Living Dead in the Pacific: Racism and Sovereignty in Genetics Research on Taiwan Aborigines 0774826592, 9780774826594

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LIVING DEAD IN THE PACIFIC

LIVING R ACISM AND SOVEREIGNT Y

DEAD IN GENETICS RESEARCH

IN THE O N TA I W A N A B O R I G I N E S

PACIFIC Mark Munsterhjelm

© UBC Press 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca. 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14   5 4 3 2 1 Printed in Canada on FSC-certified ancient-forest-free paper (100% post-consumer recycled) that is processed chlorine- and acid-free. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Munsterhjelm, Mark, author Living dead in the Pacific : contested sovereignty and racism in genetic research on Taiwan aborigines / Mark Munsterhjelm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-0-7748-2659-4 (bound); ISBN 978-0-7748-2661-7 (pdf) ISBN 978-0-7748-2662-4 (epub) 1. Taiwan aborigines. 2. Genetics – Research – Social aspects – Taiwan. 3. Genetics – Research – Political aspects –Taiwan. 4. Racism – Taiwan. 5. Ethnology – Taiwan. 6. Taiwan – Race relations. I. Title. DS799.42.M85 2014 305.899’25 C2013-907741-3 C2013-907742-1

UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing program of the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. UBC Press The University of British Columbia 2029 West Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2 www.ubcpress.ca

To my Mother and Father

Contents

List of Figures and Tables / viii Acknowledgments / ix Acronyms / x

1 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes / 1



2 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages / 32



3 Imposing Genetic Distinctions: Aboriginal Peoples and Alcoholism in Genetics Research / 53



4 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland / 87



5 Were the Maori “Made in Taiwan”? / 125



6 Internet Shopping Carts and Patenting Taiwan’s “Gift to the World” / 165



7 Conclusion: The Agency of the Living Dead in Contested Sovereignty / 209

Notes / 224 References / 235 Index / 257

Figures and Tables

Figures



1 Aboriginal genes: Closed black box versus open black box / 3



2 The Austronesian zone / 11



3 Taiwan Aborigines’ territories / 14



4 Archetypical narrative contestation / 50



5 Narrative mapping of genetics research project / 59



6 Criticisms disrupted the flow of Lea et al.’s narrative across different forms of space / 152



7 Narrative map of how the examiner destabilized the gout patent application / 187

Tables



1 Summary of genetics research narrative schema / 70



2 The organizing properties of genes in Trejaut et al. coverage and Kavalan dispute / 121



3 Taiwan Aborigines and Maori genes’ organizing properties / 163

Acknowledgments

This book developed out of my work in sociology at the University of Windsor in Ontario. Like any project of this sort, it is the result of many people’s efforts. Dr. Daniel O’Connor patiently guided me through long hours of discussions, as did Dr. Barry Adam and Dr. Leslie Robertson, and Dr. Christopher Tindale helped me sort out my various inter-disciplinary queries and questions. I then had the benefit of a year as a research associate with the CIHR-funded Novel Tech Ethics project at Dalhousie University, Halifax, to further develop my work in a lively exchange of ideas with Tim Krahn and the other NTE members. During the patent applications cases, I worked closely with Neth Dano, Jason Pan, and Grammie Vahia. My aunt, Liz Munsterhjelm, helped me with editing. And, most important, I want to thank my wife Soi Leng and daughter Karina, whose love and care have carried me through these long years of graduate and post-graduate research.

Acronyms

AFP

Agence France-Presse

ALDH

aldehyde dehydrogenase

CNA

Central News Agency (Taiwan)

CCR

Coriell Cell Repositories

DPP

Democratic Progressive Party (Taiwan)

DSM

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

HGDP

Human Genome Diversity Project

IPCB

Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism

KMT Kuomintang MAIPT

Medical Association for Indigenous People of Taiwan

MIT made-in-Taiwan MOFA

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Taiwan)

MOU

Memorandum of Understanding

NGOs

non-governmental organizations

NIPS

Network of Indigenous Peoples Solomons

NSC

National Science Council (Taiwan)

PCT

Presbyterian Church in Taiwan

PRC

People’s Republic of China

ROC

Republic of China

TAHR

Taiwan Association for Human Rights

TASP

Taiwan Aboriginal Study Project

TIPO

Taiwan Intellectual Property Office

TITV

Taiwan Indigenous Television

TML

Transfusion Medicine Laboratory (Mackay Memorial Hospital)

USPTO

United States Patent and Trademark Office

LIVING DEAD IN THE PACIFIC

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

1

A number of philosophers of science have called genes a type of black box. What this means is that, when a gene is simply considered as a fact, it is a closed black box because the scientific networks involved in making this knowledge are forgotten. Why? Because the credibility and authority of science mean that it is no longer necessary to remember (Latour 1987). I worked as an English language teacher in Taiwan from 1992 to 2001, and I consider this small island nation a good place to learn about how genetics research creates, and also fails to create, such black boxes. With 23 million people, 98 percent of whom are Chinese settlers and 2 percent, or about 500,000, of whom are Aborigines, genetics has become one way to explain and potentially govern the social relationships between settlers and Aborigines. In the late 1990s, I became interested in how, in their competing sovereignty claims over the island, Taiwanese nationalists and Chinese nationalists argued, on the one hand, over the significance of genetics research on the ancient origins of Taiwan Aborigines, while, on the other hand, the Taiwan mass media repeatedly quoted scientists as saying that Aborigines had a genetic predisposition toward alcoholism and other health problems. These contrasting views eventually led me to research the question of why Aborigines and their genes were positively valued as connections to the past but negatively valued as being predisposed to disorder in the present. This book is the outcome of those initial inquiries. In 1998, the Taiwan government’s Central News Agency (CNA) published an article entitled “Alcoholism up among Aborigines, Especially the Young,” which dealt with a presentation by Ko Ying-chin of Kaohsiung Medical University in southern Taiwan.1 The article concludes: Most of Taiwan’s aboriginal residents are genetically predisposed to alcoholism, the medical professor said, adding that under his survey about 3 per­cent to 6 percent of aborigines who are alcoholics suffer from insomnia and

2 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

muscle spasms if they do not get regular doses of alcohol. To effectively resolve the problem, Ko recommended establishing special hospitals to treat alcoholism and training medical personnel to help people stay on the wagon. (Hsu 1998)

A settler, Ko has become a much lauded researcher on Taiwan Aboriginal health issues. He cites statistics and symptoms, and states that Aborigines have genetic predispositions to alcoholism that may require measures that the Taiwan government and concerned others might use to help them control their alcoholism. There was no question about the genetic factors: they are simply stated as facts, closed black boxes that explain Aborigines’ alcoholism. The matter-of-fact nature of the 1998 CNA article stands in contrast to the emphasis on genetics research as a complex social process in a July 31, 1999, report broadcast by the Taiwan Public Television Service’s (1999) Aboriginal News Weekly Magazine. Entitled “Aborigines in Test Tubes,” the report opens with an image of a researcher holding a test tube in a laboratory. In Latour’s terms, this report opens the black box to reveal genetics research involving Aborigines as a social process, and it does so by explaining the procedures and the problems associated with it. These problems include ethics violations on the part of researchers, such as frequently not telling Aboriginal participants that their blood would be used for research and not obtaining their proper informed consent. The Aboriginal News Weekly Magazine report also discusses researchers’ strong interest in Taiwan Aborigines’ ancestral origins, with Lin Ma-li, a noted authority on Aborigines’ origins, explaining how HLA and other genetic factors are being studied. In the late 1990s, such research on Aborigines’ origins was already highly politicized and was an integral part of the sovereignty debates regarding whether Taiwan was part of China or an independent country (Stainton 1999b). Living in Taiwan at the time, I wondered why genetics research on Aborigines as ancestral identifiers was so overtly political, while scientists’ statements that Aborigines were genetically dysfunctional went unquestioned, despite Taiwan’s colonial history and contemporary discriminatory practices. The answer has turned out to be the difference between closed and opened black boxes. To open the black boxes of Taiwan Aborigines’ genes requires attention not only to the sovereignty disputes between the Taiwan government (formally known as the Republic of China) and the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan but, more significantly, to Aborigines’ own sovereignty claims and rights to represent themselves. The idea that Indigenous peoples have their own forms of sovereignty and that these continue to exist has gained

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 3

Figure 1 Aboriginal genes: Closed black box versus open black box

increasing acceptance in international forums like the United Nations as well as in international law (Niezen 2003, 3-5). Based on this notion of Indigenous sovereignty, various Indigenous peoples have used the concept of biocolonialism to challenge the ways in which genetics research has been conducted over the last twenty years. Colonialism is generally defined as a situation in which foreign powers have usurped the sovereignty of distant peoples and territories. Biocolonialism involves foreign rulers utilizing sovereign powers to extend their rule to the genetic level. For example, in a 2000 primer on the implications of genetics research for Aboriginal peoples, the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB) (2000) contends: In former times, our ancestors fought their battles on land and in courtrooms. Today some of the battles have moved to scientific laboratories and patent offices. Our weapons are awareness, knowledge, and choices, rather than arrows, guns, and treaties. Call it “the new wave of colonialism,” “the new biotechnology,” “the bio-revolution,” or “bio-colonialism,” it is here

4 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

and will be with us for a long time. In a very broad sense, what we are talking about is “biotechnology.” It is an area that we dare not ignore. (Harry, Howard, and Shelton 2000, 7)

In this statement, the IPCB identifies genetics research as involving not only new spaces of oppression but also new spaces of resistance and struggle. It draws a clear analogy between earlier colonial legal claims and, for example, a claim that involves the US government awarding to scientists a patent that is based on research on Indigenous peoples without the involved indigenous communities’ consent (Harry, Howard, and Shelton, 2000). Genetics research is an emerging technology of sovereignty involved in the creation of what Ong (2008, 117) calls “new political spaces,” which “are generated by varied strategies that govern populations in and through multiple scales of exception.” So in the case of biocolonialism, decisions over the exception (the degree to which law applies and does not apply), such as whose legal and human rights can be violated and who accrues what rights and benefits (e.g., patents), occur across multiple time-spaces. Such time-spaces might include transnational biotechnology networks, settler state institutions (like the US Patent and Trademark Office), and Aboriginal peoples and their territories. Contrary to some globalization theses (such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s nebulous Empire, which sees transnational capitalism as a juggernaut), settler states remain important in global assemblages.2 Though their sovereignty has been transformed, they have considerable agency in these networks. This continuing significance is why Indigenous peoples are able to engage in transnational networking and forums such as the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations as well as in national campaigns (including those like the Zapatista movement in Mexico, which uses nationalist symbolism) in order to pressure the state. In the 1990s, various Indigenous peoples’ organizations engaged in extensive international efforts to destabilize the Human Genome Diversity Project. Terming it the “vampire project,” they sharply criticized this effort on the part of scientists to take samples from many thousands of Indigenous peoples and store them as sources of diversity for future generations (Barker 2004; Brodwin 2005, 150-4; Hasian Jr. and Plec 2002, 310; Smith 1999, 16, 100-1, 155). These Indigen­ ous efforts involved organizing international networks to pressure US government funding agencies, which eventually led to the shelving of the project in the late 1990s. These efforts show how Aboriginal-led coalitions can successfully pressure state institutions to destabilize such international research networks. Accordingly, state institutions remain a key area of contestation.

