1 On the Origins and Theoretical Concerns of this Article

The reflections on indigeneity outlined in this article were first presented in oral form as part of a panel on ‘Speculative anthropologies on the futures of indigeneity in Asia and beyond’ organised by Micah Francis Morton and chaired by Noah Theriault at the 2015 meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Denver. The original title was ‘Formosan Indigeneity: Social Movements and Electoral Politics in a Marginalised State’. I originally focused on the paradox that Taiwan has a dynamic and progressive indigenous social movement, often aligned with ‘green’ political forces that emphasise Taiwanese nationalism and sovereignty, but that ordinary indigenous people overwhelmingly vote for the kmt and ‘blue’ candidates who dismiss much of indigenous politics as ‘ideological’ and unrealistic while promoting instead themes of ‘ethnic harmony’ and ‘economic development’. ³ Since in many ways, learning from the perspectives of the marginalised, even the poorest of the poor, is anthropology’s raison d’être, I have always tried to understand the perspectives of ordinary people, including hunters and trappers. ⁴ This allowed me to contribute to a panel about indigeneity defined as a form of neoliberal governance and, as all panellists were asked to do so, look for the existence of what Bessire called ‘hypermarginality’ (Bessire, 2014). As ethnography, the goal is not to generalise to the level of any population such as Taiwan indigenous people as a whole, or even to the Truku or Seediq, ⁵ but rather to explore how indigeneity is lived in everyday life in a limited number of specific localities and how that relates local people to larger political dynamics. The constant shift in scale, from the United Nations to Taipei, or from following crowds of protestors in the capital to walking with a lone trapper in the forest, gives ethnography a unique perspective for understanding contemporary politics. To contextualise this in the wider field of electoral politics, one only has to look at the 2020 election results. Although Tsai Ing-wen ran for re-election with the most pro-indigeneity track record in Taiwanese history, she gained only 25.8 percent of the vote in Taiwan’s 30 mountain indigenous townships, as opposed to kmt candidate Han Guo-yu, who got 70.8 percent in spite of having no substantial indigenist platform at all. ⁶

Indigeneity has come to refer to the new political agendas of peoples who have great moral claims on nation-states and on international society because of inhumane, unequal, and exclusionary treatment, usually within the historical context of settler colonisation (Merlan, 2009: 304). The core idea behind indigeneity is that indigenous peoples possess inherent sovereignty over the territories that nation-states brought in by outsiders have come to occupy. Unlike previous assimilationist or integrationist frameworks, indigeneity frames assimilation as a moral evil akin to cultural genocide. Indigeneity in this sense is thus not about a particular form of cultural or social identity within multiculturalism; nor is it about racial or ethnic equality. Indigeneity makes the stronger claim that, because of inherent sovereignty and a particular bundle of rights that flow from that, indigenous peoples are effectively nations within nation-states and are not ethnic minorities (Niezen, 2003: 18). ⁷ One common goal is to establish a modern treaty-making process in which geographically defined territories are placed under the management of indigenous peoples in mechanisms negotiated with the encapsulating state. Radical critiques of indigeneity, like that of Mohawk political philosopher Taiaiake Alfred, argue that these institutional and legal strategies fail to protect indigenous lands and rights or motivate young generations to action (Alfred, 2005: 24). It may, in fact, be just another form of hegemony.

The first time that an indigenous nation tried to speak to a collective body of international states as a sovereign nation equal to states was in 1923 when Chief Levi General Deskaheh of the Cayuga Nation in Canada attempted to gain a hearing at the League of Nations, gaining the support of such states as Japan and Persia, but finally losing to the great power politics of Canada and Great Britain (Niezen, 2003: 35). After the North American Red Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s and the 1977 International ngo Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, groups self-identified as indigenous nations began a process of consultation at the United Nations that culminated in the 2007 un Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (undrip). This international movement, which Niezen calls indigenism, ‘has the potential to influence the way states manage their affairs and even to reconfigure the usual alignments of nationalism and state sovereignty’ (Niezen, 2003: 3).

un indigenous deliberations, based on the precedents of labour union participation at the International Labour Organization (ilo), are unlike most un proceedings because they include representation by civil society organisations alongside state representatives. This has allowed Taiwanese indigenous groups to join, even when their state is excluded. Indigenous delegations from Taiwan began attending un events at the 1988 meeting of the un Working Group on Indigenous Populations (Miller, 2003: 188). Taiwanese groups have usually evaded Chinese opposition to their participation by voicing opinions as members of global indigenous rights ngos or on delegations of friendly states. In recent years, as China has succeeded in blocking all roc passport holders from entering un buildings, Taiwanese groups have had to content themselves with participation in side events (Palemeq, 2012).

