What is it about?
Different peoples have different relations with animals, and "domestication" is only one possibility. The Seejiq Truku of Taiwan sacrifice pigs to the ancestors and get wild boar from the ancestors in return. Their hunting dogs are important mediators in the hunt. The postcolonial state has imposed legal forms of managing human-animal relations on the Truku, which place constraints on these activities. This causes discomfort, but also stimulates resistance as the Truku emphasize the validity of Gaya, their ancestral law. This paper explores these multi-species communities, and the moral discourses of human-animal relations among an indigenous people.
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Why is it important?
This article shows that the defense of cherished forms of human-animal relations is an important part of indigenous rights. It is also a contribution to the ethnography of Taiwan and the indigenous peoples who live there.
Perspectives
This article emerged from years of field work in Truku and Seejiq villages in Nantou and Hualien, Taiwan. I have attended numerous pig sacrifices, interacted with hunting and non-hunting village dogs, eaten game, and conversed with people about their relations with these animals. They have taught me new ways of looking at these animals and our relations with them.
Professor Scott E Simon
University of Ottawa
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Real People, Real Dogs, and Pigs for the Ancestors: The Moral Universe of “Domestication” in Indigenous Taiwan, American Anthropologist, November 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/aman.12350.
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