The Pingpu aborigines keep running up against hard brick walls in their attempts at becoming an officially recognized tribe. But hats off to them as they keep trying anyway.The first official snub came in June 2009, when the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) rejected their application. Currently, the Taiwan government-level council only recognizes 14 "indigenous groups," or tribes.
The council said that the Pingpu do not meet the criteria to be officially recognized as Aborigines according to the Aboriginal Identity Act (原住民身分法), and that the then-Provincial Government of Taiwan did not make any mistakes in its call for Aborigines to register their identity in the 1950s and 1960s, “so, the Pingpu cannot legally be granted Aboriginal status.”
The Pingpu claim they never heard about the registration at the time; they had either failed to be notified by mail, or did not understand that the call for registration applied to them because the government at the time used the racist term "mountain people" to refer to aborigines. The Pingpu, who have historically inhabited the lowlands near Tainan, did not think this applied to them. The Pingpu were recognized as Aborigines until the 1950s, when their failure to register their ethnic status led to the removal of recognition of aboriginal status.
“In fact, throughout the course of history from the Qing Dynasty up until now, the Pingpu chose to live with the Han people, making them different from other Aborigines,” the Council of Aboriginal People’s statement said. “If they want to become part of the family now, they should respect other Aborigines and not act like the ‘homeless beggar who kicked out the temple administrator.’”
The “homeless beggar” analogy is commonly used in Taiwanese to refer to a situation in which a person tries to get rid of and take the place of someone who once helped them.
“The Pingpu claim to be Aborigines, but they do not share the same historical legacy and lack interaction with Aborigines,” the statement said. “If the Pingpu are doing so in order to gain access to resources, we would like to ask a question: Did you, the Pingpu, stand with Aborigines when the Aborigines resisted Han domination?”
The statement said the CIP was created to serve all Aborigines, but not the Pingpu.
The official snub was met with a legal challenge. On behalf of the Pingpu, activist Uma Tavalan, of the Siraya tribe in southern Taiwan, filed a suit in early April 2010 with the district administrative court in Tainan City demanding official status as indigenous peoples for the nine tribes that make up the Pingpu.
Taiwan's nine groups of lowland Ping Pu indigenous peoples are the Babuza, Hoanya, Kahabu, Ketagalan, Makatao, Papora, Pazeh, Siraya, and the Taokas.
Tavalan's lawsuit challenges the Taiwan central government's denial of both ethnic group status and indigenous peoples status for the lowland inhabitants.
Tavalan said: "This legal challenge is the beginning, it may be a long road. If needed, we will take it all the way to the Court of Grand Justices and demand for a Constitutional interpretation. We are carrying the burden of the past painful history. Many Ping Pu peoples are backing my effort. We must fight on to the end. Maybe we might fail or we can succeed, but we must never give up this fight."
Pan’s group said that the UN special rapporteur James Anaya accepted its request for an international probe of the Pingpu's claims, and promised the request would be given "close and careful consideration," and that the UN could initiate communications with the Taiwanese government on the issue.
Council Minister Sun then told the press that informal sources had informed him that the U.N Special Rapporteur had rejected the complaint.
Trying to quell the sounds of protest, the CIP issued a more supportive statement. The July 6, 2010, announcement from CIP Minister Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川) included a vow to further enhance the rights of the Pingpu plain aboriginal tribes of Taiwan.
"The era during which the existence of Pingpu tribes was ignored or even denied has come to an end, as the CIP has established a task force to take care of Pingpu-related affairs, " Sun said at a press conference.
He said that it is undeniable that Pingpu plain tribes share a common culture and history with the "mountain" indigenous tribes, but that recognizing the status of the Pingpu plain tribes should not result in any damage to the rights and interests of the indigenous tribes already officially recognized. In other words, the council was trying a typical maneuver to quiet the voices of angry Pingpu activists. Basically, by saying "we'll look into this," the council could lessen tension by having finally shown a more positive response.
The attempt did not satisfy the die-hard Pingpu activists, who the next month tried yet another step toward further official rejection. In early August 2010, about 30 Pingpu tribal people gathered in front of the Presidential Office on the United Nations' International Day of the World's Indigenous People, calling for official recognition by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Nationalist Party (KMT), a party that for decades has garnered aboriginal support in the voting booth. Escorted by police officers, 10 of the protesters entered the Presidential Office to deliver a petition to President Ma Ying-jeou after participating in an ancestor worship ceremony at Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the presidential building.
Historian Lin Sheng-yi (林勝義), who heads the Ketagalan of Taiwan Indigenous Culture Alliance, said that in addition to petitioning for official recognition of the tribes, they also demanded: 1.) the restoration of a 4,400-year-old Ketagalan historical site in Gongliao in Taipei County, 2.) an investigation into the destruction of the site, and 3.) a halt to land expropriation and development in the northeast coastal area and a wetlands area in Tianliaoyang in Taipei County to ensure conservation and biodiversity.
The presidential office replied to the petition in a September 3, 2010 letter addressed to Lin. The written statement expressed the president's full support for the Pingpu "in the area of culture and history," but chose to leave the ethnic recognition issue to one side because it is "very complicated and needs to be dealt with very carefully."
"We Pingpu are an indigenous people, and that is a fact that was recorded by the Spanish, the Dutch, the Qing Chinese and the Japanese, who all ruled over Taiwan," Lin said. "We're Aborigines, we're born with that identity. I don’t know why it’s a complicated issue that needs to be dealt with very carefully."
"How do you administratively decide someone’s ethnicity?" he asked.Jason Pan echoed Lin’s ideas. "The government had no problem recognizing the ethnic identities of other Aborigines, of Tibetans, Mongolians and Hakka, but when it comes to Pingpu Aborigines, it becomes a 'complicated issue' that needs to be further researched, and that requires social consensus." Pan said sarcastically. "If If we Pingpu do not fight for our own rights, we will eventually become culturally extinct."
Lin said that the Presidential Office called them "Pingpu" in the letter and admitted that they had their own culture and history, "so how can you say that these people do not exist?"
[This post was put together from various online news items, including excerpts from the Taipei Times and China Post.]
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