As more and more travelers prioritize local, authentic experiences, Native-owned tour outfitters are rising to meet the demand and share their cultures that have been sustained through generations of genocide and forced assimilation.
For Native guides, tourism can be a means of reclaiming narratives that have long been shaped by external and antiquated beliefs about their cultures.
According to the latest data from the American Indian and Alaska Native Tourism Association (AINTA), the three years between 2017 and 2020 saw a 230 percent increase in American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian-owned tourism firms, and they estimate those numbers are climbing.
For travelers seeking to explore Indigenous cultures with experiences that support Native American communities, here are seven Native-led adventures in the U.S. to add to your bucket list.

Nathan James, a Navajo trail guide for Totsonii Ranch, leads a horseback-riding tour of Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Eastern Arizona. Photograph by Kevin Moloney, The New York Times/Redux
Explore a sprawling canyon in Navajo Nation, Arizona
Canyon De Chelly is in the center of the Navajo Nation’s sprawling reservation. In Chinle, Arizona, the 83,000-acre canyon is one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes on the continent, with Diné—commonly known as Navajo people—occupying the area for 5,000 years. It is also the site where a pivotal moment in the tribe’s history began. Known today as the Long Walk, between 1863 and 1866, the U.S. Army, in its relentless campaign of Indian removal and westward expansion, forced nearly 10,000 Diné to trek more than 300 miles from Canyon de Chelly to Fort Sumner in current-day New Mexico. Canyon De Chelly is still home to a handful of families and visitors can only enter when accompanied by a Diné guide.
Lupita McClanahan, 69, a Diné elder as well as the owner and operator of Footpath Adventures, grew up on the vast canyon floor beneath its towering sandstone walls. Throughout the spring and fall, McClanahan leads groups on a four-day cultural immersion tour into the canyon. On an unforgettable backpacking adventure, visitors hike an ancient sandstone trail, explore Dine petroglyph, cliff dwellings, and caves, and participate in cultural activities like grinding corn, making shampoo from yucca, and coming together for traditional song and dance, all while McClanahan imparts generations of Diné stories.

Kayaking in Pavlof Harbor is another way to explore Chichagof Island, Alaska, home to the densest brown bear population in the world. Photograph by Michael Melford, Nat Geo Image Collection

On Chichagof Island, a grizzly bear walks in the Pavlov River while fishing for salmon near Fresh Water Bay. Photograph by Jonathan Kingston, Nat Geo Image Collection
Track brown bears on Chichagof Island, Alaska
Chichagof Island, an island in Alaska’s Alexander Archipelago, is home to the densest brown bear population on Earth and features a landscape that embodies Alaska’s majestic natural beauty: thick spruce forests, alpine ridges, snowcapped mountains, yawning rivers, and shimmering glaciers.
John and Marilyn Hillman, both Tglingit, launched Wilderness Island Tours in 2021 after cruise lines installed docks in their small town of Hoonah, which brought ships full of tourists to the island.
Wilderness Island Tours is the region’s only Indigenous-owned, land-based tour operator. Their tours take visitors on driving excursions through the island’s stunning landscape to see its famous brown bear population and learn about the natural resources—protein-rich sockeye salmon and Sitka black-tailed deer, and medicinal herbs and plants like devil’s club and s’ikshaldéen, and sweet treats like bright red nagoonberries—that have sustained its Alaska Native inhabitants for thousands of years.
For the Hillmans, who have spent their whole lives on the island, witnessing the excitement of someone seeing a bear for the first time is one of the greatest joys of sharing the beauty of their homelands.
“The best part is that when we come across a bear, people get so excited,” Marilyn laughs. “I tell them how you have to be very quiet and have to learn to whisper otherwise they’ll go back into the woods. Then we see the bear. They forget about being quiet, and they scream with excitement.”

