Wahgi Meets West
Richard Monte looks at the integration of Western ideas into native cultures.
In popular romantic myth, primitive societies are generally held to be centres of paradise incompatible with their corrupted civilised neighbours. The 'noble savage' (in reality usually more savage than noble) is thought either to face extermination or subjugation at the hands of 'civilised' society. However, primitive societies do not always suffer from a detrimental relationship with the modern world, as an exhibition at the Museum of Mankind, 'Paradise: Change and Continuity in the New Guinea Highlands', currently shows. The exhibition follows a recent visit by a team of curators to measure the progress of such an encounter in the New Guinea Highlands.
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