Paper short abstract:

In Australia, the relationship between museums and indigenous population has altered, which symbolically shows the change of Aboriginal situation. Whereas in Japan, the situation is very different. This paper will examine those differences to see how it was changed and why.

Paper long abstract:

In Australia, the relationship between museums and indigenous population has altered at the end of 20th century.　It symbolically shows the change of Aboriginal situation in the country. I have conveyed a research among mainstream museums in Australia in the early 2000s and interviewed the curators concerning their indigenous exhibition. Until the 1990s, it was very rear to see Aboriginal curators, but the research showed that the situation was dramatically altered by 2000s. Also the planning procedure and the exhibition itself changed drastically. Most of the Aboriginal exhibition put large emphasis on the contemporarity of indigenous population. The drastic change was partly due to the centennial of federation. Around the turn of the century in Australia, the relationship between their indigenous populations has been regarded as a national issue and attracted wide public interest. The change of the museum shows this situation symbolically. And in the north, a few local museums which exhibit local Aboriginal items were originally built in 1970s. .And the nature of them have changed over the years. The historical diversion of local museums reflects the changes of indigenous situation in Australian society too. In this paper, I will give several case studies of mainstream and local museums to examine how the relationships between museums and indigenous peoples have changed in a concrete sense Compare to these, the relationship between museums and indigenous Japanese people are very different. In this paper, I will examine the differences to know the situation of Indigenous population in both countries.