ATHABASCA — Alberta is making a name for itself in the tourism industry, breaking visitor records in 2023, growing revenue year over year, and outpacing growth in Ontario and B.C. by double in 2024 and more than triple the national average.
A large driver of the provincial boom is thanks to unique experiences offered by Indigenous tourism, which aims to connect Albertans, Canadians, and international visitors with authentic, immersive experiences in Indigenous and Métis culture, ways of knowing, and ways of existing.
And this year, the culmination of nearly 20 years of inter- and cross-cultural connection, collaboration, and celebration that put Smoky Lake County on the map is being recognized on the national stage as Métis Crossing CEO Juanita Marois is included in the list of nominees for the CanadianSME Small Business Awards.
Marois, a proud Métis woman and long-time resident of Athabasca, is in the running to be named CanadianSME’s 2024 Business Woman of the Year for her role in creating the first-of-its-kind cultural gathering place and sustainable tourism destination in the country.
“This was a really big surprise and quite an honour, because within the Indigenous community, Metis Crossing is leading the way in Alberta in terms of developing Indigenous tourism,” said Marois.
Métis Crossing, a project that began as an idea in 2006 and opened officially in the fall of 2021, has won awards for their cultural experiences, sustainability, Métis-made wood structures, and selected as one of the top 50 travel destinations in the world.
Marois herself has been recognized as a Globe and Mail Canada Top 50 Changemaker, and received the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee medal in 2023 for her work on the site and in the Métis community. But the Master’s degree-holding mother of four said this most recent nomination is putting her industry and people on the national scale in an unprecedented way.
“This award in particular is much broader. It’s not an Indigenous-specific award, it’s not a tourism-specific award, this is an entrepreneurial award across the country of Canada,” she said. “As a Métis person, it wasn’t that long ago that we were roadside allowance people. We did not have a place in this country, we were excluded from mainstream society in many ways.”
Marois, a specialist in sustainable tourism, was involved in the initial community consultations and development designs of the site in the early 2000’s, speaking with Elders about their visions for the 512 acres with deep Indigenous and Métis roots.
“It sits on a very historic land base for Métis people, so I spent the first two years restoring the traditional buildings, the first barn where all the community barn dances were held, and the homesteads of two of the families that were there.
“The Elders were very clear that Métis Crossing was already there, that the spirit of our ancestors walking on the land, when they chose to make that place their home, it was because Métis Crossing was already there. My job was to make it accessible for others to come and feel the spirit of our ancestors.”
In the years that followed, Marois focused on family life, moving to Athabasca with her husband to raise their children. But her connection with Metis Crossing came full circle in 2017 when she was approached to return to the site to create a cultural centre with $3.5 million in federal funding.
“They said, ‘Hey, you’re the only person we know who can hit the ground running and take this dream and make it a reality,” said Marois. “It was kind of perfect alignment; it was where the Creator needed me to be.”
Today, Marois takes great pride in upholding the Métis tradition of bridging worlds, just as her ancestors did for the First Nations and European settlers as children of the fur trade, by introducing locals and international visitors to authentic Métis food, practices, stories, values and more.
But like many other Canadians with Métis heritage, her connection to the culture wasn’t always the source of pride, strength and identity it is today.
“I did not grow up in community — I have a Norwegian-Irish mother and a French-Métis father, and very early on they decided with my Métis grandparents that it would be better for us, easier for myself and my siblings, to thrive in Canada if we did not identify as Indigenous.”
Growing up outside of Enoch Cree Nation, between what is now Edmonton and Spruce Grove, Marois said she and her family were observers of practices like powwow, but never participants. It wasn’t until work immersed her in First Nation communities in Northern Saskatchewan she understood who she is.
“I realized it was a piece of me that had been missing all my life.”
After Marois returned to Alberta, acquired her citizenship with the Otipemisiwak Metis Government, and starting an intentional exploration of what her heritage means to her, Métis Crossing gave her an avenue to do the same for others on a daily basis.
“It’s, I think, a very important job of Métis Crossing to be that place,” she said. “It’s only been since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that people have been open and willing to embrace that side of themselves.
“The reason I’ve engaged so deeply in Metis Crossing and that I’ve invested as much as I have is I want to make sure no parent has to make the same decision that mine did. That they do not have to say, ‘It would be better for my children not to be who they are.’”
The Crossing, at its core, is a place to educate guests from all corners of the world on what it is to be Métis, and bridge gaps in common understanding of Canadian history, a perspective Marois called not incorrect, but “radically incomplete.”
But she also said walking the line between being a welcome gathering space for all Métis people, and providing world-class destination experiences for global travellers arriving in limos and leaving in helicopters, can be push-and-pull.
“If we don’t have our own people coming to Métis Crossing; if I don’t have our elders coming and having a coffee in the morning and sitting around the fireplace; if I don’t have our own community there, then the authenticity of what we’ve done, what we’ve created, is lost.
“We can never Disney-fy Métis Crossing. It has to always be authentically Métis. As soon as it loses that, it loses its value to the people from around the world, so it is a balance that we walk every day.”
While Marois is hoping to bring home the title of 2024 Business Woman of the Year on June 7, she said it was an achievement in itself to be included in the list of women making major moves in the medical, pharmaceutical, and artificial intelligence worlds.
And although the national recognition would be a win for the Crossing, Indigenous tourism, and Métis culture and identity, Marois does have other, personal milestones under her multi-coloured woven sash.
She recalled the moment when she brought her 85-year-old former construction superintendent father to the beginning stages of the boutique Lodge. As he walked through the work in progress, she said her father was able to see what it means to be Métis in a different light.
“He came face to face with the beauty of his own culture, and in a way that still very much honoured who he was as a man, who he had brought me up to be as a young woman.”
“He needed to see it, he needed to feel it, and I think that’s something really important about Métis Crossing.”
