ABSTRACT
The great challenges of a more cross-cultural definition of art is to allow what was and is different about Aboriginal art to remain despite its placement within a more inclusive category. Not all cross-cultural categories are going to be universal; some may apply regionally or temporally. The substantive phenomena are ones that have salience in the context of the society concerned and are in dialogue with cross-cultural categories. The universalism of cross-cultural categories must, however, always be open to question. It is that invasion that has made cross-cultural categories necessary and, since anthropology's origins are more with the invading cultures than with the invaded, the categories of anthropology are surely in part instruments of colonization or so they might be construed.
