In recent research, anthropologists and historians have demonstrated that tradition and culture are not fixed entities passed on unchanged over generations. Rather, they are continually modified to meet contemporary sociopolitical circumstances. Surprisingly, these concepts have not been formally applied to the single most visible western theatre of culture and tradition - the museum. At least since the nineteenth century, museums and cultural exhibitions have been perhaps the most visible and active modifiers of culture and tradition. Ethnographic museums actively contribute to the definition of people and culture.

Born of an imperial desire to document vanishing cultures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anthropological collections and exhibitions provided the western world with a window onto exotic lands. The exhibition of vanishing peoples buttressed the pervading social, political, and scientific paradigms of the era, which ultimately bolstered colonial authority. Collections and their subsequent exhibitions were specifically focused toward these scientific ends. Consequently, such exhibitions became central arbiters in the negotiation of social identities for indigenous peoples. (p. 292)

CONTENTS
Hariru Wikitoria!
The Maori.
Discussion.
Notes [ include bibliographic references].