 OK. So welcome to tonight's Sawa Center Taiwan Studies seminar. Tonight we've got, we could say, the first lecture in our contemporary Taiwan Indigenous Studies lecture series. We finished the last Indigenous Studies project last Friday, and now we're starting a new one. This is part of a two-year project that was sponsored by the Shrinny Museum in Taiwan. And we're going to be focusing on contemporary Indigenous issues. So it's going to be a little bit different from our former, our previous query historical project that Nikki Olsford ran. Today's speaker is one of our former students, Daniel Davis. So Daniel first became interested in Taiwan when he was an undergraduate student. He was at Sussex University on development studies. And one of the things about Sussex University is they're one of the few UK universities that offer the possibility of doing a year abroad or term abroad in Taiwan. In Sussex case, they work with National Taiwan University. So that was Daniel's first taste of Taiwan. After he graduated, he lived in Taiwan for a couple of years. And then he came back to the UK to do his MA. And Daniel did MA Taiwan Studies at Sussex in 2013 to 2014. He was part of a remarkable Taiwan politics group that year in 2013 to 2014, which was also being his first year on the team. So he was here when Taiwan Studies was really taken off at Sussex. And he was, again, quite a remarkable student. And he did, because he did the kind of things that we, as teachers, we want students to do. OK, so for example, he got accepted for the EATS conference, the European Association of Taiwan Studies, where he gave the first version of his dissertation project that looked at the way indigenous issues were covered in Taiwan's political propaganda, particularly looking at election advertisements. And I think that, looking in the audience, I can see that we've got, let's see, one other former EATS presenter and one future, oh, two former EATS presenters and one future EATS presenter. So I think that anyone that's been, oh, of course, me and Pete as well, I think we can all agree what an impact this could have on dissertation projects. Daniel then went on to further develop this into a distinction grade dissertation that was really full of original analysis. And it was something we're really agreed in terms of dissertations, because it was the kind of dissertation that may both be you and me happy, which is not easy to do, because of that different kind of approaches. And of course, one of the wonderful things is that some people, when they graduate, then they drop their original studies. But Daniel's kind of continued to embrace Taiwan. And he's returned to Taiwan since graduating and started a PhD, which again is one of the things that, as teachers, we love to see our students carrying on their projects. So he's completed the first year of his PhD program at National Georgetown University in Galshaw. And he's currently just taken a bit of a break, but he's about to restart this project. So tonight's talk is kind of a reflection on his early dissertation work. He's also tried to kind of take this project forward. OK, so on that note, let's give Daniel a very big welcome back to you. First of all, thank you to Daphid for having me back. And to you as well, of course. So as Daphid said, today what I'm going to be sharing is, as I'm sure some slides are exactly the same as my East slide, so five years ago. I'm currently working on my PhD. So I'm looking down a few different avenues. So what I want to present today is two or two and a half bits of research, which I've started. They're all on a similar kind of lines of inquiry. They're all about the use of imagery, about the use of voice or use of articulation to promote or use Aboriginal people for some kind of political purpose. So this is something which I came to so as wanting to study this. And that was, what, four years ago, five years ago. I still want to study it, right? And so now I've gone back to Taiwan. I live in Pingdong. My wife is Paewan Tzu, associate from Paewan tribe. And I've been as active as possible in different community activities there. So I've been working with arts projects. I've been working with education projects and then community development projects there. And every one of my experiences leads me down the same line of inquiry towards why, why are the conditions the way they are now? And what I mean is that in Taiwan, the Aboriginal population is very small. It's only about 2%, about 500,000 people. There's currently, I think, 16 recognized tribes. There's more than 11 or 12 who aren't recognized. But this is still 2% of the population. But if you look towards politics, if you look towards the main stage, you will always see an Aboriginal person there. And this is always really intriguing. And so on one side of it, I just want to understand why. And then I want to understand, is there a reciprocation? Is it that the Aboriginal image is used? And from that use, there's a benefit to local communities? Or is it some kind of misappropriation? Is it this image is being used for the benefit of the elite, of the political elite, with no resignation within the villages themselves? So this is what I've been looking at. And these are two ways which I think we can investigate that. And hopefully, I'll be able to move it into something slightly more focused. There will be a couple of photos in there just to make sure you're awake. So the presentation outline is just I'm going to be giving you a brief background on the idea of indigenous cultures in Taiwan. And then I'll introduce kind of the theory which got me interested in this and what I'm using as a crutch for the majority of my research. I'll look a bit at the methods and why I've chosen to research in the way I have. And then I'll be presenting both research on domestic use of Aboriginal image and then international. International, I think, will be new to view and that bit. So that's what I'm really kind of excited about right now. So as I just said, I'm sure most people are quite aware the Aboriginal people in Taiwan, they only come for 2% of the population. And mostly, they are now located in the cities or in the mountain ranges of Central and East Taiwan. I've kind of broken it down into three stages. I mean, this is very simplistic, but this is how I understand kind of the rise of indigenous cultures in Taiwan or the different steps, the different limits that they've had to push past. So there's this idea of kind of 1600s, 17th century, when there was the first contact with Europeans and there was large scale migration from China, from mainland China. At this point, it was very much assimilate or move out. So if you assimilate and there's mixing with the Han population, which did occur in huge numbers, or groups were marginalised and they were pushed closer and closer towards the mountains. Now, there was a lot of conflict in that time. But for me, I see it's the Japanese colonial rule. This is when it became institutionalised. This was institutionalised assimilation. So while there were strong fences put up, blocking Aboriginal peoples from Han people, in this time of institutionalised assimilation, as I call it, there was a huge push for the relocation and the centralisation of Aboriginal peoples. So what this means is that every village had to be registered. Every village needed to have a police station in it. Every village needed to have a school in it. And so you can imagine populations which were actually quite spursely divided around regions. They were forced to live in a way of life which was not theirs. And in some ways, that's the nice part. From local research that I've been doing in Pingdong, the stories that you hear of the atrocities which occurred, both under Japanese and then warming and KMT