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 5

Scientists See Pre-Modern Genes When conducting genetics research on human disease and human origins, scientists view Indigenous peoples in particular ways. A central assumption within the scientific community is that Indigenous peoples are geographically isolated and, therefore, relatively genetically homogeneous compared to larger majority populations. For example, the population geneticist Spencer Wells describes the Y chromosome of Indigenous men, which is passed intact across generations from father to son, as a time machine that scientists can use to understand early human evolution (PBS 2002; Wells and Read 2002). In human disease research, scientists assume that Indigenous peoples are genetically isolated and homogeneous and that this makes it easier to find correlations between genetics and disease than is the case with modern majority populations. Both of these lines of research involve a conception of Aboriginal peoples as premodern, as either living connections to the ancient dead or as genetically predisposed to disease and death under conditions of modernity. This premodern status can be understood by conceiving of Indigenous peoples’ ancestors as living dead, as physically dead but politically alive. In this configuration, the physically dead still have agency because they make a difference to the living. When the physically living die, they become the dead and, in so doing, gain forms of political and legal agency that can be used by the living. The agency of those deemed by nation-states as the glorious dead is evident in war memorials. These memorials honour dead soldiers for sacrificing their lives to protect their nation’s sovereignty (Smith 2000). The Spanish philosopher José Gil (1998, 53) asserts: “In the absence of being able to give itself a religious foundation, the state will transfer aspects of its sovereignty and authority towards the ‘nation’ and the latter will be founded on the power of the dead.” Gil argues that the dead represent an important basis of sovereignty. Those deemed the glorious dead are repositories of power that the state is able to mobilize. Are all the physically dead so compliant and supportive? In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson (1991, 9-12) states that there is a strong relationship between nationalism and death as the nation provides a sense of continuity that, since the decline of religious systems, has been missing. Settler states often incorporate Indigenous peoples in ways that seem to eternalize the state. For example, ancient Indigenous peoples are often termed the “First Americans” or “First Canadians,” which would seem to classify them as members of the glorious dead. Similarly, settler states often reevaluate the significance of Indigenous peoples who were killed resisting

6 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

colonization. For example, the Canadian government executed the Métis leader Louis Riel for treason because he led a Métis rebellion in 1885. How­ ever, Riel is now popularly revered in Canada as a national founding figure. Similarly, in Taiwan, Mona Ludao, a Seediq Aboriginal leader who led the ill-fated 1930 Wushe Uprising against the Japanese colonial government, is now featured on Taiwan’s NT$50 coin.3 These examples suggest that settler states will honour some Aboriginal dead as glorious dead, as physically dead but politically alive and worthy of remembrance. The Inglorious Dead? But what of those who have recently died prematurely from alcoholismrelated disease, suicide, illnesses highly correlated with poverty, and other conditions that stem from exposure to death and political marginalization? Are they now dead dead, biologically dead and politically dead and so no longer remembered? Scientists are conducting extensive research into, and there are heated debates over, high levels of diabetes, alcoholism, and related diseases among Indigenous peoples (Fee 2006; Poudrier 2007; Williams 2011). This suggests that these recently dead continue to make a difference to the living. Such morbidity and mortality involve what is known as biopolitics (politics of life), which considers the governance of living populations aimed at “making live” by optimizing health, life expectancy, and morbidity (levels of sickness) (Foucault 2003). Biopolitics interacts with sovereignty, particularly with regard to the question of how to deal with the recently dead. For their part, genetics researchers have attributed these high levels of morbidity and mortality to the interaction of genetic predispositions and culture with rapid social change. So, like Ko’s aforementioned explanation of Aboriginal alcoholism, scientific research’s explanation of the high levels of mortality and morbidity can be used to govern the living through various biopolitical interventions, such as genetic screening and lifestyle counselling (Poudrier 2007; Williams 2011). In response, a number of writers argue that, when scientists use genetics research to explain Aboriginal people’s mortality and morbidity rates, they ignore issues of racism, poverty, and political marginalization (DemocracyNow.org 2000; Poudrier 2007; Whitt 1999; Williams 2011). These differing views lead to another important question. If we consider the concept of the glorious dead, when scientists attribute high levels of Aboriginal morbidity and mortality to genetic and cultural factors, do they imply that Aboriginal peoples are predisposed to becoming the inglorious dead? Would such an implication help reproduce the hierarchies of sovereign power between settlers and Indigenous peoples by reducing the political significance of the latter’s higher levels of morbidity and premature death? These debates point toward a

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 7

concept that is the flipside of biopolitics: necropolitics, or thanatopolitics – the politics of death (Foucault 2003; Mbembe 2003). These questions regarding the complex relations between living, dead, and the ambiguous status of living dead in genetics research are not an abstract matter for philosophers, nor are they limited to Indigenous peoples; rather, they are of profound social, political, and economic importance. This is because today, around the world, millions of peoples’ blood and tissue samples are frozen in liquid nitrogen. These samples and the cells grown from them can be kept indefinitely in institutional collections called biobanks or cell repositories. These samples can and do outlive their donors. Scientists, states, and businesses increasingly view these vast collections as strategic resources and are seeking to integrate them into their respective scientific projects and into their nationally and globally oriented biotechnology development. Indeed, during the current crisis (of accumulation) in global capitalism, the conversion of national populations into vital strategic resources for biotechnologically based development is increasingly justified in terms of economic survival. Biotechnology industrialization advocates argue that, if a nation places strong or “excessive” human and civil rights limitations on biotechnology development during this time of economic crisis, it will be surpassed by its rivals. As a consequence, the nation will suffer both sustained and serious economic losses as well as population health losses. Through analyzing genetics research involving Indigenous peoples, this book considers what can be learned about the problems related to sovereignty and to legal and political rights in the context of this biotechnologically based conversion of populations. Context and Methodology Taiwan is an appropriate site in which to explore the aforementioned questions because genetics research has already been incorporated into mainstream political discourses to explain Aboriginal social problems, into controversies over national sovereignty and identity (since the mid-1990s), and into recent biotechnology development efforts. In a 1999 paper presented at a conference on Aboriginal rights at National Taiwan University, one Taiwanese academic discussed how genetics had already been integrated into common negative stereotypes of Aborigines: “The popular perception of Indigenous peoples is invariably, in one form or another, of social pathology in need of social relief at best, or to be condemned to their own miserable destiny resulting from genetic defects at worst” (Shih 1999). Taiwanese nationalists have used Taiwan Aborigines’ genetics as signifiers of a distinct Taiwanese identity. This use of  Taiwan Aborigines’ genetics and the underlying symbolism of shared blood is supposed to strengthen Taiwanese

8 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

sovereignty claims against Chinese nationalist claims that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. Such usage is typified in the Taiwanese nationalist expression: “We have Chinese fathers but not Chinese mothers” (Kagan 1998). Both the Taiwanese and the Chinese nationalist claims have become increasingly intertwined in biotechnology development. For their part, by the late 1990s many critics in Taiwan were already condemning scientists’ routine large-scale violations of Aborigines’ rights and dignity at both the individual and the collective levels (Lin M.J. 1999; Liu 2000b; Taiwan Public Television Service 1999). Many thousands of samples have been taken from Taiwan Aborigines without their proper informed consent (Lin M.J. 1999; Liu 2000b). Exploiting health care shortages in Ab­ orig­inal communities, scientists took a significant number of these samples under the guise of a health check-up, without informing Aboriginal donors that the samples would be used for genetics research (Liu 2000b). Taiwan Aboriginal activists and leaders have challenged these pervasive violations, and this has led to significant legislative changes, including new legislation on human research subjects passed in December 2011. Backed by the threat of large fines, this new legislation requires informed consent at the individual and collective levels before research involving Taiwan Aborigines begins and before the publication of any research results (Shih 2011). Beginning in the 1990s, Taiwan embarked on a long-term biotechnology industrial development effort in an attempt to replicate the successes that had made it a major computer manufacturer in the 1980s and 1990s. Promoted in government slogans such as “Taiwan Biomedtech Island,” these efforts seek to integrate the national health care system and the centralized medical information system, covering 99 percent of the population (including most Aborigines), with large-scale coordinated genetics research and bio­ technology development, including the proposed Taiwan Biobank (which would contain samples and information from some 200,000 people) (Chiu 2005). Important provisions include extensive government funding and legal changes to encourage foreign investment and to allow government-funded researchers to apply for patents. However, these efforts soon led to conflicts. In 2006, a major dispute broke out over the failure of government officials and scientists to consult with Aborigines regarding the proposed Taiwan Biobank Project (Munsterhjelm and Gilbert 2010). Critics argued that this failure to consult with Aboriginal peoples was a violation of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law (passed in 2005), which mandates that all research involving Aborigines requires their prior consent. It is too soon to assess the effectiveness of these new laws as they could end up being either weakly enforced or simply ignored. However, they are indicative of the fact that, to date, Taiwan

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 9

has seen some of the most complex conflicts over genetics research involving Aboriginal peoples anywhere. As these conflicts indicate, genetics research involving Taiwan Aborigines has raised a significant and troubling set of legal, ethical, and sovereigntyrelated questions. In order to answer them, I offer a detailed narrative-based analysis of several case studies. These studies explore how scientists have transformed recent high levels of Aboriginal alcoholism into genetic pre­ dispositions; controversies over the use of genetics research on Taiwan Aborigines’ origins in sovereignty claims and in Taiwan’s diplomatic policies; several cases of scientists’ violating Aboriginal rights; and the commercialization of genetics research, including sales of cell lines and controversies over patent applications. Only a couple of these case studies have received (limited) scholarly attention, and there have been no detailed comparative analyses. In order to understand the relationships between living, dead, and living dead in genetics research involving Taiwan Aborigines, I develop an analytical framework that integrates actor network theory, rhetoric and argumentation theory, and recent work on the organizing properties of narratives. This analytical framework considers the agency of various human agents, including genetics researchers, Aboriginal research subjects, and the ancient dead, along with that of non-human agents (including texts, laws, and lab equipment). These forms of agency are evident in a major narrative schema in which scientists pose Taiwan Aborigines’ genetics as a research problem, commit to researching that problem, carry out the research, and then interpret their findings for other scientists and the public. Three forms of rhetoric, defined by Aristotle some twenty-five hundred years ago, are crucial to these different stages. Scientists use epideictic rhetoric, which deals with moral praise and blame, to express the importance of the research problem. They then use forensic rhetoric, which deals with accounts of the past, to explain how they conducted their research. Finally, they use deliberative rhetoric, which advocates future courses of action, both to define how they will conduct their research and to indicate its potential significance to science and society (including how it may be used to govern). By applying these forms of rhetoric to the narratives of scientific researchers and Aboriginal critics, this analytical model allows for a nuanced understanding of the complex interactions of competing narratives – interactions that stabilize and destabilize networks that span transnational science and capital, settler states, and Indigenous peoples. Many readers will be unfamiliar with Taiwan Aborigines and Taiwan, so the remainder of this chapter provides a brief history of sovereignty issues

10 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

in Taiwan and how they have become intertwined with genetics. This history is needed in order to ensure that the reader understands the more detailed analysis of genetics research involving Taiwan Aborigines that comprises the rest of this book. In order to understand some of the controversies over Taiwan’s sovereignty, we must first consider its geographic location. Taiwan is strategically located in the western Pacific Ocean, some 160 kilometres off the southeast coast of China across the Taiwan Strait, 120 kilometres west of Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and 100 kilometres north of the Philippines’ Batanes Islands across the Bashi Channel. It has a land area of about 36,000 square kilometres and is just under 400 kilometres long from north to south by 170 kilometres from east to west. The island was formed some 70 to 80 million years ago by the collision of the Philippine Sea Tectonic Plate with the Eurasian Tec­ tonic Plate. This collision created two of  Taiwan’s major geographic features: first, a large low-lying plain on the western side of the island (on the side adjacent to China) that covers approximately one-third of Taiwan’s land mass; second, a series of densely forested and steep mountain ranges (with many peaks of over three thousand metres) that run the entire length of the island from north to south, covering most of the eastern two-thirds of its land mass. The eastern coast is lined with a small, narrow plain. During a number of prehistoric ice ages, Taiwan was connected to mainland Asia. As we will see, Taiwan’s location and geography have been pivotal in its history. Different accounts of the island’s history play an important role in the sovereignty claims of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Republic of China (ROC), and the Taiwanese independence movement. The One-China principle asserts that Taiwan is, and has always been, an inalienable part of China. The One-China policy means that any country that wants formal diplomatic relations with the PRC or the ROC must recognize one and not the other as the sole government of China. The PRC claims sovereignty over Taiwan, but it has never governed the island. Its sovereignty assertions are based on its claim to being the legitimate successor to previous Chinese gov­ernments. Conversely, the ROC claims to be the legitimate government of China and Mongolia (which became independent in 1921), although, since 1949, its effective rule has been limited to Taiwan and outlying islands. In practice, this has led to absurdities, such as the way in which the members of the ROC National Assembly, who were elected in 1947 in China and then fled to Taiwan in 1949, continued to represent the areas of China in which they had been elected until they were finally forced to retire in 1991 (after 1991, all members were elected only for areas actually under ROC control). In contrast to One-China advocates, Taiwanese nationalists claim that Taiwan’s historical and political experience make it a country distinct from

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 11

Figure 2 The Austronesian zone

Note: Map by Eric Leinberger based on Bellwood 2000. The original map by Peter Bellwood is available at http://ecai.org/austronesiaweb/Maps/All-austronesia-area/All-austronesia-area.jpg.

