|
EDITORIAL:
Understanding Aboriginal culture
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) mistaking a Paiwan man for a member of the Amis
tribe during a meeting with Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award recipients on
Tuesday again revealed his abysmal ignorance of Aboriginal culture.
Choreographer Bulareyaung Pagarlava, attended the meeting in a traditional
Paiwan outfit. However, when Ma greeted him and shook his hand, he asked: “Are
you an Amis?”— a comment Pagarlava later said hurt his feelings.
It was not the first time Ma’s comments and actions have betrayed his lack of
understanding of Aboriginal culture and discrimination against the nation’s
Aborigines.
During the presidential campaign in 2007, Ma, the then-Chinese Nationalist Party
(KMT) candidate, visited Sijhou Community in Xindian, New Taipei City (新北市) amid
protests from Amis members living there against a relocation plan.
When a local resident pleaded for “President Ma” to build an embankment to
prevent the community’s relocation, he told the woman: “If you come into the
city, you are a Taipei citizen; I see you as a human being, I see you as a
citizen, and I will educate you well. Aborigines should adjust their mentality —
if you come into the city you have to play by its rules.”
This insult was more than just a slip of tongue. It reflected Ma’s elitist
attitude and deep discrimination against the group.
Ma later apologized for the comments, insisting that he had been quoted out of
context and pledged to promote policies that would improve the rights of the
indigenous people if elected.
Five years have passed since he was elected and little progress has been made.
Aboriginal autonomy has not become a reality and ethnic discrimination
continues.
Last year, former KMT Central Standing Committee (CSC) member Liao Wan-lung
(廖萬隆) suggested in a CSC meeting that intermarriage between Aborigines and
non-Aborigines should be discouraged to maintain the “purity” of Aboriginal
blood.
A Mainland Affairs Council-sponsored TV ad that referred to the Aboriginals as
pa-nga — an Amis word for penis or “loose women” — also sparked fury among
Aboriginal tribes.
Ma, who promised to implement Aboriginal autonomy during the 2008 presidential
campaign, told a CSC meeting last year that “ceding territories” to Aborigines
to create autonomous regions was not what was best for Aborigines, since it
could isolate them.
He also said the public should value the sporting or musical talents of
Aborigines more, and that Aborigines may need “some degree of protection.”
Incidents of discrimination against Aborigines under the Ma administration have
sabotaged efforts to raise public awareness of Aboriginal issues and to enable
Aborigines to regain their cultural pride, long suppressed under KMT rule.
Taiwan’s 14 Aboriginal tribes account for only 2 percent of the population, and
yet each tribe has established its own cultural system. Ma’s failure to
recognize the traditional costume of the Paiwan tribe and to study the
background of the award recipients made his promises to promote Aboriginal
culture and improve the rights of Aborigines unconvincing.
To fulfil his promises and promote the rights of Aborigines, Ma should abandon
his elitist, Han-centric mentality, and push the legislative review of a draft
Aboriginal autonomy act that would allow each tribe to take on greater
responsibility for preserving its own cultural assets as well create authentic
autonomous regions.
The government should also promote the Indigenous Peoples Intellectual Property
Act (原住民族傳統智慧創作保護條例), as the nation’s tribes start applying for protection of
tribal naming rights and intellectual property under a trial implementation
launched this year.
|
