谁来定义原住民艺术:东亚的定居殖民主义

艺术与人类学关联众多,在当代的实践中互为学习的镜像,也共享着大量家族相似的问题和方法,而社会是其中重要的耦合点。结绳志与《信睿周报》联合策划推出一系列关注艺术、社会与人类学的文章。
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本篇关注的是东亚语境——尤其是日本——的原住民艺术和定居殖民主义。我于2019年起在上海纽约大学(以下简称“上纽大”)工作,发现我的同事、来自新加坡的Roslynn Ang的研究课题正是原住民阿伊努族(Ainu アイヌ)和日本的定居殖民主义(settler colonialism)。此外,她的研究方向还包括去殖民化方法论、本土性、种族和国家等。2018年至2019年,RoslynnAng与上纽大的同事Ann Chen合作,邀请札幌阿伊努音乐保存会(Sapporo Upopo Hozonkai 札幌ウポポ保存会,下文简称SUH)的成员来到上海,与上纽大师生进行了互动和交流。
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在以下访谈中,我们除了回顾此次活动,更重要的是从阿伊努族的历史、艺术出发,尝试理解原住民如何在定居殖民主义的背景下进行艺术创作,剖析艺术与手工艺之间的微妙差别,探讨人类学者在其中起到了什么作用,进一步反思学者与艺术家的合作,并提出了一些在东亚语境中如何重新定义原住民艺术的展望。
访谈&撰稿/ 王菁 & Roslynn Ang (人类学者)
人类学和原住民艺术之间有着漫长而令人不安的历史。人类学者对世界各地的原住民进行考察、分类、定义,但在殖民者剥削、消灭原住民的过程中也起了直接或间接的作用。原住民艺术往往被认为是这些殖民历史的明证,当人类的遗骸、文物从其原生环境中被取出,并在博物馆和其他艺术空间中进行静态展示时,我们不得不问:谁来定义原住民艺术?我们该如何理解艺术背后的殖民历史、权力关系和伦理诉求?
长期以来,原住民艺术家一直在挑战由殖民者、殖民国家和艺术界所定义的主导性叙事,人类学者也在不断反思人类学与殖民主义的关系。如何在当代语境下以更恰当的伦理视角进行原住民艺术的策划、展演并与其长期合作?其中的权力关系需要各方参与者谨慎协商,这对原住民艺术家、当代人类学者、策展人、艺术评论家、学院体制下的艺术机构、民间和私人美术馆、拍卖行,甚至当地政府都提出了更高的要求。
01.
“阿依努”本身就是“人”的意思
王菁:2019年,你在上纽大校区组织了一场阿伊努歌舞表演,这场活动吸引了很多人,但是我们的读者可能对阿伊努族和他们的原住民艺术并不熟悉。你愿意和我们分享一下阿伊努族的历史吗?
Jing:In 2019, you organized an Indigenous Ainu dance and song performance on NYU Shanghai campus. It’s a fascinating event. However, our readers might not be familiar with the Ainu people and their art. First of all, would you like to share with us a brief history of the Indigenous Ainu people?
Roslynn Ang:阿伊努族最初分布在北海道、萨哈林岛(库页岛)、千岛群岛等地。阿伊努族与冲绳族(琉球王国)是19世纪末被日本殖民的第一批民族。这里我也想提一下,“阿伊努”本身就是“人”的意思,与之相对的是“卡姆依”,也就是神威,这反映了他们的世界观。
阿伊努族与日本本岛有数百年的文化和物质交流,但随着日本对阿伊努族的土地、劳动力和资源的集中控制,加上同化政策——比如教育、强迫婚姻,以及大量的和族(中国古代也称其为倭人,现代又称大和民族)定居到北海道,阿伊努族的境况开始发生改变。日本政府认为阿伊努族的生活方式和文化传统与文明和现代的日本人不同,是野蛮的。
Roslynn Ang: The Ainu were originally spread across the Tohoku region, Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuriles. The Ainu, along with the Okinawans (Ryukyu Kingdom) were among the first people whose lands were colonized by Japan in the late 19th century. Of course, there were centuries of cultural and material exchange with the Japanese mainland but this was a shift into a centralized control over lands, labor and resources, coupled with assimilation policies (education, forced marriages etc) and large Wajin (和族, ethnic Japanese) settlement into Hokkaido. The Japanese government and their imperial universities interpreted the Ainu way of living and cultural traditions as barbaric, to be placed in contrast to the civilized and modern Japanese.