China. Diplomatically, most countries recognize the PRC as the sole government of China, while only twenty-three countries (six of which are small Pacific countries) recognize the ROC as the sole government of China. However, many countries have representative offices in Taiwan (e.g., the American Institute in Taiwan and the Canadian Trade Office, both of which are located in Taipei), which handle embassy-type functions such as visas. Nationalists often try to strengthen the legitimacy of their sovereignty claims by asserting direct connections to ancient peoples, and Taiwan is no exception (Rudolph 2004; Sleeboom-Faulkner 2006; Stainton 1999b). For many thousands of years, dozens of linguistically, culturally, and politically distinct Aboriginal peoples have inhabited Taiwan. They have spoken a range of Austronesian languages, which are related to some eleven hundred languages spoken in a broad band from Hawaii and Easter Island across the Pacific to Aotearoa (New Zealand), the West Pacific (including the Solomon Islands) and Melanesia, through the Philippines and Indonesia to Madagas­ car. Taiwan Aboriginal peoples’ traditional stories posit various origins. The Pangcah (Ami) Aborigines and Rukai Aborigines have stories of how, long ago, their ancestors arrived in Taiwan by sea. According to the origin stories of the Atayal people, their ancestors emerged from a rock in Taiwan (Covell

12 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

1998, 39). In recent decades, various scientists in the fields of linguistics, archaeology, and, most influentially, genetics have been researching the origins of Taiwan’s Aboriginal peoples and their relations to Indigenous peoples of the Pacific. Today, such research has transformed the approximately 500,000 Taiwan Aborigines and their ancestors into strong signifiers of Taiwan as a Pacific island, possibly the homeland of the Austronesian languages. The People’s Republic of China’s Sovereignty Claims The PRC’s sovereignty claims ignore the concept of Aborigines’ historical sovereign control of the island and assert that Taiwan has somehow always belonged to China. The One-China policy shaped a 1993 PRC White Paper entitled “The Taiwan Question and Reunification of China,” variations of which still appear on PRC embassy webpages, which asserts: Lying off the south-eastern coast of the China mainland, Taiwan is China’s largest island and forms an integral whole with the mainland. Taiwan has belonged to China since ancient times. It was known as Yizhou or Liuqiu in antiquities. Many historical records and annals docu­ mented the development of Taiwan by the Chinese people in earlier periods. References to this effect were to be found, among others, in Seaboard Geographic Gazetteer compiled more than 1,700 years ago by Shen Ying of the State of Wu during the period of the Three Kingdoms. This was the world’s earliest written account of Taiwan. Several expeditions, each numbering over ten thousand men, had been sent to Taiwan by the State of Wu (third century A.D.) and the Sui Dynasty (seventh century A.D.) respectively. (Taiwan Affairs Office and Information Office 1993)

In the PRC’s view, ancient historical descriptions and stories of Chinese Wu and Sui kings sending expeditions to a place that might have been Taiwan help make the island an integral part of China. Whether these expeditions occurred is a matter of historical debate, but we can safely say that they did not result in any long-term Chinese influence in Taiwan, and there is no archaeological evidence of such large expeditions. PRC claims are also based on the history of Chinese governance of the Penghu Archipelago, located about forty-five kilometres off the west coast of Taiwan. Today the ROC government controls Penghu as well as a couple of small islands off the coast of China, but the PRC contends that, historically, Chinese control extends to the main island of Taiwan:

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 13

Chinese governments of different periods set up administrative bodies to exercise jurisdiction over Taiwan. As early as in the mid-12th century the Song Dynasty set up a garrison in Penghu, putting the territory under the jurisdiction of Jinjiang County of Fujian’s Quanzhou Prefecture. The Yuan Dynasty installed an agency of patrol and inspection in Penghu to administer the territory. (Taiwan Affairs Office and Information Office 1993)

This assertion involves a metonymic form of reasoning of part for whole, in which China’s historical jurisdiction over Penghu is supposed to be equivalent to ruling Taiwan. However, historically, Chinese jurisdiction was limited to the Penghu Archipelago, while Taiwan remained under the control of local Aboriginal peoples. The Chinese administration did not exert any sort of actual control over Taiwan until the late 1600s, when this control was initially limited to colonized areas in the western part of the island. As the successor state to an earlier imperial predecessor, the PRC (as a macroactant) claims the historical domain of the Chinese Empire, which means its present-day claims over Taiwan are fundamentally imperial in origin. The Colonization of Taiwan Taiwan’s history of colonization is a relatively short but turbulent one. Taiwan started to integrate within regional trading networks in the mid-1500s. Ming Dynasty anti-piracy efforts pushed Chinese and Japanese pirates to set up temporary bases on Taiwan’s west coast for attacks on shipping in China’s coastal areas, while small numbers of Chinese traders and fishermen began to settle in Aboriginal villages (Kenji 2010, 80; Shepherd 1993, 47). An economy developed during the late-1500s based on the export of deer skins (Shepherd 1993, 47-48). However, the island remained under Aboriginal control. Its strategic position led Japan’s Tokugawa Shogunate to send two expeditions, one led by Arima Harunobu in 1609 and another led by Murayama Toan in 1616, both of which were unsuccessful due to local Ab­ original military resistance. Large-scale Chinese settlement on Taiwan actually started after 1624, when the Dutch East India Company landed and began colonizing Siraya Aboriginal areas in the southwest of  Taiwan, near presentday Tainan. The Spanish established a small fort just north of present-day Taipei, but the Dutch captured this in 1642. Initially, under the Dutch East India Company, a trade quickly developed based on the exploitation of the western plain’s vast herds of deer, with the meat sold in Chinese ports and the skins exported to China and Japan. However, over-exploitation eventually decimated these herds, and the Dutch recruited Chinese to grow sugar and

14 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

Figure 3 Taiwan Aborigine’s territories

Note: Map by Eric Leinberger based on Council of Indigenous Peoples, n.d. and Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative 2000.

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 15

rice in colonized areas. The Dutch were followed by a succession of foreign powers, beginning with Koxinga (Zheng Cheng-gong), the Ming Dynasty loyalist who defeated the Dutch in 1662. During much of the 1600s, China was in the midst of an extended period of warfare as the Ching Dynasty displaced the Ming Dynasty. Once the Ching had defeated the last remnants of the Ming and consolidated its control of China, it then attacked and defeated Koxinga’s successor (his son) in 1684, taking control of the colonized areas that he had ruled in western Taiwan. During the 1600s to 1800s, Taiwan saw mass immigration from China, particularly Hoklo, who are Minnan-speaking settlers from southern Fujian Province directly across the Taiwan Strait, and also Hakkanese, a minority group from Guangdong Province and other areas of China. During this early period of Chinese settlement, there was extensive intermarriage between Chinese settlers and Pingpu (Plains) Aborigines. Still, despite over two hundred years of colonization and a population of some 2.5 million Chinese settlers, only the island’s western plain and northern tip were under nominal Chinese rule in 1895, on the eve of the Japanese conquest.4 Various Aborig­ inal peoples still controlled and exerted effective sovereignty over the remaining 60 percent of the island’s territory. Such complexities are absent from the PRC White Paper, which states: “The history of Taiwan’s development is imbued with the blood, sweat, and ingenuity of the Chinese people including the local ethnic minorities.” By defining Taiwan Aborigines as Chinese ethnic minorities, the PRC excludes any consideration of Aborigines as independent political entities with their own sovereignty and histories. The PRC officially refers to Taiwan Aborigines as the “High Mountain Tribe,” one of its fifty-five minorities, a designation that totally ignores the Pingpu Ab­origines. It also defines the Han Chinese (which, historically, is a recent construction) as the dominant, or normal, group. The PRC asserts that legendary ancient expeditions, Ching colonial governance of parts of Taiwan, and definitions of Aborigines as Chinese ethnic minorities all support its sovereignty claims. Further foreign interventions increased the complexity of sovereignty exercised over Taiwan during the middle and late 1800s. Western powers like the United States and England, along with newly industrializing Japan, became interested in Taiwan due to the declining power of the Ching Dynasty, Taiwan’s valuable resources, and the island’s potential as a market for Western goods (particularly opium). The Anglo-French defeat of China in the Second Opium War (1856-60) resulted in the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin, which opened Taiwan’s ports to Westerners. Under the Treaty of Tianjin, foreigners were immune from Chinese law, so that there was a mix of Chinese and Western sovereignty in colonized areas of Taiwan. This was particularly evident in

16 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

the ports, where Western trade houses were based and where Western gunboats frequently docked. From the 1860s onwards, European and American merchants imported large amounts of opium. For example, in 1882, at the northern port of Tamsui (Danshui) (now a suburb of Taipei), Western merchant houses imported 1,583 piculs (95,438 kgs) of opium, which accounted for 62 percent of the total value of foreign imports (Huang, Lin, and Ang 1997, 2:588-89). Not surprisingly, these imports led to high levels of opium addiction among the Chinese settler population.5 Taiwan was known for products such as rice, sugar, tea (which grew well in mountainous areas), and particularly camphor, which, at the time, was an important strategic material. Camphor trees (cinnamomum camphora) were abundant only in Taiwan and Japan. Western traders were particularly interested in camphor, which was very valuable due to its unique chemical properties, which made it an essential ingredient in celluloid (an early plastic), various medicines (such as arthritis rubs), and smokeless gun powder (Alfred Nobel’s formulation was 10 percent camphor) (Davidson 1903; Hyatt and Hyatt 1870; Sri Kantha 1997, 304). At the peak of the camphor trade between the 1870s and 1890s, one to two million kilograms of processed camphor were exported annually from Tamsui, on the north tip of the island. It was the Western demand for camphor that drove the invasion of Aboriginal territories. And while, in some areas, Aborigines were involved in the trade, many Atayal communities and others opposed this encroachment on their lands. The Atayal resistance in the mid-1880s was so effective in the camphor production areas in the mountains south of Taipei that only three piculs (181 kgs) of camphor were exported from Tamsui in 1885 (Huang, Lin, and Ang 1997, 2:690; Davidson 1903, 405-6). In 1887, Edmond Farago, commissioner of British Customs at Tamsui, wrote: “The Camphor trade, which was thought to be doomed to a rapid extinction, is again showing signs of revival. Some degree of success having attended the military operations in the hills, densely wooded districts, hitherto dangerous to approach, have been rendered accessible” (Huang, Lin, and Ang, 1997, 2:716). These offen­ sive operations, undertaken by Ching military units against the Atayal, restored production levels within a few years. For example, in 1894, 2,386,084 kilograms were exported from Tamsui (Davidson 1903, 442). During much of the 1700s and 1800s, the Ching Dynasty had a policy of minimizing the costs of governing Taiwan. Accordingly, it limited Chinese colonists’ incursions into independent Aboriginal territories due both to the financial costs associated with the resulting large-scale conflicts and to the expense of governing such remote areas (Shepherd 1993). However, this policy changed with the increase in Western and Japanese interest in colonizing the island, particularly after the Japanese military expeditions against

