Would you pay to sleep in a traditional-style, birch-bark shelter? This Yukon tourism business thinks so

A new Yukon business is offering tourists an "authentic experience" in First Nations culture that could include sleeping in a traditional shelter made of spruce bark and moss. 

The new venture will also guide hikers through traditional trails of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nation.

"We've been wanting for some time to actually open some of our ancient trails and praying about having about businesses work with us, so we can create a new venture and a new clientele," said Meta Williams.  

Williams already has experience with cultural tourism. Her family runs Kwäday Dän Kenji (Long Ago Peoples place), a learning site outside Champagne, Yukon.

The learning camp and the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations have partnered with a French-language tourism outfit called Le Jardinier Voyageur (The Travelling Gardener.) 

The new venture will bring visitors for days at a time, to sample local foods and walk trails restored in recent years by the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations.

"These trails have been sleeping for many, many years. So to actually open up those trails has been a wonderful venture," Williams said. 

The arrangement means the tourism company will handle marketing and booking while local people will be guides. 

One of them will be Harold Johnson, who has been building shelters and guiding at Kwäday Dän Kenji for 20 years. 

"There's traditional trails all over the entire Yukon," he said. "The elders say at one time the entire Yukon would have looked like a spider's web. There's trails everywhere."

Growing demand for 'cultural experiences' 

Jonathan Alsberghe, who runs Le Jardinier Voyageur, said the new venture with Champagne and Aishihik promises "a 100 per cent immersive experience," in First Nations culture.

"It was good timing, I think," he said. "Meta and Harold are exactly in this vision right now."

One limit placed by the community is that the trips will not feature drum dancing.

"You cannot sell a ticket to a drum dance," said Alsberghe. "Not every part of the culture can be bought and sold."

The tourism entrepreneur said there is a growing demand for cultural tourism, a fact explored at a conference in Whitehorse last year. 

He said he's happy to be the link between that international demand and a Yukon family willing to be guides. 

The company's first guided tour, near Ibex Valley, leaves June 23.