Indigenous museums and cultural centres have sprung up across the
developing world, and particularly in the Southwest Pacific. They derive
from a number of motives, ranging from the commercial to the cultural
political (and many combine both). A close study of this phenomenon is
not only valuable for museological practice but, as has been argued, it
may challenge our current bedrock assumptions about the very nature and
purpose of the museum. This book looks to the future of museum practice
through examining how museums have evolved particularly in the
non-western world to incorporate the present and the future in the
display of culture. Of particular concern is the uses to which historic
records are put in the service of community development and cultural
renaissance.