President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) left last night for a seven-day tour of six South Pacific allies. Some less-than-diplomatic wrangling over the guest artists that were to be part of his official entourage, however, has overshadowed his trip before it got off the ground.
Eight members of the Formosa Aboriginal Song and Dance Troupe (原舞者) had been invited to join his delegation to perform at state dinners. The invitation was rescinded last week, however, amid claims of discrimination that sounded more like outright racism.
The troupe was founded in 1991 by young Aborigines to preserve the song and dance heritage of Taiwan’s Aboriginal tribes. From the beginning the troupe’s mission involved conducting field research and documenting oral traditions handed down by elders. Since its first trip to the US in 1993, the troupe has performed abroad many times, often at the government’s invitation. Last month, it took part in this year’s Taiwan International Festival, performing the Ilisin-Amis Harvest Festival Dances.
It seems, however, that the troupe’s interest in preserving Aboriginal traditions has run afoul of the government’s Han-centric idea of what is “good culture.” The troupe had decided on a program for Ma’s trip that would include portions from the Harvest Festival Dances of the Amis and Puyuma and part of the Truku’s headhunting dance.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs thought the third choice was inappropriate. Rather than admit that, however, Council of Indigenous Peoples Minister Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川) trotted out some excuses — that the program was too long, that the lack of “professional sound and light equipment” would detract from the performance and that it was too difficult to explain the cultural significance of the dances in a state dinner format.
One would have thought that all these factors would have been considered before inviting an artist or troupe to join a presidential delegation. The excuses don’t ring true, as it wasn’t the entire troupe that would put on a show and the eight performers weren’t going to do an entire performance, just a sample.
If Sun’s explanation wasn’t convincing, the comments by the ministry’s deputy spokesman, James Chang (章計平), made things worse. He said the decision to ask the troupe to change the headhunting dance had been made by more than a dozen unnamed “experts” with “knowledge of Aboriginal culture,” and who thought something “more lively and cheerful” would be better, without saying wther any of these “experts” were actually Aborigines.
Isn’t it too bad when natives refuse to be cheerful, especially after all the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governments have done for them.
Given that Ma is visiting the South Pacific and meeting people of Austronesian and Melanesian decent — who scientists believe share common ancestry with Taiwan’s Aborigines and certainly have linguistic links to the Aboriginal languages spoken here — how much “explanation” of the performances would be needed?
It is unlikely that the headhunting dance would have fazed people in the Solomon Islands, who have their own history of headhunting.
Headhunting? War is brutal. Full stop. It doesn’t matter what country, culture, civilization or age — or whether you are fighting the next village or another country, or those with different religious or political beliefs. Political combat is just as deadly, as those who have fallen afoul of Europe’s kings, queens and revolutionary zealots could attest. At least in Ma’s government, people just lose their jobs.
It sounds like it’s the foreign ministry that needs a briefing about culture and history, not Taiwan’s allies. In the meantime, Ma’s government has shown once again that it prefers to whitewash history.
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