Indigenous heritage and museums today. Encyclopaedic museums were institutions born of 'Enlightenment' values and committed to a belief that through the study of things from all over the world, truth would emerge. Museums were also thought to broaden cultural horizons and foster a greater understanding of cultural diversity. For the last quarter-century however, these principles have been called into question. Roger Fyfe examines how increased ethnic and cultural self-assertion has attacked the legitimacy of those museums which are full of objects taken from other places in other times.