Indigeneity is not to be confused with the liberal framework of modern human rights created after the foundation of the United Nations and enshrined in the un Declaration on Human Rights. In that framework, the goal was to eliminate discrimination against indigenous people and integrate them as citizens into modern states. The roc on Taiwan, which was still active in the un, took these goals very seriously. The roc in 1962 (when it was still a un member) signed the ilo Convention 107 (ilo107), the first international document of specifically indigenous rights (Iwan, 2005: 33). Focusing on Republican citizenship, the roc changed the name of the islands indigenous peoples from takasagozoku (高砂族, based on an ancient name for Formosa) to ‘mountain compatriots’ (shandi tongbao, 山地同胞), but maintained the nine ethnic classifications invented by Japanese anthropologists. Mountain compatriot affairs were placed under the authority of the provincial government; and a quota established for mountain compatriot representation in the Provincial Assembly. The state created 30 ‘mountain townships’ with the requirement that township magistrates be mountain compatriots. All of this was called ‘local autonomy’, even as the goal was to assimilate them as citizens of a modern Chinese state (Harrison, 2001: 66). People who had just become accustomed to speaking Japanese and using Japanese names were forced to learn Mandarin and adopt Chinese names in schools that emphasised Chinese identity (Friedman, 2010). ilo107, which drew the criticism of indigenous peoples worldwide for promoting integration into states rather than recognising their distinct forms of sovereignty, was replaced in 1989 by a more strongly formulated ilo Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention 169 that recognised the rights of indigenous peoples to self-determination within nation-states.

Indigeneity came quickly to Taiwan. On 29 December 1984, the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines was founded (Allio, 1998; Rudolph, 2003: 86–89). Shortly thereafter, with support of the Presbyterian Church, the first delegations attended indigenous un events in Geneva. Urban-based indigenous activists took to the streets demanding a new collective name, the right to use indigenous personal names, return of state-appropriated land, and the creation of a government body to represent their interests. Beginning with legislative elections in 1992, and based on provincial precedents, there was a quota for indigenous legislators. Activists trained through the Presbyterian Urban-Rural Mission chose the term yuanzhumin (原住民, ‘original-inhabiting-people’) as the best word to express their collective identity. In 1994 this word was incorporated in constitutional revisions that recognised their political, economic, and social rights. In 1996 the roc upgraded indigenous affairs from provincial to national authority, creating the cabinet-level Council of Indigenous Peoples. In 1997, following ‘the –s’ debates about indigenous people versus indigenous peoples at the un, the constitution was revised to protect the rights of yuanzhuminzu (原住民族, the new translation for ‘indigenous peoples’).

There is a significant difference between integrating indigenous people as citizens and bearers of political and economic rights, which translates into such practices as voting rights and affirmative action employment regimes, and recognising indigenous peoples as rights-bearers, which calls for the formation of indigenous governments as legal persons and creates entirely separate units of governance. The main political goal of indigeneity, and this is what sparked the protests on Ketagalan Avenue, is to create autonomous self-government institutions on the territories that were lost during colonisation.

It is not surprising that indigenous people as individuals in any country come to hold different opinions about which set of rights to prioritise in different contexts. In Taiwan, most of them were already beginning to reap the fruits of Republican citizenship and economic development. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, one of the main frustrations of ordinary indigenous people was not cultural assimilation, but rather being constantly asked to show identification and prove they are not Southeast Asian migrant workers. Whether or not they need a set of new political institutions, and what form those should take, opened up new arenas of political contention that seemed remote from working-class aspirations.

The Democratic Progressive Party (dpp), established in 1986 and closely associated with Hoklo ethnic nationalism and demands for Taiwan independence, became an early champion of indigeneity. In 1999 dpp presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian promised a ‘new partnership’ with Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, and after election promised to manage state–indigenous relations on a ‘quasi-state-to-state’ basis (Simon, 2007). Although Chen’s party failed to implement this full agenda, legislators in 2005 adopted the Basic Law of Indigenous Peoples based on draft versions of the un Declaration. During the Chen presidency, indigenous leaders focused their efforts on local identity politics. State recognition of new political and territorial groupings, through a contested political process of name rectification (正名, zhengming), increased the number of officially recognised groups from nine in 2000 to sixteen by 2015. Each unique indigenous national identity is expressed through language instruction, crafts, public art, and musical performances—all of which can be funded with public money under multiculturalism policies. dpp sympathisers say that President Tsai’s apology and the creation of the Transitional Justice Commission are intended to further strengthen indigenous rights. Postcolonial scholars, however, argue that indigenous Formosans still live under colonial dominance because even laws of indigeneity are based on state priorities rather than on indigenous cultures (van Bekhoven, 2016). More importantly for local politics, the kmt and other pan-blue parties, have been able to gain traction within indigenous communities by portraying the initiatives of indigeneity as merely ways for local elites to gain power and wealth for themselves without improving the livelihoods of ordinary people.

