Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Summit 2022
Dance to the Beat of Our Drum

Awards Show Nomination Outline
Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Summit 2022
Dance to the Beat of Our Drum via zoom | March 29 7-9pm
Deadline: Friday, March 25 5pm
Hosted by Nova Scotia Indigenous Tourism Enterprise Network

Awards Show Nomination Criteria
The 2022 Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Awards will be presented at the Atlantic Indigenous Tourism
Summit on Tuesday March 29, 2022 from 7-9pm. Special Opening Performance by: Morgan Toney.

Nomination Process:
Nominations can be submitted via the Google Form available online at www.NSITEN.com/2022aits/
Contact: Rachel Derrah 2022AITS@gmail.com
Jordynn Bernard nsiten.jb@gmail.com
Deadline Monday, March 25, 2022 at 5pm AST

Award nominations will be accepted for the following categories:

• Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Entrepreneur Award
• Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Band Enterprise Award
• Atlantic Indigenous Youth Tourism Award
• Atlantic Indigenous Artist Award (Group/Individual)
• Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Champion Award (I/NI)
• Atlantic Indigenous Cultural Tourism Experience Award
• Atlantic Indigenous Cultural Tourism Event Award

Please note:

Submissions should include a detailed description of their background history showing clear examples of activities supporting their application for these awards. Applications should include photos, videos and/or audio files to assist the Awards Committee in reviewing each of these applications.

Awards Show Categories

Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Entrepreneur Award
This award highlights the significant effort that individual Indigenous business owners from
across the Atlantic Region have completed in their tourism sectors. This award targets Indigenous
entrepreneurs from within the community, urban and covers all mainstream and cultural tourism
sectors. Note: Community and/or organization based enterprises are not eligible under this category.
This business owner and/or joint venture partnership must currently be a registered business and
must be a minimum of 51% Indigenous owned and operated business in terms of staff eligibility. They
will also have at a minimum operated the business in the Atlantic Region since 2020-21 fiscal year to
be eligible for this award.

Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Community Enterprise Award
This Community Enterprise Award focuses on the efforts that Indigenous leaders, their communities
and their governments and the work they have taken to develop opportunities to build quality
tourism capacity, tourism focused development projects, businesses and community enterprises
aimed at creating socio-economic opportunities for their community members while promoting
their culture, heritage and sharing the true history of their people to the world. Communities and/or
Indigenous governments and their organizations are eligible to nominate more than one community or
government owned and operated enterprise for this award.

These enterprises must also be at a minimum 51% owned and operated and have more than 51%
Indigenous staff working to establish the goals and objectives of the organization. Specific targets
for these Community Enterprise Awards should focus on supporting Indigenous culture, language,
cultural revitalization and strengthening the long term participation of Indigenous people in
mainstream tourism.

Atlantic Indigenous Youth Tourism Award
Recognizing the valuable involvement of our youth in the future development of Indigenous tourism
is essential in the long term goals of our organizations. Whether they are involved in culture, working
in the mainstream tourism industry, promoting arts and crafts, working with Elders to promote our
traditional stories and history, our youth will always be a very important part of our future.
This award is to ensure that we make this message clear to them and to the world that our youth are the
future of our people and they need to play a major part in the growth of our Indigenous tourism industry
and in our collective the path forward. Youth that are nominated must be between the ages of 15-30
years old and have established Indigenous status from one of the Atlantic Indigenous communities.

Atlantic Indigenous Artist Award (Group/Individual)
This category brings together so many different wonderfully talented artists, crafters, cultural
performers, singers, dancers, poets, story tellers and all sectors of the arts. Whether it is through
authenticity in the root of the work they show or how they sing a song to tell the world who they
truly are in traditional in modern or contemporary ways, we want to highlight these artists’ beautiful
contributions to our Indigenous ways of life and how we represent ourselves in today’s world!
This artist(s)/group chosen will also work to help make broader impacts in today’s society with their
work and their messaging in terms of creating broader understanding of our cultures, our languages
and our true history.

Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Champion Award (I/NI)
This award identifies the true impact of individuals, teams and organizations when they believe in the
power of supporting and working with Indigenous people through Indigenous tourism efforts. These
are the “Champions”, the “Allies” that help to support our collective efforts in the growth of Indigenous
tourism in Atlantic Canada.

Whether they work at the community level, the Provincial or Atlantic level or in the industry levels,
they are the ones who help to make the true differences by the level of commitment they bring. This
award recognizes Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, leadership, businesses, organizations or
industry partners that are or have made significant differences towards this cause.

Atlantic Indigenous Cultural Tourism Experience Award
Authentic cultural tourism experiences touch the hearts, minds and souls of people from around
the world. In our traditional territory we have brought together some very rich and powerful
experiences that are paving the way to developing stronger Indigenous tourism packages for
communities, businesses and individuals that want our stories to be told and shared. Through the
investment and cultural revitalization efforts of leadership, organizations and people that view this
as an integral piece of our collective journey forward we want to recognize their efforts through
their recognition of this award.

Atlantic Indigenous Cultural Tourism Event Award
As people travel through our Indigenous nations we are enriched by their authentic cultural
expressions. We believe that by promoting, investing and highlighting these cultural tourism festivals
and events that are held in our communities and urban town/city locations we honor our history and
our place on our traditional territories through the authentic expressions of our people. This award
recognizes those festivals and events that help to build and strengthen the authentic history, culture,
language and traditional values of the Indigenous people of the Atlantic Region.