Wonu Veys

There are three parts about Melanesia, North Australia and New Guinea Island and the four parts about the futures of tribal museuses. Inaugural sections and sections 3 and 13 mainly deal with theory topics such as "indigenous", "Western" and " museological" manners.

Is there a systemic distinction between tribal museum in the West Pacific and museum in Europe? He concluded that tribal art galleries are delicate and operate differently from their counterparts in the West and often encounter issues that maintain their dynamism. The third section compares and explores the technologies used by Lak (Southern New Ireland) burial rituals and Western museum to transcend the inter-subjective relation of space and time to the past.

Kingston, unlike the other writers, does not talk about an effective school. Instead, using a wealth of ethnographical information, he proposes ways to show how tribal ideas and conservation strategies are deeply embedded in culture shapes, practices and information frameworks that seem to have no museumological dimension on the face.

In a contextualized way, Christina Kreps shows how critically and comparatively museum types and methods are similar and different in different cultures. Using the case examples presented in the volume, she also examines the motivation and process behind the evolution of Pacific Museum and Centres. It shows that the context in which Pacific art galleries and art centres operate is complex and is influenced by major historic, economical, political, societal and culture factors from different countries, regions, national as well as internation.

Sections 1, 5 and 6 deal with the roles of the tribal people of Melanesia and Torres Street in changing regional policy on culture, tourist and monetary management. The first section tells Lissant Bolton how the field workers at the Vanuatu cultural center affected Vanuatu's culture as a result of environment laws, the state structures and the educational system.

This group of field workers has recognized and recoded a different pattern of sexual relationships, especially in relation to Vanuatu's own perceptions of what makes up female castom (indigenous wisdom and practice), and thus uncovered the complexity of sexual concepts in present-day Vanuatu. Tate Lefevre shows how the Lifou group, an economic deprived group within New Caledonia, manage tourist activities with their native dancing group, the Troupe du Wetr, and how they have controlled their identities by transferring them to others.

The unique way of combining one's own tradition with the needs of the contemporary life confirms that it is possible to use the tourist industry as a means of stimulating and strengthening culture. The case studies raise the question of how many scientists see the tourist industry as something intrinsically harmful to tribal people. Anita Herle, Jude Philp and Leilani Bin Juda examine the multi-faceted Gab Titui Strait Islands Culture Center.

They tell how the centre deals with questions of culture, society and revitalisation. Emphasizing that the growing self-determination of the tribal peoples and the awareness of the museums' domestic and foreign collection were decisive factors in the establishment of the institution. Different interests as well as different domestic and foreign regimes within the centre were discussed and strengthened.

The third topic (Chapters 2, 4, 7, 8, 11 and 12) deals with how Westerners' founded institutions either collapse or become "indigenous museums". "Lawrence Foana'ota declares in the second section that the Solomon Islands National Museum, founded in 1969, was first considered an outsider creation.

It has, however, become part of regional dynamism through public education programmes. Furthermore, the early 21st centuries' ethnical tension had aroused interest in culture centres and institutions among those groups of society most affected by the intrusion. Foana'ota points out that the Musée de la Musée includes the locals in various ways: firstly, they deposit mighty silent artefacts, and secondly, these artefacts are revived in the culture village erected on the premises of the Musée, which gives the institute a credible supervisory role.

Thirdly, the Musée d'Orsay provides an appropriate way of developing the tourist industry, which appeals to Solomon Islanders and is not only directed at the tourist. Diane Losche's New Caledonia Tjibaou Culture Center explores the challenges that Pacific culture centres and institutions face in portraying, recognizing and remembering the often violence-prone historic conditions of their emergence.

They argue that the Tjibaou Cultural Center's stunning architectural design, a present from the state, could have a detrimental effect on the fellowship as it overwhelmingly devours the objects. Supposedly representing modernism and Kanak identities, it becomes a memorial to the occidental notion of the fine building and misses the chance to establish a dialog with the Kanak tribes and their people.

In the post-war period, post-war ceremony scene appear as themes of painting and carving, and the development of the community tourism industries and recovery ethnographic policies. Section 8 explores a series of case histories of how the Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery, at first a present of Australian origin, is seen as a home of ancestry, or a home of Tumbuna with the headmaster as its incarnation.

He talks about what he thinks about the various features of the school and the intricate relationships between tribal peoples, artefacts and the school. First and foremost, the Musée is an institute that seeks to conserve ancient wisdom by allowing the collection to be studied by professionals. In addition, it conserves items donated to the Musée by the municipalities, items that can be important in the event of a dispute over the countryside.

After all, there is the dilemma of how the mystery of certain items is dealt with in the exhibition. Stanley asks in section 11, with the Asmat House of Cultures and Progress case studies, whether it is possible for them to become tribal. It considers the part of the native trustee (the Asmat Museum) as crucial in closing the gulf between West European art and traditional cultures.

On the other hand, the museum's trustees act as host for visiting experts from the West. While the Asmat is not a culture centre, the annual woodcarving contests, in which the Musée is heavily engaged, link the Musée to the woodcarvers. Welsch looks at the state of Papua New Guinea's culture centres and art galleries by first debating the National and Art Galleries, which knew a number of predecessors - Sir William MacGregor's and Sir Hubert Murray's collections and the collections of E.W. Pearson, a governing ethnologist - before they were founded in 1954.

It poses the issue of whether or not a school can be regarded as an institution after an indexation trial in which the people of the school will become completely indian. What does this contrast with the situa-tion outside the capitol Port Moresby, where tribal culture facilities such as the J. K. McCarthy Musuem in Goroka in the eastern highlands, the Gogodala Culture Center and especially the Madang Culture Center and the family-run Engawel Culture Center are unequally located?

Another topic in this book is how Christianity is intertwined with community traditions, policy and the money industry and plays a beneficial part in the revival of our richness. The Gogodala Culture Centre, which was constructed in the mid-1970s and is modelled on the nave, is analysed by Alison Dundon. It investigates why the centre dissolved and was resurrected in the latter part of the 20th cent.

He shows how the complexity of the interaction of Protestant Christianity, customs and questions of the evolution of this area in Papua New Guinea influences and shapes the exhibition and sales of artefacts in Gogodala and comes to the conclusion that the increasing stability of the link between Christianity and customs is encouraging for regional evolution.

Christin Kocher Schmid retraces the story of the Babek Bema Yoma Culture Centre (and the museum) in the 10th section and shows how the establishment of the Centre was linked to the establishment of municipal and domestic policies, municipal ecclesiastical structure and access to the money industry. It is clear that the centre is more focussed on activity than on object, and the writer concludes that it has become an acceptable tool for the construction of the country and commercial growth.

It is an important contributor to the literary work on museum in different cultures and is highly commended to anyone who wants to better understand the complexity of "indigenous museums". "There is no set pattern, and it is clear from these cases that the museum and culture centres are continually adjusting to the needs of their people.

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