The workshop was important for what was said, as the speakers addressed a number of issues that are of relevance to indigenous peoples and communities around the world. Topics of equity, excellence and justice for indigenous peoples were brought to the foreground. In his opening remarks, Ihimaera set the focus upon the necessity of indigenous people coming together to discuss and even deal with local issues that are disturbingly global in scope.These crises—which include the loss of cultural identity, the urbanization of tribal individuals, poverty, substance abuse, inadequate healthcare, gender inequalities, systemic failures in education, the struggle for land rights, and environmental degradation—demand a strong response from indigenous writers. “We have articulated ourselves in an extreme and forceful way,” Ihimaera said, noting that indigenous artists contribute to the righting of historic wrongs. Especially important, he argued: “We are writing for our survival.”
To achieve change in the world does not necessarily demand the writing of blatantly political treatises disguised as fiction. It may simply be enough to represent an indigenous reality. “Our function is to be different,” argued Ihimaera. This difference between aboriginal and non-aboriginal cultures demonstrates a general similarity between indigenous peoples globally. “There is not that much difference at all” between the aboriginal people of Taiwan and the Maori people of New Zealand, Ihimaera suggested. “We still honor the earth,” he added, arguing that through their writing indigenous people are struggling not only for their own lives but the continuing health of “rivers, the sea, the trees.”
Through their writing, indigenous artists in both Taiwan and New Zealand represent their similar histories of invasion, displacement and the social crises resulting from the colonial experience. “All those things are part of our world as well,” Ihimaera noted.
The ongoing experience of contact between the so-called “dominant” communities of power (the Anglo-Europeans in New Zealand, and Han Chinese in Taiwan) and indigenous peoples is a further theme to be found in the work of Native writers. Ihimaera spoke of his own experience of controversy arising from the visual representation of the racial and gender variety resulting from continuing “contact” between Maori and non-Maori New Zealanders.
The specific source of the controversy was the closing scene of Niki Caro’s 2002 film adaptation of Ihimaera’s novel The Whale Rider, which featured mixed-race Maori and a female tribal leader aboard the ceremonial waka, or ceremonial canoe, with a young girl serving as the chosen tribal leader. “There was actual anger at this,” Ihimaera said, but historical and modern realities demand that sometimes “we have to transgress our cultures.”
Perhaps the most important role of the indigenous artist, therefore, is simply to represent the experience of being aboriginal. “We articulate the lives, the world, that we know,” said Ihimaera. “If we don’t, who will?” Through this writing of the aboriginal experience comes a degree of empowerment. “And let’s face it,” Ihimaera said with a touch of obvious sadness, “all aboriginal peoples are weak.”
Striving for indigenous communal empowerment naturally and necessarily requires a discussion of education and the need for artists and others to work with young people, especially children. And so Taiwan scholar Dadelavan Ibau admonished her fellow “Taiwanese” to pay attention to the children in their communities. For her part, Ibau spends her weekends in Puli, where she volunteers to teach drumming to children. When working with them, Ibau also tries to communicate in their native language.
Both endeavors — the drumming and the language practice — are aimed at instilling pride in the children, especially those who are growing up in dire poverty. “These kids need to be encouraged,” Ibau said. “They’ve experienced great poverty, and that all too often leads to a lack of confidence.”
Novelist Badai concurred with Ibau on the need to reach out to younger generations, but as a community activist and artist he recognizes that the arts may also serve as a way to build bridges of all sorts within indigenous communities. “As a cultural worker I need to think what’s the next step for my community,” he said, adding that “comparisons to the Maori experience are important” in this goal.
Arts may serve as a bridge of communication between indigenous and non-indigenous communities, and in this function they may encourage communication and further understanding. I recall my own experience in mid-June (2008) when as a “tourist” with a group of scholars from National Sun Yat Sen University we were treated to a dance performance by members of a small and predominantly indigenous township located in the foothills of Jade Mountain outside of Meinung.
The performance featured both traditional and creative pieces, while the dancers themselves were largely middle-aged men and women. As village residents they formed the dance group as a hobby, a pleasurable and challenging evening activity. The group members use the tourist crowd as an appreciative audience. Their dances take place on the basketball court outside of the local Presbyterian church. (See video clip at bottom.)
Perhaps what was most important of my experience as a audience member was the exchange that took place afterwards, when the dancers and audience mingled for photographs and to play with some of the props used during the dances. At this time the tribal chief stood and chatted with our group leader about the economy of the township, the difficulties everybody faced in making a living, and their plans for surviving a future of rising food and gas prices.
While such “cross-cultural” exchanges are important, there are perhaps unrecognized dangers involved. Author and documentary filmmaker Sakinu, continuing the discussion of how the arts can benefit indigenous communities, offered a warning about misdirection and loss of focus. Sakinu, whose novel Wild Bear, Flying Squirrel, was turned into a popular feature film by a noted Hong Kong director, spoke of the temptations that arise when the indigenous artist writes for a non-indigenous audience.
