Kevin Rudd's Indigenous museum was a good idea. But let's not leave it to politicians | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on Tue, 27/09/2016 - 4:18pm

There’s a pressing need to create a national keeping place for the cultural property of Indigenous people – a kind of reverse museum to repatriate rather than appropriate

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s failed “secret” plan for a national museum for Indigenous Australians highlighted a negligent omission in this country’s celebration and preservation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and 60,000-year civilisation.

In 2009 Rudd, it seems, had in mind a “significant architectural monument and educative institution” in the vein of or Washington’s Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian or, perhaps, the recently dedicated National Museum of African American History and Culture.

My response was simple, and it ran along these lines. First I am required to abide by federal laws with which, by the way, I happen to agree. Second the NMAI’s collections originally consisted of almost 1,000,000 objects, and we have to date repatriated 30,000 of them which leaves us with 970,000 – I think we will be able to remain in business as a museum. In addition, as direct collateral of repatriation, both the NMAI and the Autry learned much more about their native collections.