On the eve of International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on Sunday, Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) discussed in an interview how to solve discrimination against “indigenous peoples,” saying “more than 80 percent of all Taiwanese might have indigenous ancestry.”
However, Taiwan’s outstanding minister was mistaken, a mistake common among the public.
First, “indigenous peoples” is not a concept based on ancestry or genetics.
It refers to shared communities faced with the same political and social situations. The core meaning of “indigenous” lies in the oppression and subjection experienced by a place’s inhabitants, rather than their status as the earliest known inhabitants of that place.
As UN special rapporteur Jose Martinez Cobo defined it in his 1981 report Study of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations: “Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them.”
International law academic James Anaya defined “indigenous” as referring “broadly to the living descendants of pre-invasion inhabitants of lands now dominated by others.”
Also, the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples “recognizes the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous peoples which derive from their political, economic and social structures.”
In short, “indigenous peoples” is a phrase for “imagined communities” born under colonialism, and it does not refer to any specific ancestry or people who were the earliest to live in a region.
When Tang said that most Taiwanese might have “indigenous ancestry,” she was referring to all of the native ethnic groups on this land, such as Taiwan’s Austronesians.
However, when such a concept is involved, English-language speakers tend to use the word “Aboriginal” to refer to locally born and raised people, because it is a neutral term unrelated to any political or social meaning.
In addition, she attempted to construct a sense of homogeneity from the perspective of ancestry, and tried to eliminate discrimination simply by emphasizing that “we are all the same.”
That strategy blurs authentic problems, such as the oppression and marginalization of Aborigines.
The nation’s Aborigines only account for 2 percent of the population, and that 2 percent refers to communities that are being oppressed within a colonial structure.
No matter how many people in the other 98 percent are shown by scientific evidence to have Aboriginal ancestry or genes, it would not change that this land was colonized and exploited by aggressors in modern times.
From land and rights to inappropriate gains, accumulated wealth and structural privileges, the political, economic and social structures behind these issues are the factors that have shaped Taiwan’s Aborigines.
These factors differ from genetics and ancestral studies.
The nation must clarify the difference between the concept of “indigenous peoples” and “locally born and raised natives,” and “the earliest known inhabitants of a place.” If it does not, it will not be capable of truly understanding the essence of the current Aboriginal issue.
Chen Chia-lin is the director of the Taiwan Solidarity Union’s policy department.
Translated by Eddy Chang
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
On today’s page, Masahiro Matsumura, a professor of international politics and national security at St Andrew’s University in Osaka, questions the viability and advisability of the government’s proposed “T-Dome” missile defense system. Matsumura writes that Taiwan’s military budget would be better allocated elsewhere, and cautions against the temptation to allow politics to trump strategic sense. What he does not do is question whether Taiwan needs to increase its defense capabilities. “Given the accelerating pace of Beijing’s military buildup and political coercion ... [Taiwan] cannot afford inaction,” he writes. A rational, robust debate over the specifics, not the scale or the necessity,
RSS