Centering Indigenous Taiwan:  Youth Resistance through Education, Identity Reclamation, and Cultural Resurgence

Daniel Pai; Lily Tang

doi:10.18733/cpi29773

Authors

Daniel Pai
Lily Tang Centering Indigenous Taiwan Project

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29773

Keywords:

Anarcha-Indigenist theory, Taiwan, Indigenous education, cultural storytelling

Abstract

Utilizing anarcha-Indigenist theory and participatory methodologies, this article examines the educational experiences and aspirations of Indigenous Taiwanese youth. Uplifting students’ contributions to a cultural storytelling project organized by the authors, this article celebrates the complex and intersecting strategies Indigenous students are using to reclaim their languages, lifeways, and futures. In so doing, this article offers a place for Indigenous youth voices and examines how youth can be empowered to act on behalf of their identities and participate in cultural preservation and advocacy, as well as make recommendations for promoting justice-oriented policies and cross-cultural solidarity for Indigenous rights.

Author Biographies

Daniel Pai

Daniel Pai (he/him) is an international educator and college admissions consultant. He graduated magna cum laude from New York University with a BA in Social and Cultural Analysis and completed his MA in American Studies at Columbia University in 2020. Previously, he was a 2020 Fulbright Taiwan English Teaching Assistant and a 2021 English Teaching Fellow. His research broadly examines the politics of language, the psychology of race, and settler colonialism with a focus on diasporic youth identity, racial melancholia, and Indigenous language revitalization.

Lily Tang, Centering Indigenous Taiwan Project

Lily Tang (she/her) is an educator and non-profit leader. She is the Director of Outreach for the Commonwealth Seminar, a non-profit that empowers diverse leadership in government. Lily is also an international educator, having taught in Taiwan for the past 3 years. She was a 2021 Fulbright Taiwan ETA grantee. Lily graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a dual degree in Political Science and Individual Concentration in Global Studies, focusing on Asian and Asian American Studies. She is also an Advisory Board Member of the UMass Asian & Asian American Studies Certificate Program (AAASCP). Lily is a radical feminist and believes that we can create a world free from white supremacy, racism, and capitalism.

References

Akiyama, C. (2008). Bridging the gap between two cultures: An analysis on identity attitudes and attachment of Asian Americans. Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention, 8(3), 251-263.

Blust, R. (2019). The Austronesian homeland and dispersal. Annual Review of Linguistics, 5, 417-434.

Chapmumu, P. (1993). Report of the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations. In the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines in the World Conference on Human Rights.

Chen, A. (2022, January 3). Unpacking the Colonialist Undertones of the Indigenous People’s Basic Law: Law as a Tool of Oppression in Taiwan. Retrieved [January 21, 2024] from Taiwan Insight website: https://taiwaninsight.org/2022/01/03/unpacking-the-colonialist-undertones-of-the-indigenous-peoples-basic-law-law-as-a-tool-of-oppression-in-taiwan/

Chen, P. (2012). Empowering identity reconstruction of indigenous college students through transformative learning. Educational Review, 64(2), 161-180. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2011.592574

Chen, S. (2006). Simultaneous promotion of indigenisation and internationalisation: New language-in-education policy in Taiwan. Language and Education, 20(4), 322-337.

Chen, S. (2010). Multilingualism in Taiwan. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2010(205), 79-104. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.2010.040

Chou, H. M. (2005). Educating urban indigenous students in Taiwan: Six teachers’ perspectives. University of Maryland, College Park.

Coulthard, G., & Simpson, L. B. (2016). Grounded normativity/place-based solidarity. American Quarterly, 68(2), 249-255.

Council of Indigenous Peoples. (2023, December 13). 11 Yuè yuán zhù mínzú rénkǒu shù tǒngjì zīliào [Indigenous population statistics in November]. Retrieved from: https://www.cip.gov.tw/zh-tw/news/data-list/ 940F9579765AC6A0/A1A31F1D009D948376694672144C6E6C-info.html

Dee, T. S. (2005). A teacher like me: Does race, ethnicity, or gender matter? American Economic Review, 95(2), 158-165.

Egalite, A. J., Kisida, B., & Winters, M. A. (2015). Representation in the classroom: The effect of own-race teachers on student achievement. Economics of Education Review, 45, 44-52.

Eng, D. L., & Han, S. (2000). A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 10(4), 667-700. https://doi.org/10.1080/10481881009348576

Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, N. (2011). Kuleana Lahui: Collective responsibility for Hawaiian nationhood in activists’ praxis. Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, 5(1). Special Issue on Anarch@Indigenism, 130-163.

Ho, I. P. (1998). Relationships between motivation/attitude, effort, English proficiency, and socio-cultural educational factors and Taiwan Technological University/Institute students’ English learning strategy use. Auburn University.

Ho, Y. R. (2021). Exposing colonial representations: Analysis of portrayals of Indigenous culture in Taiwan’s language textbooks. Race Ethnicity and Education, 24(6), 856-875.

