Giving Indigenous People a Voice (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Giving Indigenous People a Voice

[photo inset - Finding skilled and experienced indigenous staffers who can
speak their own tribal languages is quite a challenge for TITV. (Photo by
Huang Chung-hsin)]

Publication Date：08/01/2007
Byline：CINDY SUI
http://taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=24476&CtNode=119

Even its critics admit that Taiwan's first aboriginal TV station is
performing a vital task.

Being one of Taiwan's first aboriginal news reporters, Kolas Yotaka wrestles
with a dilemma-how to reach out to the island's 13 recognized tribes when
she cannot speak any of their languages, including that of her own tribe.

"I grew up speaking Mandarin with my parents. They thought the language of
our tribe, the Amis tribe, was useless, so they didn't teach it to me. They
wanted me to learn English and Japanese instead," she says.

The dilemma she faces as head of the news department of Taiwan Indigenous TV
(TITV), the first TV station devoted to the island's original inhabitants,
was just one of many facing TITV as it marked its second anniversary on
July 1.

Two years after it was set up, the station is celebrating its successes as
well as contemplating how to overcome its obstacles.

Previously, only a once-a-week, hour-long program was shown on the Public TV
station about the 470,000 aborigines in Taiwan's population of 23 million
people.

After the Executive Yuan set up the Council of Aboriginal Affairs in 1996
(later renamed the Council of Indigenous Peoples), aborigines began pushing
for government funding for their own TV station. Funding was granted and the
station went on the air for the first time on July 1, 2005.

"With an aboriginal TV channel, we can express ourselves from an aboriginal
viewpoint. Before, there wasn't a way for us to do that. Information and
portrayals of aborigines went through a third party. There were some
misrepresentations," says TITV's director Masao Aki.

Since TITV's inception, it has been well-received by Taiwan's indigenous
population, almost all of whom claim to watch it, and gets viewers from the
general population as well. Programming is offered 24 hours a day and the
news department often breaks stories concerning aborigines. Programs are
diverse, ranging from cooking shows featuring traditional recipes from the
various tribes, rarely shown on mainstream TV, to segments educating
children about their native languages and cultures, to talk shows and
interviews covering serious topics including the health, economic and
educational problems faced by aborigines.

The station even has a dating show-one of its most popular programs-which
tries to match single youngsters with each other and help elderly widows or
widowers find new love. "Since our numbers are so small, it's a way to help
aborigines find partners who are also aborigines," says Masao.

Also, the station is filming the first situation comedy about aborigines, to
air in July.

Broadcast Babel

But at the same time, the station is struggling with how to broadcast to
people from 13 tribes, each of which speak a different language and have
widely different customs.

"It's very difficult to be fair," says station director Masao, himself from
the Atayal tribe. "Out of 13 tribes, which tribe's language do you choose
to broadcast in? So we have no choice but to use Mandarin" (the language of
the majority Han Chinese population). "Some Atayal viewers complain there's
too little Atayal news. Of course it would be best if every tribe had its
own channel, but that's impossible."

Another problem the station faces is finding skilled aboriginal staff,
especially reporters and technicians, and those who can speak their own
tribal language, even if not fluently. Although 87 percent of the
broadcaster's staffers are indigenous people (the rest of the jobs being
held by Han Chinese), it has to constantly strive to maintain that level.

"Now the most important task is staff training," Masao says.

The TV station's problems finding skilled aborigines is shared by other
professions. With a history of being oppressed, losing their land through
being cheated or seizures and forced to forsake their languages and customs
to adopt the majority's ways, aborigines have become economically inferior
in Taiwanese society and few end up obtaining a higher education and
working in skilled professions.

In recent years, more universities are devoting resources to training
aborigines to go into media. Hualien County's National Dong Hwa University
has a media studies program that reaches out to aborigines, many of whom
live in the area.

Kolas, who grew up in the city with no aboriginal friends, recalls realizing
the importance of being able to speak her own language when she first
switched from being a mainstream reporter to being a reporter covering
aboriginal issues for TITV.

