第二場次Second Stream

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Indigenous Struggles: The Fight Against Marginalisation, Criminalisation and Oppression

原住民掙扎：對抗邊緣化、入罪化和壓迫的奮戰

 

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Kui Kasirisir (Hsu, Chun-Tsai)

NPUST, Taiwan

 

Indigenous Older Adults in Taiwan: The Ageing Population and Related Policy

 

This presentation reviews the development of social work in Taiwan and reveals several problems with the current Taiwanese professional social work system. The Indigenous people of Taiwan have experienced several periods of historical injustice. As a result, social work in Taiwan has developed without input reflecting the colonial history and culture of Taiwanese Indigenous peoples. Present Tsai apologised to the Taiwanese Indigenous peoples on 1 August 2016 and has engaged with transitional justice for the Indigenous peoples. Taiwan employs an ethnic mainstreaming approach as a tool for dealing with the problems and issues of historical injustice experienced by Indigenous peoples. Therefore, the ideas of Indigenous social work involve social justice, ethnic equality, and historical justice. Nevertheless, the development of indigenised social work would assure the introduction of relevant policies, services and practitioners, based upon transitional justice for the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan.

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Shelley Bielefield

Griffith Law School, Australia

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Cashless Welfare Transfers and Australia’s First Nations: Redemptive or Repressive Violence?

 

The Australian Federal Government claims that the Cashless Debit Card (CDC) is a necessary ‘support’ that generates positive outcomes. Despite contrary evidence revealed through independent research and problems with the scheme also apparent in government-commissioned research, the dominant political narrative accompanying the CDC remains intractable. The CDC has been characterised by elites as helpful ‘practical love’ for those in need of government income support. However, many of those with lived experience of the CDC report that the scheme imposes difficulties with basic bill payment, undermines sound financial management, and stigmatises cardholders. The majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations who have gone on the public record strongly condemn the scheme in its compulsory iteration, as do prominent First Nations Senators. Taking these issues into consideration, this article examines whether the CDC is best characterised as ‘redemptive’ or ‘repressive violence’. In doing so, it reflects on colonial conceptions of ‘care’, which are deeply paternalistic, and contrasts this with an approach that promotes self-determination and autonomy. This presentation is situated in the context of neoliberal marketisation of welfare state practices, where heavy handed regulatory frameworks have proven lucrative for industry interests.

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Scott Avery

Western Sydney University, Australia

 

Something Stronger: Truth-telling on Hurt and Loss, Strength and Healing, from First Nations People with Disability

 

This presentation will present the testimonies of First Nations people with disability who have had encounters of aggravated violence, trauma and discriminations. It will explore how social forces of racism and ableism intersect to manoeuvre First Nations people with disability into situations on vulnerability which exposes them to violence, exploitation and abuse. It will further expose how and an Indigenous culture of inclusion of people with disability, fostered by a sense of belonging to the First Nations disability community, sets a pathway for healing and restitution.

 

Hala Marshood

Who Pays?, Palestine

 

Dispossession and De-development of Palestinians in the Naqab

 

In January 2022, Palestinian Bedouins confronted Israeli bulldozers as they were paving the way for afforestation to be implemented by the Jewish National Fund on the lands of the Sa'ua village. This project is one among many others currently being implemented in the Naqab region (south of Palestine), ones that will impact and lead to the forced displacement of thousands of people.

 

The concept of modernisation and “making the desert bloom” is a central pillar of the ideological underpinnings of the Israeli settler-colonial project in Palestine. For Israel, the presence of Palestinian Bedouins on their land is an impediment to sovereignty, modernity, and development. Thus, Israel relegated all of the Naqab’s Palestinian inhabitants to landless citizens, and those who remained steadfast on their land in unrecognised villages are classified as “criminals” and “trespassers” on state land. This formed the legal basis for uprooting Palestinians from their lands. Hence, when Palestinian Bedouins resist and assert their historical property rights, they are challenging the ideological basis of their dispossession.

 

This presentation will provide an overview of  Israel’s colonial, de-development policies in the Naqab region.  It  will detail the current projects being advanced in the Naqab, as well as the corporate actors involved in their facilitation, demonstrating how for the Israeli colonial system, infrastructure and development serve as part of the ongoing dispossession and forced displacement of Palestinians.

 

Lin Hung-Yang & Liu Hsing-Kuang

NPUST/SCSP, Taiwan

 

Delivering Community Services During the Time of COVID-19 and Beyond: The Case of Southern Pingtung County

 

The Support Centre of Southern Pingtung (SCSP) is a quasi-governmental organisation financed by the Pingtung County Government in order to deliver training programmes for leading volunteers as well as services to help local community workers find the ways to develop community services for the elderly. The areas where the SCSP provides services are at the south end of Pingtung County from Chiatung Township down to Hengchun Township and Manchou Township. It spreads more than 70 kilometres from north to south and deep into the Tawu Mountain to some tribes in Chunri Township, Shihchi Township and Mudan Township. The communities in Hengchun Township locate closely, but that in other townships are distant. For this reason, particularly in remote areas, community centres play an important role on rendering courses and services for ageing people to maintain social networks and physical and mental status.