leadership, are quite frightening. There were whole villages burnt to the ground. Any kind of items of cultural worth were destroyed. Clothing was destroyed. There were times where all of the men, literally every man in the village, was taken away and they were put in prison. So you get this idea of the huge demonisation that was of this group of people. But then if you move towards the modern Taiwan now, multinational Taiwan now, and the movement of minority rights, there's been a complete reversal. This isn't a culture which we need to teach away. You don't need to send people to villages to teach Aboriginal people how to use chopsticks anymore. This is a culture which is for various cultures which are hugely valued and that they used a lot. And so it's this transition. This transition from demonised to valued. This is what I want to look at. This is what I want to understand. So the way I've gone about this is using something that actually BU introduced to me, which was Stuart Hall and his theory of articulation. So for me, I love this idea because articulation is described as the way that you make an object into a subject, the way that your voice, the words that you use, the images that you attach to someone, produces that person and how that person is perceived. I think this is hugely important for this line of inquiry. So I want to understand the site of struggle, which is the articulation of Aboriginal peoples, to understand how the political elite are representing Aboriginal peoples and then on the other side, how the Aboriginal peoples themselves identify themselves or what do they link their identity to. So I'll be using the theory of articulation for that. And it's definitely connected to this idea of imagined communities by Ben Degdanderson. The nation that you're part of is constantly being created and it's through published materials. It's through actual campaigns which nationalism is created. And Taiwan is an amazing example that we can see throughout time, different stages of nationalism that has gone towards what I would call now the multinational Taiwan. Domestically, I'll be looking at those works and then for the international side, I'll be looking at Joseph Nye and the idea of soft power. So to understand that, especially in Taiwan where it's so squeezed diplomatically, there are other ways to create ties with different nations. So international relations isn't only about war and money, it's about language and culture and values. And that's something where I see a huge connection with the use of what I would call the Austronesian narrative in Taiwan as a way to create relationships with other Southeast Asian countries. So in terms of methodology, I like to pretend that it's formal. But what I do is I'm sure if anyone's worked with this kind of survey-based research, you just get hundreds of videos, you get hundreds of articles and you sift your way through them and you do what you can do with them. So I managed to narrow it down to three questions, broad questions, but three questions nonetheless. I wanted to see how the prominence of Aboriginal content has varied in political discourse. So the amount of times that politically talk about Aboriginal people, show images of Aboriginal people, how has this varied over time and to what effect? Secondly, I wanted to, and I was quite reluctant to even start this because I didn't want it to become a blue-green type issue. But the more I was looking at the data, this is something that we need to look at. We can use this to predict certain trends and then also to be able to understand the strategies of the different political parties. And then thirdly, and this is what I myself am most interested in, is how does this political discourse, this creation of Aboriginal peoples by the government, how does this relate to the reality of the communities? And so it's that third part which I'm currently doing now. I'm trying to create these connections between the theory and the political campaigns to the reality of the villages. So what I did to understand the domestic side of this was I did a survey of every single campaign I had for the presidential elections between 1996 and 2012, just waiting on the 2016 ones. And I went through and I made a note of every time there was an image, a song, any writing, or any Aboriginal languages. Just so I could understand how common was this. And then for the international survey, what I did is I looked at government press releases. So for me, this is another voice of the government. This is another voice of the state, which I felt we could look at and we could try and use to understand the discourse that was being created. And for this survey, I was looking at the use of Austronesian, which I would explain in a minute. So first of all, why presidential election ads? Why did I choose to do this? Jonathan Sullivan and Daphid have done a huge amount of work around advertising in Taiwan. And there's this idea that these are the main point of contact between the campaign or the candidate and the populace. So the way that a party or a candidate presents themselves, this is calculated. This is they're trying to appeal to the largest audience. They're trying to get elected. And it's all about showing the legitimacy and how they meet the expectations. So this isn't random. This is very much calculated. So for me, I thought that these ads were the perfect way to see not only who the candidates are, but who they believe the electorate to be and what they believe the electorate wants to see. So as I said, I've looked over more than 500 campaign ads and mainly focused on the major parties. I broke them up into different categories. So that was the political party campaign, so the year and the party, the form of content. So I was looking content which was visual, audio, and language-based. And then the different messages that came. So this is looking at the issues, the ideologies, and then the kind of candidate promotion, which happens. There's a lot of data, and it can be presented in a lot of ways. But this is one of the graphs which I like the most. So you can see this is the proportion of Aboriginal content in ads. So at its highest, we have 25% of ads of the KMT for that year had some kind of Aboriginal content. And if you remember, I said that the population is only 2%, then this is interesting. Why is there such a large proportion? And this, slightly misleading, this is the total. So really, we should start from the second column there. And you'll see that the DPP were quite slow to take up on this in comparison to the KMT. But the KMT have consistently used Aboriginal peoples within their campaign ads. And so for me, this was very much predictable. If you look at the KMT, they have the Aboriginal people are the iron votes for the KMT. Well, they were traditionally. The KMT had managed to connect itself with the tribes and with the villages and with the families so much that the KMT have always been linked to these communities. So they always have that vote. So the idea that they would include Aboriginal peoples within their campaigns to kind of solidify that base would make a lot of sense for me. But the DPP, and you'll see in other research, the DPP, their use of Aboriginal content is slightly different. You'll see how it comes slightly later. And there's no really trend that we can see. But it's also surprising for a party which we see as being a Hocloan nationalist with a party that we see as being based on the Minan, the Taiwanese, as opposed to the Chinese. So for them to even include this was quite surprising. And so if we move towards kind of a more quality assessment, we can see that if you look at the kind of issues which were mentioned, this candidate promotion is the first one, which is a little bit sad. You're using