The documentary Cannibal Tours (1988) shows inherently the issues with western tourism, schooling, economics, and the legacies of colonialism.

When western tourists visit foreign lands, they go in completely blind. From the start, their schooling did not consist of the small details of places that they are visiting, if their schooling even mentioned them at all. None of the tourists know what papua new guinea is outside of once being a dutch-then-german colony. They know very little about the people that live there, their way of life outside of the ways that are strange to them, and they carry with them the belief that their colonizers set them free and introduced brand-new and revolutionary ideas that changed the colonized peoples lives for the better.

The tourists don’t see the exploitation, the indentured servitude, the hardship that these locals have faced by foreign governments for centuries. They see people that are happy living this way, that are fulfilled because they know nothing more. The tourists are completely oblivious to the idea that perhaps these people are not benefitting from western economic doctrines and influence. People that travel to ogle and stare at other societies they perceive as backwards is simply paternalistic racism, the idea that these people simply don’t know any better because they can’t, and must be told how to live by the western powers that caused their poverty in the first place.

From the westerners’ point-of-view, I can understand a little. They themselves don’t know better. They only know their way of life, a life of comfort and privilege in a world their ancestors raped and pillaged for their own profit. They fall to the propaganda. They have been told that their way of life is the only way of life, that capitalism is the supreme economic force of a modern world. Of course they believe it; they have the money they were promised! They get to tour and witness the people they perceive as savage, but slightly better than savages just because there’s a Walmart down the road.

Nevertheless, as a western tourist myself, the best thing to do is to acknowledge the power I wield having money and visiting countries that are economically and militarily dominated by western powers. As such, it is a mission to buy locally as much as possible, to directly support the people of the countries you visit, and to respect the culture and people as if they were your own. Being a tourist also means being a guest, and being a guest means that you are not above any rules or require any fanfare when visiting, such as these tourists in Cannibal Tours seem to think.