*Cable Car leading to the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village (Photo by Bernhard Gagnon)*

Opinion Editoral by Clara Stiborek

estimated reading time: five minutes

Only a cable car ride away from Taiwan's famous holiday destination of Sun-Moon Lake in Nantou County, the “Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village” sits nestled between evergreen mountains. It is a mixture between an open-air exhibition and an amusement park. Full of roller coasters and carousels, it also features allegedly indigenous-inspired dance performances; their plot: a young man has to hunt a wild boar to win the chieftain’s daughter for marriage. For some reason, I did not like it there. Was it the lack of dignity I felt portrayed when a whole culture that fought wars over its survival is placed on par with a carousel ride? Or was it because I felt that the exhibition and performance just didn’t seem genuine, authentic, or real? So I asked myself, Who wants to be portrayed in that way? I doubt that such a setting can really promote indigenous interests and allow a culture to thrive and develop freely. I decided to take a closer look at how Taiwanese officials engage in projects concerning the indigenous population on the island.

Today, Taiwan's Indigenous People are visible everywhere in the country. The government is putting a lot of effort into the visibility and preservation of their cultures; the establishment of the “Formosan Aboriginal Cultural Village” is one such effort. However, that was not always the case. Before the 1980s, there had been a policy of separation between the indigenous communities and Han people on Taiwan, characterised by a perceived superiority of the Han. The status and rights of the indigenous population were recognised in 1987, comparatively late. In mainland China, for example, the state already recognised 39 ethnic groups by 1954; the number increased to 56 in the following decades. The promotion and preservation of indigenous groups is an ongoing process; the understanding of cultural diversity leads to new categorisations and recognitions of cultural groups up to today. After centuries of struggle for recognition and wars, indigenous people in Taiwan have been living under a protected status for a mere 40 years.

With that in mind, the question arises to what extent indigenous cultures can exist in an “authentic” way in the 21st century. The allure of modern technology and mainstream culture are exceedingly strong. Many aspects of indigenous culture—traditional ways of living, working, and crafting—have started to disappear. Realising this slow weakening of their “way of life," indigenous people on Taiwan have made efforts to preserve their heritage: music, ceremonies, local languages, even traditional plant species. The cultures have changed in the last 100 years, more rapidly than ever before.

But, according to Matthias Hoesch, professor of philosophy at the University of Munster, a culture will continue to thrive if changes are integrated in an authentic way. However, this is heavily dependent on who initiates and directs the changes. The forceful changes initiated before indigenous people on Taiwan were recognised in 1987, like banning indigenous languages at school and discouraging young people from wearing indigenous clothing, have left lingering damage to those communities. However, nowadays, a 180-degree turn has taken place. What does the eager promotion of indigenousness look like today?

*Totem Poles at the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village (Photo by Bernhard Gagnon)*

Let us take a look at an event that took place in 2004. The Taiwanese government launched a tribal mapping project to assess what areas were traditional territories of the Taiwanese indigenous tribes. In Canada and Alaska, similar projects of tribal mapping have been successful since the 1960s. There, the indigenous communities themselves started the project and filled maps with history, sites, and life, creating a “collective memory." The government in Taiwan initiated the project, funding the survey of traditional territories using modern geoinformation systems. A group of chieftains belonging to the Truku tribe saw this as an opportunity. Back then, the Truku and some smaller tribes were not yet recognised as distinctive indigenous groups. Officially, they were part of the Atayal tribe, following a Japanese classification of the 19th century.

The Truku elites took advantage of the tribal mapping project to extend their own land claims, even claiming areas that belonged to others, deliberately excluding smaller tribes like the Tuda and Tkdaya from the process. Even most locals of the Truku group were left out. In the end, the territory that was claimed as a traditional tribal area of the Truku was divided between only eight families. This project brought many problems to light. For instance, mapping out traditional territories of indigenous families and tribes is highly complex; these ancient boundaries can hardly be defined using coordinates and modern geoinformation systems. In the past, boundaries were ever-changing, and a region could be frequented by more than one group. The second problem of the program consisted in its top-down, government-initiated nature. It was not a community-driven idea that included all voices and members of the affected groups. The voices heard were the ones of a few elites who utilised the project to serve their own interests.

Does tribal tourism suffer from the same problem? In a 2017 study of the Truku Hongye tribe, about 80% of the participants wanted to cooperate with the government to develop a tourism industry in their tribal region. Taiwanese indigenous people have long been in a disadvantaged position when it comes to education and job perspectives. Tribal tourism is not only a means to secure jobs and opportunities in the countryside to counter rural to urban migration of young people, but it also significantly improves infrastructure in those remote areas. By becoming a travel destination and tourist site, a region that is otherwise highly disadvantaged can see a lot of economic stimulus.

Why does tribal tourism feel so fake, then? The vague feeling of dislike I felt in Nantou is perfectly articulated by a filmmaker who worked on ethnic communities in China, Yutong Lin: The problem lies in “framing ethnicity to be a commodity and to be a performance for tourists.” Just as tourism clearly brings advantages to tribal areas, with it also comes the danger of turning the unique and meaningful rituals of a culture into shallow performances, with the sole objective of entertaining visitors.

Cultures are always changing; to preserve them does not mean to freeze them in time. It is crucial to make sure the changes come from within and reflect the community’s authentic voice. Demands and impositions from outside carry risk; they can only be successful when the majority of the cultural group consents. Agency is the key here—who decides, who has authority over how a culture is evolving, changing, and adapting to future challenges? If agency comes from within, the community can decide how their culture evolves and shapes its development. However, top-down initiatives are not always a problem if the people welcome them, agree to its terms, and turn it into their own project.

The treatment of indigenous people in Taiwan has more than just improved in the last 40 years: suppression was turned into acceptance and even promotion. However, I feel like there should also be an increased awareness of who controls the changes and who profits from them in order to promote a genuine and authentic development of these invaluable cultures that have inhabited Taiwan for millennia. Even if agency lies with the indigenous communities themselves, the decision about what best to do and what to strive for is far from simple. I guess I need to go back to the amusement park in Nantou once more to ask the locals: is this how you want your culture to be portrayed, is this how you want to see it?

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