these people not to represent any issue, which is a hand or anything ideological about the nation, but it's a way that someone can promote themselves. So if you were to look through the videos, what I mean by this is it's mind shaking hands with an Aboriginal person or dressing up or dancing or something like this, which personally, in my own opinion, I don't think it really, it won't resonate with the Aboriginal population. There's no addressing of the serious issues which should be addressed. And if it's something which I would then later come to see it again and again. The second most common use of Aboriginal content was to produce this idea of multiculturalism. So what this is, is the idea of the four ethnic groups. And it's the story which started with Li Deng Hui and then it carried on. It's also a narrative which I feel has been produced. So that was more what I was looking for. I was trying to see this use of Aboriginal peoples to promote this narrative, this multicultural Taiwan narrative, which very much came through. And it was not only the KMT, but also the DPP, which were promoting this narrative. The more that I looked at the images and the songs that have been used, I noticed that these were purely romantic images. They were an image to show, look, I'm a good person. I'm spending time with Aboriginal peoples. It's kind of like a charity case. They start to come along and along. Notice this idea of naturalization of social issues. So you have certain campaign ads where you have the candidate walking hand in hand with a disabled person, an elderly person, and an Aboriginal person. So there's this naturalization of the problem that this is the way it is. And I will help these poor people, which I mean, as an Aboriginal person, I don't know how they would feel. But this for me seems to be naturalizing certain issues. And not actually attacking them head on. Another side, which is very much connected to this romantic image produced, was this reduction to a cultural other. There's no content. There's nothing that you can really understand about this person other than they are different. And this has led to kind of a backlash. I mean, this is something that I'll talk about later. But even myself, if I watch some of the videos, I can see misrepresentation where people are wearing the wrong clothes. Or there's an example of Mainjou dancing hand in hand like this. If you know the traditional dance to the Taiwan, they're celebrated because they're open hands. You don't hold hands to the person next to you, you don't hold hands to the person over one. And so to see Mainjou like this, and this is something which came up a lot, this image of tangled hands, it's something which has come back again and again just to show how there's really been this appropriation of the culture just for some political gain. And so that's what I was looking at with here. There's a lot more to look at. There's a lot more data to go through. All that I could see was these two clear messages that it's all about creating an image, this image of multiculturalism, or this image of an amazing candidate. And then secondly, there was no work on issues. And there was even the naturalization of issues. So to move on, this is the second bit of research that I did, which is looking at news releases. What I mean by this is the information which is published on the government website from the president, which is available to everyone. And just like the campaign ads, this is a direct form of communication between the state and the people. So again, I see this as being calculated, and I see this as being a form of articulation. This is a form of discourse creation. This is the official narrative of what the government believes. And so again, I looked at the same time period, starting in 1996. However, because I had the materials, I moved this on to 2018. And what I searched for was not indigenous, but Austronesian, because I wanted to understand how the idea of an Austronesian narrative of Austronesian Taiwan, how much this was produced by the government of Taiwan and then reproduced in its communications with nations abroad. So the Austronesian narrative is the idea, and I'm not here to say true or false, but it's a theory that the Austronesian peoples, which stretch from Taiwan to New Zealand, from Madagascar to Hawaii, their central point of dispersal was Taiwan. I mean, the whole idea is that it's a linguistic group, correct? So the linguistic group and the cultural group somehow went from Taiwan and then moved southwards. It's not supposed to be a genetic trail. It's not saying that this is colonization. But there was the spreading of language and the spreading of culture. That's one idea. There have been other ideas talked about, the idea that actually Aboriginal peoples came from mainland China, whether they came from what now would be Malaysia. But from these three different narratives that you could have, this idea of the Austronesian narrative, of which Taiwan was the hub where there was this huge explosion of cultural and linguistic development, this is the one which has been taken up by the state. And for me, there's a reason for that. There's definitely a reason for that. So this is what I wanted to look at. Not if it was true or not, but how it was used. And so again, I went through each of these news releases and I tried to identify what they were being used for. I found three major sections, which was for diplomatic missions. So this is either bilateral or multilateral connections to different nations in the South Pacific, the international conferences held in Taiwan, or domestic events. Now, I'm not really going to discuss domestic events later. So just briefly, these domestic events are usually once a year on the 10th of October. There will be the presidential speech. And at some point in there, we will say, we have Austronesian roots. That's more or less what it is. It's kind of the only domestic use of this term, Austronesian. So these are the results I got from that. So you have the domestic events in blue, the international conferences in red, diplomatic missions in yellow. And then the blue and the green shows the party in charge. So now you see why I had to do this blue-green comparison, because the results that you get are just way too interesting. So when I looked at it, the first use of Austronesian was in 1999. So this was still Lee Dunwe. And this was, I guess, a little bit late on, but it was in line with the Go South policy. So it's an economic policy. It's a cultural policy, it's a political policy to move away from the mainland and to create a place for Taiwan in South Asia, or South East Asia. And this is something that Lee Dunwe started, that Tsensui Bien carried on in 2005, and now Tsai Ing-wen has now carried on again. And within this Go South policy, Austronesian people, or the Austronesian narrative of the Aboriginal people of Taiwan, has always been there. I've got a couple of quotes, which I find entertaining. So you have Tsensui Bien. So the nations we're talking about are like Palau, Nauru, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, the few diplomatic ties that Taiwan still has. But it's also the Philippines, and it's also New Zealand. So these are bigger economies, a more influential countries, which Taiwan really has no space to interact with formally. So this is really very, very, very unique. And this is something which deserves more recognition, the place of Aboriginal people in international relations in Taiwan. Because the Aboriginal people of Taiwan were attending the UN in 1988, when there was no Taiwanese representative allowed. But Aboriginal peoples, they have continuously been able to be involved in different forms of diplomacy because of their origins, because of their heritage. So