The intellectual groundwork of indigeneity in Taiwan was laid, in a literature too broad to fully introduce here, by legal scholars (Lin, 2000), political scientists (Kao, 2004), and theologians (Pusin, 2008), often in collaboration (Koh, Shih & Pusin, 2001; Shih, Koh & Pusin, 2002). Green-leaning Avanguard Publishing House (前衛) has published entire series on indigeneity. Much of the work, especially coming out of the Presbyterian Yushan Seminary, has been based on liberation theology, but the sectarian nature of this work means that indigeneity is not equally shared or promoted among indigenous members of other denominations or traditionalists and others who do not attend church. Local scholars have also been very prolific in writing about the futures of their own nations: for example, Tera (2003), Siyat (2004), Walis (2009), and others. There have also been radical critiques of indigeneity, like Namoh Nofu Pacidal’s lecture ‘Founding a New State: Theory of Taiwan’s Indigenous Independence’ at the 2016 meetings of the North American Taiwan Studies Association in Toronto (Namoh, 2016). Yet, most of this intellectual production has happened outside of anthropology. Taiwanese anthropologists, accustomed to being the sole experts of indigenous ‘cultures’, still have no consensus about how to engage with this political movement. The mainstream view in Taiwan (as well as in international anthropology) is to ignore indigeneity and its philosophical underpinnings while focusing on the study of culture or anthropological theory. Taiwanese anthropologists have mostly refrained from directly attacking the legitimacy of indigeneity, unlike some international scholars (e.g. Kuper, 2003).

The principles of indigeneity behind the undrip promise marginalised and stateless peoples a place at the table in the family of nations as the moral and ontological equals of states. Yet compromises at the international level mean that the undrip cannot be mobilised to challenge state sovereignty. Article 46.1, added to undrip at the last moment due to the insistence of state negotiators, explicitly decrees that the Declaration does not authorise or encourage action that threatens ‘the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent states’ (United Nations, 2007). In a sense, this is the Achilles heel of indigeneity, which promises to keep states intact according to current borders, while granting autonomy to indigenous peoples only by renegotiating alliances within encapsulating states. Many states interpret the undrip to mean that territorial and political unity trump indigenous concerns which, as Neal Keating has noted, is precisely what inspired the global indigenous rights movement in the first place (Keating, 2007). This state-based framework excludes Taiwanese indigenous peoples from the international framework of indigeneity. On 13 September 2007, when the un General Assembly adopted the undrip, Taiwan had no vote because it had already lost un membership in 1971. This exclusion means that Taiwan’s indigenous peoples have no direct access to the un special rapporteurs. It also means that their participation in other events is also questioned. As I learned from attending the 2016 Pacific Arts Forum in Guam, for example, there are constant struggles about whether Taiwanese delegations can show their national flag and even a lack of consensus about whether or not they should be permitted to attend international indigenous events.

In Taiwan indigeneity as an urban-based social movement detached from the interests of ordinary people was first analysed by Taiwanese anthropologist Shih-chung Hsieh who, in a touchstone article comparing Taiwan’s nascent indigenous rights movement to the North American Red Power movement, described a social phenomenon of ‘elites alienated from the people’ (偏離群眾的菁英) (Hsieh, 1992). Kun-hui Ku argued that the changing status of indigenous populations was used to legitimise a new Taiwanese national identity and separate Taiwanese identity from the Chinese one (Ku, 2005). Chi and Chin even went so far as to accuse the Truku families involved in tribal mapping projects of ‘colonialism from within’ (Chi & Chin, 2012: 733). These themes have been picked up in the international literature, notably by Michael Rudolph (2003, 2008), who focuses on elite competition as if indigeneity were just one more instrument in the toolkit of political opportunism. Chung-Chi Chao, on the other hand, warned against overemphasising the novelty of these nations, because the groups seeking recognition in modern indigenous nationalism are based on precolonial ‘incipient’ nations (Chao, 2003). Their ability to take on the diplomatic role of Chief Deskaheh, representing their nations to the world, depends on the legitimacy they gain both among their own people and at the international level.

2 Daily Life in Indigenous Villages

The lived experience of indigenous people is best understood through ethnography, by living with them and, to the greatest extent possible, as they do. This is the most fundamental contribution of anthropology. As Bronislaw Malinowski once said, the goal of the ethnographer is ‘to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world’ (Malinowski, 1932: 25, emphasis in the original). The emergence of phenomenological anthropology has made this of greater actuality in theory, especially with the concept of life-world that seeks to understand life from the basis of lived experience rather than from preconceived intellectual models (Laplante & Sacrini, 2016: 11), even from a presupposition that the people we work with represent a culture with clearly defined borders. In a similar vein, Taiwanese anthropologists have shown the usefulness of focusing on embodiment and the physical activities of walking and hiking to understand both indigenous identity as expressed in documentary films (Lin, 2013) and in the success of indigenous root-seeking expeditions (Yang, 2015). Seediq and Truku people have also made me aware of their ancestral law of Gaya as a legal-political-moral ontology to be lived, experienced, negotiated, and put into action rather than as a cultural model that determines their behaviour (Simon, 2012).

