Amid increasing scholarly interest in studying Taiwan and the “Formosans” (the various indigenous peoples who have resided on the island for thousands of years), a tricky translation problem has emerged. The Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民族基本法) was enacted to protect the rights of indigenous peoples (原住民族, “original resident nations”). Moreover, in specifying who precisely these original resident nations are, it identifies the Amis people or Amis nation (阿美族), the Atayal people or Atayal nation (泰雅族), the Paiwan people or Paiwan nation (排灣族), etc.
The problem emerges in the act’s English translation. Here we find these peoples described as the Amis tribe, Atayal tribe, Paiwan tribe and so on.
Wait a minute. How did “nations” (民族), large groups of people sharing a common language, traditions, culture and history (and formal acknowledgement in the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples), suddenly get demoted to “tribes?”
Like many parents, my greatest teachers are my children. I recall my nine-year-old daughter coming home from her Canadian school last year incensed because a teacher had used the word “tribe” to refer to the Algonquin, a local indigenous nation.
“That’s an insult! She’s putting them down,” she said. “Tribes are low and small. We have tribes in Girl Guides and school activities. ‘Tribe’ is for little groups of people.”
This was not something we had discussed, but rather came from her own understanding of how the word is used.
The celebrated US author Kurt Vonnegut Jr had something like that in mind when he wrote about a secessionist group in west Africa that had proclaimed itself a distinct state and attempted, unsuccessfully, to separate from Nigeria.
As Vonnegut wrote ironically of the Biafran neo-polity: “Its enemies were pleased to call it a ‘tribe.’ Some tribe.”
Although the Biafran claim was probably not legitimate, that is not relevant here. What is significant is Vonnegut’s recognition that “tribe” is a disparaging word, an epithet hurled to undermine any political respect that might be due to a people, and especially a people seeking formal recognition.
The standard English translation of the problem with the word “tribe” and the reason it is no longer used by respectable English-language academics, is that it is implicitly insulting and disparaging.
On a hierarchy of political terms, we move from kingdom or empire, down to nation or state, then down to province (or state in the US or German sense), then to municipality. Far below that is the old-fashioned anthropological term “tribe.”
As schoolchildren decades ago, we used to read about postcolonial conflicts among the distinct nations in Africa (who had been arbitrarily enclosed in European colonies that were later granted “statehood”) being dismissed as “tribal warfare” or “inter-tribal conflict.” “Tribes” were considered unsophisticated, “primitive,” pre-political kinship groups.
My daughter had rightly heard her teacher speaking in obsolete and implicitly racist terms.
In Canada, the English crown signed “nation-to-nation” treaties with indigenous peoples, in recognition that they had rights to the land and its resources and deserved political recognition. When, as has too often been the case, those treaties were not respected, this designation has allowed indigenous nations to argue successfully for political rights and recognition in major victories such as the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2000 Marshall decision.
Other linguistic dominoes have fallen as well. Indigenous communities, legally called “bands,” have increasingly rejected that word (since it brings to mind little groups like Robin Hood’s Band of Merry Men) and replaced it on signage and documents with “First Nation.”
“Indian,” despite being enshrined in the Canadian Indian Act — the word first came into use because Columbus mistakenly thought he had arrived in India not North America — has been replaced by “indigenous” in government department names, journalism and academic discourse.
As Taiwan continues the complex process of devising a constitutional space for indigenous peoples, it is unquestionably true that the Chinese language is supreme. However, since the Ministry of Justice provides English translations of these laws (thank you) Taiwan has an opportunity.
Many people, including international academics and students depend on these translations. I respectfully submit that “zu” (族) must be translated as “people” (singular) and “peoples” plural, or alternately as “nation,” but never as “tribe.”
Similarly, “buluo” (部落) should be translated as “indigenous community” or “First Nation” when referring to the community level of social organization, but again, never as “tribe.”
Please, do not revive the old racist demons that we in the English-speaking world have been working for decades to exorcise.
Bill Hipwell is an adjunct research professor of geography in the department of geography and environmental studies at Carleton University in Canada.
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