"I realized that, just because I was an aborigine, it didn't mean I could
get interviews with aborigines. Without speaking their language, it was
very hard for me to win their trust and interview them," she says. She is
now studying the Amis language.

Less than 5 percent of aboriginal children can speak their own language,
Masao estimates, but like many things concerning aborigines, no solid
statistics are available. To encourage the learning of one's own language,
the station has now made it an employment requirement.
Giving Indigenous People a Voice-1

[photo inset - Elderly contestants dress in costumes and even put on wigs
and mini skirts to woo the opposite sex in a dating show, one of the most
popular programs aired by TITV. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)]

Doing What It Can

The desuetude of aboriginal languages is such a problem that the TV station
is trying to devote more airtime to tribal language broadcasting.
Throughout the day, tribal folk tales are told in tribal languages,
although the programs are generally short, resembling commercial breaks.
Once a week, there are news programs in a select number of tribal tongues.
The main programs, however, including news and cooking shows, are mostly
broadcast in Mandarin, unlike another Taiwanese minority channel, Hakka TV,
which broadcasts almost entirely in the Hakka language. Hakkas are Han
Chinese from certain regions of southern China who speak a language very
different from the northern-derived Mandarin.

Some people in the aboriginal community complain that the station is simply
scratching the surface on aboriginal issues and that programming is not
reaching a certain segment of the population.

"There is a lot of room for improvement," says Namoh Rata, an Amis language
professor at National Dong Hwa University. "Many of the elderly indigenous
people do not understand Mandarin, so it's useless for them." The language
instruction provided on TITV is, he says, a drop in the ocean of what needs
to be done to help aborigines save their languages and cultures from dying,
beset as they are by lack of recognition of their importance, insufficient
government support and the trend among aborigines of assimilating into
mainstream society for economic survival.

"Loss of language is at a crisis stage. Aboriginal languages are in the
emergency room. They need emergency life-saving procedures," he says.

Funding, meanwhile, is also a problem. The Council of Indigenous Peoples
provides funding, which will be NT$350 million (US$10.6 million) this year
and is expected to grow in the future. But in order for the station to
provide more and better programming, it will need more money.

For example, the number of reporters, currently 15, is simply not enough to
meet the demands of reporting about tribes spread all over the island,
including the remote mountainous areas. The station only has five bureaus
in outlying rural areas and these bureaus are manned by one reporter each.

But despite the problems, even its critics believe the TV station is making
a difference.

"It can't fix all its problems in one day," says Namoh. "It has made a big
impact in terms of education and getting people interested in aboriginal
culture. At least when aboriginal parents sit down with their children for
dinner, they flip to the TV channel and use it to encourage their kids to
learn about their culture."

A Starting Point

"Having an indigenous TV station is not a final solution," he says. "It's
just a starting point." He says he would like to see aboriginal children
allowed to attend schools where subjects are taught in their own languages,
as they are in China.

No statistics are available on viewers and ratings. The international
ratings agency ACNielsen does not rate TITV because its target population
of 470,000 aboriginals is considered too small.

One viewer, Yang Weixiu, says he thinks the TV programs do not have enough
of an aboriginal flavor and the programs are not attractive enough. "They
also don't give much information about the rights of aborigines," says
Yang, a social worker and director of the Taiwan Indigenous Social Work
Association.

That kind of comment is not a surprise to the station, which is constantly
trying to develop more programs, despite a limited budget and staffing.

The TV station's staffers such as Kolas are well aware of the need to better
meet the high expectations of tribespeople whose opinions have long been
overshadowed and voices ignored. Staff members believe in their work and
have a strong sense of mission.

"When I used to work as a reporter for a mainstream TV station, all I cared
about were the ratings. Now I don't think about ratings. I think about how
to tell the stories of indigenous people," Kolas says. "My hope is that the
news I report is accurate. There are so many stereotypes about Taiwan's
indigenous people. I hope I can report about them in a correct way, and at
least be fair so that I can let non-aborigines truly understand
aborigines."

