Culture and Peru, Kelly Moody

I'm stuck in a bit of a dilemma. The problem is one concerning globalization. In May, I am going to Peru for a class through ODU. We are going to a lot of different places but what i am looking forward to most is the time we will spend with different groups of people in Peru. We are visiting a school in one of the small villages to see what their schooling is like. We are also going to stay with a family for a night on an island that has mostly maintained its cultural identity over time, it will not have modern facilities and no electricity(as far as they tell me). My problem is that, how can they maintain their cultural identity if they are having us there to be paid by travel companies? People go stay with them regularly, and they perform their dances nightly, dress tourists up in their clothes, sell their culture, and it makes me kind of sad that it has resorted to that. The thing is, a lot of other cultures like this around the world are doing the same thing. Turning their heritage, their identity into a consumer commodity. Watching Baraka just made me think about every single indigenous ceremony as just a consumer-driven act for the camera, that as Westerners looking on, we could never get a true experience of their culture because of what we live by, because of how we get around in the world. It bothers me that i will be perpetuating this practice, when i go to Peru and get to witness the dances of these people, their ceremonies. I will just be wondering: what would it be like without us here? The thing is, we could never truly have that experience. That's the sacrifice. As Westerners, trying to become culturally open minded, culturally relative, non bias, well-traveled, just makes it all worse. For us to just be there, to just be put in their culture is automatically destroying their cultures because we are implanting a part of us there. In the process of experiencing their culture, we are destroying it. We celebrate something we are taking away from them at the same time.
Aside from that, my other problem. We have to bring gifts. Both for the schoolchildren and for the tribes people. They are telling us to bring things they 'need' like toilet paper, writing utensils, brushes, paper, food utensils etc. But i am thinking: that is terrible! Who are we to judge what is good for them? It reminds me of that scene from Baraka where the indigenous man is putting on his face paint with a brush! Why would i want to push this process along? But what the heck else could i give them?? They want Western items, because they believe it will help them prosper, and the economy around them forces this need on them. I don't want to give them gifts like that, i want to give them something that won't destroy their culture. But what?? It's a bit of a moral dilemma in a sense, because the teachers arranging the class will want to know what we are bringing as gifts and if i don't bring something they feel is a good gift(aka western products) then that may be a problem. I know it seems like not such a big deal, but coming to all of these realizations about what we are doing when we are masked by the illusion of otherwise makes me question the motive of everything else happening.