现在,学者越来越认识到,对阿伊努族土地的占领,包括和族向北海道的大规模移民,都是一种定居殖民主义的表现形式。定居殖民主义不同于传统的殖民主义,它既包括定居者本身的大规模迁移,也包括定居者的政府、文化和社会向被占领土的大规模迁移。
Scholars are increasingly recognizing that the occupation of Ainu lands, including large scale migration of Wajin into Hokkaido, is a form of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism is different from colonialism because it includes large scale migration of settlers and the settlers’ government, culture, and society into occupied territories.
传统的殖民主义通常掌握大部分控制权,但会让本地人的治理形式保持不变——大英帝国对印度的殖民,基本上就是通过这个形式实现的。此外,传统殖民主义并没有一个集中的系统来同化所有本地人,使他们与定居者文化同化,从而消除本地的语言、传统、宗教和文化。1992年12月10日,联合国启动了世界土著人民国际年(1993年正式开始),阿伊努族的野村义一在大会上谈到了日本对北海道的殖民统治。
Traditional colonialism usually leaves native governance in place, with extraction-focused controls in the hands of the minority colonizers. Unlike settler colonialism, traditional colonialism has no centralized system to assimilate all natives to settler culture, consequently eliminating the native language, tradition, religion and culture. Nomura Giichi, a member of the Ainu community, spoke about Japan’s colonization of Hokkaido at the 1992 General Assembly during the United Nation’s inauguration of the International Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.
然而,日本很长时间以来都不承认国内有少数民族的存在。自太平洋战争之后,日本政府就视日本为一个单一民族国家。一直到2008年,在北海道举行的八国集团峰会上,阿伊努族与来自其他国家的全球原住民组织一起抗议,日本政府才终于在同年承认了阿伊努族的原住民身份。然而,日本政府同化政策的相对成功也意味着在恢复和振兴阿伊努语言和文化方面还有许多工作要做。
However, Japan did not recognize the existence of minorities in the country as it was supposed to consist of only ethnic Japanese after the Pacific War. It was only after organizing with global Indigenous peoples from other countries to protest the 2008 G8 summit in Hokkaido that the Ainu finally got Japan to recognize their status as Indigenous in the same year. The relative success of former assimilation policies also meant that there is a lot of work left to recover and revitalize Ainu language and culture.

王菁:你是怎么想到要在上海组织这样一场活动的呢?
Jing: How did you come up with this idea of organizing this event in Shanghai?
Roslynn Ang:在和阿伊努表演团体合作时,我主要是想提高他们在当地和全球的知名度,因为日本政府曾非常努力地抹去了他们的存在,而我的大多数合作者都想去表明他们并没有消失。
Roslynn Ang: My overall goal when working with the Ainu performance group is to increase their visibility locally and globally because Japan worked very hard to erase their existence and most of my collaborators want to show that they are still here.
我曾当过SUH的网站管理员,那是我在2014年田野调查时着手的一个在线项目。巧合的是,2018年我到了上纽大之后,发现数字媒体技术(IMA)的教授Ann Chen正在为她的学生寻找潜在项目,更重要的是,她曾经和加拿大的第一民族合作过,非常了解与原住民合作的伦理规范。于是,我们在2018年就开始策划,为这次活动筹集资金。这是个很好的机会,可以使原住民音乐在保存方式上有所创新,音乐也变得更有活力。我们邀请了几位SUH的成员来上海,录制了他们的现场表演,学生们还对他们进行了采访——采访的重点是他们如何学习阿伊努族的表演和手工艺。遗憾的是,视频内容目前只有英语和日语版本。
I was the webmaster for Sapporo Upopo Hozonkai (SUH), a simple online project I had started while doing fieldwork in 2014. Coincidentally, Ann Chen, a professor in IMA, was looking for potential projects for her students in 2018. More importantly, she has worked with First Nations in Canada and is aware of the ethics of collaborating with Indigenous peoples. We started planning and sourcing for funds in Fall 2018. This was a great opportunity to create a newer and more dynamic website for SUH by inviting several members to record their live performances in Shanghai. The students also recorded interviews with the members, so there is a personalized element of life history on the website. The interviews focused on how they learn Ainu performance and crafts. Unfortunately, it is only available in English and Japanese.
