Dear friends and colleagues,
I hope you are well.
You are welcome to join us April 8 (12:30-14:30) for the next installment
of the STandD speaker series, where Dr. Scott Simon will present,
"Indigenous Nations in a Contested State: An Anthropology of Geopolitics on
Formosa and in Taiwan." Participation in the hybrid event may be in-person
(Peterson 116) or virtual (Zoom details below).
Hoping to see you then and there.
Best,
Nic
*Indigenous Nations in a Contested State: *
*An Anthropology of Geopolitics on Formosa and in Taiwan*
Dr. Scott Simon
Professor, University of Ottawa
April 8, 2022—12:30-14:30 EST (Peterson Hall 116 + Zoom [details below])
Taiwan has been prominent in the news because of military tensions in the
Taiwan Straits. The People’s Republic of China, which has never ruled
Taiwan but claims it as a Chinese province, sent a record-breaking 969
warplanes into Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone in 2020. In this
context, perhaps only anthropologists would care about the archipelago’s
Indigenous populations: some 560,000 people (2.3% of the population)
belonging to 16 state-recognized Indigenous groups. As speakers of
Austronesia languages, their continuing existence and cultural resilience
link them, not to China, but rather to the peoples of Oceania. As part of
their Indigenous resurgence, which can be brought into dialogue with
similar movements in North America, they are asserting political
sovereignty in new ways.
History and ethnography of the Seediq and Truku peoples, highland peoples
of the Central Mountain Chain, put geopolitics in a very new perspective.
What does it mean for Indigenous peoples to seek sovereignty and
recognition from a state that is itself scarcely recognized in the world?
How does Taiwan’s main island – formerly called Formosa – appear if we
imagine it, not as contested territory between two Chinese states for
decades, but rather as the homeland of hundreds of Indigenous nations for
millennia? What can anthropology reveal about the nature of indigeneity,
sovereignty and nation in the shadows of the world’s greatest geopolitical
risk?
*Scott Simon*, Professor, University of Ottawa School of Sociological and
Anthropological Studies, got his Ph.D. in Anthropology at McGill in 1998.
For the past two decades, his research has focused on development,
Indigenous rights, state-Indigenous relations, and indigeneity in Taiwan,
based on research with Truku and Seediq peoples. He has published three
books about Taiwan. He is co-chair of the UO Research Chair in Taiwan
Studies. As Senior Fellow on Taiwan, Human Rights, and the Indo-Pacific at
the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, he also written policy-oriented papers on
Taiwan. Having served as assistant consultant on a UO-Beijing University
human rights project, he maintains an interest in human rights in China.
His new book, *Truly Human: Indigeneity and Indigenous Resurgence on
Formosa*, will be published in 2022 with the University of Toronto Press.
Meeting ID: 832 1015 7456 ; Passcode: 526921 ; Join Zoom Meeting:
*https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/83210157456?pwd=Skk3ZFdFS0pocDVtZjhHN1ZCRWFXQT09
<https://mcgill.zoom.us/j/83210157456?pwd=Skk3ZFdFS0pocDVtZjhHN1ZCRWFXQT09> *
One tap mobile +12042727920, 83210157456# Canada; +14388097799,
83210157456# Canada
*Photos courtesy of Dr. Scott Simon
