Collective Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Identity-Based Movement of Plain Indigenous in Taiwan.

COLLECTIVE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: Identity-Based Movement of Plain Indigenous in Taiwan. By Jolan Hsieh. New York, London: Routledge. 2006. xvii, 137 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$104.99, cloth. ISBN 0-415-97745-2.

In 1954, Taiwan's plains indigenous peoples (pingpuzu) lost the indigenous legal status they had under Japanese rule because the Chinese Nationalist Party found them to be "civilized" like Han Chinese (p. 4). Even amidst the identity politics of DPP-era Taiwan, they have not regained status as indigenous peoples (yuanzhu minzu). Largely assimilated to Hoklo lifestyles, most pingpu individuals identify as Han Taiwanese or Chinese and are so identified by household registration offices, legislators and others.

Plains indigenous peoples have long demanded legal recognition. They receive little support from established indigenous groups, who fear plains indigenous communities would absorb resources currently allocated to their own projects. There is also a strong perception in those communities that legal recognition of pingpuzu would lead Taiwanese of mixed ancestry to claim status like the Metis of Canada. Since that would include the majority of Taiwan's population, it could dilute the rights they claim as indigenous under international law. The pingpuzu are thus in a dangerous and frustrating state of liminality, trapped betwixt and between accepted ethnic and legal categories.

The pingpuzu movement is sometimes identified with the Taiwanese independence movement, as its adherents stake an identity as non-Chinese in spite of the fact that few people speak pingpu languages and even pingpu deities have been assimilated to Han-Chinese culture (p. 68). There are already anthropological studies of the pingpuzu in a long historical perspective (Melissa Brown, Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004; John Shepherd, Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600-1800, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), yet little about their social movement. It is high time that something was written about them from the perspective of indigenous human rights. Jolan Hsieh, a pingpu activist and assistant professor at Taiwan's National Dong Hwa University, fills this niche.

This book, apparently the publication of her Ph.D. dissertation, is a factual introduction to pingpuzu demands. In the beginning chapters, Hsieh frames the issue in terms of human rights and identity-based social movements, including a review of indigenous rights in the UN system. She then provides a six-page "historical analysis" of Taiwan, a stream-of-consciousness auto-ethnographic essay, and analysis of a survey she did with 172 individuals. She concludes that it is necessary to promote plains indigenous identity to gain legal recognition and the right to self-determination.

Using a feminist, self-reflexive methodology and writing style, Hsieh divulges her emotions as she conducted this research. The voice of the committed activist thus emerges much more strongly than that of the academic. Unlike the academic books of Brown and Shepherd, it does not make an important theoretical contribution to disciplinary debates, but that is not its purpose. It makes its contribution elsewhere--in the struggle for indigenous human rights in Taiwan. This is commendable. In fact, it is vital to the well-being of her community. It took courage to publish such a book at the beginning of her academic career, and that should be rewarded.

Like the pingpuzu themselves, this book is liminal, betwixt and between the categories of the academy. It may be of some interest to activists in the international indigenous movement who already know about Taiwan's indigenous peoples and wish to learn more about the country's unrecognized peoples. It would be a useful addition to university libraries wishing to acquire a comprehensive collection in Taiwan studies or indigenous studies. The audience that needs this book the most, however, consists of students enrolled in training courses for social activists, held in Taiwan by the Indigenous Peoples Council, the Ketagalan Institute, or the Presbyterian Church. For that reason, one hopes that Dr. Hsieh will either translate this book into Chinese or write another one for that purpose.

SCOTT SIMON

University of Ottawa, Canada