鉴于日本试图抹去阿伊努文化的态度和举措,传统的代际传承停滞了一两代。日本政府规定打猎或捕鱼是非法的,所以阿伊努族不能实践他们的传统生活方式,不得不进入日本经济体制之中。为了进入劳动力市场,他们必须学习日语。阿伊努族成了少数族裔,在各种公共场合(比如工作场所、学校等)都受到歧视。阿伊努族曾经接受了日本政府的同化方案,没有把自己的语言和传统传授给子女。
Given the Japanese state’s attempts to eradicate Ainu culture, the passing of traditions skipped a generation. The state made it illegal to hunt or fish, so the Ainu cannot practice their traditional ways of living and had to enter the Japanese economy. To enter the workforce, they have to learn the Japanese language. The Ainu became a minority and encountered discrimination in various public sectors (workplace, school etc). The Ainu believed in the Japanese solution of assimilation (同化 in Japanese) and did not impart their language and traditions to their children.
但是,同化是一个虚假的承诺,因为只要一个人被“揭露”为阿伊努族,歧视就会继续。这包括持续存在的刻板印象,比如,原住民不会说“文明”语言、住在山中的草屋里等。这种刻板印象是一个全球性的现象,并不限于日本人。当代阿伊努族和大多数日本人一样过着日常生活,但是他们必须付出额外的努力,来学习和留存阿伊努族的表演和手工艺。
Assimilation was a false promise as discrimination continues as long as a person is “outed” as Ainu. This includes the continued stereotype that Indigenous peoples cannot speak “civilized” language and live in straw huts in the mountains. This stereotype is a pretty global phenomenon and is not limited to the Japanese. Contemporary Ainu, living everyday lives like most Japanese, have to make an extra effort to learn Ainu performance and crafts.

02.
互相帮助、互相依存
王菁:你是通过什么契机开始与阿伊努艺术家合作的?
Jing: How long have you been working with the Ainu artists and performers?
Roslynn Ang:我大概从2007年开始为2008年举办的“阿伊努土地上的原住民首脑会议”(这次活动是为了抗议在北海道举行的八国集团首脑会议)做志愿者,承担一些翻译工作。来自美洲、欧洲和亚洲等地的26名原住民代表参加了会议。2014 年,我回到札幌进行实地考察时,峰会的一位组织者向我介绍了SUH,他的妻子就是SUH的成员。很巧,为峰会做志愿者的一位长者也是SUH的成员。SUH的会长向公众开放阿伊努刺绣课,我去上了,想自己做一件袍子在表演团表演的时候穿。阿伊努艺术家和原住民权利活动家之间的界限其实很模糊,因为日本没能完全消灭阿伊努文化,所以他们的歌舞实践也有了一定的政治性。
Roslynn Ang: Since around 2007. I volunteered as a translator for the 2008 Indigenous Peoples Summit in Ainu Mosir, an event organized in protest to the G8 summit in Hokkaido. There were twenty-six Indigenous delegates from the Americas, Europe, the Pacific and Asia. When I returned to Sapporo for my fieldwork in 2014, one of the summit organizers introduced me to Sapporo Upopo Hozonkai. His wife is an active member of the performance group. An elder who volunteered at the summit happens to be in the performance group too. The leader of the performance group holds Ainu embroidery classes for the public. I joined the embroidery classroom to make my own robe to wear when performing with the group. The line between Ainu artists and activists is pretty blurred because the practice of Ainu songs and dances are already political due to the fact that Japan failed to eradicate their culture.
王菁:你会怎么形容自己和原住民艺术家之间的关系呢?
Jing: How would you describe the relationship between you and the indigenous artists?
Roslynn Ang:我记得我在田野调查的初期,曾经问过一位阿伊努长者,我能够提供怎样的帮助。当时,我正在北海道大学攻读硕士学位,还是一个默默无闻的研究生,没有很多力量去帮助阿伊努族社区。他很实际地告诉我,等我成为知名教授后再问这个问题,我的想法一定会改变。现在,我觉得我和原住民艺术家之间是一种互相帮助、相互依存的关系。
Roslynn Ang: In the early days of my fieldwork (mostly participant observation), I recall asking an Ainu elder how I can help. I was pursuing a Masters degree at Hokkaido University at that time. He was very practical when he told me to ask this question again when I become a well-known professor. I was simply a powerless and unknown graduate student at that point. My thoughts will definitely change on this but for now, I think it is a co-extractive and interdependent relationship.