My research methods most importantly included long-term residence in indigenous villages. Of course, I initially gained access through local ‘elites’ who interact regularly with academics, understand our projects, and have living space to rent to visiting scholars. In fact, these employees of the township offices, Presbyterian ministers, and schoolteachers were among the best ‘informants’ as they are knowledgeable about indigenous issues and able to articulate them in ways easily understood by academics. More difficult to approach are those ‘ordinary people’ who may work in subaltern jobs or eke out a living from day labour and the (illegal) sale of bushmeat. They have a tendency to dismiss inquisitive scholars by saying that their lives are uninteresting. I addressed this problem by, when those with jobs were absent, working alongside or conversing with those people who stayed in the villages during the daytime, and then prolonging our days into evenings around the barbecue pit and even excursions into the mountains.

Long-term participatory research enabled me to seek an understanding of Seediq (human) life-worlds from what Ingold calls a dwelling perspective: ‘the immersion of the organism-person in an environment or life-world as an inescapable condition of existence’ (Ingold, 2000: 153). It also made me the brunt of humour, as when a township employee (with whom I lived) said, ‘You are the best anthropologist ever. You can even hang out with the village drunks and make friends with so-and-so.’ This time of field research, however, also made me a bit sceptical about too strong an analytical distinction between ordinary people and elites. The so-called elites might very well be the children of ordinary people, and a set of siblings may include both elites and ordinary people. According to Gaya, they are expected to share with one another. The main human parts of their life-worlds are the people with whom they must share. For the Seediq and Truku, these people are members of their family (sapah) and the larger territorial and somewhat clan-based alang, which sometimes via the Mandarin buluo (部落) gets clumsily translated as ‘tribe’. Relations beyond the alang, even within the limits of what proponents of indigeneity see as Taiwan’s 16 territorially defined and officially recognised indigenous peoples, are fraught with tensions. People still recall the violence that different alang inflicted upon one another in the Japanese era and before. They dwell in life-worlds defined more by family and local belonging than by the larger, sometimes contested, legal classifications of indigeneity.

Participatory research means that my field notes are full of descriptions of conversations. One morning in Nantou, for example, I drank Whispy (a caffeine-based alcoholic beverage) with a group of women who were waiting for their labour broker to pick them up and take them to work at the nearby Atayal Resort. This amusement park, with a French-style garden and a giant statue of anti-Japanese rebel Mona Ludaw, was built on indigenous reserve land that had supposedly been fraudulently obtained by a Taiwanese corporation from the indigenous titleholder. One of the women told me that they are poorly paid, but they have few work opportunities near home. Since the Seediq were at the time lobbying for state recognition, I asked her if she thought establishing a Seediq nation and eventually a Seediq autonomous region would resolve the conflict between the community and the Atayal Resort. She told me that name rectification does nothing for ordinary people and is only a ruse to obtain new positions for local elites. When I said that the Basic Law calls for creating autonomous regions, she said, ‘That law is just to fool foreign scholars into believing that the dpp government is treating the indigenous people well.’ I said that I know a lot of indigenous scholars who promote political autonomy, including Kao Teh-I. She replied: ‘Kao Teh-I! Those people are just flower-vase scholars [花瓶學者, huaping xuezhe] that they parade around in front of foreign scholars.’ I was horrified that she could so easily dismiss the work of a scholar whom I saw as a leader in indigenous rights. Yet such conversations were useful because they illustrated to me how people perceive indigeneity as an external imposition and as a political tool wielded most forcefully by the dpp.

The cynical positions of these people are to some extent the talking points of the opposition kmt. The kmt has been very successful in indigenous communities, as indigenous cadres from their peoples’ service stations make regular rounds of the villages and engage in conversation with people. Between elections, they show their concern for peoples’ needs, help them resolve difficulties as citizens negotiate local bureaucracies, and cultivate personal ties that they can then mobilise at election time as voters make ‘mini-deals’ with candidates as parties (Simon, 2010). kmt messages are amplified by the pro-kmt television news, broadcast 24 hours a day in public spaces, and nowadays via social media. The message during both the Chen Shui-bian and Tsai Ing-wen administrations was that the dpp manipulates ideological themes of indigenous rights and sovereignty for the benefit of a narrow elite, but does little to address issues of poverty, unemployment, and discrimination. The kmt portrays itself as a ‘non-ideological’ party that seeks only ‘ethnic harmony’ and ‘development’. In addition to the kmt, there are also ‘independent’ indigenous politicians such as the outspoken Kao Chin Su-mei, who does not hesitate to take delegations of indigenous people to China where they join performances representing themselves as one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities. By providing annual junkets to village elites, usually led by pan-blue indigenous legislators, the Chinese Communist Party has cultivated a network of indigenous people in favour of unification. Some of those people praise China for having the only real form of autonomy for ethnic minorities. In my 2019 visit, I found that people in the villages were very sceptical about Tsai’s apology and about the Transitional Justice Commission, repeating the false information that Commission members gain a high salary for just attending one monthly meeting. They portrayed kmt Han Guo-Yu as the candidate most likely to forge a close economic relationship with China and thus bring prosperity to all. The success of the kmt strategy is demonstrated in the fact that, ever since free elections have been held in Taiwan, the 30 indigenous townships have voted overwhelmingly in favour of either the kmt or more radically pro-unification candidates for both the presidency and the legislature. This means that indigeneity is only one symbol among many in wider political competition, and not an agenda that people embrace naturally because of their legal status as indigenous people.

