams in Forillon

The Gespeg nation is launching a new tourist offer to offer traditional Mi’gmaw accommodation in the Forillon National Park in Gaspé. The UM’tgi Wapg-Terre project of Aube is part of the reconciliation and recognition agreement signed in April 2024 with Parcs Canada.

This new tourist attraction will be offered from the summer of 2026. In addition to 5 wigwams and 17 beds, the site will offer interpretation activities and workshops to discover the culture of this Aboriginal people from the Pointe de la Peninsles Gaspésienne.

Reproductions of fossils found on the tip of the Penouille peninsula, such as arrow spikes and pottery testifying to the presence of the Mi’gmaq, will also be used to feed the historic workshops.

The Gespeg nation has been working on this traditional accommodation project for almost 10 years. Three jobs will also be created for members of the Mi’gmaw community.

There will be all kinds of traditional activities, such as the conception of dream sensors and what it will also bring to visitors is to learn the culture and spirituality of our nationexplains the Gespeg chief, Céline Cassivi.

An agreement for reconciliation

Even if this project has been in the boxes of the nation for longer, the signing of a reconciliation and recognition agreement between the Mi’gmaw nation and the Forillon park in April 2024 accelerated the establishment of this new offer which meets the major objectives of this 25 -year agreement.

It is a project that is online with the objectives of the agreement, it is a project that allows you to highlight culture [mi’gmaw] and which also makes it possible to develop opportunities for economic development and jobs for membersadds the director of the Forillon National Park Mathieu Côté.

A traditional manufacture

The five Wigwams were entirely designed and built by members of the nation with wood harvested on their ancestral lands.

Only the reproductions of bark on the structure coating had to be purchased from an external supplier, to meet the standards of Canada Parks and avoid the risk of fire.

It was the fisherman Martin Jean-Dubé who designed the Wigwams with the members of his crew, all members of Gespeg.

I started by inspiring myself from those we already had at our interpretation site, also by consulting the elders of the community … I did not make a plan, it started from my head downright. It is a great pride.

There are nearly 300 accommodation, craft or museum companies that value indigenous culture in the province, according to Aboriginal Tourism Quebec.

But this project would be unique, due to this collaboration with Parks Canada which will also allow Gespeg to take advantage of the tourist locomotive that Forillon represents, with more than 165,000 Canadian and international visitors each year.

The importance of tourism for the indigenous economy

Indigenous tourism is really an important socio-economic tool, there are many communities that choose it more and more, the tourist offer is booming everywhere in Quebec and Canada and having ambassadors like Parks Canada, it may have an additional notorietylaunches the interim director general of Aboriginal tourism Quebec, Patricia Auclair.

But according to Original Aboriginal Tourism Destination, an organization that aims to promote First Nations culture all over the world, it still lacks investments to bring the promotion of these attractions to another level of international recognition.

It is that we did not have enough money to do effective marketing, so often we promote very classic tourist experiencessays Sébastien Desnoyers-Picard, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Original Aboriginal Tourism Destination.

We are going to sell events like a power-wow, but it’s not every weekend, so it can be excursions to whales, forest visits to discover medicinal plantshe adds.

So we must better target the needs of the customers and less highlight stereotypes.

The UM’tgi Wapg-Terre project of Aube will have required an investment of nearly $ 700,000. Parks Canada injected $ 185,000 into logistics support and investments there.