Reaching out to mainstream viewers is a major goal for her and others at the
station. "A very big reason for reaching out to the general population is to
say 'I'm not the way you used to think of me,'" she says.
Giving Indigenous People a Voice-2

[photo inset - TITV's 24/7 programming is diverse, ranging from news
reports, cooking and dating shows, talk shows, interviews and native
language teaching targeting children, to situation comedies. (Photo by
Huang Chung-hsin)]

Fighting Stereotypes

Mainstream society traditionally had very negative stereotypes of
aborigines. "When I first entered college, a lot of my classmates asked me
if people in my tribe carried out beheadings," Masao says.

While views have generally changed after aborigines have been portrayed more
positively in recent years, by such as TITV and through well-known
aborigines such as the famous pop singer A-mei, stereotypes still persist.

"Many of our staff have trouble renting apartments in Neihu (the district
where TITV is located) because Taiwanese landlords hesitate to rent to
aborigines," Masao says.

To change such stereotypes and educate the public as well as aboriginal
communities, TITV regularly invites distinguished aborigines such as
respected scholars to speak on air about matters concerning indigenous
people, including unemployment, alcoholism, inadequate health care, fading
customs and the sense of isolation felt by youth unable to assimilate into
mainstream Taiwanese society.

On a recent program, an aboriginal doctor being interviewed told the story
of a young aboriginal man who went to several job interviews. Even though
the young man didn't drink, all the employers asked him if he drank and
didn't believe him when he said he didn't.

"This has become an image Taiwanese have of aborigines, so that's why I
think we must make health a priority," said the doctor, who urges the
government to provide more funding to NGOs that help aborigines as well as
calling on aboriginal communities to help their own youngsters who have
gone astray. "Looking at Native Americans and Canadians, we can see that,
like them, we need to have our elders reach out to our young people and
help them," he said.

To reach out to general viewers, the station does not go out of its way to
distinguish itself from other broadcasters, except in program content.
Kolas, for example, looks like any other news anchorwoman when she's on
air-sharp, with perfect makeup and hair and an intelligent look. But she
always wears a subtle decorative item with an aboriginal design on her
clothing. Anchors who present the weekly news in aboriginal languages,
however, wear traditional tribal garb.

Although it is funded by the government, the station does not shy away from
tackling sensitive issues, such as the ongoing dispute between indigenous
people and the government over unclear land rights and the increasing
problem of government approval of aboriginal land for development projects
in recent years, station officials say.

"We stand on the side of indigenous people. There's no contradiction and
we're not afraid of criticizing the government," Kolas Yotaka says.

The station was the first to break the story about three aboriginal men from
a mountainous area in Taiwan's Hsinchu City who were arrested and convicted
of stealing national forestry products last year. The men had taken some
wood from trees toppled during a typhoon. They and other aborigines argued
they were innocent as the land belonged to aborigines, not the government.

The cases involves a much bigger issue, which is that current Taiwanese law
does not clearly define which land belongs to the original inhabitants and
which belongs to the government. After the government moved from China to
Taiwan in 1949, land for which no clear title could be shown was claimed as
government land. Aborigines often could not show title to land that they had
lived, hunted and farmed on for hundreds of years.

The men were sentenced by a Hsinchu local court earlier this year. TITV's
coverage, including that of a protest over the sentencing, and its ongoing
coverage of the men's appeal, has sparked coverage by the mainstream media.

Kolas says her news department does not get pressure from the government.
Sometimes legislators may call the station to express concern that the
station may have misunderstood their position. But the same thing happens
elsewhere.

In late May the station also reported about a protest by aborigines over the
attempt by the Taipei City Government to rename a street originally named
after an aboriginal tribe.

"We're not afraid of this kind of news. Our goal is to let viewers see the
truth. Reporting balanced news is our best protection," Kolas says.
___________________________
Cindy Sui is a freelance reporter based in Taipei.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Cindy Sui