[quote=“Confuzius”]
Extra daftness…no one looking? Um…its a forum, they kinda havta look (or do we have forumosa for the hearing impaired? that would actually be pretty swell). [/quote]
Woops, visually impaired, pretty daft of me I must admit… 
[quote=“Confuzius”][quote=“Confuzius”]
Extra daftness…no one looking? Um…its a forum, they kinda havta look (or do we have forumosa for the hearing impaired? that would actually be pretty swell). [/quote]
Woops, visually impaired, pretty daft of me I must admit… [/quote]
I rest my case.
[quote=“dulan drift”][quote=“Confuzius”][quote=“Confuzius”]
Extra daftness…no one looking? Um…its a forum, they kinda havta look (or do we have forumosa for the hearing impaired? that would actually be pretty swell). [/quote]
Woops, visually impaired, pretty daft of me I must admit… [/quote]
I rest my case.[/quote]
The case that you have no argument and refuse to respond to anything I say in any serious manner? Master of the obvious as well, astounding! :bravo:
Only if they look like this:
http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=105863&p=1380533&hilit=waiting+list#p1380522
[/quote]
yuup and apparently the taiwanese aborigine originally came from china but were not han, and somehow left china en masse and arrived in taiwan (could have been as little as a few thousand then of course). And later they are thought to have populated the entire south east asia , polynesia up to hawaii (australian aborigine not being of the same group tho) . Me thinks they went all the way to the New World. The USA today.
Does this pic not remind you of american injuns?
reminds me of this tv show i saw a few years back where a group of american indians had invited this tribal chief and his wife to stay with them for a few weeks in the USA. They were from the jungles of central america or south america , i forget.
So these were not unaware of the modern world, not fresh off the jungle people.
But they were interviewed after 2 weeks and the tribal chief said that he didnt feel any connection at all to the american indian because:
- they were white (and most american indian are not pure blooded anymore and look just like regular white mericans)
- they ate like iguanas (this particular family were heavy on the salads and not big meat eaters).
I had to laugh at the eating like iguanas bit because it really shows how little the american indian resembled the american indian that faced the white man when the whites arrived.
The US govt gives American Indians gaming rights. This is patently ridiculous to me. Most of these folks you cant tell had any indian in them.
I dont believe in special rights for special citizens. Equal rights for all. NOw those who feel a heritage bent in one way or another can freely practice their customs (where legal). Thats fine by me.
Most Taiwanese have aborigine genome are are therefore partially aborigine. The remaining two percent that are relatively pure probably are not that pure either.
let them practice their customs within the law, not out of it. IF they are to be treated special then they have to be like the American Amish and be compelled to live like their forebears. And wear tribal dress everywhere so we can identify them and give them “special treatment”. I cant tell most TW aborigine apart from the regular Taiwanese unless they speak mandarin as they have a particular bent , some of them. Not all of course.
Met a few aborigine ladies who spoke perfect taiwanese mandarin.
They are. The laws of many countries recognizes a special status for aboriginals. Why is this concept so hard for some of you to grasp?
Here’s a thought experiment for y’all. Imagine the government declares that all treaties and obligations regarding aboriginals are now null and void. What would be the result? Peace, happiness, harmony, or great social strife for years if not decades as 3% of the population starts mass protests and other forms of civil disobediance (which may even result in domestic terrorism).
Much of the rest of society won’t be too happy either as many will see the unfairness of this, and worry that perhaps their government is just going to willy-nilly stop honoring contracts and obligations.
I would rather permit aboriginal groups to have hunting rights that will likely help bring them closer to mainstream society and the rule of law, than deal with decades of trouble.
But that’s just me.
Not to mention the fact that such special privileges are designed to help preserve traditional customs in a way that helps the group maintain a link with the “good old days”, which helps them buff up their cultural confidence. This is no small thing for groups that have had their confidence smashed since contact with more powerful societies. It’s easy to come from a confident culture and then expect others to be confident, regardless of their background.
No problems with upholding tribal and cultural roots , within the law. TW aborigines used to headhunt. Should we allow that to continue to uphold their traditions and respect their culture? Extreme example but NO.
They want to dress up and put on war paint? Sure go ahead.
Want to hunt endangered animals? Uh how about NO !
