On the eve of International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Sunday, Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) discussed in an interview how to solve discrimination against “indigenous peoples,” saying “more than 80 percent of all Taiwanese might have indigenous ancestry.”
However, Taiwan’s outstanding minister was mistaken, a mistake common among the public.
First, “indigenous peoples” is not a concept based on ancestry or genetics.
It refers to shared communities faced with the same political and social situations. The core meaning of “indigenous” lies in the oppression and subjection experienced by a place’s inhabitants, rather than their status as the earliest known inhabitants of that place.
As UN special rapporteur Jose Martinez Cobo defined it in his 1981 report Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations: “Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them.”
International law academic James Anaya defined “indigenous” as referring “broadly to the living descendants of pre-invasion inhabitants of lands now dominated by others.”
Also, the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples “recognizes the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous peoples which derive from their political, economic and social structures.”
In short, “indigenous peoples” is a phrase for “imagined communities” born under colonialism, and it does not refer to any specific ancestry or people who were the earliest to live in a region.
When Tang said that most Taiwanese might have “indigenous ancestry,” she was referring to all of the native ethnic groups on this land, such as Taiwan’s Austronesians.
However, when such a concept is involved, English-language speakers tend to use the word “Aboriginal” to refer to locally born and raised people, because it is a neutral term unrelated to any political or social meaning.
In addition, she attempted to construct a sense of homogeneity from the perspective of ancestry, and tried to eliminate discrimination simply by emphasizing that “we are all the same.”
That strategy blurs authentic problems, such as the oppression and marginalization of Aborigines.
The nation’s Aborigines only account for 2 percent of the population, and that 2 percent refers to communities that are being oppressed within a colonial structure.
No matter how many people in the other 98 percent are shown by scientific evidence to have Aboriginal ancestry or genes, it would not change that this land was colonized and exploited by aggressors in modern times.
From land and rights to inappropriate gains, accumulated wealth and structural privileges, the political, economic and social structures behind these issues are the factors that have shaped Taiwan’s Aborigines.
These factors differ from genetics and ancestral studies.
The nation must clarify the difference between the concept of “indigenous peoples” and “locally born and raised natives,” and “the earliest known inhabitants of a place.” If it does not, it will not be capable of truly understanding the essence of the current Aboriginal issue.
Chen Chia-lin is the director of the Taiwan Solidarity Union’s policy department.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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