21.1 (Spring 1997) Museums and Indigenous Cultures

Pygmies of Southwestern Uganda: Reaching the End of the Road-and the. Beginning

Ethnically, Abayanda represent the most eastern range of Pygmoid Africans on the eastern edge of the great tropical rain forests of Africa. Pygmies, by various, and may number up to 300,000 persons. The majority live in close association with remaining forests. Abayanda, like other Pygmies, are a hunter-gatherer forest people and share a history on the continent that may go back 50,000 years or more.

The idea of gathering things, normally beautiful things, together and putting them on display is very old. Babylonian kings had their private collections in the sixth century BC. The emperors of China and royal personages in other parts of the world certainly had collections of their own. The idea of a museum, however, comes to us from the Greek word museion, which did not originally refer to a collection. Instead it indicated a seat of the muses, a place for philosophical contemplation or for artistic performances.

On December 12, 1996, Korea's National Museum reopened in its new location in Seoul, while the building that had housed its treasures for the past ten years was being prepared for destruction. The grand project of relocating the National Museum of Korea to a new site and demolishing the old building -originally built as the Governor General's Office during Japanese colonial rule-has drown scholars and members of the general public into a heated about the National Museum and Korea's colonial experience.

The Symbol of Japanese Colonialism

From Hall of Worship to Tourist Center: An Ancestral Hall in Hong Kong's. New Territories

This Year, 1997, is Heritage Year in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Tourist Association decided that this particular year was an excellent time to launch a new set of day tours highlighting temples, ancestral halls, shrines, and "traditional Chinese" buildings located in remote corners of the colony.