ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the factors which initiated these changes and describes how the Australian Museum's relationship with indigenous peoples within Australia and the western Pacific Islands has been altered by them. It describes some of these activities, and attempt to situate them in the broader social and political contexts of the time. The most important events in the development of relationships between the Australian Museum and these countries in recent times were the gaining of political independence in the period between 1975 and 1981. The latest phase of exchange occurred in 1988, when the Directors of the national cultural bodies of the three countries were invited to the opening of the major temporary exhibition at the Australian Museum, Pieces of Paradise. With the project's completion, the position of physical anthropologist at the South Australian Museum also ended, and currently no Australian museum has a staff member fully trained in biological anthropology or physical anthropology.