The very act of appealing to a “mass audience” may inadvertently result in a pandering to “majority” stereotypes and negative expectations. “We don’t want to be pigeonholed” as a people who know only one dance or one song, Sakinu said. “Nor should we only make films about misery.”
Sakinu’s warnings should carry some weight, for indeed the burden of majority expectations based on stereotypical images, what Native American critic Gerald Vizenor calls “Manifest Manners,” is potentially deadening to the indigenous artist. This is certainly the experience of a number of Asian American writers who, according to author Frank Chin, create characters, settings and plots that satisfy the stereotypical expectations of white readers—while the act of “selling out” proves psychologically destructive to the individual artist, and eventually to the community.
Sakinu himself testified to a similar experience of being influenced by the desire for a mass readership, resulting in what he later felt was a compromising of his personal standards and values. While negotiating the sale of the film rights to his novel, Sakinu recognized in himself the dominance of the profit motive over the desire to create art as a spiritual activity. “This was a negative influence” of the urban, commercialized majority Han society, he said.
The necessary counterbalance, he argued, is for the aboriginal artist to focus on “love” as a central theme. “Let the world see our inner values,” and if that proves unpopular with a mass audience, then artists must be satisfied knowing that “recognition will come from indigenous people themselves.”
Interestingly, noted National Chengchi University professor Paelabang Danapan, over the past decades much of the strongest support for aboriginal artists in Taiwan has come from academia. Elementary school teacher and poet Walis Nogang supported this viewpoint. His own work as a researcher and social activist resulted in the establishment of a research institute responsible for information collection and data management.
Nogang spoke of the history of aboriginals and academia in Taiwan, beginning with a reminder that during the decades prior to the close of World War II, there were a number of indigenous intellectuals writing in Japanese. The arrival of the fascistic Nationalist Kuomingtang (KMT) regime — and the ensuing suppression of Japanese cultural influences, as well as the purposeful erasure of Japanese institutions in tandem with the methodological slaughter of thousands of Taiwanese during the three decades of “White Terror,” beginning with local intellectuals — contributed to the tremendous gap that currently exists between tribal students and mainstream students vis-à-vis their enrollment in and graduation from institutions of higher education in Taiwan.
More than three decades of Nationalist rule was also destructive to indigenous cultures and languages. According to longtime human rights activist Linda Arrigo, the tyrannical regime of Chiang Kai-shek and his somewhat less-extreme son Chiang Ching-kuo forced aboriginal people to abandon their traditional songs and ceremonies, and to replace these with “patriotic” music and lyrics. The forced assimilation of aboriginal people also led to the demise of native languages, while removals from tribal areas in combination with forced marriages between tribal women and Chinese soldiers further weakened connections with indigenous cultural roots.
Arrigo, in an article entitled “A Minority within a Minority: Cultural Survival on Taiwan's Orchid Island,” speaks of Chiang’s cultural bias and how he forced the tribal people of the island to live in concrete bunkers. By doing so, Chiang effectively killed an important aspect of their cultural heritage for generations to come. A further genocide awaits the people of Orchid Island given the status of the island as a dumping ground for Taiwan’s nuclear waste.
Of course, the KMT party, which today is only slightly different from
the fascistic Communist party in China, continues to employ many of the techniques of citizen control used by other fascist regimes the world over. Just yesterday, around 6pm on a Sunday evening, I was in the public plaza outside of Taipei City Hall. With both the central and city government in the hands of the KMT, it should have been no surprise to me when the public loudspeakers (see photo) began to blare out a patriotic song. Catchy though it might have been, it nevertheless was an obvious militaristic composition designed to stir the blood and evoke a strong desire to identify with colonialist Chinese dreams, and the passion for the “motherland.” Welcome to Chinese Taipei.
It was not until the late 1980s, with the death of dictator-son Chiang Ching-kuo (1988), that Taiwan’s aboriginal people had an opportunity to freely express their cultures and re-identify themselves with their lands, Arrigo told me. The passing of power into the hands of a more liberal KMT president Lee Teng-hui began what Nogang referred to as the “first wave” of indigenous expression, as writers from the Paiwan, Bunun and Tawu peoples put pen to paper and actually achieved publication.
Despite the advances of these early writers, aboriginal authors remain a minority within the community of published artists. “There are less than 10 indigenous writers who are published, and very few new authors are being noticed,” Nogang said. Young aboriginal artists are also somewhat handicapped by the requirement to write in the language of the majority population, Mandarin. Perhaps more troubling, Nogang suggested, is that while Taiwan’s academics and social leaders label the island a multicultural haven, in reality the society is a haven of materialism where traditional indigenous values draw little interest.
“Our literature must speak out for and to the indigenous people,” Nogang stressed. It is up to the aboriginal writer to struggle for the creation of art in a society where he or she will not be respected as an artist, he said.
Maori artist Witi Ihimaera noted that in such an environment, not at all unique to Taiwan, it demands of the indigenous artist that he “over-excel” in all undertakings. The Native author must continue putting pen to paper, telling their own stories, and writing against all odds “until we get our own people who are both writing and critiquing.” Wise words indeed.
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