Even when the only serious threat against those endangered animals is commercial hunting, as opposed to sustenance hunting from small aboriginal groups and other natural predators? 
Just curious.
Would we get to brag about our 5,000 years of glorious history?
dulan drift: You made more than one assumption. Anyway, it’s neither here nor there.
As for permaculture and Aborigines. Would these be the same kind of people detailed in Dog’s Breakfast’s post who grow the wrong things (or quantity thereof) in the wrong places and then have to spray the shit out of everything?
Mucha Man: What you continue to overlook is that many of us understand what you’re getting at. We just don’t agree with your conclusions. Furthermore, we don’t have to throw our toys out of the pram and start insulting people and label them as dogmatic, etc. just because they disagree with us. Multiculturalism, whether it is for newly arrived people or indigenous people, has been an abject failure. What it amounts to is little to no responsibility being taken on the part of indigenous people. They want to embrace certain aspects of the modern world, either those that are convenient for them or those that give short-term gratification, but are very self-destructive. Two things fail to get mentioned: 1) everyone else has access to potentially self-destructive things such as alcohol, but manages to act like a grown up, not an ill-disciplined fourteen year old with no self-restraint, 2) those really trying to live an authentic lifestyle and rejecting the modern world are directly contributing to their lower life expectancy rates, rates of literacy, etc. precisely because it is the modern world that has raised such metrics. Don’t want the life expectancy of a stone age hunter gatherer? Here’s a novel concept: don’t live like a stone age hunter gatherer. Their unwillingness to really engage in self-examination in this respect is their fault alone, not that of people of European, Chinese or any other ancestry.
BigJohn: Laws do not exist to build the self-esteem of anyone. Society is not a giant creche where people still get to feel good about themselves because they can’t, or more likely, won’t, tie their own shoelaces. The “good old days” weren’t the good old days. Now is the good old days, though in all likelihood, in twenty or fifty or one hundred years’ time, now won’t be the good old days either. The so-called good old days you’re talking about were plagued by low life expectancies due to (an incomplete list) high infant mortality, poor hygeine, poor understanding of science and medicine, plague, periodic famine and constant malnutrition, a higher than present likelihood of dying a violent death at the hands of another human being, poor governance and lack of rule of law, belief in superstition, etc. Note that this was true of my ancestors’ too. I wouldn’t like to have grown up in 1950, let alone 1050 or 150, and I certainly wouldn’t want to live like my neolithic ancestors. People need to stop romanticising the pre-modern era. There’s nothing romantic about the stone age or iron age.
Poor form, sir. Confuzius made a good faith effort to respond to your criticisms, and in my estimation, he did so gracefully.
Poor form, sir. Confuzius made a good faith effort to respond to your criticisms, and in my estimation, he did so gracefully.[/quote]
Graceful - Confuzius? Hmm. I’d hate to see his clumsy efforts.
Good Sir, kindly pick out the quote of mine where i am arguing that we all should go back to Africa, as Confuzius is claiming i am arguing. If you can do that, then i will happily respond to it, gracefully apologize, and withdraw my comment. Should you be unable to find such a quote, then i leave it to your discretion as a gentleman as to whether ‘good form’ would dictate a retraction.
Until then, i will treat his bungling attempts to concoct assertions on my behalf with the contempt they deserve. No more, no less.
They are. The laws of many countries recognizes a special status for aboriginals. Why is this concept so hard for some of you to grasp?
Here’s a thought experiment for y’all. Imagine the government declares that all treaties and obligations regarding aboriginals are now null and void. What would be the result? Peace, happiness, harmony, or great social strife for years if not decades as 3% of the population starts mass protests and other forms of civil disobediance (which may even result in domestic terrorism).
Much of the rest of society won’t be too happy either as many will see the unfairness of this, and worry that perhaps their government is just going to willy-nilly stop honoring contracts and obligations.
I would rather permit aboriginal groups to have hunting rights that will likely help bring them closer to mainstream society and the rule of law, than deal with decades of trouble.
But that’s just me.[/quote]
And me. Why do people get so up tight and indignant about granting some basic cultural hunting rights (to be appropriately regulated as MM has outlined) to the native inhabitants that have endured oppression for hundreds of years? Aren’t there enough rich, greedy corporations from the ‘civilized world’ out there to attack? Do you really feel you need to stick the boot into the aborigines? What dark impulse in your souls is that satisfying?