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 17

Paiwan Aborigines in south Taiwan in 1874. As part of a self-strengthening program, the Ching colonial government began to improve the island’s military defences and infrastructure. This program gained further impetus following the Ching’s successful defence against French attempts to colonize the north of the island at Keelung in 1884-85.6 Its policies emphasized increasing revenues and a shift toward the aggressive colonization of the remaining independent Aborigines (Gardella 1999, 183-91). Camphor and tea were important sources of revenue for the Ching’s efforts. Within the context of late 1800s imperialism, Taiwan’s camphor production networks involved over­lapping and often conflicting assertions of sovereignty in a series of linked zones extending from Aboriginal territories in the mountains through Ching-controlled areas to Western merchant houses backed by Western naval warships. Japanese Colonial Period Beginning with the unannounced entry of US admiral Perry’s fleet into Tokyo Harbour in 1853, Western powers coerced Japan’s ruling Tokugawa Shogunate into a series of unequal treaties that gave preferential treatment to Western powers, including access to Japanese markets (Storry 1982; Auslin 2006). These events destabilized the Tokugawa Shogunate and finally ended its rule, leading to the Meiji Restoration in 1868 (which involved the founding of the Japanese centralized state). This marked the beginning of Japan’s breakneck pursuit of modernization. Modern Japanese interest in Taiwan dates to the early 1870s. In 1874, the new Meiji central government launched a series of military expeditions against Paiwan Aboriginal peoples in southeast Taiwan. These punitive expeditions were purportedly a response to the Paiwan’s massacre of fifty-four shipwrecked Ryukyu Islanders in 1871. In 1872, the Meiji government had asserted sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands (including Okinawa) and, as a sign of this, pledged to avenge the Ryukyu Islander victims. Hitherto, the Ryukyu Islands had been under a sort of joint Japanese and Chinese suzerainty. So the expedition of some thirty-five hundred soldiers to Taiwan was Japan’s way of asserting both its exclusive rule and sovereignty over the Ryukyu Islands and its ability to seek justice for those it claimed as subjects. The expeditions also allowed the Japanese to test Western reactions to the potential colonization of Taiwan. Domestically, the still unstable Meiji government gained extensive public support through mass media coverage of these expeditions, wherein it contrasted Japan’s new modernity with the supposed savagery of Taiwan Aboriginal peoples (Eskildsen 2002). When the Japanese initially demanded reparations from the Ching government, Ching officials replied that they did not control these areas and therefore

18 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

were not responsible for the actions of the involved Paiwan. However, realizing the larger geopolitical sovereignty implications of the Japanese intervention as a potential prelude to colonial invasion, the Ching govern­ment eventually paid reparations to the Japanese. By doing so, it also effectively recognized the exclusive sovereignty of Japan over the Ryukyu Islands (Gardella 1999, 183-84). The Japanese finally left southeast Taiwan in De­ cember 1874. During the 1870s, the Meiji government consolidated control over its own territory and embarked on a rapid process of industrialization and modernization. By the 1890s, it was actively seeking to expand overseas. In 1894, Japan started a war with China over Korea, which concluded with a Japanese victory in 1895. In the resulting Treaty of Shimonoseki, China ceded the Penghu Archipelago and Taiwan to Japan (even though China only controlled part of the island of Taiwan). Initially, Japanese colonization focused on suppressing armed resistance among the Chinese settler population from 1895 to 1902, which it did with ruthless effectiveness.7 The Japanese then set about gradually conquering the Taiwan Aboriginal peoples who still controlled about 60 percent of the island’s territory. The colonial government imposed a camphor monopoly. Camphor from conquered Aboriginal areas not only financed the invasion of further Aboriginal territories but also provided around 15 to 25 percent of the colonial government’s local revenues during the early colonial period (Barclay 1999, 133, 155). After twenty years of warfare, in the late 1910s the Japanese finally conquered the last independent Taiwan Aborigines, the Truku (Taroko), in the east of the island. However, Japanese control remained nominal in some areas and pitched battles still occurred into the 1930s including the Wushe Uprising by the Sediq and resistance by the Bunun and Paiwan. Basing their efforts on Western imperial ideology and colonial govern­ ance practices, the Japanese colonial government transformed Taiwan’s Aboriginal areas into a periphery that provided resources and labour to further economic development in Taiwan’s urban areas and, eventually, supported the Japanese war effort. Along with Western military and industrial technology, Western colonial ideology was widely adapted during Japanese modernization (Barclay 1999; Eskildsen 2002). For example, a Japanese parliamentarian, Takekoshi Yosaburo, wrote in 1905: “The white man has long believed that on his shoulders alone has rested the burden of colonising the yet unopened portions of the globe, extending to the inhabitants the benefits of civilisation; but now we Japanese, rising from the ocean in the extreme Orient, wish to take part in the white man’s important mission. There are doubts as to whether our countrymen can shoulder the yellow

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 19

man’s burden. The success or failure of Japanese rule in Taiwan will be the touchstone upon which this issue is resolved” (Barclay 1999, 63). The Japanese colonial regime developed a modern infrastructure, including waterworks, schools, hospitals, roads, and railways. Various Aboriginal areas were flooded to provide that most essential of modern resources – electricity. During the Second World War, war-related production led to the development of heavy industry, including chemical and aluminum industries, which were powered by an abundance of hydroelectricity. The Japanese colonial government forced many Aborigines to provide corvée labour and imposed increasingly harsh forced assimilation measures on them. Aboriginal rebellions, such as the aforementioned 1930 Wushe Uprising, were brutally repressed. During the Second World War thousands of Taiwan Aboriginal men were either drafted or volunteered to fight with the Japanese Imperial Army.8 As well, known euphemistically as “comfort women,” hundreds of Aboriginal women were forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army (Tanaka 2002, 44). The Japanese imposed a system of colonial governance and political economy that forced Taiwan Aboriginal areas to supply settlerpopulated areas, a system that was taken over by their Chinese Nationalist successors. The Kuomintang Colonial Period With the Japanese defeat in the Second World War, the US granted Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) government control of Taiwan in 1945 (without any consultations with Taiwanese settlers or Aborigines), which transformed Taiwan into a semi-sovereign American protectorate. The Japanese had completed the conquest and intensified the colonization of Taiwan Aborigines and their territories as part of the island’s transformation into an industrialized country, processes that the Kuomintang (KMT) would further intensify. During the post-Second World War period, rapid development intertwined with state terror. The US-backed KMT dictatorship, led by Chiang Kai-shek, silenced real and imagined Hoklo, Hakka, and Aboriginal political opposition by killing and imprisoning tens of thousands.9 Estimates of those killed by the KMT regime range from ten thousand to thirty thousand settlers during the repressing of the February 28, 1947, uprising, which had been triggered by popular settler resentment of the KMT’s corrupt administration and its pillaging of the island for resources to support its efforts in the Chinese Civil War (1945-49). In 1949, with the KMT’s defeat in the Chinese Civil War, Chiang Kai-shek and 1.5 to 2 million soldiers and refugees fled to Taiwan. Following their defeat by the “communist bandits,” the KMT declared

20 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

a state of emergency and imposed martial law on Taiwan, which effectively suspended all political and human rights, initiating a period of brutal state repression commonly known as the White Terror.10 This state of emergency went hand in hand with the intensification of the political and economic exploitation of Aborigines – for their labour, their territories, and the natural resources within those territories. In 1946, the KMT nationalized all Aboriginal territories, making them public lands (Hsu 1991).11 This nationalization effectively criminalized the traditional use of their own territories, rendering Taiwan Aborigines impoverished in their own homelands. The KMT’s nationalization of Aboriginal territories and the sub­ sequent declaration of a state of emergency suspended Aboriginal political rights and land rights. Conscious of Aboriginal peoples’ past resistance to such colonization, during the White Terror the KMT imprisoned and killed a number of Aboriginal leaders. Aboriginal communities were often subjected to tight police surveillance and forced cultural assimilation measures, the purpose being to Sinicize them. Aboriginal areas in Taiwan’s rugged mountains, which stretch the length of the island from north to south, were also heavily militarized due in part to KMT fears that Taiwanese settler dissidents might use them as guerrilla bases. During the 1950s, government and private settler firms heavily logged the Aboriginal areas of eastern Taiwan, providing valuable foreign currency and ecologically devastating these regions. Deer, long a food source and totem for the Aborigines, were rendered nearly extinct at this time. The government constructed more hydroelectric and mining projects. The KMT regime’s expropriation and exploitation of traditional Aboriginal territories inflicted devastating poverty, and many Aborigines began to migrate to urban areas in the 1960s and 1970s in search of employment and better living conditions. In these urban areas, they frequently suffered racist discrimination at the hands of the Han Chinese, and they were generally relegated to menial labour, high-risk occupations in construction, deep-sea fishing, and the sex industry. These severe upheavals led to social breakdown in Aboriginal communities (Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines 1993). Democratization In the 1970s, rapid economic growth and the emergence of a large educated urban middle class combined with the loss of international diplomatic recognition to shatter the domestic and international legitimacy of the KMT government’s sovereignty claims over China, including Taiwan. In 1971, the United Nations voted to transfer the UN seat for China from the KMT regime in Taiwan (formally known as the Republic of China) to the People’s Republic

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 21

of China. The transfer of the UN seat to the PRC was followed by most of the world’s major powers, who shifted official diplomatic recognition to the PRC, with the US finally following suit in 1979.12 This loss of legitimacy contributed to Taiwan’s settlers and Aborigines making increasingly open demands for democracy in the 1970s. Aborigines, along with labour, human rights, environmental, and other social movement organizations, played an important role in the mass democracy movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Many of these early organizing efforts were centred in the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, which had American and Western connections that provided some protection from the more extreme aspects of KMT state terror. Efforts such as the Return Our Lands Movement, which, during the late 1980s, challenged the expropriation of Aboriginal territories under the KMT (Stainton 1995), were part of the larger democratization movement. This movement, combined with loss of international recognition, succeeded in pressuring the KMT dictatorship to finally end martial law in 1987, thirty-eight years after it was declared. Aborigines and Contemporary Sovereignty in Taiwan In Taiwan, what we find in practice is that sovereignty is part of a bundle of concepts that Aborigines variously mobilize in their relations with the settler state and transnational assemblages.13 Indigenous peoples have used the concept of sovereignty not only where there are treaties between settler states and Indigenous peoples (e.g., the United States, Canada, or New Zealand) but also where there are no treaties (e.g., Australia and Scandinavia) (Tsing 2007, 42-44). Taiwan Aborigines have no treaties comparable to the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi signed by Maori and the British Crown in New Zealand or to those of many First Nations in Canada. However, since the 1980s, the concepts of Aboriginal sovereignty, collective rights, and land rights have become part of Taiwan Aboriginal struggles and political discourses. It is useful to sketch out the complex conditions and the types of assemblages involved in how Taiwan Aborigines make a difference in constituting political power relations that recognize them as part of the polity rather than as living dead. Historically, there were a diverse range of social forms and governance practices, from the nobility and commoners of the Paiwan and Puyuma to the egalitarian nomadic societies of the Atayal and Bunun.14 Today, the Taiwan government officially recognizes fourteen peoples. There are also several peoples, particularly most of the Pingpu Aborigines, whom the settler state refuses to officially recognize. Taiwan Aboriginal peoples are further divided in various ways, for example, along linguistic lines (unlike the Maori, their Aboriginal languages tend to be mutually unintelligible)

22 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

and according to religious affiliations, including Presbyterianism, Roman Catholicism, Protestant evangelicalism, and Aboriginal religious belief systems. Politically, the pro-China Kuomintang Party receives more Aboriginal support than does the pro-Taiwan independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). There is a long and repressed history of Aboriginal attempts to advocate autonomy. College educated during the Japanese colonial period (which was very rare at the time), the Tsou Aboriginal leader Uyongu Yatauyungana (whose Chinese name is Kao Yi-sheng) began advocating Taiwan Aboriginal autonomy after the Second World War (Harrison 2001; Loa 2007b; Williams 2004). He and other Tsou also participated in the 228 Rebellion of 1947. Tsou warriors, in conjunction with local Taiwanese settlers, pinned down KMT military units at the Chiayi airfield in central Taiwan. However, Yatauyungana was arrested in 1952 and finally executed by the KMT in 1954 during the White Terror. The KMT dictatorship instituted a centralized system of governance that created a dependent Aboriginal elite while maintaining strict control over Aboriginal areas. The intensity of state terror declined in the 1960s and 1970s, while the 1980s were a time of extensive social movements and democratization that transformed the country. Christian Missionaries Missionary efforts in Taiwan have been complexly intertwined with Taiwan’s colonization. Mainly after the Second World War, some 70 percent of Aborigines converted to some form of Christianity (whereas only 3 percent of Han settlers are Christian) (Stainton 2002). Christian missionary efforts began under the Dutch, but these initial efforts made no lasting mark after the Dutch defeat in 1662. However, with the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin, Christian missionary efforts began again.15 Conversion remained limited to colonized Aborigines, much to the chagrin of some early missionaries.16 Under the Japanese, missionary activities in Aboriginal areas were banned, though some secret proselytizing occurred (Covell 1998). Following the Second World War, the KMT allowed the US-affiliated Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Roman Catholic Church to engage in extensive missionary activities in Aboriginal areas. The resulting post-Second World War mass conversions among Aborigines followed the upheavals inflicted by the Japanese conquest and the KMT occupation of Taiwan. The political and material resources of the churches helped alleviate the grinding poverty of many Aborigines following colonial conquest and the expropriation of their territories. While initially authoritarian in its repression of traditional Aboriginal cultural and religious beliefs, Christianity was somewhat localized