王菁:在组织原住民艺术的活动时会涉及很多跨国问题,你们遇到过什么困难吗?
Jing: Is it a difficult process to work in transnational contexts when organizing events on Indigenous art?
Roslynn Ang:这其实取决于我们想要面对的受众和想要表达的信息。在某种意义上,我们也做了一些预设,那就是——上海的观众可能知道日本的殖民历史,但不知道阿伊努族也曾被日本殖民过。实际上,日本以外的观众很难真正意识到阿伊努族是原住民,即使阿伊努族与日本本土民族有着不同的语言和文化,大多数人依旧认为日本是一个单一民族的国家。甚至有时在日本国内,很多人也那么想。尽管我和Ann Chen一再强调这些表演并不“日本”,但上纽大活动负责人一直称阿伊努表演者为“日本舞蹈表演者”。
Roslynn Ang: It really depends on both the audience that we want to address and the message we want to put across. In a sense, we can assume that a Shanghai audience knows about Japan’s colonial history but are unaware that the Ainu were colonized by Japan too. However, it remains very difficult for audiences outside Japan (even within Japan sometimes) to actually register the fact that the Ainu are Indigenous and have a different language and culture from mainland ethnic Japanese. Most people see Japan as a single-race nation. The events manager at NYUSH kept calling the Ainu performers “Japanese dance performers,” even though Dr. Chen and I repeatedly emphasized that it is not “Japanese.”
定居殖民国家以种族灭绝的方式抹杀原住民的存在,导致原住民艺术背后的历史、社会和文化背景都很难传达。我认为,原住民艺术的跨国背景可以从两个方面进行解读:一方面是日本的原住民阿伊努族与在中国的上纽大学生之间的互动,另一方面是阿伊努族与日本和族之间的关系。在北海道沦为殖民地之前,阿伊努族其实拥有主权地位,而且今天有越来越多的阿伊努艺术家组织起来争取他们艺术实践的文化主权。因为这些原因,未来阿伊努族和学者也有可能把阿伊努族与和族的关系解释为另一种形式的跨国关系。
Unfortunately, the historical, social and cultural context behind Indigenous art is difficult to convey due to the genocidal efforts of settler states to erase the presence of Indigenous peoples. Here, the transnational context of Indigenous art can be interpreted on two levels. Between the Indigneous Ainu from Japan with NYUSH students in China, and between the Ainu and ethnic Japanese. Given the sovereign status of the Ainu before Hokkaido was colonized and the fact that there are increasing number of Ainu artists organizing for the cultural and land sovereignty that is needed for their artistic practice today, there is future potential to interpret the relations between the Ainu and Wajins as an alternative form of transnational relations too.

03.
难道任何人都可以生产原住民艺术吗?
王菁:作为研究定居殖民主义的人类学者,你如何看待东亚语境对“原住民艺术”的定义?比如,谁来定义?出于什么目的?以及,原住民艺术和手工艺之间的区别是什么?
Jing: As an anthropologist and scholar of settler colonialism, can you share with our readers your observations of how “indigenous art” is defined in the context of East Asia? By whom? For what purposes? What is the difference between indigenous art and indigenous craft?
Roslynn Ang:艺术和手工艺之间的区别可能非常复杂。欧洲(传统)倾向于突出艺术家的角色,但在面对原住民艺术时不是这样的。大多数被收藏在博物馆中的原住民艺术可能会有一个描述起源地的标语牌,但并没有关于设计者和制作者的信息,无论是雕像、装饰品,还是刺绣、布艺,都是这样,其中有很多原因。收藏家可能认为原住民艺术品只是代表了单一文化,但是这种假设是有问题的,因为其在设计、采购和制作方法上都有多个谱系,可以代表不同的亲属关系。
Roslynn Ang: The distinction between art and craft can be very complicated. European art tends to focus on the artist while that is not the case for Indigenous art. Most Indigenous artworks that are housed in museums might get a placard describing the region it originated from but there is no information about the person who designed and made the art, be it a statue, an ornament or an embroidered clothwork. There are many reasons for that. Collectors may perceive Indigenous art as objects that represent a monolithic culture. This can be problematic, as there are multiple genealogies on design, sourcing and crafting methods that can represent diverse kinships (animate and non-animate) across complex spatial understanding of “land.”
