Abstract

The present study examines the dynamics of the contemporary rituals of Taiwanese Aborigines following the change of this people’s self-perception in times of Taiwanese multiculturalism and nativism. Based on materials collected in many years of participating observation, the author scrutinizes the efficacy of these rituals within the new religious, socio-cultural, and political context – a context that today is not only impacted by local and national, but also by global influences. Are these rituals mere folkloristic representations of culture, or do they have deeper implications for society and people’s identities? The author argues that the often newly invented or “re-invented” rituals play a crucial role regarding the generation, confirmation and transformation of social reality in the new socio-political context.
The author conducted several months of field research every year from 2002-2007 in the rural communities of different ethnic groups. Among the most salient characteristics of the rituals observed is not only the syncretic involution of Christian, Han-Chinese, and underlying autochthonous cultural traditions, but also the controversy between different ethnic elites (traditional, intellectual, political, and Christian elites) on the question about the adequate relationship of these cultural elements. The main positions are a Christian as well as a traditionalist one which are each forming alliances with other interest groups (political parties, commercial culture associations etc.) within aboriginal society as well as in Han society.

Abstract (long)

The present study examines the implications of Taiwanese nativism, multiculturalism, and the competition among elites on the contemporary rituals of Taiwan’s Malayo-Polynesian aborigines. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the cultures of Taiwan’s aborigines have received growing attention. This development is highly remarkable, since these people, whose 13 officially recognized ethnic groups all belong to the Austronesian language family, were once heavily discriminated against as “barbarians” and “uncivilized people”. The new interest was partly motivated by the awareness that the existence of aborigines pointed to Taiwan’s non-Chinese origins – a fact that made them appear to be helpful for the establishment of an independent Taiwanese identity. (Thus, it is quite popular for Han-Chinese in present-day Taiwan to point at one’s possible Pingpu-ancestry: the Pingpu comprise up to nine different Austronesian peoples who have been amalgamated into Taiwan’s Han population over the course of the past four centuries). Another reason for the sudden interest in aborigines was the consideration that a respectful attitude towards all different ethnic groups in multi-ethnic Taiwan might not only prove to be supportive of inter-ethnic harmony, but that Taiwan’s variant of democratic multiculturalism might also impress China and the international community. Under such conditions, Taiwan’s aboriginal traditional cultures and particularly their rituals, which had become almost extinct after many decades of Christianization, assimilation and government discrimination (aborigines were recognized as ethnically different from Taiwan’s Han only in 1994), have gained increasing symbolic value. In addition to this symbolic value, leading officials in Taiwan’s government were convinced that through rituals and their performative character, the solidarity of communities could be enhanced, and common cultural values could be enduringly entrenched into peoples’ cultural memory. Over the course of the ethnic and ritual revival that began to unfold during the 1990s with significant financial assistance from the government, these cultures and rituals were eagerly documented by specially trained journalists. By way of special TV programs and particularly on the Internet, they were then made accessible to the whole Chinese- speaking world.
While the process described here was primarily motivated by the need of Taiwan’s Han for self authentication, it had considerable impact on the character and the nature of ritual performances organized and brought onto the stage by aborigines since the early nineties. “Objectified” traditional culture now increasingly became a political tool for contending political, traditional, and religious elites who tried to use ritual for their own authentication. In this sense, most rituals publicly performed by aborigines today bear – in the context of the Taiwanese identity search – those often elite-dominated mechanisms that are thematized by Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983) or Anderson (1988) in their examinations of processes of cultural invention for the needs of political and cultural entities. However, one essential finding of this study is that despite this instrumentalization, aboriginal ritual simultaneously also mediates the identity needs and social exigencies of the respective social group or society in a decisive way. At least in terms of its social role, contemporary aboriginal ritual is highly efficacious. By way of ritual improvisation during the rituals, ritual criticism afterwards, and counter-rituals, the performances contribute to the renegotiation, the reevaluation and the modification of the participants’ relationship to themselves, to other group members, and to the Han. Rather than, as generally in theatre, simply representing social structure for entertainment (Schechner 1977; 1985), these activities have the power to create, change and even subvert social reality.
