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

Abstract

In this article I examine performances of Indigeneity in encounters between Indigenous people and the Taiwan legal system. Studying displays of Indigenous identities reveals the processes through which individuals and communities draw upon histories and practices to fashion themselves as Indigenous and engage with wider publics through performances and performative acts. Focusing on three encounters between Indigenous people and the Taiwan legal system, displays of Indigeneity in these encounters were multivalent and involved a repertoire of creative performative acts as Indigenous actors used court spaces, like the new ad hoc Chamber of Indigenous Courts, to perform identities that confounded essentialist conceptions of Indigeneity, introduced alternative ontological parameters, and assumed state governance responsibilities. These performances suggest a contextually situated engagement with the postcolonial state where Indigenous identities are anchored in the past and forward-looking, reinforce or challenge the category of Indigeneity, and themselves operate as techniques of power.