Hijacked agenda : the National Museum of Australia and the Gallery of the First Australians

In 1975, Museums’ Australia in conjunction with the Federal government undertook an assessment of museums throughout Australia. The results of this study were published in what has become known as the Pigott Report. Almost twenty years later the objectives of the report were utilised as the foundational document for the establishment of the National Museum of Australia, Australia’s first fully national museum, which finally opened its doors to the Australian public in March of 2001. Housed within it is The Gallery of the First Australians. Within this gallery Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history is told from a revisionist perspective. National Museums play a major role in projecting narratives of national identity – they have done so in North America and in New Zealand. This thesis examines what is at stake in representing Australian indigenous culture in a national museum within a postcolonial context. The central question is what role Aboriginal culture plays within the national imaginary as represented within the museum. At issue is the place of indigenous cultural representation within the totalising concepts of national identity and national history. Therefore consideration is given to the way in which the National Museum in its internal organisation and by its architecture, signals the concept of nation. Since the late eighteenth century when the great museums of the world opened their doors to the general public, museums and the development of the nation state have been intimately connected, so much so that museums have been described as one of the ‘fundamental institutions of the modern state’. As such, they have enjoyed a respected and authoritative position within the societies which they served. Whilst the storm of controversy surrounding the National Museum indicates that this position is under threat, it also suggests that museums, as national institutions, remain important to contemporary society. In order to address the controversies surrounding the Museum this thesis examines the policies, structure, and focus of the National Museum and its representations, both museological and architectural, of indigenous peoples within the Gallery of Aboriginal Australia. It also gives consideration to the Museum’s public critics and to its relationship with the government that funded its establishment. It questions how these public and governmental responses might affect both Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal Australians and the much debated reconciliation process. The implications of the Mabo decision for museum collection and display are also considered. In order to illuminate the Australian situation, comparisons are made with the representations of First Nations’ people within other museums such as Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand, the Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec, and the Pequot Tribal Nations’ Museum, Stonington, Connecticut. This study is located within the broad arena of museum history but focuses on the history of indigenous representation. To enable an understanding of the complexity of the relationships involved, a multi-disciplinary approach is used. This calls on the disciplines of Art History, History, Memory Theory, Ethnography and Museology. Whilst the primary concern is to elucidate museum practice within Australia, the thesis addresses how the inclusion of the Gallery of Aboriginal Australia within the National Museum of Australia inflects perceptions of the national in Australian culture.

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