ABSTRACT
The Mah Meri Cultural Village presents a case study of the complex dynamics within a typical government-initiated community-based cultural project that is established to provide capacity-building for the local communities. I argue that community-based cultural projects can cultivate a culture of dependency between the brokers managing the projects and the intended beneficiaries of these projects, based on a form of ‘patron-client’ relationship that existed historically, leading to the marginalisation of the local communities in the hands of the brokers. What is promoted as a community-based capacity-building project for the Indigenous people today appear to resonate with the colonial civilising mission of the twentieth century, rooted in the historic ‘patron-client’ relationship that conceptualises Indigenous people as backward, undeveloped, and inferior relative to the white Europeans and other ethnic groups on the evolutionary hierarchy.