In this volume, I analyze the contemporary ritual performances of Taiwanese Aborigines from two perspectives. In Part I, I examine their role and the discourses connected to them in the wider nativist context, since such contemplation illuminates those exigencies of social and political authentication within Han society that helped these rituals to generate their contemporary importance. The rituals discussed in this part are mostly performances that explicitly aim at attracting public attention and which are therefore performed either in the big cities inhabited by Han or in the presence of other non-Aborigines. As Taiwanese observers confirm, many rituals seem just to be hold in order to collect the official subsidies and to increase one’s power in election campaigns. Since cultural protection and revitalization is a national policy, politicians of no matter which political party try to get hold of these resources in order to bolster their political influence. One of the results is a flood of newly invented rituals. The examples I give, however, also show quite impressively that these performances, under the circumstances described, sometimes generate effects that – though they are in tune with the official Han policy of cultural revitalization – do not necessarily meet the interests of the makers of the policy. A prominent example are the “pilgrimages“ of intellectual Aborigines to Japan between 2002 and 2005. Sponsored by Taiwan’s pro-unification camp, the members of this group claimed that their main aim of their journeys was to obtain their ancestor souls from the Yasukuni shrine, a shrine that not only commemorates Japanese soldiers and 2000 Taiwanese Aborigines who had died for Japan in the Pacific War (1941-1945), but also some war criminals. The group underlined their religious (non-ulitarian) intention with performances of ancestor-spirits-rituals in Japan. As my analysis shows, however, a major intention of the actions was to compromise Taiwan’s pro-independence government that apparently sided with a regime that refused to repent its war crimes in other Asian countries and that for political calculations even neglected to support their own aborigines in times of hardship.
However, the new perception of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples and their rituals also has its impacts on the performances held on the local level. In the second part of the study (Part II), I therefore analyze and compare the contemporary collective rituals of two Austronesian groups in Taiwan, the Taroko and the Ami. In the case of the Taroko – a patri-lineal people in East Taiwan – I introduce the “ancestor-spirits-rituals” which were revitalized in 1999 by traditionalist aboriginal elites who had successfully applied for official funding. Although these rituals were still practiced privately in families, they were not carried out openly for a long time because they are connected to the former head-hunting religion of the Taroko. Due simply to their problematic background, the new performances caused deep controversies in contemporary Taroko society. They provoked the development of Christian counter-rituals and were eventually discarded.
In my investigation of the contemporary rituals of the Ami, main focus are again the yearly festivals of this ethnic group, the so-called “harvest-festivals”. Although these festivals, which usually take several days and which consist of a multitude of different collective rituals (such as ancestor worship, dance rituals, etc.), contain many traditional elements, they are in fact strongly Christianized. Similar to the rituals of other aboriginal groups, they are subject to constant modifications by political elites in the present political climate. And, very much like in the case of the Taroko, nativism also had a “retraditionalizing” influence on some parts of once matri-lineal Ami-society. Here, it enhanced the development of alternative rituals in addition to the official Christianized canon, rituals that referred to partly still existing, partly extinguished shamanic traditions. Very similar as in the Taroko’s case, the traditionalist activities were finally rejected by the common people. In both cases, my analysis shows that the claim of certain social groups to alternative cultural interpretations is often politically motivated. While the main competing positions are a Christian and a traditionalist one, these two currents ally with other social interest groups like political parties, cultural associations, gendres etc.. The fact that everybody in aboriginal society is connected to at least one of these interest groups (or identities) predetermines his or her active engagement in ritual revitalization, ritual re-invention and ritual criticism.
In sum, the study makes clear that aboriginal public ritual is a very elite dominated domain in present-day Taiwan. Since non-Chinese traditions are of important representational value today, national as well as local elites often use them as authentication tools. The examples I present all suggest that references to ancestor gods, head hunting, and shamanism in these performances do not so much indicate the identification with an ancient cosmology but rather have „functional indexical uses“ (Tambiah 1979) in so far as they express and negotiate contemporary social concerns, status and power interests. Traditional and often highly ambiguous ritual symbols are used in order to convey meanings that have little to do with the ritual itself. In this sense, contemporary aboriginal rituals are as much national appropriations as they are instruments in the competition among elites. Apart from this, however, aboriginal ritual also seems to serve as a medium for post-colonial emancipation. Especially the way in which aboriginal elites often make ostensive or even subversive use of elements of traditional religion is not always only “pragmatic” in a political sense, but may have deep-seated psychological and expressive reasons as well.
