Guyana’s Indigenous Communities Take Tourism Into Their Hands

For the potters of Toka, clay is a responsibility as much as a raw material. Take carefully from the earth, and give something back. That principle shaped how this Indigenous village in Guyana’s North Rupununi decided to approach visitors. When outside proposals suggested mass-producing its pottery, residents said no. They chose to invite travelers into the tradition, on the community’s terms.

“We have decided as a community to offer it through the tourism business as an experience,” village chief Micah Davis said.

Davis was speaking at a panel in Georgetown on October 8 during the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s State of the Tourism Industry Conference. His message is one the wider Caribbean is increasingly being asked to hear. The most durable tourism may be the kind that local people own, shape and can say no to.

A Panel With a Pointed Title

The session was called “Rooted in Place: Indigenous Tourism and the Future of Regenerative Caribbean Destinations.” It brought together Indigenous leaders and tourism officials from Guyana and Belize. They examined how tourism can strengthen community ownership, protect cultural traditions and deliver meaningful local benefits.

“Regenerative tourism” is now a regular fixture of industry conferences, and the term can drift into marketing language. What set this discussion apart was how practical it was. Speakers dealt with consent, sacred sites, transport costs and fair contracts, the things that decide whether a community venture survives.

Inside Toka’s Pottery Experience

Toka’s approach grew out of years of conversation. After Davis was elected Toshao, the village’s elected leader, in 2020, residents revisited the question at a village meeting. They asked how they might share parts of everyday life with visitors.

Pottery was a natural fit, built on knowledge handed down through generations. But turning it into something visitors could join meant protecting the customs around it.

“It’s not just any clay,” Davis said. “It’s a very sacred clay that we use.”

A ritual comes before the clay is extracted, and giving back is part of the practice. That includes planting fruit trees and bringing fruit to the extraction site. Davis argues that inviting visitors to learn the craft lets residents earn from their skills while keeping control over how the tradition is shared.

“You pay for what you experience,” he said. He believes this model can bring in income comparable to mass production while preserving the tradition for the next generation.

The “Journey through Pottery” experience launched in February 2024. It had backing from the Guyana Tourism Authority, Conservation International, Visit Rupununi and other partners. For travelers, it gives a reason to stop and spend time in the village rather than simply pass through the North Rupununi. Decisions about future projects are made through community meetings and consent. Davis insists that residents must decide how tourism develops in their village.

Tailor-Made, Not Copy-and-Paste

That philosophy runs through the Guyana Tourism Authority’s (GTA) community-led and owned framework. Candace Phillips, the GTA’s senior manager of product development, said development must reflect each community’s culture, knowledge, surroundings and priorities.

“An experience that succeeds in one village may not suit another,” she said. “Development cannot just happen across the board. It has to be tailor-made for that particular community.”

The GTA works with village councils and tourism committees to assess attractions and identify experiences residents want to offer. It also helps build the skills to run them, including guiding, culinary operations and management. Part of the process is agreeing on boundaries around sacred sites and traditional knowledge, including what should stay private.

Phillips was candid about the human side of this work. Some people become discouraged by the daily demands of hospitality, from managing guests to solving unexpected problems. At those moments, she said, GTA staff act as mentors and motivators as well as technical advisers. “We go as fast or as slow as they can,” she said.

The authority works in more than 50 communities. It is also increasingly linking village experiences into circuits or clusters, recognizing that one community’s success depends partly on the attractions, services and transport around it.

More Than One Village

Toka is part of a broader pattern of Indigenous enterprise in Guyana. Surama Eco-Lodge is owned and operated by the people of Surama, who have chosen ecotourism as a sustainable use of their land. Rewa Eco-Lodge puts community employment and biodiversity conservation at the center of its operations.

At Caiman House in Yupukari, village-based research links local knowledge with scientific work. Its river turtle program, founded in 2011, combines conservation with community participation and youth activities. Guests can even join the black caiman research crew.

For visitors, the appeal is encountering the landscape through people who know it intimately. For hosts, it shows that conservation and tourism can reinforce each other when residents have real roles in both.

What “Regenerative” Actually Means

Amerindian Affairs Minister Sarah Browne-Shadeek offered a useful test. Regenerative tourism, she said, should be judged by more than arrivals, hotel rooms and revenue. The questions are whether villages are better off, whether cultures are respected and whether young people can see a future at home.

“Indigenous culture, too, is not a product created for visitors,” she said. “It’s a living heritage.”

In her view, communities should decide which practices to share, how they are represented and which knowledge, places or ceremonies stay private. Cultural practitioners should also be recognized and paid.

She cited national budget provisions of G$7.2 billion and G$7.5 billion for Indigenous development over the past two years. She also cited cumulative village disbursements of G$16.9 billion through the Low Carbon Development Strategy’s carbon-credit program. These funds support priorities that include agriculture, infrastructure, land titling, women’s and youth initiatives, and ecotourism. But money alone is not enough. “Funding without meaningful community participation may fail to address the priorities that matter most to our local people,” she said.

Consent, Skills and Elders

Yvonne Fredericks-Pearson, a ministerial adviser and Indigenous leader, stressed land rights, full participation and fair benefits. She invoked free, prior and informed consent, a principle that, as general background, is widely associated with international standards on Indigenous rights. She warned against plans imposed from outside.

“Communities need time to discuss proposals and understand what they entail,” she said.

She also called for investment in business skills such as training, packaging and promotion, so residents can take traditional knowledge and products to market. And she pointed to the role of elders in taking young people into the forest to teach them about medicinal plants and other heritage.

On conservation, she was unambiguous. “We have been doing that for years,” she said. “Many centuries ago, we have been doing that, practising sustainable use of the forests.”

A Regional Echo From Belize

Belize’s tourism ministry CEO, Nicole Usher, described similar questions in her country, where nature, culture and community livelihoods overlap. She spoke of balancing authentic experiences with the transport, accommodation and services visitors expect.

Her emphasis was on listening. “Policies and plans must draw on community input, and communication must work in both directions,” she said.

The comparison is instructive. Belize and Guyana both market nature-rich, culture-rich travel that sits apart from the Caribbean’s sun-and-sand mainstream. For travelers weighing the two, general-knowledge context applies: Belize offers a more established visitor infrastructure, while Guyana’s interior experiences remain smaller in scale and more intimate. That is exactly why the governance question matters. As interest grows, communities that have set their own rules early are better placed to manage it.

The Hurdles Are Practical

None of this is easy. Davis noted that the cost of reaching interior destinations can outweigh the price of the experience itself, so better connections and more affordable transport matter to the viability of community ventures. Phillips added that communities need agreements that protect them in dealings with tour operators and other partners.

Those are the unglamorous issues that decide whether Indigenous tourism stays community-owned or slowly slips into outside hands.

For visitors, the message is simple. Experiences like Toka’s are priced to reflect real value, and your money goes to the people whose knowledge makes the experience possible. Booking directly with community enterprises, respecting boundaries around sacred places and allowing time for slower, deeper encounters are the clearest ways to support the model.

For the industry, the discussion left a clear measure of progress. Communities must be able to make decisions, protect what they value and secure a fair return from the tourism their knowledge and stewardship help sustain.

Fredericks-Pearson summed it up in one sentence: “There should be nothing about us without us.”

In Toka, that principle already shapes a choice about clay. The village welcomes visitors into a tradition carried by generations, and it keeps the authority to decide how that tradition continues. If the Caribbean wants a tourism future that lasts, it could do worse than start there.

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