Ho, Y. R. (2022). Indigenous language curriculum revival: An emancipatory education analysis of Taiwanese Indigenous language policy and textbooks. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54(4), 501-519.

Huang, S. M. (2018). Understanding disaster (in)justice: Spatializing the production of vulnerabilities of indigenous people in Taiwan. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1(3), 382-403.

Huang, S. H., & Fan, Y. N. (2023). Ethnic Identity of Urban Indigenous Adolescents in Taiwan. J Comp Soci Scien Res, 1(1), 102. https://doi.org/10.33790/jcssr1100102

Huang, S.-M., & Liu, S.-H. (2016). Discrimination and incorporation of Taiwanese indigenous Austronesian peoples. Asian Ethnicity, 17(2), 294-312. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2015.1112726

Hsu, F. (2021). Taiwan’s bilingual policy: Signaling in/dependence and settler coloniality. American Quarterly, 73(2), 355-361.

Jan, J.-S., & Lomeli, A. (2022). Ethnic context, education policy, and language assimilation of indigenous peoples in Taiwan. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 25(1), 355-366. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2019.1688246

Lee, Y. (2009). Indigenous Knowledge Construction and Experiential Learning of Taiwanese Aborigines. International Education Studies, 2(2), 155-161.

Lee, L., & Chen, P. (2014). Empowering Indigenous youth: Perspectives from a national service learning program in Taiwan. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 5(3), 1-19.

Macedo, D. (2000). Introduction. In P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th Anniversary ed., pp. 11-26). Continuum.

Ministry of Education (2014). Curriculum Guidelines of 12-Year Basic Education. Retrieved from: https://www.naer.edu.tw/upload/1/16/doc/1325/十二年國教課程綱要總綱(英譯版).pdf

Ministry of Education (2023). Yuán zhù mínzú jiàoyù gàikuàng tǒngjì jiéguǒ tíyào fēnxī [Summary analysis of statistical results of education profile of indigenous peoples]. Retrieved from: https://stats.moe.gov.tw/files/analysis/111native_ana.pdf

National Development Council (2015, June 29). Guó fā huì quánqiú zīxùn wǎng (yīngwén wǎng) [National Development Council (English Website)]. Retrieved from: https://www.ndc.gov.tw/en/Content_List.aspx?n=BF21AB4041BB5255

Nikar, H. (2019, September 11). When Indigenous Communities Meet Tourism: Those BOT Projects in Our Traditional Territories. Retrieved [January 22, 2024] from Indigenous Sight website: https://insight.ipcf.org.tw/en-US/article/124

Nesterova, Y., & Jackson, L. (2018). Understanding the ‘local’ in indigenous Taiwan. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 17(3), 55-66.

Pan, J. (2022a, April 20). Report targets village relocation issues. Taipei Times. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2022/04/21/2003776979

Pan, J. (2022b, August 21). Taitung censured over Miramar Resort project. Retrieved [January 22, 2024] from Taipeitimes.com website: https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2022/08/21/2003783886

Pawan, C. (2009). Indigenous Language Education in Taiwan. UC Berkeley: Department of Linguistics. Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8wm6g4cf

Phinney, J. S., Chavera, V., & Williamson, L. (1992). Acculturation attitudes and self-esteem among high school and college students. Youth and Society, 23(3), 299-312

Redding, C. (2019). A teacher like me: A review of the effect of student-teacher racial/ethnic matching on teacher perceptions of students and student academic and behavioral outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 89(4), 499-535.

Saranillio, D. I. (2018). Unsustainable empire: Alternative histories of Hawai‘i statehood. Duke University Press.

Simpson, L. B. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press.

Sium, A., & Ritskes, E. (2013). Speaking truth to power: Indigenous storytelling as an act of living resistance. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2(1).

Sue, D. W., & Sue, D. (1999). Counseling the culturally different: Theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Thiongʼo, N. W. (1986). Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. London: J. Currey; Portsmouth, N. H.: Heinemann.

Tsao, F. F. (1999). The language planning situation in Taiwan. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 20(4-5), 328-375.

Uba, L. (2003). Asian Americans: Personality patterns, identity, and mental health. New York: Guilford Press.

Wang, J. H., & Wang, S. Y. (2019). Indigenous social policy and social inclusion in Taiwan. Sustainability, 11(12), 3458.

Wen, C. P., Tsai, S. P., Shih, Y. T., & Chung, W. S. I. (2004). Bridging the gap in life expectancy of the aborigines in Taiwan. International Journal of Epidemiology, 33(2), 320-327.

Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387-409.

Yang, S. Y. (2015). The indigenous land rights movement and embodied knowledge in Taiwan. Senri Ethnological Studies, 91, 25-43.

Yu-Chen, C. (2023, October 16). Indigenous Disaster Justice: Reflecting on Typhoon Morakot Recovery. Retrieved [January 8, 2024] from Taiwan Insight website: https://taiwaninsight.org/2023/10/16/indigenous-disaster-justice-reflecting-on-typhoon-morakot-recovery/