49 Design

I resigned from the Explore Edmonton Indigenous Advisory Circle today. Three years. More than 100 hours of my time. And I want to talk about what that actually looks like from the inside.

It is called an advisory circle. Sounds meaningful. What it actually is, in practice, is Indians on parade. You show up. You lend your name, your knowledge, your community relationships, and your credibility to an organization that uses all of it to look like it is doing the right thing. And you do it for free. While everyone around the table who works for that organization is getting paid.

Here is what three years of free advisory work produced at Explore Edmonton. A strategy document published in 2023 that promised an Executive Director of Indigenous Tourism with a real voting seat on the board. Three years later that position still does not exist. We raised it formally in a resolution to the board on April 17th. The board sent four lines back. No commitment. No timeline. No meeting.

Four lines.

At the 2026 International Indigenous Tourism Conference, which Explore Edmonton co-hosted with $250,000 of City of Edmonton public money, Indigenous operators, Elders, knowledge keepers, and keynote speakers delivered a world class event. When the community experienced harm in the aftermath, as reported by CBC News, Explore Edmonton never advocated publicly for any of us. Not once. When the Advisory Circle raised a formal resolution demanding accountability, the board sent four lines.

And when we pushed back? We were tone policed. Told we were being unprofessional. Called one by one to be managed individually rather than engaged collectively. At least one advisory circle member was confronted on why they could vote for the resolution. That is what happens when Indigenous people stop being decorative and start being inconvenient.

At the conference itself, a thousand delegates from fourteen countries were in that room. The Advisory Circle sat in the audience. Not introduced. Not acknowledged. Not thanked. Not once.

We were in the room and we did not exist.

This is what Indians on parade looks like. We helped for years to make the IITC conference a success for Edmonton, and they didn't even acknowledge us at the event. You get a seat at the table to provide legitimacy. The moment you ask for real authority you become a problem.

I am done being a problem for free.

49 Dzine is growing. Third location on the way. To every Indigenous person sitting on an advisory circle somewhere, working for free, lending your name to an organization that calls you a partner but treats you like an accessory, you are not obligated to keep showing up for people who have decided your time costs nothing.

The community showed up for tourism. Tourism did not show up for the community.

I am going somewhere it will.

-J. Nathan Rainy Chief