Museum transactions : negotiating knowledges, governing cultures

I expect that most readers of Humanities Australia will be familiar with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Map of Indigenous Australia (fig. 1). Some, particularly the Academy’s anthropologists, will be acquainted with it professionally. But most, I suspect, will have come across it in one or another of the more general contexts in which it has been circulated. These include museums. It forms a part of the visitor’s orientation to the First Australians: Gallery of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at the National Museum of Australia, and, since it was first made available in 1996, has performed a similar function in relation to exhibitions of the cultures of Indigenous Australians at many Australian museums