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populations, such as Canada and New Zealand as well as Australia (Morris
2004: 10–11).
The fact that claims to universality are used to head off repatriation claims
reveals the colonial basis of such claims. That is, by claiming to hold these
objects for the good of the entire world, the museums presume either that they
know best what is in the interests of First Nations, or simply that these people
are not included in the world (O’Neill 2004: 196). However, historically the
public museum has always aspired to universality. A central part of the project
of the large national museums of Europe was to ‘symbolize a nation united
under presumably universal values’ (Duncan 1995: 47). The collection is seen as
part of the national patrimony and held for humanity as a whole (Clifford 1997:
121). Claims to universality work to maintain hierarchical relations between the
centre and the peripheries, asserting the superiority of dominant (global) cul-
ture over marginal and local cultures. Thus community-based or tribal
museums tend to be viewed as limited and relatively insignificant because they
address and respond to a localized community.
The anthropologist James Clifford has written about two Northwest Coast
tribal museums in Canada: the U’mista Cultural Centre and the Kwagiulth
Museum and Cultural Centre, both built to hold regalia repatriated in the
1970s. These objects had been seized by the Canadian government as punish-
ment for their use in an ‘illegal’ potlatch held by Kwakwaka’wakw people
(known as Kwagiulth) in 1921–22 (Clifford 1997: 124–5). However, as Clifford
notes, the museum itself is a Western institution, imposed on the communities
as a condition of the repatriation (Clifford 1997: 145). Even so, it can be
appropriated, though how tribal museums reinvent this institution varies. The
Kwagiulth Museum reinvents the idea of the museum in Kwagiulth terms, plac-
ing emphasis on family ownership as conceived within Kwagiulth culture, and
addressing a Kwagiulth audience. The U’mista Cultural Centre emphasizes the
moment of the potlatch, the seizure of the objects, and its tragic impact on the
communities. It gives a more explicit overall message ‘of hope and pride’ about
the event and about tribal culture (Clifford 1997: 134–6). This museum has a
more cosmopolitan outlook, collaborating and engaging in dialogue with
majority museums and attempting to speak for the Kwagiulth to both tribal and
non-tribal audiences. These differences in approach speak of different inter-
pretations of the museum as institution and contested versions of events within
the communities. They show how such museums, inserted into local and cul-
turally particular practices, orient themselves differently to the larger canonical
narratives and institutions (Clifford 1997: 122). They also suggest the diversity
contained within terms such as ‘local’, ‘tribal’ and ‘community’ (Clifford 1997:
141–4).
The relationship between the ‘global’ and ‘local’ is further complicated by