More than anyone else, indigenous people understand that the entire landscape of Taiwan is a process of life created by those who dwell within it. Even the concrete jungle of cities was created through the blood and sweat of indigenous construction workers, but even more so the countryside. People with construction experience often build their own houses. Over the past three generations, they have expanded their agricultural lands, an activity that gives them usufruct rights over state-owned reserve land. They look beyond the village to the adjacent mountains, where sapah and alang stake claims to clearly defined hunting territories recognised by other hunters but not by the state, for whom hunters are poachers in lands under the jurisdiction of the Forestry Division or National Parks. Indigenous people have built their landscapes as farmers by digging rice paddies, cutting trees to make room for tea and cabbage plantations, and planting orchards, but also as hunters by using machetes to cut paths through the dense vegetation of semi-tropical forests. Other people are also a part of this landscape, but relations with them can be difficult. Most indigenous adults have the experience of working in the cities, but those who have faced the realities of discrimination and exclusion there return to their homelands where they hope to live on their own terms. Those terms include the right to hunt on their traditional territory. The perspectives of hunters and trappers are especially important. If, as indigenous leaders constantly stress, indigenous sovereignty is based on their stewardship of the land for generations, the people who actually maintain traplines and cultivate hunting territories are central to regaining traditional territory and establishing self-government.

3 Hunting: Gaya as Becoming Fully Human

For the Seediq and Truku men, hunting is important for social and economic reasons, but also for religious or spiritual dimensions related to what they call Gaya, their ancestral law. For most non-indigenous Taiwanese, hunting is a sign of savagery, contrasted to civilisation characterised by farming or urban life. Some indigenous individuals, especially those with post-secondary education, have also adopted this attitude and take pride in the fact that they do not hunt. Yet, most rural men boast that ‘the mountain is my freezer’—meaning that they can take meat from it anytime they wish. They are frustrated by the state legal framework that has criminalised many hunting activities since the 1970s. They claim instead that Gaya has protected the animals for millennia, its efficacy proven by the continued existence of animals, and that they need no other law.

Hunting is restricted by changing sets of laws and regulations that are often difficult for ordinary people to understand. Only indigenous people are permitted to possess rifles and hunt. Yet they are permitted only to use home-made rifles, which means they can face criminal charges if they use modern firearms or ammunition. In addition, the makeshift rifles sometimes cause injury or death to hunters. Nearly all traps are illegal. There are strict laws against hunting of threatened and endangered species or hunting in national parks. These legal restrictions are enforced in spite of the fact that the 2005 Basic Law on Indigenous Peoples recognises an indigenous right to hunt for cultural and subsistence purposes. Moreover, the sale of bushmeat is explicitly illegal. When hunters are hunted down in the forest by conservation officers and police, subjected to arrest, detainment, imprisonment, and fines, they experience the state and state claims to sovereignty as a form of ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998) that denies the most basic element of their life-worlds. Whenever they hunt, they are conscious that they are violating state law, which they say has less legitimacy than Gaya. Each hunt is thus a potent form of resistance.

Hunting covers a spectrum of activities that extend from forming the hunting group to sharing the meat (Nadasdy, 2003: 65). Young men enjoy hunting flying squirrels with one or two friends, or even alone. This usually means going into the foothills at night, casting the beam from a headlight into the tree canopies until it reflects glowing eyes, and then shooting. Some of them train dogs to retrieve squirrels that fall into inaccessible ravines. Older men prefer trapping, and have regular traplines along paths they carve through the jungles with machetes. Their challenges are knowing when to inspect their traps; but they say that the ancestors give them dreams to indicate that an animal awaits them. Other men hunt by rifle, using headlights at night, to catch larger mammals. Preferred catches are wild boar, serow (a mountain goat), and muntjac (a small deer). Most leave in the evening and return by morning. Very few hunters travel farther into the forest for multi-day expeditions. In any case, they say that the animals are gifts from their ancestors, the reward of righteous men for having followed Gaya, so they cannot refuse animals that are presented to them.

Each hunt is a social process that involves more than killing animals. On one overnight trip, for example, Ichiro (a pseudonym) took me up the steep mountain path to his hunting shack. Before entering the forest, he prayed in Presbyterian fashion to God for our safety. As we walked through the forest, he showed me where his father had fallen down the cliff to his death and left a small offering of rice wine. In the evening, his headlights caught the reflection of an animal on the path and, without identifying the animal, he shot at it. Due to the poor quality of his rifle, to his consternation, the bullet merely bounced off the animal’s head. Nonetheless, it was stunned and fell to the ground. He seized the unconscious animal, which he could now identify as a serow, tied its feet with cord, and took it to his hunting shack. In the morning, he placed the revived animal in a burlap bag. Ichiro was elated to bring back a game animal. He expressed frustration about the legal framework that meant he had to hunt with a substandard rifle, at night, and worry about authorities who could arrest him. ‘In the past, we returned to the village as heroes,’ he said. ‘Now we have to return in secret like thieves in the night.’

