Decolonizing Travel and Reframing the Stories We Tell of Our Journeys

This post is part of my 3DR newsletter where I share what I’m (un)learning to build just futures. It centres around my 3DR approach to equity: Decolonize. Disrupt. Dismantle. Rebuild. If you approach the world with curiosity and you’re looking for courageous and compassionate conversations around social justice and collective liberation, subscribe to my newsletter.

I’m hopping on a plane this week for the very first time since the pandemic turned our world upside down, and while I’m extremely anxious about it, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also extremely excited. You see, travel is (was?) a big part of my career and my life.

I spent most of my 20s traveling while working in the international education space for an organization that facilitated experiential programs focused on various social justice issues around the world. That experience deeply informed my approach to anti-oppression and equity today. Today, I do freelance work for Wanderful, an international collective of travelers and travel content creators on a mission to make travel better for women of all intersections of identity.

I’m not going anywhere too far, just across the border to organize and speak at a conference focused on the travel and tourism industry (it’s called the WITS Travel Creators & Brand Summit by Wanderful, for those who might be interested!), but still. I love the feeling of seeing a new place and I appreciate the opportunity to reflect on the privilege that comes with that.

As the world begins to open up and more of us consider travel again, I wanted to take a moment here to challenge you to think more critically about your next trip. I want to take a moment to reflect on how a seemingly innocuous and leisurely endeavour is actually so deeply intertwined with global systems of power and oppression.

As my friend, Dr. Anu Taranath writes in her book Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World, “Every time I travel, I enter a story of systemic opportunity and adversity that’s been playing out long before me. No matter how justice-minded I might be, my journeys intersect with these historical legacies.”

What’s colonialism got to do with it?

Aside from everything, you mean?

Human beings have obviously been moving and migrating throughout the world for our survival since the beginning of time, but it’s really only the Age of Discovery that signaled something new. Marked as the time between the 15th century to the 18th century in history when sea-faring European nations explored regions across the globe, the Age of Discovery was the beginning of empire-building for many colonizing European countries.

Christopher Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, for example, led to the discovery of “The New World", and created a new surge in exploration and colonization. **Although, of course, it should be noted that "The New World", is a misnomer, as it was only new to the Europeans who had never been there before. It had existed as Turtle Island for millennia to the many Indigenous nations who were the original inhabitants and caretakers of the land.

World maps changed drastically during this time as European powers such as England, France, Spain, the Dutch, and Portugal began violently taking land and even people. Think of the genocide of Indigenous peoples. Think of the Atlantic slave trade.

This was all encouraged by colonial and imperialist governments and facilitated by economic policies that offered attractive and lucrative possibilities. The Pilgrims – that is, the English settlers who came to North America on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts, were economic migrants in search of greater economic opportunities and stability.

I co-teach a course alongside Dr. Taranath for RISE Travel Institute where you can learn more about and get deeper into this history of travel and its roots in colonialism and the global dynamics of power. You can learn more about that here.

Needless to say, these legacies of slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and uneven investments in certain parts of the world continue to play out today and impact our decisions of where we travel, and who gets to travel.

As my co-instructor Dr. Taranath writes, “Many regions of the Global South remain the Global South because of the persistence, degree, and historical roots of global inequality and difference. We can even say that many regions of the Global South have been kept in place by a current global economic order that has been forged from the past, and remains in place through various processes of Western-dominated trade, economic regulations, militarism, and cultural hegemony.”

What does this have to do with me and my travels?

Aside from everything, you mean?

For those of you who have been subscribed to my newsletter since the beginning (thank you!), you might remember the social identity wheel I shared in my very first one on unpacking intersectionality. Here’s a refresher:

This wheel of social identity, this wheel of power and oppression determines how I, and how you, move through this world.

The fact that I was born in the Philippines, but moved to Canada when I was just four years old and became a naturalized citizen means that I have more power and more freedoms than if I held only my Filipino passport. Suddenly, with my Canadian passport, I am able to travel the world with far more ease and/or work abroad in a professional capacity with fewer obstacles. And of course, I don't even have to go anywhere to feel the effects of those privileges of being a Canadian citizen.

This is what we call passport privilege.

As my friend, colleague, and CEO of Wanderful Beth Santos writes, “Passport privilege — the decision of where you can travel based on what country you come from and what is allowed to you as a citizen of that nation — rests solely in the hands of political agreements, disagreements, and agendas. It may be easy to forget, when we’re boarding a flight to our next destination, the many political agendas that have contributed to us being able to get on this plane at all — from getting a visa, to passing airport security, to even being able to afford a flight in the first place.”

As always and in all the things that you do, I encourage you to think about and reflect on your own intersecting identities and how that impacts the way you see and move through the world. Quite literally in this case.

Disrupting systems of oppression through the stories we tell

While there’s so much more I want to cover about how we might disrupt systems of oppression through the decisions we make while traveling abroad (the dollars we spend and where, the modes of transport we choose, the places we choose to visit and why), for now, I want to share how we might disrupt those systems through the stories we tell about our journeys.

At the end of 2020, I co-created the Anti-Oppression Toolkit for Travel & Culture Creators with my friend and colleague, Ariel Goldberg, and lovingly housed by Wanderful. For those of you who write, make videos, take photos, or tell stories of your travels or about the world in some shape or form, this toolkit is for you.

You’ll find a glossary of terms to lay a strong foundation in understanding anti-oppression; a how-to series on practicing diversity, equity, and inclusion in photography and writing; and additional resources to keep (un)learning — all through the lens of travel. 

As travelers (and as people, in general, really!), we must consistently interrogate our privilege. We must question how our presence affects the places we travel to and move through. As writers, photographers, videographers, storytellers, and creators in positions of relative power, we have a responsibility to use our platforms to also ask those questions…and then some.

We have the power and opportunity to amplify historically and currently underrepresented voices and stories that we encounter around the world. We have the power and opportunity to reframe and complicate mainstream and one-sided travel narratives. We have the power and opportunity to help level the playing field and work towards anti-oppression in the travel industry.

The toolkit is entirely free and you’ll get access to resources, webinars, and a network of creators who are committed to making the travel industry truly equitable for people at all intersections of identity.

Please note that this toolkit is an ever-evolving work-in-progress, just as all anti-oppression work should be. This is, by no means, a comprehensive list of all the things to read about on these topics, but rather a launch point for your own journey. I am continually updating this toolkit as I continue to learn and unlearn the systems of oppression and the travel industry’s role in it all.

We’re in a strange juncture of time as our world “learns to live with the pandemic”, however ill-advised, uncomfortable, harmful, and simultaneously much-anticipated this time might be. COVID-19 has wrought havoc on all of our lives but it has compounded and exacerbated the existing inequities that profoundly hurt and harm various marginalized communities around the world. As we return to travel, the need to critically examine our roles and responsibilities as global citizens, while also acting to support the world’s most vulnerable is ever more urgent.

Additional resources on traveling mindfully