Staging Indigenous Heritage: Instrumentalisation, Brokerage, and Representation in Malaysia by Cai Yunci (review)

This monograph stands out for its contribution to expanding the literature on indigenous museology from a Southeast-Asian perspective. In this study the author surfaces critical conversations on museology, cultural heritage and the mobilization of UNESCO's culture for development rhetoric through an ethnographic study of four community-based cultural villages in east and peninsular Malaysia.

The four 'living museums' are touted as community-based cultural heritage projects intended to conserve and sustain living traditions and customs and contribute to the socio-economic well-being of indigenous groups. Using grounded case studies Cai Yunci exposes contradictory realities—how these museums represent a post-colonial reconfiguration of the state's relationship with indigenous minorities and are in fact sites of negotiation and contestation where the dynamics of representation, self-determinism, identity and sustainability are complicated by the differing interests and motivations of several stakeholders (communities, sponsors, mediators/brokers, curators, landowners, audiences) involved in setting up, managing and operating the museums.

Readers are persuaded to rethink the politics of representation and of museology by the methodical approach taken by the author. The monograph opens with a well referenced and up-to-date literature review on the changing notions of concepts such as culture, cultural heritage, culture for development, indigeneity and museology.

The author strongly suggests the need to adopt critical museology, an approach which recognizes that cultural institutions such as museums are subject to specific geographies and histories which cannot be segregated from wider social, political and economic relations. Cai devotes a chapter to uncover the early historical conceptualization and classification of indigeneity in Malaysia and how it has been influenced by colonial thought and politics, in the form of race discourse, ethnography and censuses, evolutionary principles, cultural protectionism and integration policies. Cai also presents newer counter developments in indigenous political activism and shared consciousness that have arisen as a response to issues of marginalization and status reclassification, encroachment of customary land and resources, environmentalism and the rise of transnational indigenous rights movements.

Following the examination of the historical conception of indigeneity at the macro level is an examination of how indigeneity is conceptualized, curated and consumed at the micro level through cultural museums. The case studies provide well-researched information on the founding, development and organization of the four cultural villages and reveal differing perspectives held by contesting stakeholders on the impact and effect of these cultural projects. In particular the case studies highlight the concepts of cultural brokerage and cultural enterprise and commodification that characterize the Malaysian projects. The case studies demonstrate how indigenous cultural practice has been displaced from its place of origin; how beneficiary groups have been reduced to a culture of dependency on the brokers and museums; how self-determinism is denied due to lack of trust; and how the staging of cultural heritage has resulted in the modification, reinvention or reframing of cultural attributes.

By contextualizing how the dynamics and notions of indigeneity at the macro level affect indigenous representation at a micro level, the author exposes the complexities that need to be considered in museology and the importance of maintaining a critical and reflexive attitude towards toward place, time, and constituencies. Southeast Asian museums need to reconsider the rights and obligation of the community in matters of curation, operation, and management, to recognize community agency and authority on what they deem appropriate, sensitive, and accurate, as well as acknowledge that indigenous cultures are not merely rooted in locality but are also subject to the pressures of modernization and globalization.