there's a quote which I wanted to talk about. So Tsensui Bien talks about a shared culture with the people of Nauru. They talk about their Austronesian roots. He even goes as far to talk about how blood is thicker than water. So this is why I think it was Kiribati and Taiwan have such good relations, because blood is thicker than water. So our whole idea is not just the Austronesian narrative, but that also is then reflected on the politicians themselves. There's a way of creating a diplomatic tie where otherwise there is not. Even Mainjo, who you can see in his period of his administration, so from the second half of 2008 up to 2016, he cut all the bilateral and multilateral talks abroad at least. So there was the forum, the Austronesian forum, which was set up by Tsensui Bien, and was hugely successful. This was a forum which brought together the different Austronesian nations and the leaders of all of these nations, and actually ended up in a UNESCO bit to have Taiwan recognized as a root of Austronesian cultures. So again, they were using the Austronesian narrative and this Austronesian connection to create a platform for which they can speak in places like the UN and different international events. And even though Mainjo, he cut all of those ties, when Taiwan came back into power, they went straight on. They carried on a bit straight away. And so this year and last year, there was a sustainable Austronesia working together for a better future. But that's probably the reason I had so many results, because it was the name of her talk. But it's something very interesting to see how whenever Taiwan wants to focus southwards, to focus away from China, the Austronesian heritage suddenly becomes a key point of this. These international conferences was another really interesting way that the state were able to create some kind of diplomatic power or soft power through this Austronesian narrative. All of these conferences were attended by either the head of state, so the president or the vice president. So this wasn't just a conference for academics. This was a conference bringing the leaders of these nations together. And the Austronesian conference, which is held now, you will have people from Canada. You'll have people from Hawaii. You will have people from Madagascar. So all over the world going to take part in this, which for Taiwan, which has always been so squeezed diplomatically, is something very important. Now, this is something slightly different. This is why I'm trying to understand so what. You have all of this happening on the world stage, on the politically stage. How does this affect the people in the communities and in the villages? And so this still needs a lot of work, but this is a brief oversight of when new legislation was put in, when there were new acts for the protection of Aboriginal cultures or minority rights or land. And you can see, again, it's blue and green. So for Campery and DPP, you'll see that in my Joe's administration, there was not one new act put through for the protection of Aboriginal peoples. Now, this is slightly misleading. There were procedural acts or managerial acts. So this is an act which goes through to say, OK, this is how we're going to do it. But there was no new laws put in for the protection of minority rights, which I find very interesting. So to try and find a correlation between actual government action and the use of this Aboriginal discourse, I find extremely interesting. For this, it shows a positive correlation that when there was a lot of use of the Austronesian narrative by the DPP, they're actually putting new legislation through. So for the average voter, those iron votes of the KMT, maybe this kind of information could influence that. And it's something which really, really needs to be researched. I mean, you have the basic people's law, indigenous people's basic law. This is a law which gives the right to hunt, but that's not recognized. So you have a return of land. Again, it's not recognized. So the fact that these laws have gone through and the acts have been passed, that's a positive thing. But we shouldn't just accept that that means that they are being abided by. So this is just one part of this new research that I'm trying to do to understand what correlation is there between the production of an Austronesian or indigenous narrative and then the actual livelihoods of Aboriginal peoples. So from the information I've just shown you, there are some key pieces of information we can take. We can see that Aboriginal heritage has been constantly used in diplomatic talks and in campaign ads since 1966. And we can see that there are strong links between the multicultural discourse in Taiwan and the indigenous discourse in Taiwan. These we can see positive correlation between these. And there's a bipartisan acceptance of the Austronesian narrative. Not only as being true, but as an international image of Taiwan, a way that both parties feel that they can present Taiwan to the outside world. And that Austronesian narrative was very successful. If you look at the bilateral, multilateral ties which were created through this Austronesian narrative and with these nations, they're some of the strongest ties that they have. There's recently, Amnstech went through, which is the free trade agreement between New Zealand and Taiwan. The first stage of that was a cultural exchange, an Aboriginal cultural exchange. There's also a cooperative act with Philippines. So there's no free trade act, but there is a cooperation for the protection of indigenous peoples. And even the Pacific Arts Conference, Pacific Arts event, which happens every year, which invites all the Austronesian or artists from different Austronesian countries to take part. Taiwan has been now accepted for that, where for more than 20 years they were refused every time. So I see the pushing of this Austronesian narrative by the state as being a reason for that. However, of course, we still need to investigate. At the same time, while there's been these successes in the state, there have still been the idea of misrepresentation was still very valid. There was a lot of people in places of power, but then also within communities where they saw the Aboriginal image was not being correctly represented. So I gave you one example of the dancing. And this happened with songs, and it's happened with clothing time and time again, especially for diplomatic events. So for some people from these communities, they find this very offensive. The idea that their culture is being used but not understood. So that's something that needs to be recognized. And then finally, there was this positive correlation between the use of the terminus image and then the laws going through. But after doing all of this research, I still find myself saying, so what? So what? There's lots of different strategies that nations or political parties will use to get more space, to create dialogue with different actors. So what? And for me, this is what comes down to what are the effects on the communities themselves. This is what's most important for me. So that's why I've started to do interviews. And so the interviews are going to be with individuals which are active in either community development work or the cultural sector. And they have some kind of relationship with the state but don't understand how this relationship's working. I feel like this is the best way to see what the effects of this politicization of culture is in the grassroots. So for communities themselves and for community actors. And so the way I'm going to be doing this is through structured interviews. I've already conducted three interviews. And the findings, just from these three interviews, so from three hours of conversation, there's so much which I really want to