Comments on: This Indigenous School Teacher Requested the Return of an Ancestral Pillar—What Happened Next Will Astound You… /2014/01/29/this-indigenous-school-teacher-requested-the-return-of-an-ancestral-pillar-what-happened-next-will-astound-you/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology Fri, 08 Dec 2017 18:00:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1 By: Kerim /2014/01/29/this-indigenous-school-teacher-requested-the-return-of-an-ancestral-pillar-what-happened-next-will-astound-you/comment-page-1/#comment-816221 Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:28:00 +0000 /?p=1559#comment-816221 Dr. Hu has been recently conducting research on shamanism among the Paiwan. You can find her full CV here:

http://www.ioe.sinica.edu.tw/Content/Researcher/content.aspx?&SiteID=530367205133077215&MenuID=530400021400001437&Fid=0&MSID=530210541316731017

]]> By: John McCreery /2014/01/29/this-indigenous-school-teacher-requested-the-return-of-an-ancestral-pillar-what-happened-next-will-astound-you/comment-page-1/#comment-816220 Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:01:22 +0000 /?p=1559#comment-816220 DJ, good points all. Your answer helps to clarify something I didn’t say very well. What is a “native anthropologist”? Hu is a mainlander, but she’s married to a Taiwanese and studies indigenous peoples in Taiwan. To the best of my knowledge, she grew up in and has always lived in Taiwan. She isn’t another foreign devil who has come to do research then left Taiwan. She is, in my view, an extraordinarily interesting character displaying a kind of betwixt-and-betweenness rarely even mentioned in debates over the relationship of anthropologists to the peoples whose lives they share and study. In what respect, if at all, is her relationship with the people in the film different from that of DJ Hatfield or Kerim Friedman to the people they work with in Taiwan? How, if at all, does it matter? I am genuinely curious about these things.

]]> By: DJ Hatfield /2014/01/29/this-indigenous-school-teacher-requested-the-return-of-an-ancestral-pillar-what-happened-next-will-astound-you/comment-page-1/#comment-816219 Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:23:23 +0000 /?p=1559#comment-816219 @john. i’m not sure in this case that hu would consider herself a native anthropologist. at any rate, belonging to the dominant population, she would have no right to do so vis-a-vis the colonized people whom she studies. that’s not a criticism of hu; i appreciate her work, and in my personal acquaintance with her have found her a good colleague. but her relationship with ‘amis people is equivalent to that of british anthropologists in south africa or anglo anthropologists among native americans. while i might not argue that your description of hu as a native anthropologist comes from an unexamined position of white privilege and, by marking her as “native” diminishes her work in relationship to scholars from the periphery, i would point out that situating her as such renders it nearly impossible to wrestle with the complex problems of position that inform the film

]]> By: John McCreery /2014/01/29/this-indigenous-school-teacher-requested-the-return-of-an-ancestral-pillar-what-happened-next-will-astound-you/comment-page-1/#comment-816218 Wed, 29 Jan 2014 09:34:32 +0000 /?p=1559#comment-816218 Kerim, do tell us more about Hu Tai-li. When we talk about “native anthropologists,” she is someone very special. As I recall, her doctoral dissertation and first book was an ethnography of her mother-in-law’s village. Hu was a mainlander woman married to a Taiwanese husband (a very big deal in her generation). She then went on to become a major league advocate for visual anthropology and indigenous peoples in Taiwan. Do you know what she is up to now?

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