When he became the first Kanak head of state of New Caledonia, Jean-Marie Tjibaou made it a priority to reshape the Musée de la Nouvelle-Calédonie around Kanak values and Kanak leadership. Later, he would open a museum in his own hometown just as he became the leader of the Kanak separatist government in the midst of a push to gain independence from France. Tjibaou’s recognition of the political importance and impact of museums is instructive toward understanding the affordance and constraints on Indigenous self-determination efforts particular to the museum. This dissertation traces Tjibaou’s life and theories alongside ethnographic example of the museums in Nouméa and Tjibaou’s hometown of Hienghène. These museums reveal colonial and anti-colonial strategies for determining and self-determining Indigenous and non-Indigenous identities. This ethnographic study of the museums in the fraught political context of Kanaky/New Caledonia examines the political investments of the museums in the ultimate political of the archipelago: (non-)independence from France. Ultimately, this dissertation concludes that, as exemplified in Tjibaou’s assassination and the move away from Tjibaou’s culturalist, museum-inclusive political strategy, the museum is an important but still colonial and problematic site for Indigenous self-determination.