Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: 原住民族青年陣線
INDIGENOUS CIVIC GROUPS have criticized efforts by the KMT and TPP to change the structure of the Council of Indigenous Affairs.
The changes are wide-ranging in nature and will not only weaken the ability of the Council of Indigenous Affairs to function, but have been criticized as reinforcing colonial distinctions. First, though the size of the Council of Indigenous Affairs will be increased from 16 to 29, under the changes, members of the Council will no longer receive any salary from the government. Secondly, leadership of the Council will rotate between a Plains Indigenous and Mountain Indigenous person, with members of the council able to be reappointed, but limited to two-year terms, and all members of the council dismissed when there is a change of leadership.
Photo credit: 原住民族青年陣線
In particular, this move is seen as another attempt by the KMT and TPP to reshape institutions of government using the current narrow majority that they hold in the legislature. The KMT justified the move by claiming that it was to counter the undue influence of DPP legislators Wu Li-hua and Chen Ying over the council. Nevertheless, the move is spearheaded by Indigenous legislators from the KMT who have also taken a hard line on the legal measures protested by the recent Bluebird Movement.
Indigenous civic groups demonstrated against the new changes on December 4th. Likewise, the Council of Indigenous Affairs has stated that it will seek a constitutional interpretation against the new changes. However, the legislation was already passed by a vote of 58 to 45, as proposed by KMT Indigenous legislators Sra Kacaw and Ciwas Ali.
If serving on the Council of Indigenous Affairs becomes an unpaid position, this can be understood as a substantive downgrading of the Council’s importance, and will limit the Council’s ability to serve Indigenous communities. Likewise, if members do not receive salaries, only individuals who are independently wealthy will be able to serve on it and devote their full attention to it, minimizing their ability to represent their communities.
Similar to media ombudsman positions in government in which issues arose because those serving in such positions also needed to other work that they were paid for, this led to such roles not being substantively carried out. This change, then, has been criticized as weakening the administrative power of the Council of Indigenous Affairs, as well as the ability of members to represent their respective Indigenous groups.
Photo credit: 原住民族青年陣線
Furthermore, the changes are criticized as likely to lead to a lack of professionalism in carrying out the tasks of the Council of Indigenous Affairs, whose legal requirements specify workers of need to be majority Indigenous. The new proposed members of the Council of Indigenous Affairs Have been criticized as mediocre and unqualified choices by the DPP.
To this extent, the rotation of the leadership of the Council of Indigenous Affairs between a Plains Indigenous and Mountain Indigenous individual has been criticized as maintaining colonial distinctions that are arbitrary and were imposed during Japanese colonization. Indigenous civic groups critical of the move have pointed to that this continues a division that has continued through a significant period of authoritarianism, whether that was the division between “raw” and “cooked” Indigenous or “Plains Mountain Brothers” and “Mountain Brothers”–terms criticized by Indigenous activists as racist, leading to the shift toward the term “原住民“, which is used today. This illustrates how the institutions of the ROC have inherited the colonial frameworks of the Japanese. Indigenous civic groups have long called for the abandonment of this colonial distinction between “Plans” and “Mountains”.
Moreover, the mechanisms by which specific Indigenous groups have representatives answerable to their communities on the Council of Indigenous Affairs have been criticized as likely to break down following the changes. The 16 members of the Council of Indigenous Affairs previously served to represent the 16 recognized Indigenous groups in Taiwan, which have differing methods of determining among the community who they feel is best to represent them. Not all groups have mechanisms to determine who represents them, which has led to controversy in the past, as a result of which, there have been calls to improve the mechanisms by which members of the Council of Indigenous Affairs come to represent the consensus of their community, as well as to specify that members of the Council of Indigenous Affairs represent specific communities.
Such actions by the KMT and TPP are ironic. The KMT and TPP have broadly taken aim at the national budget. The KMt and TPP have sought to slash the national budget for not only defense, but evidently the Council of Indigenous Affairs. KMT Indigenous legislators such as May Chin, Kin Cyang, Sasuyu Ruljuwan are among those to back the changes.
Photo credit: 原住民族青年陣線
It is worth noting that the KMT and TPP previously used Indigenous issues as a pretext to block the national budget. The KMT and TPP framed the issue as that the Executive Yuan’s budget did not include compensation for logging on Indigenous land. Yet as the issue had not been previously raised by the party in any significant capacity, the aim was mostly to freeze the national budget, and the issue simply provided a convenient pretext–the Executive Yuan later stated that it was willing to fund this, though it sought to maintain that it had the authority to draw up the national budget.
That the KMT and TPP have sought to cut funding to the Council of Indigenous Affairs and deal a blow to its administrative power in this way reflects how the KMT and TPP never truly cared about the issue. But, to this extent, the KMT and TPP are likely taking aim at the Council of Indigenous Affairs because it is not an institution they currently control, and aiming to expand influence over it with their recent actions.
It is to be seen how and if there is further pushback against the issue from Indigenous civic groups, then. To begin with, that there is a Council of Indigenous Affairs was only won by Indigenous through movement organizing and many years of protest, seeing there originally was only a small-scale government body under the Taiwan Provincial Government responsible for Indigenous Affairs, until such demonstrations led to the establishment of the Council of Indigenous Affairs in 1992, with a great deal of energy devoted to setting up the structure of the Council of Indigenous Affairs. Consequently, these legal changes pushed through by the pan-Blue camp are seen as diminishing Indigenous sovereignty.