INDIGENOUS TOURISM
Mary Louise Bernard recognized for work as interpreter
Former First Nation chief takes home award from conference
A former First Nation chief has taken home an award for championing Indigenous tourism.
Mary Louise Bernard, who led the Wagmatcook First Nation for eight years beginning in 1994, was honoured during the Nov. 23-24, Nova Scotia Indigenous Tourism conference in Halifax.
Bernard took home the Indigenous Tourism Champion Award for her work as a Parks Canada interpreter.
Through the federal agency, Bernard developed a Mi’kmaq legend into an interpretive program offered during the visitor season at Cape Breton Highlands National Park.
The legend is also part of Bernard’s children’s story, “Sweetwater Maiden: The Mi’kmaw Legend of Maple Syrup,” she released as an entrepreneur in 2013.
The book is available in Mi’kmaq, French, Gaelic and English, and can be purchased through Les Amis du Plein Air’s Le Nique bookstore in Cheticamp.
During her term as chief, Bernard was instrumental in increasing tourism in her community with the creation of the first cultural and heritage centre in a First Nation community in Nova Scotia.
The recent conference was
hosted by a new group known as the Nova Scotia Indigenous Tourism Enterprise Network.
The network is a volunteerbased, not-for-profit cultural tourism organization working to support the growth of tourism businesses and community enterprises in Nova Scotia. The Nova Scotia group is also connected directly on the national level with the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada and was spearheaded by the association’s Atlantic Partnerships liaison, Robert Bernard.