我所说的亲属关系包括有生命的和无生命的关系,背后是阿伊努族对“土地”复杂的空间理解,但在博物馆中,这些都会被简化为单一的原住民文化。虽然我们现在把阿伊努族归为一个单一的原住民群体,但阿伊努社区内部,语言和生活模式其实很多样。比如,阿伊努族的生活模式和原材料取决于他们是在海边还是在河边生活,这会进而影响他们生产的物质文化类型。
All these get simplified into a single Indigenous culture. Although we now classify the Ainu as a single Indigenous group, there is a lot of diversity in languages and living patterns within the Ainu community. For example, living patterns and source materials are influenced by whether an Ainu community is living by the sea or by a river, which impact the type of material culture that they produce.
其实,艺术品和手工艺品的分界线取决于其背景。对非原住民观众来说,当原住民艺术作为舞台上的舞蹈或博物馆玻璃柜中的物品呈现时,就脱离了它原有的背景,只呈现出单一的审美价值。当然,这些“物品”同时具有金钱上或研究上的价值,特别是在殖民统治初期,日本人和欧洲人都在收集阿伊努艺术品——无论他们是否得到了阿伊努社区的许可。比如,直到20世纪初还有殖民者在未经许可的情况下,挖掘阿伊努族的墓穴,拿走里面的陪葬品。而对阿伊努族来说,他们的艺术品既有使用价值(如可用于辟邪、祈祷),也有复杂的审美价值和社会价值,这取决于制作或表演这种艺术的社区和个人。
The line dividing art and craft really depends on the context. To a non-Indigenous audience, Indigenous art takes on a singular aesthetic value when presented as a dance on a stage or an object within a glass case in a museum. The “object” has been taken out of its original context. It also has a monetary or research value, especially during the early days of colonization when both Japanese and Europeans were collecting Ainu art, with or without permission from the Ainu community. For example, graves were excavated without permission to extract burial items up till the early twentieth century. For the Ainu, there is a use value to their art as it contains a certain meaning to other Ainu communities or a prayer to ward off evil. Of course, to the Ainu community, there are also complex layers of aesthetic value and social value, depending on the community and/or individual who produced or performed this art. In this sense, Indigenous art has been taken out of its original context for non-Indigenous audiences as it is quite impossible for most people to fully comprehend the nuances and complexity of Indigenous art.
王菁:在重新定义“原住民艺术”的过程中,阿伊努族的故事和日本定居殖民主义的历史是如何帮助我们更好地理解这个过程中潜在的利害关系的呢?
Jing: How does the story of the Ainu people and the history of Japan’s settler colonialism help us better understand the potential stakes in re-defining “indigenous art”?
Roslynn Ang:我认为我们有必要批判性地反思“以进步、现代化、发展,甚至是国家统一和防卫为名,对邻居进行殖民主义定居”的行为,这些都是日本政府在日本开始向北海道输入移民时使用的一些关键词。所有这些词汇都是建立于这样一种观念上——原住民很原始,而且无知。但这些说法其实是在为他们消灭原住民的行为辩护。
Roslynn Ang: I think there is a need to critically reflect upon the act of settler colonialism on one’s neighbors, justified by the name of progress, modernization, development and even national unification/defense. These were some of the keywords used when Japan started moving its people into Hokkaido. All these terms are built upon the idea of a primitive or ignorant natives and justify the attempts to eliminate them for land grab.
在我的工作中,我把本土性(indigeneity)定义为一个政治和社会概念,而不是一个种族概念。大多数日本人从种族的角度来看待阿伊努族,因此他们会认为阿伊努族是由于与和族同化、通婚,才走向灭绝的。所以我认为,重新定义原住民艺术的利害关系,根本落脚点在于承认原住民作为一个族群生存和继续繁荣的权利。
In my work, I define indigeneity as a political and social concept, and not a racial category. Most Japanese perceive the Ainu in terms of race, thus justifying their stance that the Ainu are extinct due to assimilation and intermarriage with Wajins. So the stakes in re-defining Indigenous art lies in the sovereign right of Indigenous peoples to exist and continue thriving as a community.