In fact, the social process had just begun. We took the serow to his father-in-law’s home, where we were greeted with great joy. He removed the serow from the bag and placed it in the laundry room. I patted the docile serow on the head. Thinking that I should be grateful to the prey as in North America (Brightman, 2002), I thanked it for giving us its life. Ichiro glared at me and said in Chinese, ‘You are crazy.’ He explained that, whereas domesticated pigs (babui) at Seediq Truku sacrificial killings cry loudly in protest of their impending deaths, forest animals (samat) face death silently and stoically. His father-in-law and I held the serow to the ground as Ichiro struck a knife through its throat and killed it. As Ichiro had predicted, it remained quiet. In fact, they would not have dared to slaughter it at home if they thought it might alert the neighbours. They drained the blood into a bucket. Ichiro deftly removed the hide with his knife and separated the internal organs from the meat. His wife and mother-in-law cleaned the internal organs, while the men cut the meat.

His father-in-law took over from this point, and cooked the feast, which began with a prayer of thanks to God. We ate the liver raw. His father-in-law mixed the blood with rice wine, which we drank rapidly to Chinese cheers of ‘Ganbei’ (‘bottoms up!’). His father-in-law presented the men at the table with small crystal goblets filled with an emerald liquid. This was the bile, he explained, which fortifies a man’s sexual prowess. We ate the roasted legs and ribs, cooked only with salt as ‘aboriginal flavour’ (yuanwei), as well as most of the internal organs. The lungs and other undesirable parts were saved for the dogs.

This experience demonstrates that hunting, from beginning to end, is a social process. The provision of meat to others is what makes a person into a full man. Hunting is also a relationship with the ancestors, beginning with Ichiro addressing his deceased father in the mountains. Ichiro was very proud to share with me the hunting paths that had been carved out by his father, and before that his grandfather. The animals themselves are links between the living and the dead. Before killing the serow, Ichiro contrasted it with the pig. This is important because, in a larger ritual cycle, pigs are sacrificed to the ancestors, who in return reward the righteous with game (Lin, 2011; Simon, 2015). Ichiro was also keenly aware of the danger posed by the state. Because his actions have been criminalised, he had to hunt secretly and could not share the meat more widely. Ichiro has full-time employment in a factory, which means that he hunts only occasionally. His brother, however, is chronically unemployed and relies on bushmeat sales to make a living. Although the sale of game is prohibited and comes with steep fines, he was able to send two children to university on this income. Hunting, especially sharing of meat, thus defines masculinity and the role of men in the family. It brings together so-called elites and ordinary people, and it can even contribute to social mobility. Because the social and religious aspects of hunting are so important to these hunters, they cannot accept state prohibitions on this defining aspect of their life-worlds. Only by hunting according to Gaya do people become Seediq balay—truly human.

Most crucially, the indigenous people perceive the forested mountains of Formosa to be inherently theirs, to be regulated first and foremost by Gaya. Like First Nations of North America (Simpson, 2014), these hunters make potent claims to sovereignty and thus destabilise competing state forms. Hunters insist that they are merely carrying out the practices of their fathers and grandfathers, on the same clan-based hunting territories, and that they were doing so long before the roc came to Taiwan. Some older men told me that the Japanese were better colonisers because they permitted them to hunt and even provided them with good hunting rifles. They insist that Gaya protects wildlife better than state laws drafted by urban legislators or the expertise of foreign-trained forestry scholars (Simon, 2013). Others told me that they already compromised with the state by replacing headhunting coming-of-age rituals with animal hunting, and that they will compromise no further.

4 The Tama Talum Case: Unveiling the Limits of Indigeneity

The issue of hunting has become a litmus test for indigenous rights. In July 2013, at the request of his elderly mother who wanted to eat traditional country food, a 54-year-old Bunun man named Tama Talum (Wang Guang-lu, 王光祿) hunted one muntjac and one serow. Caught with a professional rifle and the two animals, he was arrested and charged for violating the Controlling Guns, Ammunition and Knives Act (since the rifle was not home-made) and the Wildlife Conservation Act (since he had not registered his hunt with the local government as a cultural ritual and the animals are considered threatened). He was sentenced to over three years in prison and fined NT$ 70,000 (equivalent of around US$ 2,312). Tama’s case sparked indigenous protests across Taiwan and was taken up by the Legal Aid Foundation, leading Taiwan’s Prosecutor-General to file an extraordinary appeal on his behalf so that he could remain free until the case was settled. On 9 February 2017 the Supreme Court made a direct broadcast of the legal discussion of his case. In September it ruled that all charges should be dropped because the proceedings against Tama Talum violate both constitutional rights to culture and the two international human rights conventions which Taiwan has adopted and which call for state consultation with indigenous communities about policies that affect them. Tama said, ‘It’s a contradiction for the government to want us to transmit our culture and then also to arrest us (for doing so)’ (cna, 2017).

