ABSTRACT
This chapter explains abbreviated historical framework for the contemporary exhibition of First Nations' culture, considering how the disciplinary identities and museums of both anthropology and art history have played key roles in the maintenance of colonial power and ideology. The museum environment actively contradicted the 'reality' of the group and audiences often left more impressed by the skills of the exhibit designer than knowledgeable about the lifestyle and material culture of the exhibited group. The history of collecting and exhibiting has been characterized by shifting institutional interpretations of the museum's subject, object and audience, and by understandings of the relationships between them. D. Cole writes that the return of the ships Resolution and Discovery in 1780 was greeted by scientists who were disappointed in the crew's collection of native 'curiosities'. Cole points out that during the first century of exploration and contact the collection of artifacts was secondary to the acquisition of furs and the charting of new territories.