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 23

as it adapted to, and was adopted among, Aborigines (Stainton 2002). In Taiwan, some 30 percent of Aborigines belong to the Presbyterian Church. In defiance of the KMT military regime, the Presbyterian Church produced Aboriginal translations of the Bible. A type of liberation theology de­veloped in the Aboriginal centred Yu-Shan Presbyterian Seminary, which became a centre of organizing, including with regard to the Return Our Lands Ab­ orig­inal Movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s (Stainton 1995, 2002). Hence, Christianity has become an important factor politically, organizationally, and culturally for many Aborigines over the last century, and it is today an integral part of most Aboriginal communities. With Taiwan’s democratization, concepts of Aboriginal autonomy remerged. Issues of autonomy and self-government went from marginalized opinions to political orthodoxy among Aboriginal leaders during the 1980s and early 1990s (Stainton 1999a). The Alliance of  Taiwan Aborigines was founded on December 29, 1984 (over two years before the lifting of martial law on July 14, 1987) by a group of Taiwan Aborigines, missionaries and Han people who have the qualification of humanitarianism. We foresee that Taiwan Aborigines have suffered for a long time unequal treatment from economic exploitation, social discrimination, political oppression and negligence of culture. Taiwan Aborigines are truly encountering a crisis of racial extermination. This Alliance is a social movement that strives for economic benefits, pol­it­ical rights and social position. (Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines 1993)

In 1986, during a visit with Igorot Indigenous people in northern Luzon in the Philippines, Presbyterian Church-affiliated Taiwan Aboriginal leaders “met with the Cordillera People’s Alliance (CPA). The CPA shared with them a copy of the Statement of Principles of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP)” (Stainton 1999a, 423). Michael Stainton translated the State­ment of Principles as part of a report on the visit, and this report was eventually passed on to the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines, which adopted it. In an Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines presentation to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 1993, sovereignty was translated and discussed in conjunction with land rights, recognition, and history. According to the presentation: “Taiwan’s government does not recognize the ethnic status of the tribes and our historical position in Taiwan; it has deprived our traditional right to the land and our traditional sovereignty” (Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines 1993). This presentation interwove the concepts of identity, recognition, collective rights, land rights, and sovereignty.

24 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

It was Aboriginal translations of such concepts as self-government, autonomy, and Aboriginal sovereignty that reshaped the political terrain of Taiwan from the 1980s onward.17 The concept of Aborigines as original peoples was directly translated from English into the Mandarin Chinese phrase yuan-zhu-min. This phrase became popular among Aboriginal intellectuals and activists during the 1980s (Stainton 1999a), and it was eventually included in the 1994 revisions to the Taiwanese Constitution (Simon and Awi Mona 2009). The 1997 constitutional changes further expanded this concept to include the idea of yuan-zhu-min-zu, which recognizes Aboriginal peoples as collective political entities (an idea that was adapted from UN forums on Aboriginal peoples) (Simon and Awi Mona 2009; Stainton 1999a). Although still often framed in terms of the benevolence of the settler state, the concept of Aboriginal sovereignty has now been popularized. This popularization is due not only to Aboriginal efforts but also to the strategic translations and use of the notion of Aboriginal sovereignty by the DPP and Taiwanese nationalists as part of their rejection of Chinese sovereignty claims over Taiwan. The 1999 agreement is a case in point. This agreement, though not legally binding, provided a template for some of the Chen Shui-bian presidential administration’s policies. Various Aboriginal representatives and then DPP Taiwanese presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian signed the agreement, which called for a new nation-to-nation relationship, promising Aboriginal autonomy and a new partnership.18 In a 2006 speech marking the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Council of Indigenous Peoples (the Taiwanese equivalent of Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development), President Chen declared: “In October 2002, I reaffirmed that [1999] agreement in my capacity as the president, the first time that a sitting head of state had publicly proclaimed that the indigenous peoples are the original masters of Taiwan and that their natural sovereignty does exist and takes priority over that of the state” (Chen S.B. 2006). Given his rejection of Taiwan independence and his apparent pursuit of de facto unification with the People’s Republic of China, it is not surprising that the current Chinese Nationalist president, Ma Ying-jeou, makes no mention of Aboriginal sovereignty in his political discourses.19 A number of Aboriginal leaders and activists have sharply criticized the Ma administration for dragging its feet on the implementation of Aboriginal autonomy (Loa 2011). The above section provides a number of examples of how involved Tai­ wan Aborigines have translated various configurations of religion, Aboriginal identity, sovereignty, autonomy, and collective rights so as to gain considerable agency in political relationships. This agency enables them to overcome what can be termed their colonial inclusion-exclusion and become

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 25

part of the polis (i.e., the sphere of decision making). Given these examples, a central question is: How do Aboriginal assemblages make a difference in local, national, and transnational networks that decide both what constitutes an exception and where and how the law applies? The significance of discursive concepts such as sovereignty or Aboriginal identity lies not in their being ahistorical and/or universal abstractions but, rather, in their offering particular forms of agency (i.e., making a difference) when translated and mobilized by Taiwan Aborigines. Disqualification from Full Citizenship Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Hobbes all posited Aboriginal peoples as antithetical figures living in a primeval state of nature without, and in opposition to, sovereignty and modernity. It is this concept of mutual opposition that has shaped the definitions of sovereignty and biopolitics. In semiotic terms, the state of nature is the anti-subject, the antithetical opponent against which sovereignty and biopolitics are defined. Thomas Hobbes identified the state of nature not as merely theoretical but as actually existing in America: “For the savage people living in many places of America, except the government of small families, and concord whereof dependeth on natural lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner” (Hobbes 1651, quoted in Shaw 2008, 18). The state of nature is a state of war, if not open warfare then the constant threat of it, the critical point being that “it goes on even when the State has been constituted, and Hobbes sees it as a threat that wells up in the State’s interstices, at its limits and on its frontiers” (Foucault 2003, 90). In other words, the state of nature, being its opposite, is a threat to the State. Thus, Aboriginal peoples, defined in Enlightenment terms as living in the state of nature, comprise a threat to the State – a perpetual threat both from within and from without. In this worldview, Aboriginal peoples are viewed as zoe; that is, as biologically alive in a sovereignless state of nature. As zoe, they are excluded from the status of bios; that is, those who are included in the political life of a polis. And this also excludes any consideration of Aboriginal peoples as being sovereign. Colonizers have long imposed such savage or uncivilized status on Taiwan Aborigines. During the Ching Dynasty (1684 to 1895), the Chinese colonial government designated them as fan, Mandarin Chinese for “barbarian.” Ching officials referred to those Aborigines who had submitted to Ching rule as shufan, literally, “cooked barbarian.” However, the Ching government referred to Aborigines who still resisted Chinese rule as shengfan, literally, “raw barbarians.” During the Japanese period, building on existing Chinese typologies and their own Western-influenced views, anthropologists such as

26 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

Ishii Shinji and Ino Kanori developed hierarchies of civility based on closeness to agriculture (Barclay 1999; Kyoko 2003). In these hierarchies, Aboriginal groups (including the Pingpu peoples) who lived in lowland areas and were primarily rice farmers were ranked the most advanced, whereas the Atayal, who practised a mix of hunting and swidden agriculture in the mountains, were the most primitive (Barclay 1999). These Japanese anthropological and administrative hierarchies were subsequently adapted by the KMT Chinese Nationalist dictatorship (1945-80s), which designated Aborigines as “mountain compatriots,” who were in need of forced assimilation in order to become good Chinese subjects. Clearly, there is a long history of colonizers imposing various denigrating designations on Taiwan Aborigines. Underlying these various colonial views is the conception of Taiwan Aborigines as needing to be rescued from themselves and/or various external threats. These views involve an organizing narrative schema in which adept moral settler or foreign heroes see Aborigines as suffering and so engage in selflessly rescuing them from various reified forces (such as cultural loss) or problems due to supposed genetic and cultural dysfunctions. This may be termed the heroes-rescue-Aborigines organizing narrative schema (Munsterhjelm 2004). Given the above history of colonizers imposing denigrating designations on Taiwan Aborigines, and the pervasiveness of the hero-rescues-Aborigines organizing narrative, what are we to make of it when scientists use genetics to explain Aboriginal social problems and suggest various forms of governance for them? The idea that, under modern conditions, Aboriginal peoples are genetically predisposed to pathology and that this contributes to premature Aboriginal death is widespread in Taiwan. Genetics has been publicly cited as a factor in Aborigines’ developing diabetes (Central News Agency 2004a), gout (Chen Q.F. 2004), and alcoholism (Hsu 1998), all of which contribute to mortality rates that are three to five times the national average, thereby reducing Aboriginal life expectancy by ten years compared to that of settlers (Central News Agency 2004a).20 In general, these supposed genetic factors are portrayed as problems with which the government and concerned groups must help Aborigines (Munsterhjelm 2005). The idea of attributing Aboriginal mortality and morbidity partly to genetics is politically loaded, given that Taiwan Aborigines have high levels of poverty. According to 2010 Taiwan government data, Aboriginal households had an average income of NT$497,317 (about CDN$17,000) versus the national average of NT$1,074,180 (about CDN$35,800) (Council of Indigenous Peoples 2011, 40). Critically, in terms of income distribution, data from 2008-9 show that 37.8 percent of Aboriginal households were in the lowest quintile (fifth), with incomes below NT$282,000 (about

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 27

CDN$9,500), while fully 67.6 percent were in the bottom two quintiles with incomes below NT$554,000. Such income distribution means that more than two-thirds of Aboriginal households were poor or low-income (Council of Indigenous Peoples 2011, 46). Hence, poverty and related issues are major concerns, and the Taiwan government has a variety of programs whose aim is to improve Aboriginal social conditions. Genetics has become intertwined with these contemporary debates over Aboriginal social conditions. The current president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, evidently thought that the view that Aboriginal peoples are genetically dysfunctional was pervasive enough for him to integrate it into his speeches on Aboriginal policy. However, he presented these genetically deterministic views of Aborigines as something he opposed. I have found fifteen different media reports (there are likely more) for the period between 2002 and 2007, in which Ma publicly states that Aborigines do not suffer from genetic problems but, rather, from a lack of opportunities – opportunities that his policies were helping to provide (Ma was mayor of Taipei from 1998 to 2005 and chairperson of the KMT from 2005 to 2007).21 A major controversy broke out after a December 8, 2007, Taiwan presidential election campaign stop, at which Ma spoke with representatives from the Sijhou community, an illegal Aboriginal settlement on the outskirts of Taipei. An Aboriginal man from the community criticized the lack of employment opportunities for Aborigines and the negative effects this had on Aboriginal children’s self-esteem (Taiwan Indigenous Television News 2007). In response, Ma, after describing the positive effects of his affirmative action hiring policies, included a comment that, “their genes are not a problem, their lack of opportunities are the problem, I gave them opportunities” (Taiwan Indigenous Television News 2007).22 These and other comments Ma made, particularly regarding how Aborigines would have to change themselves in order to fit into city life, were sharply criticized as racist, arrogant, and as an example of “Han chauvinism” (Loa 2007a; Taiwan News 2007; Fan and Zhou 2007). While Ma’s comments on genetics were not the focus of the controversy, they still received strong criticism, with the cabinetlevel Council of Indigenous Peoples chairperson Icyang Parod stating at a news conference that he also protested against a comment Ma had made on several occasions to the effect that “Aborigines are not genetically disadvantaged, they just don’t have opportunities.” The statement was printed on Ma’s campaign flyers describing his stance on Aboriginal issues, and Ma also used it during his Dec. 8 visit to Sindian. “By saying so, Ma keeps telling people that there is a genetic difference

28 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

between Aborigines and non-Aborigines. This only shows he is a racist at heart,” Icyang said. “He should apologize to Aborigines, as well as to Taiwanese society.” (Loa 2007a)