Me 3, i have no problems with that. As long as they dont impact society as a whole.
Killing rare animals = NO
headhunting = NO
Of course, nobody is suggesting aborigines have the right to murder people and cut off their heads or eradicate endangered animals. But sure, tear down that strawman.
What an inflammatory remark, unworthy of the rest of your thoughtful posts. Obviously not all aboriginals are addicts and addictions are not unique to aboriginals. In many aboriginal cultures alcoholism is a problem. Why? Could chronic poverty play a role? Could previous attempts at civilizing aboriginals have divided families and communities and contributed to mental health problems and addictions? In Canada, the government and church, in their collective wisdom, felt that it would be a good idea to isolate aboriginal children from their parents and put them in the care of the clergy. It turned out badly. Generally speaking, this is the 45+ year-old cohort of aboriginals alive today, but the last residential school closed in the nineties so even younger people were directly affected. Their children inherited a great deal of their suffering. Is it reasonable to expect these entire networks of families and communities to recover at a rate convenient for us? Does it take some chutzpah for us to ask those communities to focus on introspection, given recent history?
We all know individuals who have triumphed over adversity, but given a large population, life is not a fairy tale.
I think the idea behind honoring the treaties and having special status for aboriginals is that these modern influences were imposed on them. They had no choice. Living off the land as a community is largely impossible, within the constraints of the modern world. Consider nomadic tribes – they probably still control their summer territories, but their winter territories, which would generally be more temperate, are now likely occupied by unmovable large settlements/cities. Negotiating a land claim over Toronto or Taipei would be a non-starter.
Over time, I hope things will evolve closer to your vision. As the societies themselves adjust to modern conditions and are able to handle increasing responsibilities and become more self-determining, perhaps tribes will take it upon themselves to develop businesses that both respect their relationship with the land and work well within the modern world, or impose taxes on their members in exchange for improved services, etc. The conundrum is that the very treaties and status differences that must be honored are often the very entities that impede such developments. But we cannot unilaterally change these things. The impetus must come from aboriginal communities themselves. We have tried paternalism and that has not worked.
[quote]The current laws regarding hunting don’t create incentives for cheating and rule breaking. The real, and greater, issue is one of the poor, or non, enforcement of laws generally in this society. If you want to argue for hunting licences within sustainable quotas, then fair enough, but such hunting licences should be open to any and all members of society. If there is more demand than supply, then they should be allocated by a lottery. Of course, if people didn’t use up the quota afforded to them, it could/should be made available to others randomly again.
[/quote]
In Belgium it’s made simple, go to classes, do exam and get hunting license if passed … fail, no hunting!
Apparently MEE JIU (rice wine) is the staple drink of choice for TW aborigines and a lot of them (maybe things have changed tho) basically drank a bottle or more a day (but then so did my Auntie and shes not aboriginal – I think)>
darien: Obviously, I’m not saying that every member of a successful or unsuccessful group shares the same traits or engages in the same behaviours as the populace on a whole, but we are talking about culture, and so we are therefore talking in general.
Your point about the destruction of community and culture is an interesting one. Earlier in this thread, I pointed out that the Jews have been suffering extreme persecution for 2,000 years. They had all sorts of restrictions placed upon their professional lives (and were then persecuted for engaging in the sole professionals allowed to them), their property was regularly confiscated, they were expelled, they suffered pogroms, and of course, it all reached a climax during the 1930s and 1940s, culminating with the Holocaust. Cities such as Vilnius in Lithuania and Warsaw in Poland have but a fraction of the Jewish population they did prior to the 1930s. Yet throughout this period, as I previously mentioned, they contributed immensely to every field of human endeavour to the point where it’s quite remarkable how over-represented they are. Likewise, after 6 million of them perished, they managed to create the only modern state in the Middle East that has a true democracy.
Engaging in alcoholism or other self-destructive behaviour is an irresponsible thing for anyone to engage in. If I were to get on the booze and act like an idiot, people would rightly call me such. I’m not limiting that to indigenous people. I’m also not saying everyone in society will be successful. We shouldn’t make excuses for that though.