但尝试定义何为“原住民艺术”对非原住民来说意味着什么?我既不是阿伊努族,也不是原住民,所以我在“原住民艺术”问题上的利害关系,和阿伊努族有些不同。不过,话说回来,我确实认为自己是新加坡的第三代汉族定居者。大家知道,新加坡原本是马来人的,而当代新加坡是由占多数的华人主宰的,这是一个事实。于我而言,有一些以进步、现代化、发展为名的,非常具有破坏性和暴力性的东西让我受益了;但是相对而言,新加坡的马来人没有受益太多,日本的阿伊努族也没有受益。
But what does this mean for people who are not Indigenous? I am neither Ainu nor Indigenous, so my stakes in “Indigenous art” is somewhat different from the Ainu. However, I do perceive myself as a third generation Han Chinese settler in Singapore, given that the island was originally occupied by ethnic Malays and the fact that contemporary Singapore is currently ruled by the majority Chinese. My personal stakes in this is that there is something very destructive and violent in the name of progress, modernization, and development that has benefited me (comparatively) but not the Malays in Singapore or the Ainu in Japan.
那么,这对我所在的新加坡社会及其历史构建有什么影响?这对今天新加坡社会关系的合法化又有什么影响?如果日本帝国“优越”的基础是阿伊努族的“低劣”,那么当阿伊努族开始拒绝这个定义的时候,会发生什么?他们不同意被“灭绝”,因此继续实践他们的传统和艺术,这个时候,又会发生什么?对于这些问题,我没有答案,因为人们对本土性的规范化理解还是建立在一种非常简化和静态的种族观念上,尤其是在日本。
So how does that impact the way my society and its history was established and how social relations are legitimized today? If the basis for the “superiority” of the Japanese empire is the “inferiority” of the Ainu, what happens when the Ainu starts refusing this definition? What happens when they refuse to become “extinct” by continuing to practice their traditions and arts? I don’t have an answer to these questions because the normative understanding of Indigeneity is still based on a very simplified and static idea of race, especially in Japan.

王菁:在认可原住民艺术家及其作品价值的前提下,与原住民艺术家合作有没有一些更符合伦理的方式?哪些方法可以让我们避免陷入原住民艺术的殖民主义语境?
Jing: What do you think can be a more ethical way to acknowledge the value of the works by the Indigenous artists and potentially work with them to decolonize our knowledge of indigenous art?
Roslynn Ang:这个问题很难回答,因为首先我们需要使自己去殖民化。我的意思是,我们需要反思自己,看看我们是怎么通过历史、体制和权威,来理解我们与知识生产之间的关系的。
Roslynn Ang: This is a difficult question because we will need to decolonize ourselves first. By this, I mean we need to examine the ways we understand our relations with the production of knowledge via its history, structures and authorities.
一个很好的例子是反观我们所接受的“知识”,或者说是我们对原住民的刻板观念。比如,我们会认为他们是原始人,生活在“自然”状态中,没有受过教育,因此不文明;和多数定居者相比,原住民会“低人一等”。但是,这种观念是如何成为我们的基础知识的呢?这种知识又是如何使原住民的知识体系和生活方式失去合法性的呢?
A good example will be our received “knowledge” or stereotype of Indigenous peoples as primitive, living in their “natural” state, uneducated and uncivilized. How does this become the basis used to establish the “inferiority” of Indigenous peoples in comparison to majority settlers? How does this delegitimize Indigenous knowledge systems and ways of life?
在此基础上,我们还要反思知识生产的过程:像实证主义科学这样的西方传统被认为是合法和具有普适性的知识,而原住民的知识则成为不合法的知识。这个过程是如何发生的?现在,人们对气候危机的关注度越来越高,有一些研究机构正在研究如何结合原住民的知识和理论来进行STS(科学、技术与社会)研究,而这些知识和理论恰恰是适用于当地生态系统的。原住民的实践往往与特定地区的自然、动物和人类之间的关系相适应,这一点也反映在他们的艺术中。他们对当地生态的知识能提供同样行之有效的方法,我们不应该忽视这种本土性的方法论。
We will also need to think about what is the process to produce knowledge as legitimate and universal (e.g, positivist sciences, liberal western knowledge) and illegitimate (e.g., Indigenous knowledge). Given the increasing attention on the climate crisis, there are research institutes that are examining ways to conduct STS research with Indigenous knowledge and theory that are specific to the ecosystem of a region. As I had mentioned in my explanation of the difference between Indigenous art and craft, Indigenous practice tends to be attuned to a specific region’s relations between nature, animals and humans and this is reflected in their art.