Ma’s attempts to appear benevolent toward Aborigines by repeatedly rejecting genetic determinism were interpreted by Parod as actually reproducing negative views of Aborigines. The firestorm of controversy, which included some Aboriginal leaders calling for Ma’s resignation, only ended when Ma made a formal public apology (Loa 2007a). These criticisms of Ma were apparently effective as my searches of the Factiva news database indicate that, after this controversy, Ma dropped any mention of genetics from his speeches on Aborigines. That a major leader had integrated genetic determinism into his political discourse about Aboriginal peoples is an example of the importance of genetics to modern societies. However, this 2007 controversy also illustrates the contested character of the notion of genetic determinism. Aboriginal Genetics and Taiwan Sovereignty Claims In a 1991 article in Scientific American, Peter Bellwood hypothesizes that Taiwan is the homeland of the Austronesian languages (Stainton 1999b, 37-41). In the early 1990s, Taiwan Aboriginal activists were the first to make use of the Austronesian homeland concept to contest the ruling KMT “OneChina” discourse and its claims over Aborigines. However, with the rise of Taiwanese independence during the 1990s, these Austronesian linkages became integrated into state policy. In the early 1990s, President Lee Teng-hui and his Taiwan faction of the KMT marginalized the last of the KMT’s One-China-oriented old guard. With Lee’s consolidation of power within the KMT, Taiwanese state ideology shifted from a One-China to a Taiwan-centred identity project. This entailed the integration of earlier concepts prevalent in Taiwanese nationalist discourse (dating from the 1980s) that held that intermarriage between early Chinese settlers and Taiwan Aborigines during the 1600s and 1700s had created a Taiwanese identity that made Taiwan distinct from China. Although Aborigines were the first to use the Austronesian concept against One-China claims (Stainton 1999b), Aboriginal genetics research became integrated into the Taiwanese nationalist state identity project when President Lee Teng-hui called on Taiwanese scientists to contribute to it in the early 1990s. Despite this project’s express political intent (Chiu 2000, 104; Liu 2000b), a number of scientists began conducting Austronesian migrations-related genetics research on Taiwan Aborigines. Today, the cumulative effect of these efforts means that Aborigines’ genes, as sources of a national essence, are contested

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 29

in both One-China and Taiwanese Nationalist sovereignty disputes (Rudolph 2004; Stainton 1999b; Sleeboom-Faulkner 2006). Initially, the notion of genetic determinism and the Taiwanese independence movement’s notion of Aborigines as ancestor figures might seem contradictory. However, these two concepts are perfectly compatible. A drop or two of Aboriginal blood is considered by Taiwanese independence advocates sufficient for a Taiwanese person to claim an identity distinct from that of a Chinese person. However, research scientists posit that, under conditions of modernity, too much Aboriginal ancestry leads to genetic dysfunction. Both concepts involve constructing Taiwan Aborigines as premodern. Genetics Research and Resistance in Taiwan Since 1988, Taiwan Aborigines have participated in international forums such as the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples (Liu 2000a). Taiwan Aboriginal activists have made extensive use of both human rights and Aboriginal rights discourses in their public conflicts with scientists over the negative impacts of research on Aborigines and widespread violations of informed consent. Various problems were identified in a 2000-1 Taiwan National Science Council-funded project conducted by Taiwan Aboriginal activists that surveyed attitudes toward genetics research on the part of both scientists and Taiwan Aborigines (Lai et al. 2001). This project found that genetics researchers objectified and dehumanized Aborigines’ samples and denied that doing so had any negative impact on Aborigines. In contrast, Aborigines were frequently upset with the social effects of genetics research (such as the attribution of Aboriginal alcoholism to genetics), while some respondents wanted genetics researchers to consult Aboriginal participants prior to the publication of research results (Chen S.J. 2002, 40-1; Lai et al. 2001). This study indicates that there are serious differences between the views of scientists, on one hand, and Aborigines, on the other, regarding the significance and social effects of genetics research. Informed consent emerged early on as a point of contention (Lin M.J. 1999; Liu 2000b). Genetics researchers claim that enrolling Aboriginal participants through informed consent respects their individual freedom and ensures that those who become the objects of study do so willingly (c.f. Rose 2007, 152-53). Informed consent, which has become a central legal and moral constraint on research, was institutionalized after the Second World War in the 1947 Nuremberg Code (not to be confused with the Nazi’s 1935 Nuremberg Laws). It was later further developed in such instruments as the 1964 World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles

30 Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes

for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (World Medical Association 2008). However, a number of people argue that the power differentials inherent in the doctor-patient relationship render issues of individualized informed consent highly problematic (Nisker and Daar 2006, 115; Tai and Chiou 2008). In light of these problems, Aboriginal activists concerned with research involving Aboriginal peoples have been increasingly advocating collective informed consent. Ideally, collective informed consent would transform the doctor-patient power relation by having genetics researchers explain in advance their projects to Aboriginal communities in a dialogue based on mutual respect and reciprocity. Such reciprocal dialogue, it is argued, would help to mitigate the potentially exploitative hierarchies that have been typical of genetics research involving Aboriginal peoples. Yet major differences persist. What critics consider to be a history of rampant and persistent research ethics violations in Taiwan (Chou 2006, 22; Lin M.J. 1999; Liu 2000b) became a locus of Aboriginal resistance to the Taiwan Biobank project. Modelled on European examples such as the 500,000sample UK Biobank, the Taiwan Biobank is a cornerstone of the Taiwan state’s biotechnology development plans. The Biobank is to be a 200,000sample bank that is supposed to be representative of Taiwan’s population (Chou 2006, 22, 29; Tsai 2007; Tai and Chiou 2008). According to Tai and Chiou (2008, 107-8), the passage of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, which requires community consent at the collective level, has affected the way in which the Taiwan Biobank and other genetics research on Taiwan Aborigines is conducted. The very serious moral and ethical issues raised by the apparent violations of the collective consultation provisions of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law committed by Taiwan Biobank planners has, a number of times, led to stoppages in the implementation process. With Taiwan state industrial development plans pushing biotechnology as a major future sector, such conflicts will continue to increase in political-economic significance. Conclusion The relationships between the living and the dead are complex and varied with regard to both sovereignty and law. We need to broadly consider the potential forms of agency attributed to living and dead, including hybrid categories such as living dead. For example, legal death often precedes physical death. The Nazis use of the law to “kill” the citizenship and rights of German Jews underpinned the Holocaust. However, Aboriginal peoples’ resistance to genetics research (such as the Human Genome Diversity Project), which they view as biocolonial, shows how sovereign decisions over who has what rights are not merely imposed by the state or state-authorized agents like scientists; rather, as Ong (Ong 2006b; Ong 2007) argues, the outcomes

Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 31

of the interactions involved in such extended assemblages (i.e., Aboriginal beliefs, sovereignty, national laws, international human rights, etc.) are unpredictable. Similarly, Taiwan’s history reveals the complexity of the island’s sovereignty and how interactions between various foreign powers, settlers, and Aboriginal peoples led to unforeseeable outcomes. Such assemblages extend across forms of time and space that do not neatly fit with national borders, so the relationships between sovereignty/law and the living, dead, and living dead are not predetermined. In order to analyze these assemblages of human and non-human agents, Chapter 2 sets out a theoretical model that enables us to understand how such networks organize/narrate across space and time. Chapter 3 deals with how Taiwan government scientists at Academia Sinica and other institutes have explained high levels of Aboriginal alcoholism (which developed after the Second World War) as genetic predispositions activated by rapid social change. Chapter 4 compares international mass media coverage of Mackay Memorial Hospital research on linkages between Taiwan Aborigines and Indigenous peoples of the Pacific with coverage of ethics violations committed by researchers against Kavalan Aborigines. Chapter 5 deals with translations of genetics research that present Taiwan as the Maori homeland. The first half of the chapter offers a comparison of three documentaries, all of which make use of the made-in-Taiwan metaphor as applied to Maori origins. The second half analyzes the concerted Maori media resistance to a research report that attempts to attribute violence in Maori communities to a so-called “warrior gene.” Chapter 6 focuses on the US commodification of Taiwan Aborigines’ genetics. First, it analyzes how Coriell Cell Repositories sold a set of cell lines, taken from Atayal and Ami in the early 1990s, on the Internet; second, it looks at how Atayal and Ami samples were used in two US patents granted to Stanford University researchers; third, it addresses how a prominent Taiwanese researcher and his colleagues committed mass ethics violations by filing a series of US and Taiwan patent applications that involved over fifteen hundred Atayal and (eventually) nearly two hundred Solomon Islanders, leading to national and international controversies in 2010 and 2011.

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

2

What is a gene? With all of the weight given to them as signifiers of identity or as factors in disease and social dysfunction, one would think the concept of the gene was on very solid ground. Recent advances in biotechnology, rather than supporting the concept of the gene, have greatly undermined it as research into the complexity of genetic interactions has transformed previous views of genes as sequences of base pairs, found at a specific location on a chromosome, that code for a particular protein (Gerstein et al. 2007, 670). Some scientists even believe that the notion of the gene will stop being used due to its indeterminacy (Beurton, Falk, and Rheinberger 2000; Fox-Keller 2000, 66-72). The concept of the gene, the basic unit of genetics, remains very much a work-in-progress, set within ever-changing hypotheses and translated by different agents according to the needs of their particular domains (Fox-Keller 2000; Shea 2008). If genes are actually fluid constructs that reflect dominant scientific consensus based on experimental evidence and theoretical paradigms, then the contentions over genetics research involving Taiwan Aborigines discussed in Chapter 1 raise important questions: 1 Who is authorized to represent Taiwan Aborigines’ genes? How are they able to represent these genes? 2 How do Aboriginal peoples respond to this research? In order to address these questions, I offer a new theoretical model whose purpose is to analyze genetics research as a process. This model shows how rhetoric helps to constitute and stabilize narratively organized assemblages (networks) of human and non-human agents across various forms of timespace to create scientific knowledge. Forms of rhetoric allow an array of different agents to translate organizing narratives about Aboriginal genes in

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 33

such a way that genetics research projects can produce multiple meanings. Within their organizing narratives, scientists use forms of rhetoric, particularly epideictic rhetoric (concerned with moral blame and praise), to articulate the values and norms that define Aboriginal peoples’ genetics as suitable research problems. The rhetorical contingency of these narratively organized networks becomes apparent when Indigenous peoples’ organizations reject scientists’ genetics research as a violation of their sovereignty and dignity. Such resistance has undermined a number of genetics research projects by destabilizing scientists’ organizing narratives. This destabilization was evident, for instance, in the disputes that ended the Human Genome Diversity Project and in Taiwan Aboriginal peoples’ critiques of the fact that genetics research often involves the racially configured combination of biopolitics and sovereignty. In concluding this chapter, I show how the competing organizing narratives of scientists and Indigenous peoples in contestations over genetics research can be conceptually mapped. Rhetoric and Genes in Organizing Research From an organizational standpoint, the concept of genes has extensive organizing abilities because it is eminently translatable, lending itself to a host of varied meanings. This translatability means that the concept of the gene functions as a “boundary object,” which Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer define in an influential 1989 publication: Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in individualsite use. They may be abstract or concrete. They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is key in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds. (Star and Griesemer 1989, 393)

The fact that different actants (agents) can translate them in diverse contexts makes genes powerful organizing concepts in scientific research (Beurton, Falk, and Rheinberger 2000; Shea 2008). A critical point here is that a precise shared meaning of what constitutes a gene is not required in order for diverse actants to cooperate. Indeed, it is this very lack of precision, which allows for further translation, change, and redefinition, that makes the concept of the gene so scientifically useful (Beurton, Falk, and Rheinberger 2000).