All sorts of things have been imposed upon people historically. Most of my ancestors come from the British Isles. At some point, they had various things imposed upon them whether it was by the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes or the Normans. Even later, certain other things were imposed upon them from within their society. Some of my ancestors were probably transported to Australia as convicts. I’m not making excuses for them committing crimes based upon poverty. Regardless of whatever was imposed upon them, I’m glad, in this day and age, that things were imposed upon them, as much as they may have suffered. Frankly, the best thing any of my ancestors probably did was steal a loaf of bread in the late 18th or early 19th centuries and it was a blessing in disguise that the government of the times was so cruel. They did him, and his offspring, a massive favour.
There may be several reasons why paternalism didn’t work, the main one being the time frame involved or it not being implemented completely. We need to remember though that at the same time that children were being removed from their indigenous parents for child abuse or being raised in appalling conditions, white children were simultaneously being removed from their parents for similar reasons. There was also an issue of trying to breed them out, and I think that’s wrong. That was an evil concept. However, I don’t think removing children from abusive or negligent parents is a bad thing at all. There should be more of it in this day and age whenever and wherever it occurs, regardless of ethnicity. This gets to the crux of the issue though. There’s extreme opposition to paternalism of any kind, yet we allow what amount to third world states to exist within our nations, and then everyone gnashes their teeth and wrings their hands about the lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, etc. of indigenous people. We need to accept that if we truly do want to let people run their own lives, then they may make really bad decisions. That’s fine. I don’t have any problem with letting people exist in a kind of mini-third world state (so long as they don’t have any special privileges or access to resources from everyone else though). They can’t have it both ways though. They can’t then blame the white man and they can’t ask for a handout from the white man. If they want the white man’s money, then they accept the white man’s laws. If they don’t want the same sort of laws applied to them, then that means they don’t get the money to buy a motorised vehicle, for instance and they have to truly live a traditional life.
I sensed that’s what you meant. There’s a difference between pointing out that many aboriginal societies have addiction problems and drawing the analogy that you did, which I thought limited the impact of your ideas, and I wanted to draw your attention to that. I enjoy reading your posts-- it’s just some audience feedback.
Is the plight of the Jews comparable to that of the aboriginals? I think the problem of a sophisticated society occupying the land of a primitive society and thereafter forming an uneasy truce is unique and it is difficult to draw analogies to other forms of human conflict. The situations are so dissimilar.
I didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ going on about Canada in a Taiwanese forum, but part of my point was that these children were separated from their families routinely in a misled effort to ‘better’ (read: assimilate) them. It wasn’t due to unsafe circumstances at home, though those situations became part of the story later.
But the white man came and turned their world upside down and left them with the sequela of problems they could not anticipate. Consider modern fisheries:
Government: People need jobs. Let’s start a large commercial fishery. Go fish! But first, we must control access to our fishery. Fill out this form to obtain a license.
Aboriginals: We have been fishing for subsistence for millenia. Why again do we need licenses?
Government & Industry: Huh? Hey, look at this, trawlers are more efficient! Make more money and tax revenue! Science means progress! Trawl! Freeze on board! Fish for everyone! Feed the world!
Aboriginals: The fish stocks aren’t so great this year.
Years pass
Government: Oops! Turns out trawling was a bad idea after all. Some species of fish are almost extinct. We will establish across-the-board quotas. We can throw in some retraining programs for fishermen too. Let’s declare atlantic cod to be a vulnerable species. That way, our bases will be covered and there won’t be any “exemptions” for groups with “special rights.”
Aboriginals: How did this happen?
Gov’t, Public, etc.: Well, isn’t it partly your fault? We’re in this together. Besides, didn’t some of your bands use trawlers too?
Would aboriginals have ever overfished if not for the intervention of colonial powers? Probably their fishing technology would eventually have evolved to the point where that would be possible, but I guess we’ll never know how long that would have naturally taken, if ever.
Consider again the relationship between modern technology and an isolated aboriginal village in the context of a previously nomadic society. The isolated village was probably the crappiest of their territories. They can no longer be nomads because someone built, I don’t know, Taoyuan airport, on their wintering grounds. Therefore they come to rely on technology to sustain the village artificially, but not truly by choice.
Mucha Man previously mentioned that the special status afforded many aboriginal tribes is based on decades, centuries-old treaties that must be renegotiated if they are to change. I think approaching such negotiations from a “you can’t have it both ways” point of view isn’t helpful.