The past ten years have seen an increasing interest in the politics of knowledge production in tourism studies. However, tourists' hosts' politics of knowledge, the ways in which tourists' hosts can use local knowledge as both a tourist attraction and a way to negotiate power relationships, are yet to be explored. This article identifies the need for more analysis of the political uses of cultural knowledge as a tourist attraction, reporting on an ethnographic study of the politics of knowledge unfolded by an Aboriginal group of Western Australia in the context of their tour guiding activities. It will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of the political conditions and potentials for local cultural knowledge (re)production and utilization in tourism.

Based on ethnographic research conducted with Bardi and Jawi people, an Indigenous group from the Northwestern Kimberley region of Western Australia, the aim of this paper is to approach the complexities related to Indigenous tourism in Australia through the politics of knowing and not-knowing as embodied by Indigenous tour guides and non-Indigenous tourists. It examines the notion of knowing (or not knowing) and its usages by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the context of their tourist encounter. 'Knowing' represents an important aspect through which Aboriginal people and their non-Indigenous guests negotiate their interactions. In particular, the paper shows how Indigenous and non-Indigenous expectations from tourism lead actors to adopt divergent positions and to assert renewed claims in relation to knowledge or knowing, casting new light on issues of selfrepresentation and empowerment in the domain of Indigenous tourism.

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Le Pacifique est sans doute aujourd'hui l'un des principaux lieux « où se renégocient les conditions sociales, administratives et intellectuelles de la recherche » (