34 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

This stands in contrast with concepts, such as Jurgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action, that posit shared meaning as the basis of social interaction. In the case of genes, not only is shared meaning not necessary for the scientific project to go forward, but it is the very lack of shared meaning that allows it to go forward at all (Cooren 2000b). This lack of a precise shared meaning is key in organizing genetics research projects because they have to be translated to mean different things to different agents, including scientists, ethics boards, funding agencies, Aboriginal peoples, and journals. In such over-determined situations, potential participants may have other venues through which to advance their disparate goals, so rhetoric is important to their participation. Organizationally, rhetoric is used to make a project into an “attractive passage point,” which is “a point presented as the means of fulfilling the respective objectives of the various participants” (Cooren and Taylor 2000, 185, emphasis in original). The project organizers attempt to associate the project with the interests of those they wish to mobilize: “An articulation – that amounts to associating any two or more projects by finding any common point – can create a translation – that consists in establishing the equivalencies between these different projects – resulting in identification; that is, the fact that these diverse projects are now united, while each actor keeps his, her, or its own agenda” (ibid., emphasis in original). Rhetoric is essential to organizing at a distance as it associates different discourses at work in disparate institutions and/or potentially multiple discourses at work within a given institution. For example, a genetics research project involves multiple translations in which diverse agents advance their respective goals: Aboriginal participants get health care, the Taiwan National Science Council carries out its legislative mandate to support scientific research, scientists conduct research, science journals receive papers, and so on. Coordinating a diverse set of agents means putting institutional narratives and associated actions in terms that each can accommodate and authorize within its respective narratives (Cooren 2001b, 192). Translation is pivotal as it allows the same event to take on different meanings for different agents, while enabling them to cooperate despite these differences. Translation also allows for hierarchies. This is because particular organizing narratives, such as those of scientific researchers, become dominant. Accord­ ing to Cooren (2000a, 194, emphasis in original): “Communications’ organizing property amounts to creating a situation that will have real effects in the structure and hierarchy of interactions.” This hierarchical structuring means that, “though we can take another perspective on an association, for example by inserting it in another narrative schema [such as an employee’s], the fact remains that someone has definitely submitted to someone else, which creates an inescapable asymmetry in the network” (Cooren (2000a, 195).

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 35

Cooren’s work suggests that a scientific research project involves particular hierarchies insofar as participants submit to the project’s overall organizing narrative. This does not mean that the scientific research project is coercive, for researchers must translate their projects in order to appeal to various agents, including funders, potential Aboriginal research subjects, and ethics committees. However, scientific research projects are not free-for-alls, and, while some fail, those that succeed do so by getting an array of disparate agents to submit to advancing it. The Forms of Rhetoric In order to understand how the assemblages that make up scientific research projects are articulated and stabilized, it is helpful to consider the complex rhetorical relationship between the past, present, and future. In making their claims, scientists attempt to persuade through reference to past scientific research and to future research as well as to the potential larger social implications of their research findings. The rhetorical relationship between present, past, and future can be analyzed through reference to three forms of rhetoric that were first described by Aristotle: epideictic, forensic, and deliberative. Temporally concerned with the present, epideictic rhetoric involves praise and blame based on the values and norms of the intended audience (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Sullivan 1991). In order to express these values, epideictic rhetoric is often defined in terms of magnitude and through spatially oriented hierarchical topoi (topics/themes), such as higher/lower or bigger/smaller (O’Gorman 2005, 28-32). Deliberative rhetoric (e.g., policy debates or plans) is generally concerned with and oriented toward the future. Deliberative rhetoric’s main topoi are expediency/ non-expediency and honour/dishonour, with the strongest case being one that is shown to be both honourable and expedient (Logan 1994, 106). Deliberative rhetoric involves argument that “persuades through logical illustration of potential outcomes based on past or synthetic examples” (den Otter 2001, 1). Forensic rhetoric is concerned with the topoi of justness/ unjustness in assessing past events and it “persuades through syllogistic reasoning, efficiently demonstrating proofs of initial premises with statistics, physical evidence, and selected data” (1). We can see that the three forms of rhetoric are distinct from each other. However, in practice, they interact in narrating the temporal flow of past, present, and future through which we experience time. Traditionally, speeches and texts have been classified as fitting within one or another of these three forms of rhetoric. However, the rhetorician Alan Gross (2006, 25) contends that scientific texts actually integrate all three forms of rhetoric: “A report is forensic because it reconstructs past science

36 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

in a way most likely to support its claims; it is deliberative because it intends to direct future research; it is epideictic because it is a celebration of appropriate methods.” However, to date no one has set out a detailed model of the interaction between these forms of rhetoric within scientific and other narratives. In order to understand these interactions, in the following synthesis I show how the forms of rhetoric function within A.J. Greimas’s narrative schema. This synthesis provides a flexible analytical model with which to approach the various case studies discussed in subsequent chapters. The Narrative Schema Based on Vladimir Propp’s work on Russian folk tales, Algirdas Julius Greimas, a central figure in the Paris School of Semiotics, attempted during the 1960s and 1970s to develop a model of the underlying structures of narratives (Cooren and Taylor 2006; Greimas 1987, 1990). Greimas’s narrative schema involves a coherent sequencing of events, with a beginning, middle, and end, that seeks to solve a problem or to accomplish some goal. It proposes that any narrative consists of five basic phases: manipulation, commitment, competence, performance, and sanction (Cooren and Fairhurst 2004). It involves a set of what Greimas calls “actants,” which are human and non-human agents whose significance is defined through their role in a given phase of the narrative. These actants vary, depending on the narrative phase, with sender and receiver in the manipulation, commitment, and sanction phases, and the receiver engaging with helpers and opponents in the competence and performance phases (Cooren 2000a, 71-74). In this synthesis, the forms of rhetoric are crucial to the functioning of the universal narrative schema. Furthermore, deductive and inductive practical syllogisms help narratives articulate and link actants’ actions in different forms of space and time. Manipulation Phase This phase involves the identification of a problem or disorder to be solved by the hero. Because this problem exists, a sender gives a quest to a receiver, who is to solve the problem. This exchange creates a basic deontic modality: something Greimas terms a “having-to-do,” an obligation to carry out a task (Cooren and Fairhurst 2004, 802). This having-to-do fits well with Sheard’s (1996, 776) comments on how epideictic rhetoric is pivotal in creating an exigency and advocating attendant social action to deal with it: “Much contemporary epideictic rhetoric associated with civic rituals, for instance, or even academic ones, takes as its exigency a problem to be solved, a condition to be changed, a cause to be taken up. Such exigencies would seem to make epideictic discourse preliminary to forensic and deliberative discourses and therefore indispensable (rather than inferior) to them.” Genetics researchers

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 37

use epideictic rhetoric to define the significance of their research problems by emphasizing the magnitude of their value in curing disease and/or understanding human origins. Such values enable and/or define subsequent potential lines of action, but they also preclude following those that might render the organizing narrative incoherent.1 In this sense, epideictic rhetoric in the manipulation phase accords with Foucault’s conception of problematization. This is because the manipulation phase, by ethically and ontologically defining a problem, also defines the subject, the object, and the potential range of transformations (Osborne 2003). Semiotically, the constitution of the subject and the object is only possible through the relations between them since one cannot exist without the other (Cooren and Taylor 2006, 120-21).2 Epideictic rhetoric in the manipulation phase defines the problem and thereby constitutes the modality of having-to-do, a situation that the receiver-subjects must decide on in the next phase – the commitment phase. Commitment Phase In this phase, those who receive the quest can reject it, but if they accept the quest, they then become receiver-subjects by submitting to carry out the quest defined in the preceding manipulation phase. Acceptance of the quest constitutes a new modality of “wanting-to-do” because this submission by the receiver-subjects creates a fiduciary contract between them and the sender of the quest (Cooren 2000a, 74). Critically, this act of submission, which is inherent within the commitment made by the receiver-subject, lends it a powerful moral character: for the receiver-subject is now committed to serving the sender. The resulting tension between the receiver-subject and the object of the quest then drives the narrative (ibid.). It is analytically important to consider how the forms of rhetoric play vital roles in enabling the coordination and interaction of past, present, and future within narratives. This temporal coordination is critical to the coherence and persuasiveness of narratives. Epideictic rhetoric, as the form of rhetoric most concerned with the present, takes on the central mediating role between future-oriented deliberative rhetoric and past-oriented forensic rhetoric. The values articulated in the present by epideictic rhetoric form the basis for assessing and judging deliberative and forensic rhetoric. Each form of rhetoric is complementary; for example, in forensic rhetoric we judge past events based on the values of the present, which are expressed through epideictic rhetoric (e.g., determining whether or not a genetics research project advanced understanding of human disease and/or origins). For its part, deliberative rhetoric makes use of examples from the past (e.g., citing peerreviewed articles) in assessing the potential success or failure of future action.3 Having accepted the quest, the receiver-subjects use deliberative rhetoric

38 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

when they state how they plan to carry out the quest (e.g., by testing Taiwan Aborigines’ genes). In order to understand the way in which things are associated through the forms of rhetoric, it is useful to look at practical syllogisms, which enable us to claim changes in modality within the narrative (Budniakiewicz 1992). Deductive and inductive practical syllogisms allow shifts and linkages to be made between narrative phases and different space-times. Volosinov (1976, 98-102) maintains that all communication is enthymeme-like in that premises that derive from the context, place, and so on are omitted. So I treat the practical syllogism as enthymeme-like in that it always involves unstated or missing premises. A deductive practical syllogism articulates the manipulation phase and commitment phase of a typical genetics research paper: Universal premise: In the manipulation phase, through epideictic rhetoric, transnational science sets out the universal norms and values of the overall disorder and inherent quest modality of having-to-do. For example, increasing scientific knowledge about genetic factors in gout or alcoholism is important. Particular local premise: Involved scientists translate the quest into the local context. For example, these scientists know Taiwan Aborigines have such health problems. Conclusion: In the commitment phase, the conclusion of the practical syllogism involves articulating the universal norms of transnational science with the local and particular. This articulation leads scientists to assert that Taiwan is a suitable site, that Aborigines are suitable subjects to advance scientific knowledge, and that, therefore, they want-to-do or have-to-do this quest. Scientists seek to speak on behalf of science.

Through a deductive practical syllogism, scientists situate their problem within the realm and authority of transnational science; they then shift to the local, so that an articulation is made between the space-time of transnational science and the local-particular context of Taiwan. This reception by the receiver-subject constitutes the wanting-to-do modality and the attendant fiduciary contract through which moral authority and authorizations are claimed. Competence Phase The competence phase itself is an account of how the receivers demonstrate the modalities that Greimas (1990, 72) terms “being-able-to-do” and

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 39

“knowing-how-to-do,” which are required to carry out the quest (see also Cooren and Fairhurst 2004, 802). Each competence phase contains em­ bedded sub-narratives that can also be analyzed by the same five-phase schema. For example, scientists get informed consent, gain funding and ethics authorizations, go to Aboriginal villages to enrol Aboriginal peoples as participants, take Aborigines’ samples, and process these in laboratories. Each embedded competence sub-narrative is itself a narrative that includes an implicit or explicit manipulation phase. If the narrative is to be coherent, this embedded sub-narrative’s manipulation phase must accord with the epideictic rhetoric of the quest defined in the overall manipulation phase. These sub-narratives comprise forensic rhetoric in the sense that they involve accounts of how the receiver-subjects engage in gaining allies that are human (e.g., government officials or Aboriginal participants) and non-human (e.g., knowledge or magic objects). They must overcome opponents such as the irrational fears of potential allies, the threats of enemies, and large scale non-human forces (macroactants) like “cultural extinction.” The receiversubjects, having demonstrated the modalities of being-able-to-do and knowing-how-to-do, will next try to claim completion of their quest. Performance Phase In the performance phase, the receiver-subjects claim to have completed the quest, which involves a to-do modality. They make this claim through an inductive syllogism in which the above competence phase is equivalent to the to-do modality. The to-do modality means they have fulfilled the quest given to them by the sender in the manipulation phase (alternately, the receiver-subjects may fail in the quest): Particular premise: receivers have done A, B, and C. General premise: A, B, and C are equivalent to completing the quest. Conclusion: Receiver subjects have successfully completed the quest.4

This practical syllogism involves a shift from the forensic rhetoric of the receiver-subject’s account of the experiment (know-how-to-do and able-todo) to the epideictic rhetoric of the to-do modality. The receiver-subject’s claim of the to-do modality involves epideictic claims of being worthy of praise (or blame) for fulfilling (or not fulfilling) their ethical and moral obligations under the fiduciary contract, which they originally accepted in the commitment phase. Inductive practical syllogisms provide a way of moving from the forensic accounts of local research projects to the epideictically defined values of universal scientific discourses.

