Photograph By Shane Van Boxtel/Image Studios
Whether it’s putting words to her clients’ strategic visions or planning tours of Wisconsin’s Tribal nations, Apache Danforth’s passion is storytelling through tourism.
Danforth, a member of Oneida Nation, was named one of Wisconsin’s 26 Most Influential Native American Leaders for 2025 by Madison365. She is the founder of Good Words Consulting and, most recently, Good Words Travel, which offers Indigenous cultural experiences — cultural tourism is one of the fastest-growing industry segments, accounting for an estimated 40% of all tourism worldwide. Insight caught up with Danforth, who shares the latest on her cultural heritage travel agency and how it gives voice to Indigenous communities in Wisconsin.
Insight: Your career has spanned public relations, strategic planning and tourism. Can you walk me through your journey and what led you to officially launch Good Words Consulting in 2022?
Danforth: Since 2016 I have been an independent consultant and not really realizing that’s what I was. I worked for Oneida Nation in intergovernmental affairs and communications for almost a decade. Oneida Nation allowed me to grow and build my skills. I then had the opportunity to work for Native American Tourism of Wisconsin and I was a contractor for Paradigm Media for three and a half years. I was utilizing my project management and media management skills, and I was still planning events, but that’s not what I wanted to do.
I wanted to do strategic planning. I want to help my clients tell their own story and have a strategic direction and vision to focus on going into the future. I don’t know if that goes back to my cultural upbringing and the Seven Generations philosophy which was always really instilled in us. It’s the philosophy of making decisions today for seven generations from now. Just Native Americans being here [is an example] of that philosophy being put into action. Generations and generations ago, they were making decisions for us back then, and if they didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. I think that’s why strategic planning resonates with me.
How does Good Words Travel come into play?
Last year was a turning point when I knew I wanted to pivot back to tourism and use Good Words Consulting to do tourism strategic planning. So last January, with my business partner Cheyenne Landru, I launched Good Words Travel. I wanted to give cultural heritage tours of the Tribe. My target market is foreign independent travelers. They are really, really interested in Native American culture. They tend to take holiday, so when they visit a place, they stay longer. They go to more places and, ultimately, they’re spending more money doing so. Last year I went to three travel shows to get our brand Good Words Travel out into that industry. I was told it would take three years to really get this started, but we did it in two. My first tour is this month. It’s a three-day, two-night tour itinerary and we’ll be traveling to five of Wisconsin’s 11 Tribes in those three days. It’s really highlighting the culture of those respective communities. For example, in Oneida we’ll stop at the Oneida Nation Museum and the Amelia Cornelius Culture Park, which has some pretty cool things on it like the Veterans Wall and the replica long house. We’ll be stopping at [my restaurant] Off the Trail for a culinary experience as well.
Can you explain how Good Words Travel works and who are your clients?
In the tourism industry, we would be referred to as a receptive [tour operator] which technically is a wholesaler. I create itineraries and then I sell them to other operators. I’m not an agency where the general public books tours with me. Typically a receptive sells wholesale, so it’s business to business. My clients are other receptives, travel agencies and tour operators. The receptive is the voice of the community. Being a member of that community and having such deep ties to the other Tribal communities in the state, I can really capture that voice. I need local suppliers like Off the Trail and Turtle Island Gifts to build my itineraries. All Tribes have tourism assets, obviously the casino being one of the main ones, but with cultural heritage tours, we don’t really focus on the gaming part of it, but we do use their resorts and hotels and gas stations and coffee shops and restaurants. Sometimes we might have to use their clinics or emergency rooms because the reality is a community’s infrastructure becomes a tourism asset.
What is it about tourism, particularly cultural heritage tourism, that you are so passionate about?
It’s our ability to tell our story, our own narrative. For so many years, Native Americans have not had the opportunity to do that. You look in textbooks and they’re not written from our perspective. In fact, it sounds like we’re dead or extinct, when in actuality, we are very much alive. Our chiefs council and our ceremonies and our language — all of those things are very much alive. For so many years, somebody else has been telling our story. Tourism gives us an opportunity to educate people in a safe space.
Before you go, tell me about the She Rises Collective which you co-founded.
In 2022, I was working with Paradigm Media to launch the Indigenous Business Group and the Indigenous Biz Con. There was a women’s panel as part of the event and the other ladies on the panel were saying this panel is great, but we needed something more. We just started meeting. One of our co-founders contacted SCORE and they funded a strategic facilitator who took us through strategic planning and helped us develop the concept for She Rises. We have four strategic directions; one of the main ones is building generational wealth. As Indigenous women, we haven’t always had the opportunity to do that because we’ve been living in survival mode for 500 years. We saw the need for teaching women just basic financial literacy, particularly women who want to start their own businesses. We’re having our third annual retreat in September and we host business boot camps. We just did one on AI and another on pricing products and services. Those are open to everybody.
