Asian Indigeneities Workshop – Participants

Ty Bryant, Graduate Student, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia Canada

‘Transpacific Taiwanese Settlerhood: Doubly Orienting Towards Indigenous Lands and Life’

My presentation draws on my ongoing fieldwork with multiple generations of the Taiwanese diaspora in colonially called “vancouver, bc, canada” on the unceded, traditional, and stolen territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. I argue via a data corpus of multi-sited ethnographic work, archival research, and discourse analysis that a politics of belonging is at the heart of how Taiwaneseness, and by extension, Taiwanese settler-hood, is differentially negotiated and narrated vis-a-vis the co-constituted settler colonial space-time (Hu Pegues, 2021) of both Taiwan and Canada. I then consider how my research, a generative source of Asian-Indigenous disruptive relationality (Dietrich, 2016) and a site of alternative contact (Lai & Smith, 2010) opens up possibilities for Taiwanese settlers to doubly orient themselves towards Indigenous lands and life, fracturing and denaturalizing settler colonial space-time while working through an uneasy sense of double unbelonging in “vancouver” (Gao, 2023). In moving beyond settler moves to innocence (Tuck & Yang, 2012), members of the diaspora are enacting and negotiating a transpacific and decolonial place-based sense of Taiwanese beingness (Ho, 2023).

Ty Bryant (he/him) is a member of We Wai Kai Nation and a graduate student in Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Ty’s research focuses on how multiple generations of the Taiwanese diaspora in colonially called “vancouver, bc, canada,” as transpacific racialized settlers, are reckoning with their roles and responsibilities towards Indigenous lands and life. See more about the work of AIRS here asianindigenousrelations.ca.

Seira Duncan, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Eastern Finland

‘Connections among Indigenous peoples in Japan and Taiwan’

Michael Hathaway, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia Canada

‘China, Taiwan and global Indigeneity’

In this talk, I first reflect on my anthropological research for nearly 3 decades on the emergence of Indigenous politics in the People’s Republic of China and how this has been part of global dynamics. Next, I draw on my recent engagement with Taiwan to examine some ways in which several Taiwanese state projects attempt to both domesticate Indigenous politics at the same time as actively promote Indigenous folks as ways to foster strong transnational alliances. This project seems to aim to promote a vision of Taiwan as a space of Indigenous recognition and reconciliation within the Asian Pacific region, providing interesting constraints and possibilities.  

Dr. Michael J. Hathaway is a Professor of Anthropology at Simon Fraser University (SFU), Associate Member of the School for International Studies, and the Director of SFU’s David Lam Centre for Asian Studies. He is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow and author of What a Mushroom Lives For (2022) and Environmental Winds (2013). He is a cultural anthropologist who is deeply interested in China’s place in the modern world, looking at how little-known dynamics there have created world-spanning effects.

Yang-Hsun Hou, Ph.D. Candidate, Learning Sciences and Human Development University of Washington

‘Learning Through Ljavek’s IndigenousMobilities and Relationalities in Taiwan’s Urban Spaces’

As human mobilities become more entangled with histories of racism, colonialism, and territorial dispossession (Coulthard, 2014; Simpson, 2017), envisioning a world without Indigenous wisdom at the center risks building worlds that continue and exacerbate the breakdown of our ecological systems (Kimmerer, 2002). Thus, this project seeks to work alongside Indigenous communities to understand our axiological and affective commitments in mobilities and the rescalings of landscapes (Bang, 2020).

Yang-Hsun‘s research work centers the body and affect in social movements, exploring how our emotions play a role in how we learn to participate in social movements, resistances, and efforts towards liberation. Their current dissertation work collaborates with Ljavek, a mainly Paiwan Indigenous community in Kaohsiung City who has resisted displacement by the government and learned to rebuild community and kinships while moving to an urban area. Their work has been supported by Academia Sinica’s Institute of Ethnology Doctoral Fellowship and UW’s Community Partners Fellowship. Learn more: https://insight.ipcf.org.tw/en-US/article/162

Yi-tze Lee, Associate Professor, National Dong Hwa University

‘Resilient Knowledge vs. Willful Systems: Reflections on Decolonial Significance of the Indigenous Knowledge System Project’

Yi-tze Lee received his Ph.D. of Anthropology from University of Pittsburgh in 2012. He teaches at Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan, where he served as the departmental chair (2021-2024), and currently a visiting Fulbright scholar at University of Washington. He has been doing fieldwork among the indigenous peoples in Taiwan, especially with the Amis people. His research interests cover indigenous revitalization and resilience, including agricultural transition, food sovereignty, ritual performance, infrastructure/landscape building, and multispecies networking.

Huiyu Lin, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington College of Education

‘Indigenous Language Teaching and Learning: Practices in the Cou Saviki Tribal Classroom in Taiwan’

Huiyu Lin is a PhD candidate of the College of Education. She is also an international student from Chiayi, Taiwan. Her research interest focuses on Indigenous language reclamation and revitalization (ILR2) and its association with Indigenous cultures, knowledge systems, and epistemologies. Huiyu’s inquiry process centers Indigenous worldview and follows decolonizing methodologies that are grounded in Indigenous peoples’ intellectual sovereignty. She was working as a Indigenous language administrator for Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage, Alaska. Her work was focused on the historical trauma resulting in boarding/residential schools in North America, seeking to understand the association between ILR2 and wellbeing. Currently Huiyu is working with the Cou/Tsou tribal community in Taiwan for her dissertation study. Through this study, she not only advocates the importance of Indigenous culture and worldview in the work of ILR2, but also introduces Indigenous resistance and community-led practices in a non-Western settler-colonial context.

James Lin, (Moderator), Assistant Professor and Co-Chair Taiwan Studies Program

James Lin is a historian of Taiwan and its interactions with the world in the 20th century. His book, In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan (University of California Press 2025), examines rural reform and agricultural science in China and Taiwan from the early 20th century through the postwar era, then its subsequent re-imagining during Taiwanese development missions to Africa, Asia, and Latin America from the 1950s onward.

Jiun-yu Liu, Japan National Museum of Ethnology

‘Reframing Interpretation from Within: Indigenous Heritage and Researcher Agency in Museum Contexts’

Jiun-yu Liu is currently a researcher in the Center for Cultural Resource Studies at the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan.

Margaret Tu, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington Law School

‘Waves of Identity: Indigenous Youth Agency Across Taiwan and the Ryukyu’

This panel explores Indigenous youth agency and the politics of identity in Taiwan and Japan, focusing on the perspectives of younger generations navigating self-determination, nationality, and cultural representation. Margaret Tu, a Pangcah/’ Amis legal scholar from Taiwan, and Seira Duncan, an Indigenous Eurasian Ph.D. candidate from Japan, engage in a cross-regional dialogue on how colonial histories and current geopolitical dynamics shape Indigenous identity. By examining parallel challenges—from “ocean Taiwan” narratives to Ryukyuan cultural revival—this conversation highlights the power of Indigenous youth to reclaim and redefine identity in East Asia’s shifting political landscape.

Margaret Yun-Pu Tu, also known as Nikal Kabala’an, is from Taiwan’s Indigenous communities. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Law at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, USA, and serves as a teaching assistant in the UW American Indian Studies program. Margaret is deeply committed to Indigenous self-determination and decolonization and actively contributing to social justice movements. She also specializes in technology-related policies, including artificial intelligence and data governance, as a legal researcher.