Cultural Performance and the Reconstruction of Tradition among the Bunun of Taiwan

Abstract

This article aims to understand the meanings and impact of the reconstruction of tradition and the objectification of culture among the Bunun, an Austronesian‐speaking indigenous people of Taiwan. It situates the revival of tradition in the contexts of state appropriation and the development of ethnic tourism, and shows how the Bunun attempt to control their relationship with the state and the dominant society by reconstituting tradition in the present. The culturally specific ways in which the Bunun sustain local identity and sociality by reproducing their concept of personhood are highlighted. In doing so, I seek to move the analysis beyond the use of reified tradition as a political and identity symbol to address the broader theoretical concern of understanding tradition as a culturally specific mode of change.

Indigenous identity and environmental governance in Guyana, South America

“…However, rather than equating this cultural self-consciousness with inauthenticity, or to assert that cultural revitalization ideologies, particularly at national levels, primarily reflect and serve other dominant hegemonies, we agree with Yang 68 …”

“…Worldwide, Indigenous peoples are utilising culture as a self-conscious and articulate value, adopting 'tradition' as a means of empowerment. 67 However, rather than equating this cultural selfconsciousness with inauthenticity or to assert that cultural revitalisation ideologies, particularly at national levels, primarily reflect and serve other dominant hegemonies, we agree with Yang 68 who attributes the renewal and strengthening of tradition in the present to 'creative and dynamic expressions of [self] that seeks to highlight the agency and autonomy of indigenous peoples in the processes of engaging with modernity'.…”

A Taiwan knowledge keeper of indigenous Bunun: An ethnographic historical narrative of Laipunuk (內本鹿), southern mountain range

“…As the concept of colonial modernity can be applied both to the colonizer and colonized (Lee and Cho, 2012), as noted by Poyer and Tsai (2019), Tama Biung was not simply assimilated by colonial modernity, rather he, like many Bunun, connected his life experience with his indigenous identity. Although the Bunun language does not have conceptions of modernity per se , ordinary Bunun people recognize the concept as crucial to their current life experience, such as using video camera to record a cultural ritual (Yang, 2011). Tama Biung, like other indigenous peoples in Taiwan was keenly aware to the benefits of modernity, including education, better clothing, medical care (see Simon, 2005) and in his philosophy to keep moving ahead: “sharing ideas is the new headhunt.”…”

“…Outcomes have become etched into indigenous identity (Simon, 2006) and are evident today, including compliance with the state as a provider, which eventually took precedence over government resistance, as suggested by Yang (2005) in a recent interpretation of the Bunun concept of government, currently expressed as sasaipuk , a kinship term suggesting ‘to be fed’ or ‘to be adopted’. Today, as new agents of post-traditional modernity, many Bunun find religious conversion and social change through the Catholic and Presbyterian churches (Huang, 1988), engaging with an autonomous creative expression of their own culture, indispensable to their survival and success in the modern world (Yang, 2011).…”

Legal Indigeneities: Identity, Authenticity, and Power in Taiwan’s Indigenous Courts

“…Drawing on the work of Elizabeth Povinelli (1995Povinelli ( , 1998Povinelli ( , 2002, I consider the relationship between 'recognition' of Indigenous tradition by the multicultural, liberal settler state and its simultaneous construction of native society. Scholars of Taiwan have used Povinelli's work to examine the paradoxes of recognition for Indigenous peoples in the modern Taiwan state (P. K. Friedman, 2018;Ku, 2012;Yang, 2011). Rather than take the state as its starting point, this article shifts the focus to Indigenous actors and the construction of Indigenous identities at a point where their cultural values, beliefs, and lifeways intersect with state apparatuses.…”