follow. And I want to go on researching. So those concerns of misrepresentation, those have been said every single time. People are aware of this. It's probably, maybe it's a social media thing. Once one person sees it, it's spread. So everyone knows about it. And everyone is appalled by it. So that's one issue that needs to be further researched. And the second one, which I find quite surprising, is when you saw the graph where it showed a large use of Australian-Indian narrative for international diplomacy, there was a positive correlation between those periods. So Chen Sui Bien and then Tsai Ing-wen, for the amount of opportunities for people within villages to take part in projects and go abroad. So this wasn't just the president going off for a trip. There was actually communities going with. When I say communities, I literally mean communities. Recently, there was a show in Taipei. But they had a whole village go and perform. What you think about that, I don't know. But there's large scale, there's large scale movement when these kind of activities take place. And if it's for the right reasons or the wrong reasons, you can't deny that to give anyone the opportunity to travel there, to give anyone the opportunity to meet indigenous peoples or anyone from different countries is something which is going to be hugely beneficial to the group. I mean, that's my personal opinion. And this has been shared with the people that I was interviewing. Lastly, and something which makes me laugh, is that when we talked about this Austronesian narrative and the Austronesian narrative then allowing more people to go abroad, it turned out once they got there, the Austronesian narrative went away. No one cared. Oh, you're Austronesian? No? You're Austronesian? No one Taiwanese? OK. So it wasn't real. It wasn't a real connection between these people. But the connection that was there is the idea that you are an indigenous person. So when they actually come to meet, the whole idea of statehood, that goes away. It's more community to community or someone's individual nationhood towards another minority group, which I found really, really interesting. But no matter if we see as top down orientated action, once it gets to the people and to the grassroots layer, the most important ties are the ones which are there with or without the government, their cultural ties. So this is something which I really, really want to carry on research and would like to further understand. So more or less that's the research I've done. As I said, it's the many avenues I wish to travel. So if you do have any comments, if you do have any questions, or you have no or anything which you think correlates with this research, please let me know. Because I'm very, very interested to hear in ways that I could take this research further. Thank you. APPLAUSE OK, that was fantastic. It was someone who's taken a course on Taiwan's politics, domestic politics, and cross-strait relations, international, external relations. That was perfect because it covers both sides of the course. And one of the things that my students get tired of hearing is me going on about how, why, and so what. And that featured quite heavily as well in your presentation. And a lot of questions I'll try and kind of control myself and not kind of get too carried away. But in terms of the, OK, the first thing I have to say is, in terms of the book project, it sounds perfect. Because I think what you've got here is both type series, raw overviews of trans-bosy political communication, domestically, but also internationally. But it's not just over you. What you've also got is original research. So there's, I think you've got the basis for one of the book chapters in the project. But I think it goes much further than that. I was writing down a note saying, this sounds to me like a book proposal. I mean, it may turn out to be some of you can develop in your PhD. But for me, that was really exciting. In terms of kind of concrete questions, one of the things, it reminded me of some of my own research. And one of the things I found was that we often see quite different patterns in TV ads and newspaper ads. Often when we're looking at more kind of concrete issues or policy proposals, they actually will come out in newspaper ads. I'm not saying you have to do that, but it might be interesting maybe to look at one election to see how the trends differ. You also talk quite a lot about the reception. And this reminds me of discussions I've had with people looking at migration in Taiwan. And one of the questions I've been curious about is how did migrants actually receive these ads? Talking to Isabel and Lara generally, they've been quite, the argument has been probably the kind of ass that you'll get is that they may find them offensive or boring. But I think it would be interesting to try and do some kind of experiment where you actually play some of these videos to indigenous communities and see how they respond. And maybe you can set it up as a focus group. I think these kind of experimental approaches can be quite useful. And a final kind of question, I'll hold the others back. Maybe in terms of the why, what you could consider is actually talking to the people who actually design these ads. What were they really thinking about when they, for example, if we think of Mainjoe's Huanlouco, you know, one of your classic, more the cultural ones that you, with the four ethnic groups, what was the thinking behind those indigenous images? Why did they choose to that particular tribe? Because that was a landing clip that we got in that video. So I think that would be interesting to get into the minds of the designers of these ads. OK, so there's a few kind of comments, probably more comments than questions. If you had any responses. I think I do need to recognize the limitations of the research or something. As much as you want to ignore them, you do have to see them. And so I talked a lot about this idea of romanticization of culture and that you have this very shallow view of indigenous societies. But how deep can you get with visual content like that? So that is something I need to look at. And I was actually, I had the same conversation with a friend of mine who is a video editor, producer, director. And when I was showing him these, he was like, why would you not use that image? That's interesting. That's something which immediately gets someone's attention. But I still think that it has to come down to, is it just about getting attention? Or is it about articulating someone's identity in a way which is suitable? So how much do they care? It is a question that you need to ask. And I think, like you said, by looking through newspaper articles or newspaper advertising, that would be extremely interesting. It would be interesting to see whether the, because you listed some really interesting pieces of legislation. Were they actually raised during this presidential campaign? So probably we'd need to look at newspaper ads, and there's a possibility they may be there. OK, we better open up for some questions. Yeah, Mark. Thank you. That was interesting. Two questions. The indigenous links to New Zealand is that with the Maori or the Moriori, the second one was have you or do you know of any study that's looked at the experience of the Maori and New Zealand politically and how they got to a point now where the Prime Minister is a Maori and from a distinctly Maori party, and they actually formed a coalition with a party that was not going to government by themselves and actually got second place in the votes by quite a lot in the last election, but they were able to form a coalition government as a result. And that's something where, in what you were saying, I hear very distinct parallels in that in New Zealand, I