 

Along with the rocketing caseloads of those infected by the COVID-19 since the mid of May in 2021, however, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) curtailed numerous services for the elderly and for volunteers who deliver services for old-age people in communities. Nevertheless, the SCSP was the first among three support centres in Pingtung County that asked volunteers and workers in communities to learn using applications for on-line courses and meetings from 2020 especially via Google Meet and live streams delivered by YouTube and Facebook before the pandemic got worse. When the situation aggravated between May and August 2021, the SCSP could bring all the meetings and courses on-line immediately and keep rendering services as usual to some extent.

 

This presentation starts from introducing the areas that the SCSP provides services and the needs of the elderly people there, and then to share the experiences we learned from delivering courses and services on-line. The measures for community works applied by the MOHW during the pandemic are discussed, and, in the last part of this paper, some ideas are developed and proposed for further modification to deal with similar situations in the future.

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Sedjam Tjuveljelem & Hong-Zen Wang 

National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan

 

Indigenous Paiwan Culture in Taiwan’s Domestic Violence Regulations: Clash or Gap?

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Though the importance of culture sensitivity in social work is widely recognised, how to improve the daily social work practices in dealing with domestically abused clients from different cultures is yet to be established in Taiwan. This paper tries to explain what contributes to, or causes, the gap between the regulatory domestic violence reporting process and the daily practices social workers undertake when clients are from indigenous communities. Using the Paiwan minority ethnic group as an example to understand this disparity, this presentation of our research attempts to provide both reasons and solutions. From this research, we found that three main factors affected the successful implementation of regulations when viewed from a Han Chinese perspective. First, there is a lack of consideration for the indigenous Paiwan gender culture itself.  Second, there is a loss in translation between the regulatory languages and the indigenous language, while the Paiwan Vusam culture is not taken into account either.

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Sean Hilier

York University, Canada

 

Systemic Racism, Displacement, and Indigenous Experiences: The Unseen Healthcare System in Canada

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Indigenous Peoples experience lower health outcomes when compared to non-Indigenous people in Canada. Issues steaming from historic and ongoing colonial acts continue to case widespread harm to Indigenous Peoples, these include: Residential Schools, the 60’s Scoop, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls, Indian Hospitals, the Mass Incarceration of Indigenous Peoples in Canadian Prisons, and Systemic Racism in Healthcare. Issues of access to care and the displacement of Indigenous Peoples from their home communities in order to receive treatment is widespread. Even when Indigenous Peoples ‘access’ healthcare in Canada, the results can be tragic. The cases of Brian Sinclair, Joyce Echaquan, Heather Winterstein, highlight the very real problems we face – each one of these individuals died while in hospital care trying to receive treatment for highly preventable illnesses. Additionally, we will explore how ostensibly neutral health policies can be enacted as a violent intervention of erasure that specifically targets Indigenous adults and children through long-term and, at times, lifelong dislocation from families, communities, and land when needing complex healthcare treatment.

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Liu, Hsin-Yi, Drangaira Pa.Lau.Dean & Watansilan

National Chi Nan University(NCNU), Taiwan 

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Hunting as a Cultural Way of Life:The Legal Oppression of Taiwan’s Indigenous People

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At the end of 2020, the population of Taiwan’s indigenous was 576,792, accounting for 2.45% of the total population. Currently, there are 16 groups of Taiwan’s indigenous population whose names have been rectified and officially recognised. Every ethnic group has a hunting tradition, especially hunting before ceremonies. In addition to the need for food, it is also a way to maintain interaction with nature or what they call ancestral spirits. 

 

In 2012, Talum Suqluman (Chinese name Wang Guanglu) of the Bunun tribe was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in prison for using illegal firearms and hunting protected creatures. In 2017, however,. the Supreme Court ruled to stop the trial and applied for a constitutional interpretation. This is the first case in which the Supreme Court has filed for a constitutional interpretation. From the constitutional level, the conflict between the hunting behaviour of indigenous people and the current legal system is squarely addressed. 

 

From this case, there are at least three legal oppressions that have severely affected the hunting culture of indigenous. They are:

(1) Taiwan prohibits guns, but indigenous hunters are allowed to apply for legalising self-made guns while respecting the hunting culture of the indigenous. The reality is that indigenous hunters still illegally buy and sell guns because it is impossible for every hunter to make their own. They must be bought by someone who knows how to make one. If hunters are allowed to own shotguns, the government should ensure that the guns are safe enough for hunters. 

(2) The Wildlife Conservation Law of 1989 stipulates that no wild animals shall be killed unless the indigenous people apply before they hunt. However, hunting is a kind of life for the indigenous people, and it also depends on the guidance given by the gods. It is impossible to apply in advance, let alone decide the prey. It is disrespectful to the mountain god to say it beforehand. 

(3) According to what the indigenous people have seen with their own eyes, there are still many so-called conservation animals on the mountain. It may be that there is a gap between the scientific estimation method and the actual situation. The Council of Agriculture will also revise the types of conservation animals in time. For example, Muntiacus reevesi micrurus was conserved in 2012, but not in 2019. 

 

Gao Desheng, chairman of the Tsou Hunter Association of Ali Mountain Township, estimates that there are currently about 300 people in the 8 Tsou tribes who have the habit of hunting. Hunting-related laws and regulations not only prohibit the hunting of any wild animals but also require the indigenous to apply in advance and make unsafe guns. There are  no designated local government hunting areas for hunters after The Wildlife Conservation Law (2017). No wonder if you ask an indigenous hunter what you are afraid of most on the mountain, he will not say whether it is a viper or a beast, but the Taiwan police.

 

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