International Center for Cultural Studies

【ACS Institute 2023 -Day 4- 8/13- Activity Report】Roundtable: Decolonizing Multi-species Entanglements in Taiwan

2023-11-14

Roundtable: Decolonizing Multi-species Entanglements in Taiwan

郭晴柔，交通大學社會與文化研究所

GUO,QING-ROU，Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, NYCU

The roundtable talking about multi-species studies and the multi-species relationships in indigenous communities in Taiwan. All of speakers have worked with multi-species approaches and focus on Taiwan. As the moderator, Jeffrey Nicolaisen mentioned that from the cultural studies perspective, multi-species studies is a new field as the International Center for Cultural Studies at National Chiao Tung University, and they just started a new research project on multi-species. He also think this approach it is kind of developing in cultural studies, and through this cluster, we developed the idea of doing environmental justice.

The first speaker Yu Shih–Hsuan (University of Cologne, Germany) is working as a consultant to indigenous villages with goverment, developing tough government plans for hunting and multi-species relationships. From the working experience about local Taiwanese ecological investigation, which do plenty of projects with the authority in terms of ecological research, including species listing or fundamental ecological research. Since Taiwan is a place with various villages that are labelled as indigenous, basically all their research projects are closely related to one or more than two indigenous communities. And her work is trying to make the participation of these villages as far as they can. For example, the people living in rural area sometimes don't have motivations or interest in the research, so making them interest is part of their job.

They set up a nonprofit organization last year, which is called Clouded Leopard Association of Taiwan. Half of members are the people with indigenous backgrounds. We can also call them just indigenous. They are very vital voices for the work when the organization trying to persuade government to do something more positive.

She gave a brief introduction about Clouded Leopard as a species. And right now, Taiwan is seemed as a place where the animal is regionally extinct, which means we don't see them as a healthy population interacting with our local ecosystem. Clouded Leopard numbers were probably never extremely high in Taiwan, traditional hunting and hunting on bounties or orders from the Japanese drove the species to extinction.

So in terms of Clouded leopard, in UK and United States, the biggest and most resourceful institutions try very hard to understand and their reproduction and behaviour features now. Also, these two organizations are very ambitious or and want to work with Taiwanese agents or governments. They claim that we have all these animals and we can bring them inside artificial environment, but what is good for them and have a positive impact to the wild is to be released into a place that really be their home.

The second speaker Scott Simon have been doing Taiwan research since 1996 as an anthropologist. He has lived in Taiwan for more than ten years and have a lot of experience in field research.His research interests include indigenous rights, development, and the contribution of Taiwan to the Indo-Pacific. His first research was on the leather tanning industry, about how entrepreneurs in the south of Taiwan import the hides of dead pigs and cows from abroad, and then transform them into the leather that becomes leather products. After he had done 18 months of field work on topics of industrialization, he was invited to go to a protest in April of 2007 at the national park by some indigenous hunters who wanted to have a dialogue with the national park. This led him to be more attentive to indigenous issues.

Since he got into multi-species, he felt he is not as versed in the books and the theories that come from the West. What he was immersed is the world of Sediq（賽德克族）, which includes to local people. He shared their original story of Pusu Qhuni（牡丹岩）. Pusu Qhuni a very special place in the center of the island, which is a giant Boulder in the very center of Taiwan. For Sediq people, it is the giant rock formation from which the first humans emerged at the beginning of time, also the beginning of a multi-species world. According to the story, at the very beginning of time, this Rock is split open because of an earthquake, and from the rock emerged two man and one woman. One of the men looked out at the world and want to be a part of it, the other man sees a horrible world so he turned around and went back inside, later he was sealed inside the rock for eternity. The man and the woman outside became the ancestors of human. And this is the true sight of the Garden of Eden.

He also mentioned the concept “Gaya ”（ Sediq language, the traditional social norm of the Sediq）, the ancestral law of the Sediq which contains teachings about how to become truly human. “Gaya ” offers moral guidance to all humans，for these Sediq Indigenous peoples living in the mountain forests, they observed the sacred law of Gaya, and seeking equilibrium with other humans, spirits, animals, and plants. You have to have an equilibrium of the spiritual power in the mountains, and part of that is an exchange of animals. Another important concept in Sediq culture is “Samat” （ Sediq language, who is able to communicate with the spirits）.All of these bring us a new perspective on the relationship between humans and other beings.

He gives another example to show there's a network or mesh work of lives in which humans and animals are partners, including the hunting dog and a kind of bird they use as divination. In brief, there's a very rich culture of living with animals in the forest. He spent time in rather remote places in the mountains, like hunters and trappers still use very traditional ways of understanding whether hunting territories are and who has the right to those territories that should be excluded.

The third speaker Lin Yih-Ren (Taipei National University of the Arts, Taiwan) is also worked with indigenous people and multi-species approaches. He mentioned the film The Others (《神鬼第六感》, main character performed by the Australian actress Nicole Kidman) which describing the ghost haunted by human being. For him, the modern species theory is about inquiry, about “the others”. sometimes the researchers romanticize them or modify them like a ghost, but seldom think they are part of us.

For example, Taiwan is an island that almost all the living things coming from outside. So, if we talk about the modest multi-species theory, Taiwan could be a representative place. The modern species theory extends us to think about the issue not only within the human society, but extend to a wider circle to include the living and non-living beings of the land. From the experience of working with indigenous peoples, involving in social movement of indigenous peoples and ecology, he learned a lot from their deep culture.

Take the example of “Bunun ”（布農族）,from their lifestyle we can learned that relationships between human being and non-human beings is more mutually constituted. The indigenous people always use metaphors or stories to describe what they have seen, use the non-human living beings to describe the natural world. And it is always related to their homemaking narrative.

He finds that there are a lot of things that could be dialogue between the natural science and social human science, and these stories could be very useful and enlightened in this progress. So, he thinks maybe we have opportunity to talk about this theory in the context of Taiwan, it would also play the platform for the dialogue of different disciplines.

The last speaker Jeffrey Nicolaisen talks about his research, especially in relation to multi-species approaches. The core of his research is the concept of “equality”. Although cultural studies are a field that hard to define, but “equality” is at the center of cultural studies for him. Gender, class and race issues, representative people that are marginalized and disenfranchised, at the center of all these problems is to look at power relationships as the idea of “equality”.

Traditionally in cultural studies focused on human equality, and what her study is called “the quality of life” which is promoted by buddhists and buddhist organizations in Taiwan.Taiwan is a place that have long history with colonialism, but has never been colonized by European powers except for small settlements. Although there are different groups of indigenous people, but none are ethnically european generally. So, they have their own indigenous forms of thinking about equality and nonhuman beings.

He chose “hunting” from all the issues that relate to human animal relationships and life conservationist association, because from that he could look at both sides of the indigenous perspective on hunting. Looking at the confluence of hunting between buddhism inspired animal protectionist and indigenous people whose livelihood and traditional lifestyle is based on hunting is instructive.

In a word, based on the ethnographic field research, we can start to thinking of them not only in terms of the ethnic identities that state-based politics brought us. By understanding their life worlds, political struggles for recognition and the way they identify their life, sovereignty, and land, we can learn a lot from Indigenous ways of living and thinking.