Hunting reveals the paradox of indigeneity in Taiwan. From the perspective of these men, legal indigeneity seems to benefit mostly local elites who, as either conservative legislators or opposition social movement leaders, have little time or inclination to hunt. They are frustrated when these political leaders invest more resources to political struggles around name rectification or new governance structures than to their subsistence needs. Povinelli argues that states only recognise customary law to the extent that indigenous practices are not considered repugnant or shameful (Povinelli, 2002: 176). In Taiwan multicultural indigeneity is celebrated in terms of different material cultures such as crafts, songs, and dances (Friedman, 2018), whereas hunting, arguably the core of indigenous life-worlds, is still labelled by the majority as primitive and repugnant. This may explain why, although Article 13 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law calls on the government to ‘protect indigenous peoples’ traditional diversity knowledge and intellectual creations, and promote the development thereof’ (moj, 2018), relevant laws have been implemented on intellectual property rights, but no laws have been passed to help hunters create their own institutions. To the contrary, non-indigenous animal rights activists, arguing that unrestrained hunting by indigenous men will lead to the extinction of game animals, have been better able to implement their agenda than are hunters who have lived in the forests for millennia. This thus confirms Bessire’s (2014) argument about indigeneity contributing to the hypermarginality of the poor. Legal state-centric indigeneity creates political and cultural elites, while ignoring the needs of the poor. This gives the kmt and pro-unification parties a certain traction by taking stands against the dpp and its policies of indigeneity. When people are given a choice between the known benefits of social integration as Republican citizens or new, untested policies, not everyone is attracted by the sirens of indigeneity. Not everyone can see the link between indigeneity and hunting rights, especially because indigenous leaders rarely mention hunting when speaking in the communities about autonomous zones and self-government.

The hypermarginalised are day labourers and men, often stigmatised as alcoholics, who rely on hunting for protein and on bushmeat sales for modest incomes. This village ‘lumpenproletariat’ constitutes at least 45 percent of the rural indigenous population (Simon, 2011: 52). They are the ones who use indigenous languages in daily life, conduct traditional rituals in the forests, and sustain knowledge of the forests and the living creatures that live in them. They perform the labour of political campaigns, killing pigs, and cleaning up after feasts, but their perspectives are often ignored. Members of an aspiring indigenous middle class find their needs irrelevant, as they seek instead new roles for themselves in the liberal order (Rudolph, 2008: 191–192). At the end of the day, and in spite of the rhetoric, class dynamics keep hunting rights low on the list of political priorities. Even recent compromises do not prevent hunters from being arrested and charged for hunting in national parks, taking endangered species, or selling bushmeat. No attempts are made to permit indigenous hunters to organise their own forest management schemes or co-management boards; nor to address the issues of habitat fragmentation that more seriously threaten animal life-worlds. In Canada there is concern that removing hunters from the land to put them into governing positions in self-government or co-management leads to an erosion of traditional ecological knowledge (Nadasdy, 2003). In Taiwan indigenous hunters have not yet had the possibility of governing their own territories. ⁸

The Tama Talum case is important because it is the first time that the Supreme Court has used a constitutional interpretation to settle a conflict about indigenous rights. Yet there are limits to what states will do to promote indigenous rights. As Povinelli argued in the case of Australia, indigenous victories in courts and legislatures are, in the end, less about indigenous peoples and their customary laws than they are about advancing state law (Povinelli, 2002: 185). In Taiwan, where only a handful out of 113 members of the Legislative Yuan are indigenous, it is even less likely that indigenous legislation could be about indigenous people and their priorities rather than advancing roc law. This is why indigenous legislators have been able to promote multicultural agendas with little resistance; but face resistance to legalised hunting from environmental groups and a society influenced by Buddhist ethics against killing. The legislative form of indigeneity quickly reaches its limits because it is based on the principle of encapsulating indigenous peoples and lands rather than acknowledging indigenous sovereignty. Elsewhere, similar dynamics lead indigenous peoples to seek recourse in the un.

Internationalisation of indigeneity has its appeal but, as Merlan has observed, provides both openings and constraints (Merlan, 2009: 312). For Taiwanese indigenous peoples, the constraints weigh heavier than the openings. Since the Special Rapporteur does not visit their communities, ordinary people have no way to get their voices heard by the un, or to shame their government with the reporting of negative un reports. Taiwanese indigenous people have occasionally brought their issues to the un. For example, one Truku leader spoke out against hunting restrictions in the Taroko National Park in New York, but he had to sneak into the General Assembly with the Panamanian delegation. Taiwanese indigenous peoples are also excluded from enforcement mechanisms of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which includes Article 8(j) calling for states to respect and protect indigenous ecological knowledge about biodiversity. As said Bruce Miller, indigenous Formosans ‘suffer from the particular problem that the state they live in is itself invisible in certain ways and lacks significant forms of recognition from the world community’ (Miller, 2003: 193). Ironically, the exclusion of Taiwan also restrains the un. It could learn from the linguistic innovation of Taiwan’s indigenous leaders, addressing the problem that there is no appropriate word in prc Mandarin for indigenous peoples. China insisted that the un use tuzhu (土著) in the Chinese translation of the undrip. Since this term includes the character for ‘earth’, it could be considered a pejorative term akin to ‘savage’. In contrast to the spirit of the undrip, it is a term chosen by Chinese diplomats rather than coined by Chinese-speaking indigenous people. Taiwanese indigenous groups have protested the use of this term by the un to no avail.