我要解释一下刚才所说的“关系”,这种“关系”指向的是我们与知识之间的关系,而这种关系的建立是通过定居者和资本主义实现的,实现的过程中涉及了包括所有权、控制权、使用权、消费和生产这些知识和概念。难道任何人都可以生产原住民艺术吗?我们是否应该在不了解艺术家是谁的情况下,从购物网站上购买原住民艺术品?原住民的知识和艺术与知识产权的常规对象不同,那么它们还可以在全球范围内被借用、被大规模生产、用来获取利润吗?这些都是我们在筹划和原住民艺术、艺术家互动的项目时,需要问自己的问题。
By “relations” I am referring to the question of how we relate ourselves to knowledge, via settler (and capitalist) concepts of ownership, control, access, consumption and production. Can anybody produce Indigenous art? And should we buy Indigenous art off Amazon or Taobao without understanding who the artist is? Unlike intellectual property rights, are Indigenous knowledge and their arts open for global appropriation and available for mass production for profit? These are some of the questions that we need to ask ourselves when we plan to interact with Indigenous art and artists.
另外,我想谈谈“关系”的另一种体现方式。现在有关所有权和权利的概念,很多来自欧洲的思想史和哲学史,我们有必要对此进行批判。这些概念涉及对原住民知识和艺术的所有权,原住民知识是无形的,原住民艺术往往是有形的,这也体现了定居者或消费者与阿伊努族之间自上而下的等级关系。那我们是不是可以颠倒一下,规定只有阿伊努族有权生产和消费他们的艺术?但是,即便所有阿伊努族人都有特权,在阿伊努族内部对于原住民艺术还是有不同等级的使用权,这种等级制度依然在继续。说到底,这还是基于定居者殖民主义对种族类别的简化。
On top of thinking about these questions, I would like to touch upon an alternative way of “relating.” There is a need to critique the concept of ownership and rights vis-a-vis European intellectual and philosophical history. This includes ownership of Indigenous knowledge (intangible) and art (tangible), which recreates a top-down hierarchical relationship between settlers or consumers and the Ainu. We can flip the equation and say that only the Ainu can produce and consume their art. However, the hierarchy of differential access to Indigenous art continues by privileging all Ainu. Recall that this is also based upon a simplified racial category created by settler colonialism.
我们需要考虑以一种尊重的方式与原住民艺术家及其社区建立关系,虽然这会非常耗时。我与阿伊努个人和群体的互动越多,关系越是密切,就越会反思如何对一起工作的人负责。在阿伊努族表演团体访问上纽大的例子中,参与项目的学生在咨询这个团体的基础上,了解了相关的研究伦理。学生不但了解了阿伊努族的总体目标,还了解了对方希望如何被记录、希望在网站主页上展示什么细节。更重要的是,学生确保所有的记录都保存在外置硬盘中,而且在访问结束后归还给表演组。我们还确保了主页易于访问和更新,并且制作了编辑主页的用户手册。基本上,数据和资源的控制权还是在阿伊努表演团手中。
We need to consider a respectful, albeit very time-consuming, way of building relations with Indigenous artists and their communities. The more I interact and become closer to specific Ainu individuals and groups, the more I reflect on how I can be responsible to the Ainu people I work with. In the case of the Ainu performance group’s visit to NYUSH, the students involved in the project were taught the ethics of research, based on consulting the group to understand not only their general aims, but also the details on how they want to be recorded and presented in their homepage. More importantly, the students made sure that all the recordings were saved in an external hard disk and returned to the performance group at the end of the visit. We also made sure the homepage is easy to access and update, and created a user handbook for editing the homepage. Essentially, the control of data and resources remains in the hands of the Ainu performance group.
札幌阿伊努音乐保存会网站:
https://ainusapporoupopoho.wixsite.com/sapporoupopohozonkai
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