This trait distinguish es aboriginal elites from common people in aboriginal society who have different life experiences This becomes clear if we look at aboriginal elites’ and non-elites’ differing life experiences and socialization. While rural aborigines could generally still find shelter and protection within their communities, modern aboriginal elites were much more exposed to Han society and were thus much more likely to have negative experiences in their urban surroundings. Cosmopolitan aborigines, who had generally left their communities at a very early age and who often could hardly speak the language of their ethnic group, experienced to a much greater extent particularly the loss of tradition, religion and the own self. Further, many of them became, over the course of their lives with the Han, detached from Christianity and thereby often had even greater problems in coping with the humiliations they were subjected to by members of Taiwan’s Han society. The main cause for such humiliation and disdain had often been jealousy on the part of Han colleagues because of the aborigines’ enjoyment of the grade-bonus-system in high schools and in universities as a consequence of the aboriginal status as “citizens of remote areas”. Since the beginning of the 1990s, however, this kind of discrimination suddenly belonged to the past. Therefore, cosmopolitan elites today identify themselves strongly with ideals of intellectual circles within Han society where the "recognition of difference" and "multiculturalism" have become core values over the course of political paradigm change. This also implies that disassociation from past “oppressors” seems necessary from time to time.
In contrast, aboriginal non-elites have other groups of reference and therefore also another stance towards tradition. On the construction sites and in the service sectors of the large cities, they have to work together with the members of Taiwan’s lower middle classes where discrimination against aborigines often still prevails. As a result, they usually show a strong desire not to be recognised as aborigines or at least not as “uncivilized” aborigines. Here, Christianity plays an important role – a role which is very different from the “colonizing” and “identity-dissolving” role cosmopolitan elites believe it to play. I agree with Huang Shiun-Wey (2003), who emphasizes that “although the Ami [and I would add: other aboriginal groups, as well] do not use Christianity solely to distinguish themselves from the Chinese, this borrowed religion does strengthen the Ami’s [aborigines’] confidence and express their difference from the Chinese” in a way that “does not necessarily cause, but rather helps avert an identity crisis.” As Huang makes clear, three aspects are responsible for this rather positive role which Christianity can play for Taiwan’s aborigines: First, unlike the situation in Latin-America, Christianity did not come to the island with a colonial power. Second, since Christianity comes from the West, it is usually believed to be the most advanced religion of the world, which helps Aborigines to feel – at least in terms of religion – more advanced than members of Chinese Folk Religion. Third, very few Han Chinese are Christians, which is an important precondition for Aborigines to use it as a medium to maintain an independent identity. Apart from this, it is important to point out that in Taiwan, every aboriginal group has formed its own, very distinct Christian culture with its own art styles, music styles, ritual performances, bible language etc..
From this perspective, it seems debatable whether “aboriginal subjectivity” can only be achieved through the revitalization of “authentic” past traditions or whether the maintenance of the Christianized status quo would not serve this goal as well or even better. Particularly representatives of Christianity in aboriginal society are usually more convinced of this latter view. As I tried to show in this contribution, “authentic” tradition is often monopolized and instrumentalized by members of political parties and other interest groups for their own authentication in a way that challenges the authority of the state and that endangers its original democratic ideals. The contemporary, state-supported traditionalism of some intellectual and political elites does not equally satisfy all societal segments within aboriginal society. It not only collides with the religious (Christianized) identity developed by common people in the last decades, but also supports the artificial empowerment of social forces that are not necessarily legitimised by the majority of the people. Although the people – that is the cultural collectives – are remunerated for their performances and are given the opportunity for self contemplation, those who truly profit are the socially privileged ethnic elites with a range of experience that is compatible with Han society and that enables them to convert economic capital into other forms of capital. Further, one main function usually attributed to ritual – its function of endowing solidarity – seems no longer to be guaranteed. However, it should be safe to assume that the tensions produced by the traditionalist challenge may have stimulating and transformative effects on aboriginal society as a whole, since worldviews, psychological tensions, styles of ethnic representation, and questions of rank and power are recapitulated and negotiated here. Contemporary aboriginal ritual therefore confirms the approach in ritual theory that emphasizes ritual’s transformative efficacy as opposed to one that emphasizes its power of preservation.