In Idaho, the Nez Perce Tribe offers guided tours to explore Nimiipuu petroglyphs and visit historical areas where the tribe’s folklore originated. Visitors can also see cultural demonstrations and teepees, like the ones seen above, found on the reservation. Photograph by Jim and Jamie Dutcher, Nat Geo Image Collection
Immerse yourself in Nimiipuu culture, Idaho
Voted the best cultural heritage experience by AINTA in 2021, the Nez Perce Tribe—who call themselves Nimiipuu—offers multi-day cultural immersion tours to visitors of their reservation in northern Idaho. The jam-packed experience includes exploring hundreds of Nimiipuu petroglyphs along the banks of the powerful Snake River in Hells Canyon, a guided tour of the Nez Perce National Historical Park that features 38 historical areas and story sites where pieces of Nez Perce lore originated, and cultural demonstrations of singing, dancing, drumming, and storytelling.
The tribe offers single-day experiences, including Appaloosa horseback riding sessions, class III white water rafting on the Salmon River, and jet boat tours.
See wild mustangs on a 1,400-acre sanctuary, Wyoming
On the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming, home to the Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapaho tribes, the Oldham family cares for more than 250 wild mustangs on the Wind River Wild Horse Sanctuary.
Contracted by the Bureau of Land Management as a public off-range pasture—one of four around the U.S. and the only one on a reservation—the Oldhams welcome visitors to the 1,400-acre sanctuary for guided tours to see the wild horses up close and learn about their significance to different Native American cultures, such the Diné, Lakota, Shoshone and Arapaho.
Jess Oldham, Diné, says the majesty of the wild horses leaves visitors in awe. “You can feel their power. When they start running, they just sound like a thunderstorm. It makes your heart feel,” Oldham explains.

Diné-owned tour company, Ancient Wayves River and Hiking Adventures can arrange day-long and multi-day hikes that include jaw-dropping views of the area’s natural wonders in Utah such as the Valley of the Gods in Bears Ears National Monument. Photograph by Andy Mann, Nat Geo Image Collection
Hike trails to see 100,000 archeological sites, Utah
When Diné citizen and owner of Ancient Wayves River and Hiking Adventures, Louis Williams, takes visitors onto the San Juan River, it’s not long before they are pulling off onto its sandy bank so he can give them a glimpse of an ancient world.
“We go a half mile, even less, we’re pulling off because we’re going to a petroglyph panel, or maybe a site where the Clovis people [an ancient people dating back to 10,000 B.C.] were hunting,” Williams says. “There’s a lot of history out here.”
Located in Southeast Utah on the Navajo Nation Reservation near Bears Ears National Monument, Ancient Wayves River and Hiking Adventures offers day-long and multi-day hikes as well as river tours led by citizens of the Native American tribes for whom it is sacred––like the Diné, Zuni, and Hopi.
The national monument encompasses 1.3 million acres in San Juan County, Utah. The area’s vibrant red mesas, deep canyons, plateaus, peaks, and valleys hold thousands of years of history and culture for the area’s tribes, many of whom still use the lands for ceremonies and cultural practices. It’s estimated that there are 100,000 archeological sites in the area, including petroglyphs and the remnants of ancient people (housing structures, tools, pottery, and more) that occupied the area as early as 11,000 B.C.

Bears Ears National Monument is home to an estimated 100,000 archeological sites, including the Big Man Panel (petroglyphs) found in Grand Gulch, Utah. Photograph by Aaron Huey, Nat Geo Image Collection
Learn to make traditional stone pipes, Minnesota
Plains tribes have been quarrying catlinite (a type of argillite) from Pipestone National Monument for thousands of years to handmake pipes widely used in traditional ceremonies.
In the southwest corner of Minnesota, Keepers of the Sacred Tradition of Pipemakers, a Native American non-profit organization, keeps the art and tradition of pipestone-making alive. Led by Bud Johnson, an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, groups offer multi-day experiences curated around the cultural foundations of the area’s 23 affiliated tribes, including storytelling, dances, and ceremonies, a guided tour of Pipestone National Monument, and an overnight stay in a primitive traditional dwelling.
Throughout the experience, expert pipe carvers lead participants in carving their pipes from deep red, soft catlinite pulled from one of the 56 quarries in the national monument.
Embark on an adventure to explore Wabanaki culture, Maine
Led by Mahoosuc Guide Service in collaboration with guides from Penobscot Nation, The Way of the Wabanaki takes visitors on a four-day adventure into the cultures of Maine’s first people.
The trip starts with a seven-mile canoe down the Penobscot River to Sugar Island, home to a Wabanaki culture camp holding ceremonies, gatherings, sweat lodges, trails, and powwow grounds. For the next two days, Penobscot tribal members, cultural keepers, and guides lead groups in basket weaving, birch bark canoe building, medicinal plant identification, flint knapping, and shelter making and exploring the island’s trails.
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