5 Coda

In guise of a conclusion, I would like to provide a closing anecdote. In May 2017, while on a study trip to Hualien, I was invited to attend the first public hearing in one of my field sites about the new transitional justice policy of creating tribal councils (buluo huiyi). About 200 people, from a village with a population of around 2,000, crowded into the village hall. The hearing began with explanations from representatives of the Indigenous Peoples Council and the township office about the meaning of ‘buluo’ and ‘buluo huiyi’. The guiding principle is that local communities have the right to create tribal councils according to borders they define themselves. These would be legal persons, with the right to make contracts, negotiate with the state, give or decline consent to development projects, and take control of public affairs. Although they did not mention hunting, this would be the kind of political unit (like Canadian band councils) that could manage hunting regimes, issue hunting permits, and document catches according to locally determined limits and seasons. Each proposed tribal council could be established if at least half the population votes, and if a majority of those who vote approve of its formation. Each tribal council would elect a chair and a council, who would then administer their traditional territory with the guidance of the township office. They would be required to have two annual meetings.

As soon as the floor was opened to discussion, people began to express scepticism. One Presbyterian minister said that such a new political unit is meaningful only if it is based not on state law but on Gaya, the advice of the elders, and in Truku language. Someone else said it is important that the state return their traditional territory—where their activities are currently restricted in the Taroko National Park. The main debate was how to define the limits of the alang. Some argued that it would be easiest to work as they have done for the past seven decades: according to the geographical limits of the administrative village that had been established by the roc. Others opposed this on the grounds that the village was a state imposition. In fact, the village is composed of five distinct alang that were forced to leave their mountain homes and settle in the plains at different times in history. The meeting ended with no conclusion, most people grumbling that the same elites are just trying to seize political power in a new way; and that these political innovations of the Tsai government will do little to improve their lives. The evocation of Gaya and the continuing emotional sway of alang membership, however, demonstrate the resilience of Truku life-worlds.

In this case, the roc president Tsai and her advisors drafted a policy to reach out and incorporate indigenous peoples into the state in a new way. The Truku people in that room—like every individual hunter in the forest—maintain the notion that they are sovereign mini-nations with inherent rights to territory and to setting their own terms for relations with other nations, including the roc. From their perspective, the problem is that invading states seize territory and power from hundreds of autonomous alang, trying to reduce indigenous concerns to the level of domestic affairs rather than recognising them as ontological equals. There is an ongoing tension between the roc state, which under dpp administration would prefer to frame indigeneity as part of a liberal multicultural Taiwan, and indigenous life-worlds that are based on local autonomy and protection of the forest. The Truku can no longer refuse the state, as they did until they were conquered by the Japanese. Some of them would like to, however, and even assert that their Gaya is morally superior to the modern world of statecraft, exploitation of natural resources, and full-scale war. There is a large gap between the life-worlds of societies against the state and the Westphalian principles enshrined in the un.

Taiwan’s case has broader implications. It shows that indigeneity is, in the final analysis, hardly about indigenous self-determination or national liberation. It is a compromise, as when the Mohawks begrudgingly accommodate the United States and Canada that divide their territory without their consent but still uphold their own sovereignty. Legal indigeneity does not undo the history of terra nullius and the process of colonisation that violently incorporated indigenous peoples into states in the first place. It does not recognise histories of genocide and cultural disintegration, nor does it challenge the hegemony of the state that perpetuated these injustices. This reduces the potential of indigenous ontologies to provide alternatives to state political forms. This makes it difficult to imagine different relations with the Earth and living beings, thus keeping the world open to the extraction of ‘natural resources’. Indigeneity as a form of legal integration overlooks the lived reality of indigenous ontologies such as Seediq or Truku Gaya and equivalents around the world—and their potential implications for both governance and international relations. In the case of Taiwan, un instruments ignore both indigenous peoples and the state that encapsulates them. Indigeneity holds out the promise of recognising indigenous nations as ontological equals, but ends up subordinating them to the interests of established nation-states. The undrip may appear to be the best offer on the negotiating table, but it does not provide the hoped-for equality at that table. It cannot even create a space for Taiwan, let alone for the national aspirations of the Truku, Seediq, Amis, or Rukai. The undrip, like most national articulations of indigeneity, attempts instead to domesticate indigenous peoples and strengthens the interstate system for its most powerful actors.