remember in the 80s, for example, Maori culture was very much manipulated by the government and by people of word maoris. You did it harder at school, no matter who you were, for example, when your blacks played internationally, they'd do it harder. But those kinds of images, it was very much misappropriated and used as advertising or anything else, which seems to be very similar to what you're suggesting. But then they were able to pass that up in Maori in school, to talk to schools, of course, in the 80s, they were able to do things like that. So I'm wondering if you're seeing any similarities or parallels? First of all, for the first question about these links to New Zealand, as far as I know they are with Maori populations, but there are more and more coming up. I know that there's the Pulima Awards, which are arts awards, which I held every year for just indigenous peoples. They were in Gaoshan last year. And there was a Maori group came over for those awards specifically. And one of the interviews I did was with, she's a leader of a local, of a small community in Pingdong called Jiaxin, the village. And she's the chief of the village, but she's also the most active in community-based projects. And she went to visit New Zealand. And that was with the Maori council, I'm not sure I've forgotten the name. And she went there and for her that was the most exciting trip that she'd ever had. Not because she related so well with the Maori people, and they did, and that's an interview which many people would want to hear, because it's a really, really interesting story. Because the reason they were in Taiwan was not because of, the reason they were in New Zealand wasn't because of Taiwan, but it was funding from mainland China to New Zealand. But that's just besides, what this lady saw was the future of Taiwan. When she went to New Zealand, she felt she was seeing answers to the problems that there were. So for language education, which I'm very grateful that you brought up, in Taiwan there's this idea that language education can happen following the same cultural norms of the majority. So you can use a han way to teach a minority language, which isn't really working. And it's not really working with a whole range of activities, a whole range of events, where the structure is still very much mainstream, very much majority or han. But the results are looking for supposed to be tribe specific. So it's not working in a lot of places. But in New Zealand, in these Maori communities, they saw that there was 100% control. How the schools taught, what they taught, that was completely up to them. So there is definitely a comparison to be made. And I think that by looking at New Zealand, there's a lot to be learned. Because I think New Zealand and Switzerland, the two most multicultural nations in the world, at least by legislation. So I find that I think that's definitely an area that I need to look into, the Louisiana story. Yeah, Douglas and Dave. Well, even thanks for the talk. It was really, really interesting. Just to answer your question about the Maori and the Anahari, they're linguistically both related, so it would be both. I'm curious as far as, I understand that the rationale for driving towards pushing the Austronesian narrative to distance themselves from the mainland. But if you look at, say, 2% of the population, even if they are a high-voting percentage, it's still only 2% of the population that would identify as Aboriginal. So why would, I guess, why would the government invest so much of their energy in promoting this kind of recreates Aboriginal identity if it's at the risk of alienating 98% of the potential vote? I mean, no, I don't know if that's true. I'm just asking for your opinion on this story. This is something which I guess hope would have come through more in the presentation itself, but that's why I was interested. It's only 2%. Why is there more than 25% of ads with Aboriginal people in? My own understanding is it's not about trying just to get Aboriginal ads. It's trying to get ads from everyone, from the electorate. And they see that the electorate as being, at that time, interested in multicultural Taiwan. They didn't want to vote for a party which was Hocklo Nationalist, you know, Mina Nationalist. They didn't want someone who represented mainland China. They wanted someone that represented Taiwan as a whole. And so that's why I think the multi-cultural narrative has come through and why Aboriginal people are so prominent in that. Because they are the only group which hasn't originally come from China. So that's why I see them there not potentially alienating, but potentially bringing together different parts of the community of the population. And then when it goes to the Austronesian narrative, as I said, there's only one. There's only just 1010 when the government would actually say Austronesian. This is something which happens for conferences and for happens for diplomacy. It's not a narrative that you heard being spoken of a lot. It's not taught in schools, for example. So I think it's used for a certain purpose. The purpose of the Austronesian narrative is diplomacy. The use of indigenous imagery in ads is for multi-culturalism. So I don't think they are alienating, but they're actually trying to bring more people together. I was kind of thinking back to some of those stereotypical ads that have this kind of message. And what often happens is that we'll see, I think, all four ethnic groups in there. And then Julie Lund's take on that was actually pretty similar. And one of the things we also discussed when Daniel was here was whether we should actually take these ads as negative ads. Because the kind of hidden message there is that with the K and T, we've got multi-culturalism. But the DEP tries to stir up ethnic tensions. Because that was, again, if you look back at some of those ads, I think that is part of the message there. OK, yeah, but Ben. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to hear what you're saying, because you make such a difference from each presentation. You seem to know quite a lot about your subject. At that time, he's very nervous. I have two questions relating to your presentation. First of all, because your research is from 1996 onward. So in the old days, it is true that four ethnic groups constantly being presented as a kind of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic image. But later on, in the 2000s, minorities started to have the so-called new immigrants and the sons of the second generation of these immigrant spouses. So the addition of this kind of extra group, has it changed the mechanism within this kind of ads? Do they still play equally important role? Or a new competitor come into the picture and become another factor to ask you? Another one is, because according to your chart, I know you're right, Green and Blue have very different strategies internationally. Mind you, seem to do more conferences. So can you give us some idea? What's the difference, this effect of different strategies, of either using this kind of foreign mission or using international conferences? So the first point that you made about now the introduction or not the introduction, but the visibility of people from other East Asian countries and that adding to the multiculturalism of Taiwan. That is something which you start to see, I think we start to see in 2012. There are some campaign ads with, I don't know, I didn't want to say it like that. No, with foreign, I guess, immigrant, I don't know. It's said, you're an enemy. Yeah, but that's the foreign worker's foreign sponsor. And recently, I haven't seen the most recent presidential campaign yet, so I can't comment on that. But it is something that I've noticed in, like, you know the little videos you get in