Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Solomon203/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
IN JUNE, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) was criticized by Amnesty International Taiwan over Indigenous cultural appropriation. Specifically, at this year’s East Asia Democracy Forum, the TFD unveiled an AI ambassador who was depicted as Paiwan–this despite the Paiwan community not being consulted with regard to its depiction, nor was any permission sought from the community over the use of Paiwan cultural symbols.
Indeed, the forum as a whole was criticized for the use of Indigenous symbols as part of gifts for foreign visitors–treating Indigeneity as something for consumption, rather than with respect, and devoid of any cultural context. This occurs despite the fact that Taiwan already has laws concerning the use of Indigenous traditional knowledge as intellectual property. Likewise, that an “AI ambassador” for the TFD was depicted as Indigenous was raised as touching upon concerns about the lack of any clear regulation or regarding ownership rights over data from Indigenous communities used in the training of large language models.
The TFD is a non-profit entity run by the Taiwanese government. The foundation funds academic exchanges, as well as with regional and international civil society groups. In this sense, the body largely exists for diplomatic purposes, particularly regarding soft power, and in strengthening links between Taiwanese civil society and the civil society actors of other countries.
This would be far from the first time that the Taiwanese government has been accused of tokenizing Indigenous. One notes the long history in which Indigenous cultural representations have been used as part of government events that put Taiwan on the international stage, though this is usually with pan-Green presidential administrations.
Post criticizing the AI depiction by Jing-Jie Temelalj Chen of Amnesty International
Presidential inaugurations have often featured performances by Indigenous musicians. Indigenous singer-songwriter A-mei/A-mit, most notably, played at the inauguration of Chen Shui-bian. It was also the case that Indigenous folk singer Panai Kusui played at Tsai Ing-wen’s inauguration. Nevertheless, it is a question of when such performances crosses the line into tokenism, particularly if the rest of the ceremony is mostly framed around a Han-centric view of history.
For example, before the presidential inauguration of Tsai Ing-wen, the “Taiwan”s Light” performance proved controversial. Namely, the performance depicted Indigenous peoples as uncivilized and barbaric, in need of civilizing by Western missionaries, or otherwise drew on tropes of Indigenous as a happy singing and dancing people. The performance also proved bizarre, in that it reenacted Taiwan’s 400 years of Han settlement–inclusive of the violent displacement of colonialism–in a breezy manner.
It seems that the Taiwanese government has learned little when it comes to the appropriation of Indigenous culture, then. This proves all the more unfortunate when the government has sought to strengthen ties with countries that have histories of Austronesian migration that link them to Taiwanese Indigenous peoples, including some of the participants at the East Asia Democracy Forum.