How do Asia Pacific educators make sense of culture in the curriculum in terms appropriate to the twenty-first century? With the advance of globalization, is the idea of a culture (whether national, ethnic, or indigenous) as a way of life sustainable? In such a paradoxical setting where global forces appear to both affirm and undercut local cultures, how can educators navigate and negotiate the global cultural interactions required to make the curriculum an acceptable path for cultural formation? This essay uses a cross-disciplinary form of historical analysis to focus on recent national curriculum reforms in New Zealand in order to explore the present contexts and concepts of culture. (Contains 5 notes.)