Aboriginal culture
The Golden Bell Awards is an annual celebration for the television industry. Unfortunately, certain individuals were clearly put out by the traditional costumes of Aborigines receiving awards at Saturday’s awards ceremony, and the on-screen titles by certain media outlets were out-and-out discrimination. As an Aborigine myself, I was both saddened and angered by those responses.
I recall that, when I was growing up, I would often be asked whether we Aborigines ever washed, or about how much we liked booze or how lazy we were. People would make comments about how we spoke with a strange accent, or about how our grades were bumped up because we were not Han Chinese.
As an adult, more aware of how the world worked, I realized this was because we Aborigines had been labeled, and this made me see red.
Over the course of Taiwan’s recent history, we Aborigines have found ourselves at the mercy of dominant ethnic powers, and our culture and livelihoods have constantly been subjected to suppression and humiliation.
We have sustained historical wounds, caused by the accumulation of prejudice as a result of long-term colonization. These wounds have contributed to the perception of Aborigines in Taiwan’s modern-day society, a perception riddled with misunderstanding and prejudice.
Even though there have been gradual improvements in the public understanding of Aborigines in the past few years, there remain real gaps in awareness and frequent misunderstandings when it comes to our culture and lifestyles, and this has led to a lack of respect, and indeed bias, in the way others treat us and speak about us.
In my life, and in my workplace, I encounter many people who look askance at the culture and history of the Bunan Aborigine people, to which I belong, and apply labels to it, and this makes me feel at a loss and really quite angry.
All I can do is try my best to explain our culture and history to them to make them understand.
The government has, for many years now, worked hard at cultivating a diverse, multicultural social environment and, through various legislation and policies targeted at Aborigines and new immigrants, sought to address issues of respect and treatment toward ethnic cultures.
Naturally, one would hope that, as the government is now proactively pursuing transitional justice, it would also look into seeking justice for the historical wounds wrought on the Aborigines and implement transitional justice for Aborigines, too.
Even though I was enraged by the prejudice at the Golden Bell Awards, my fervent hope is that everyone will one day come to appreciate the value of the existence of Aboriginal culture, and to approach it with the fairness, respect and tolerance that it is due.
Only then will we be able to achieve a harmonious, multicultural society based on mutual respect, and make prejudice and unfair treatment of others a thing of the past.
Ma Chih-cheng
Taipei
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