trains? Have you seen them? You have small video which is just showing this is a synapsis of what Taiwan is. I've seen in that, and there has been a lot more foreign spouses, foreign workers in there. And it does seem to take away the time from the Aboriginal peoples as well. Maybe their clothes are just brighter and more beautiful. I don't know. But I think what you're saying is really, really, really true. I think that if, like I just said, that indigenous culture is being presented because it shows multiculturalism. If you have another group which also shows multiculturalism, are they going to replace each other? Or is it going to run Thailand, which is something which I'd be really interested to look at? Because not, I think maybe two or three years ago, the population of immigrants surpassed our Aboriginal peoples. So there are more people from Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, these nations. Then there are actually Aboriginal peoples in Taiwan. So that is going to be really interesting to see how that means up. I've heard a lot of funny anecdotal comments about when, for example, when there was tension between the Philippines and Taiwan, a lot of Filipino people would say, no, no, I'm Aboriginal. Or other times around where Aboriginal people would, for some reason, pretend to be a foreign worker. This could, for whatever reason. And it's funny, it's the way that these two groups who are both marginalized, how they actually work together is quite interesting. And then the second question, so about the different campaigns that they've made, that Maing-Jo and Chen-Zhe been in Taiwan, they're a different approach to diplomacy. I mean, Nibir is particularly effective in terms of having form of diplomatic ties. But I think what Maing-Jo seems, and even from the news reports from that time, it seemed quite visible that he was making conscious effort to not have any trouble with Maing-Jo. Was that when Chen-Zhe and went for these multilateral talks, the Taiwan Pacific allies, there was a backlash from China, China or the Mainland administration, they actually spoke out against us. So Maing-Jo, so this Austronesian forum, he canceled it. The first thing he did, it was supposed to be held in Kaohsiung, he canceled it. He was supposed to have a trip to Solomon Islands, he canceled it. So when he came in, he didn't, he knew Maing-Jo was very aware of wanting to close these bilateral and multilateral talks that they were having. I think all of these news releases are about people coming to Taiwan. So the governor of Samoa came to Taiwan. So I mean, about the effect, the successes, there's not a huge amount of successes going on. I mean, maybe economically, you could talk about that. That's saying, when we've heard Go South initiative, there are definitely a lot of successes, but they're not diplomatic successes. They're creating economic ties. Under Taiwan, that seems to be the main focus of the Go South policy, to create more industrial ideas. The answer to this might be just no, I don't know. Is anybody offering a critique against the Austronesian narrative? I don't mean a critique against us, hypothesis, but as a political idea. I mean, obviously, she's just told us the PRC, but apart from within Taiwan, are any wing actually articulating an opposition to it? A position against the Austronesian narrative. I've not heard of one, I think. So that leads to a sort of romanticization in your argument that way. The narrative in the self is romanticized, do you mean? Nobody against it, it's something everybody's for. So like environment, in the sense that you know, Nixon was supposed to say, everybody's for it, nobody's against it, I say, I'm for environment. I would have thought maybe someone like Houshou Zhu would probably be something that I'd put into that. Because I know, for example, we had a little bit of bait when we had to take one apology. And the way she kind of dealt with that issue, I think there was some negative backlash from what I would call the dark blue politicians. That was the only thing that crossed my mind there. But I don't know whether that was something that made any sense. I mean, that's something which I've completely omitted from this, the apology and the transitional justice going through in Taiwan. So I don't want to say that. But as far as any one discount in the Austronesian narrative, I haven't heard of that. I've heard people ignore it. I've heard that just for now with Chinese. It's also something that you need to understand, that within Aboriginal communities, and correct me if I'm wrong, I've often heard people say, us Chinese, us Chinese people. Even if there's an Austronesian narrative now, there was another narrative before that. And how effective that narrative and how much that was internalized, I guess, would create this platform to fill the debate. But we can sit here and say, well, they're all narratives. They're just a discourse which has created some form of representation. But I guess an easy question to answer is no, I haven't heard anyone. Yes, come here for the back. Hi. Thank you. That was really interesting. I don't really know crazy amounts about the subject. So it's kind of been important enough for me. But I was wondering about whether you think that having some sort of pride or in cultural identity or having a kind of image that isn't kind of, that doesn't have Western influence, like politicians being in suits, maybe the thing of there being people representing a culture, do you think that's had influence in how other international relations, other countries have related to Taiwan? In a sense, where do you think there's in the kind of idea of soft power and how there's a kind of people are actually having an idea of what Taiwan has so they can kind of have an exchange? But then also on the flip side of that, whether people, because when you had the map of the timeline of when the conferences started to come out, yeah, that's the one before. Oh, there it is. Yeah. So I was wondering whether there's a correlation between when indigenous people started to represent themselves and have some cultural pride in their own, whether that gave them a kind of empowerment to be able to speak out more about it or to be able to represent themselves in ways that they may not have been able to before. And maybe that ties into why the Austronesian narrative hasn't really been denied, because at least it is slightly a more kind of reflective of some of the cultures at least. So maybe it's appropriation, but maybe it's actually giving room for people to get the chance to actually represent themselves on a global scale. I think you brought up really, really important points. The idea that, yeah, maybe this is misappropriation, but you're still creating a stage, you're still creating a promotion for these groups. The strongest time for Taiwanese Aboriginal movement, so the social movement from indigenous peoples, was at the end of the 80s and the 90s. Up to like 1996, we had, I guess, the biggest success was where they had a government ministry created for them. But then you have this problem of incorporation of these once very motivated social activists into politicians. So that's one side of it. So that was the first time. And then the other time, I would say it's probably now. I mean, the amount of social movement happening all over Taiwan, not only in indigenous communities, is again peaking, I would say. In indigenous communities, they have a lot to talk about. They have a lot to discuss, whether it's the transitional justice going on now, or if it's the return of the land movement, which has been going on for a long time. But there is a lot of movement. And I would assume myself that there's no correlation between the message from the government. Because activists, they're not going to be impressed by these messages. It's never going to quite go far enough. And a lot of the time, the condemnation of these campaigns is, why are you bringing a load of tourists into my village? We're trying to live here and go away. I don't know if anyone saw a great form of resistance where a group of Aboriginal people went into the Ministry of Tourism, decided to take pictures of people working, and I'm turning the lights on and off. Excuse me, do you have Wi-Fi? And that's great. But that is just coming from the success of these government campaigns. Taidong is beautiful. Go and see the Aboriginal peoples in their homes. So I don't think there is a correlation. But I definitely agree that for a marginalized group who have no space and no discourse created about themselves, then, yeah, any platform is probably better than nothing. But I don't think Indigenous peoples need that platform to be given to them. I think they are very competent to create it for themselves if the conditions are right. