Skilling Indigenous futures: crafts and resilience among the Paiwan people of Taiwan

Abstract

For Indigenous people, what one knows and how one gets to know what one knows are political issues that have repercussions for self-determination and cultural resilience. This article reflects on the intersection of skilled practices and the politics of indigeneity among the Paiwan people, one of the 16 officially recognised Indigenous peoples in Taiwan. The revitalisation of crafts have for some years been key to cultural revitalisation efforts, as well as an avenue for Paiwan people to gain an income, importantly allowing individuals to work in the community and avoid migration to the cities to find wage labour. The article presents an ethnographic vignette of the activities of an initiative pairing knowledge holders with apprentices, before setting this initiative in social and historical context. The theoretical thread of the article develops Clifford’s ideas about ‘articulation’, the notion that Indigenous people are constantly engaged in the negotiation of needs that are often at odds, namely the desire for cultural continuity and self-determination, and the need to adapt to the demands of life in a settler colonial society. I argue here that it is fruitful to understand the social life of skills in Indigenous communities as shaped by such processes of articulation.