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, my gosh. Go away. That was an interesting talk. What happened is, according to looking at that, the people are getting more power. And they are actually trying to get the law in. If they are strong enough and go in to politics, they could put it into law. What I want to know is, although the politician used the aborigines, did the aborigines actually benefit? Now, we are going to look at the bigger picture. Don't look at negative. Because if you look at how things move about, it seeps into the whole world. And with all those people going around the world about the aborigines, they are actually networking. And I'll tell you, I've been looking at this. I think it's actually very international about blood is bigger than water. I've got that. And that's what I was looking for. China has all relations who are Chinese. If they ever go back to China, they have got the right. So if you look at the internationally, they are trying to get people back. Those who have got education, who can make money or whatever. That is something going on internationally. I'll give you that website later on. And that is what you've got to see. When people communicate around the world with YouTube and everything, you never know. But when I look at that line, I'm seeing developments. You see, one of these days, when those speak of aborigines, because it's power, their words are power, they get at the right time. They can put all those in order. Yeah. Look at the positive side. I think we've got to look at the positive side in everything. How can it work? If you think of Victorian times, suffragettes, that was a long time ago. If you look at the timeline, so look in a different way. Get out of the box. Yeah. I mean, it's very similar to the previous responses. And as I said, I'm really trying to look at where is the benefit, what are the positives that come from that? That's the negative. And those are the modern people who doesn't know culture. But they use it, and they never actually get infected. But look there, right? How would it benefit the people who gets publicity free? I mean, free publicity is good. But you have no control over what that publicity is saying. I know. But when you get the power, when the youngsters get to know and demand what they want, they will get it. Yeah. Like, go ahead. OK. That's the next question. Yeah. Go ahead. Thank you very much for your talk, it's very interesting. I was thinking, you know what we were looking at? No. We look at ways of images of presenting things like that. Through previous exercise, we've been looking at a particular instance. I think it was in 2006, 2005, I think it was the new Taiwan Solidarity Union, not the green one, the blue one. Oh, yeah, the Taiwan Solidarity Union. Yeah, and Mei Chin, she was one of their members. Do you know Mei Chin? Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, the indigenous independent legislator. You know, the actress politician. That was one of the inventors. Probably. God, it's too late. Yeah, yeah. That was a particular instance I found where she was basically, she'd gone to Japan to Yasukuni when another guy from the Taiwan Solidarity had gone to say, oh, well, to venerate all the Taiwanese war they didn't try there. And to me, from both sides, I was looking at how ideas of Taiwanese identity was manipulated for a political gain. And I wondered, from indigenous communities, are people who do things like that, are they called up on their bullshit pretty much, or are they, is it like sort of, is there much awareness, things like that? What's the, what's the bullshit? Basically, she's trying to, from the situation, she was trying to present herself as the representative of indigenous people. And saying that, no, they could be trusted to migrate these, we've got this, and trying to play with this idea of collective suffering and like historical trauma. So I just wondered, like, within the wider community, certainly, you know, to maybe to add this, this sense of nuance to it, is does the community engage with people who try and do that as well? In terms of national identification, we would probably put her into the category of being what hard line Chinese nationalist. Sorry, is this going to say she's using the Aboriginal identity in order to push that agenda forward? It's not something that I've come across before. So yeah, no, I don't really know how to respond to that. I think that's something that we're interested in, yeah. It's something that we should definitely be looked into. But just going back to the previous comment as well, even with that, for me, I don't see a problem with someone trying to speak out on behalf of other people, because everyone knows that when someone speaks, they're really just speaking for themselves, so that's fair enough. But the fact that has an Aboriginal person, she has the chance to do that. So she has control over her own words, which is just why I was going back to the previous comment. This idea of control, to have culture, but to have no control, isn't going to take you very far. So this idea of control, it's not whether to have Aboriginal people in campaigns as good or bad, I would say probably my first answer would be it's good. But you make power rather than virtue. No, I'm in control. I mean, what way do I represent myself? If you want to put a picture of me, like, and me as in Daniel Davis, right, I would like to choose that picture. Because if you choose one when I'm on the beach, I'm not going to feel very happy about it. Yeah. Yeah. You know? So it's this idea. After the whole lot, you cannot, if it's time, once you actually, people know about you, then they know what it's all about. But you need your publicity first. You need to be heard first, internationally or nationally. You see, once you've got that, and you've got the right person, if you look at history, people always use someone. Very seldom they don't. Politicians don't care about me. But you see, when it comes to a certain stage where people know these people, and the people will say, oh, I like that. I can be a politician and talk for my own. I just, I guess, a very simple way to say, it's a big shame that if for any movement to have substance, you need a martyr. You know? That is the way you need your words. So if you actually look at the positive display, turn it over. Anyone who use me, I can always turn it to a better way. It's a different way. Not the right way. The way, OK, if I get invited up, I chop my piece, as the aboriginal is. But I'm given the stage. That's the difference. That is wisdom. OK, I think on that note, then we should, no, it's fine. We've got some wine, so we can continue our discussion over wine. But let's thank Daniel for returning to you. Thank you.