40 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

Sanction Phase In the sanction phase, norms and values originally identified in the epideictic rhetoric of the manipulation phase are used to assess whether the receiversubject has or has not successfully restored order and whether they have fulfilled or not fulfilled the fiduciary contract. The sender or someone acting on behalf of the sender rewards or punishes (praises or blames) the receiversubject, depending on their success or failure. This sanction involves a modality of being evaluated and/or acknowledged (Cooren and Fairhurst 2004, 802). In the shift to this modality, we have another syllogism: Universal premise: Restoring order is good, important, and/or needed. Minor premise: the receiver-subject restored order. Conclusion: the receiver-subject is good, important, and/or needed.5

The sanction phase may or may not be explicit. For example, the scientific community’s positive sanction of research papers may be implied through their publication (though scientific controversies can later bring such sanction into dispute). Once these articles and genetic samples are in circulation, scientists and others can translate this knowledge and thereby represent the involved Indigenous peoples’ genetics and, by extension, involved Indigenous peoples. This issue of representation has very significant implications and consequences for Indigenous peoples. The Organizing Properties of Genetics As boundary objects in genetics research narratives and the networks of transnational science, genes are important actants that have powerful organizing abilities. Apparently material and real, they bridge the micro-macro divide by carrying the narratively defined traces of scientists’ past agency, and others can translate and redefine them in future research. By carrying these traces of agency, genes can transcend the local actions of scientists, rendering genes central mediating objects between different scientists in their geographically and temporally disparate time-spaces. Research teams in different countries can carry on joint research, while they can also refer to research conducted in the past. Genes are narratively defined objects, and so Aboriginal genes are constituted and gain consistency through an ongoing series of black-boxing processes. And, as objects in these processes, genes exert agency and are imbued with various organizing properties (the following is based on Cooren and Taylor 1997, 247-48):

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 41

1 Genes are material, and such “materiality is vital because it is this that permits organization to transcend the bounds of local interaction, which is inherently ephemeral, transitory” (Cooren and Taylor 1997, 247). Genes become common objects about which scientists can now talk and carry out research on over disparate time-spaces (Fox-Keller 1995, x-xii). Critically, materiality means that racially configured research conducted by scientists in one local time-space can be translated into different timespaces, a problematic capacity evident in early-twentieth-century eugenics. For instance, American eugenics heavily influenced the Nazis (Black 2003). Another critical point is that this materiality allows the linking of present day space-times with those of prehistory. For example, PBS in the United States has broadcast and sells DVDs of a documentary entitled The Journey of Man. In this documentary, the evolutionary geneticist Spencer Wells describes the Y chromosome as a time machine, which is passed relatively unchanged from father to son, as he tries to find Adam (the genes of the proto-male ancestor) by studying various Indigenous peoples (PBS 2002; Wells and Read 2002). As well, various genes are used to connect Aboriginal peoples across present-day space-time. For example, as we see in Chapter 6, Taiwan government agencies have translated genetic linkages between Taiwan Aborigines and Pacific Indigenous peoples into diplomatic relations. 2 Genes are plastic in that “the object, because it has been shaped by someone, carries the traces of that shaping, and of the subjectivity which it has thus translated. It is the plasticity of the object-world that makes it a medium of cultural persistence” (Cooren and Taylor 1997, 247). This plasticity in conjunction with material abilities allows transformations undertaken in one time-space to be transmitted to other different timespaces: “In this way, the object carries the traces of not just the immediately preceding conversation, but all the conversations that went before. The network is on its way to being indefinitely extended” (ibid.). For example, Chapter 3 shows how, although large-scale research on Taiwan Aborigines’ genes only began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, by 1998 the Taiwan mass media (e.g., Hsu 1998) had transformed initial speculations on a genetic linkage to explain high levels of Aboriginal alcoholism (e.g., Hwu et al. 1990) into fact. And, eventually, these speculations were translated into Taiwan-New Zealand diplomatic relations. 3 Genes are instrumental as they allow us to become hybrid agents by mobilizing them, enabling us to do things we could not do without them. Such instrumentality is evident when genes function as boundary objects in

42 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

organizing scientific research projects involving a disparate array of institutions. 4 Genes have “inherent properties of their own,” and so they have other forms of agency we cannot control or even anticipate (Cooren and Taylor 1997, 247). A central goal of scientific research is to understand such inherent properties. Furthermore, such inherent properties may only become evident once genes are translated elsewhere. For example, in the 1980s, scientists conducting genetics research in the US and Europe on ancestral origins of peoples of the Pacific could not have anticipated how their research would be translated into Taiwanese nationalist discourses in the 1990s. 5 Genes as objects constrain – that is, “the object serves to hold, to fix, to channel, to restrict, to police” (Cooren and Taylor 1997, 247). An object can constrain humans such that it “may control people’s behaviour in the absence of any immediate human source” (ibid.). For example, genetic samples degrade quickly at room temperature and cell repositories must freeze them in nitrogen for long-term storage. Another example involves how, by conceiving of genes as objects that constrain humans, various scientists have represented some Aboriginal social problems and diseases as having genetic origins, with the result that Aboriginal genes constrain Aborigines. This array of organizing properties helps explain why the concept of genes is highly translatable. How Science Narratives Function As the section that follows deals with how Indigenous peoples destabilize the networks of scientists, it is useful here to summarize how the narratives of scientists function. First, genes are important organizing concepts, boundary objects that allow the interaction of disparate agents across time and space. Second, genes are articulated through scientific narratives that can be analyzed through the use of three forms of rhetoric as well as syllogistic reasoning within the universal narrative schema. The apparent internal coherence and syllogistic reasoning structure of scientific research narratives belie their social contingency. A critical aspect of these practical syllogisms is that the premises are all apparently stated. However, because all narratives are necessarily dialogical (i.e., in dialogue with others), these practical syllogisms rest on a series of contextual factors, common knowledge, and other unstated premises (Bakhtin 1981; Budniakiewicz 1992; San Juan Jr. 1998, 21112; Volosinov 1976, 98-102). Opposing arguments often involve attacks on both stated and implied premises. In this way, critiques undermine the

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 43

smooth progression of modality changes, which is necessary to the completion of the quest and the coherence of the narrative (Budniakiewicz 1992). In other words, criticism that disputes the important stated and implied premises of practical syllogisms can threaten the coherence of a given narrative. This is evident in how Aboriginal critiques have challenged the values, premises, and goals of genetics research. International Aboriginal Resistance to Genetics Research The following is taken from the June 26, 2000, Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB) news release on the Human Genome Project’s potential impact on Indigenous peoples: Brett Shelton, Lakota, an attorney, and IPCB’s Director of Policy and Research states, “Therefore, indigenous peoples need to first obtain information about genetics research likely to be done in their communities. And, indigenous peoples need to assert their sovereign right to control genetics research activities that affect them. They must set limitations and enforce them when research activities affect their peoples.” (Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism 2000)

This IPCB statement situates genetics research within larger issues of Aboriginal sovereignty and self-determination. Kooyooe Dukaddo (Northern Paiute) scholar Deborah Harry (2011, 702) defines the international scope of biocolonialism as involving the “misappropriation of Indigenous knowledge and biological resources within a global site of contestation.” This global scope was evident during the 1990s, when the proponents of the proposed Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) described it as having the noble goals of helping to cure human diseases and learning about human origins and identity. In the original public call to establish the HGDP, its proponents used state-of-emergency rhetoric: A number of populations of considerable interest are rapidly disappearing. Large geographic areas are being exploited and developed, changing rapidly and irreversibly the Aboriginal populations that still survive in every con­tinent ... It is only from knowledge of the gene pools of these populations that we can hope to reconstruct the history of the human past. Humans are an endangered species from the point of view of genetic history. (Bowcock and Cavalli-Sforza 1991, 495)

Cavalli-Sforza and Bowcock use both a species-extinction metaphor and the epideictic rhetorical technique of amplification through phrases and words

44 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

that denote speed, such as “rapidly disappearing” and “endangered” in order to create a sense of urgency (Whitt 1999, 428-29). Furthermore, this speciesextinction metaphor reifies and naturalizes these processes. These scientists, who claimed to act on behalf of humanity, did not fully consider the implications of the project for Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and rights. This split involved what Whitt terms “value bifurcation,” in which the “potential good that may come out of the HGDP in terms of knowledge gained is seen as adequate reason for pursuing it, while potential harm is not seen as adequate reason for abandonment (ibid., 429).” Put another way, what these scientists proposed placed all the significant risks on Indigenous peoples and all the benefits on themselves. However, an international coalition of Indigenous peoples’ organizations and other supporters rejected these premises and goals. They viewed the HGDP as biocolonialism and situated it within the larger context of five hundred years of Western colonialism (Harry 2011; Whitt 1999). The international efforts of these Indigenous peoples’ organizations led to the shelving of the HGDP, despite the formidable scientific network behind it (Barker 2004). How are scientists able to organize networks, like the HGDP, which span transnational genetics research, settler states, and Aboriginal peoples, and involve racially configured distinctions in the enactment of sovereignty and the allocation of rights and obligations? It is possible to analyze these assemblages using Aihwa Ong’s (1999, 6-7) concepts of graduated sovereignty, which she defines as a series of zones that are subjected to different kinds of governmentality and that vary in terms of the mix of discipline and civilizing regimes. These zones, which do not necessarily follow political borders, often contain ethnically marked class groupings, which in practice are subjected to regimes of rights and obligations that are different from those in other zones.

The concept of graduated sovereignties allows us to deal with the interactions between the zones of transnational science, settler states, and Aboriginal peoples in genetics research. On the one hand, in negotiations and contestations over graduated sovereignty zones, involved Aboriginal peoples may attempt to assert a role in decisions over who has what rights and obligations. One of the key elements of Aboriginal sovereignty claims is the right of selfrepresentation. On the other hand, new ethics norms mean that scientists must try to show that they have legitimately gained the consent of involved Aboriginal peoples and, thereby, are justified in representing them. Conflicts

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 45

over the right of representation are played out in the global arena of contemporary neoliberalism. Ong argues that, under contemporary neoliberalism, sovereignty-type allocations of rights and obligations involve complex interactions between states, transnational capital, transnational institutions, and marginalized groups such as Aboriginal peoples. Some of the sharpest critiques of neo­ liberalism have come from Aboriginal peoples. For example, the Zapatistas intentionally began their uprising on January 1, 1994, the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect. Yet, the Maori have made some progress under neoliberalism. Beginning in the 1980s, the implementation of sweeping neoliberal policies in New Zealand reduced levels of state control over education that had allowed for the development of a Maori system of schools (Smith 2007). In part, Maori were successful because their organizing of their own institutions was well under way before the full impact of neoliberalism hit. In the neoliberal reordering, Aboriginal peoples in various places can and do organize into new contingent networks and alliances. In contesting neoliberalism, Aboriginal peoples have attempted to utilize the state’s ability to determine the exceptions to neoliberalism, such as Zapatista calls for the Mexican state to use its sovereignty to protect In­ digenous peasant farmers from cheap, heavily subsidized American agribusiness imports (Russell 2001, 403-4). Niezen identifies what he calls “international Indigenism” as a movement that has developed since the 1950s. Aboriginal peoples have been involved in international forums, including the International Labour Organization and the United Nations. They have mobilized international legal instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and carried out extensive international networking as part of their attempts to strengthen their own claims in relation to settler states that claim sovereignty over them (Niezen 2003, 3-5). Aboriginal claims often do not involve a subsequent claim of the need for formal independence from the settler state. The Zapatistas have relied on extensive use of international networking in their relations with the Mexican state. Yet, at the national level, they have carefully and strategically situated themselves not as an independence movement but, rather, as a Mexican movement. They have done this by invoking the Mexican Constitution and powerful nationalist symbols (such as the Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata) and through extensive organizing at the national level. Aboriginal peoples also network with transnational institutions, including the UN and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), against transnational capital and settler states to strengthen their ability to make a difference in

46 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

determining who has what rights and obligations. Indigenous move­ments attempt to challenge and reconfigure decision- and policy making by utilizing multi-scale strategies, including international networking efforts as well as those at the level of the settler state and in their own Indigenous areas. Sovereignty and Genetics Research Carl Schmitt (1985) contends that the sovereign is that which makes decisions over where the law applies and where there is a state of exception (i.e., when the law is suspended but not abrogated). Such differentiations in sovereignty, Agamben (1998) argues, rely on the existence of an interiorexterior, which is within sovereignty by being outside it. Semiotically, at the centre of sovereignty is an organizing metanarrative in which those who act on behalf of the sovereign, and thereby enact it, do so in opposition to the anti-subject of anomie or the state of nature, which threatens sovereign order. Rather than the complete suspension of law (state of exception), as Agamben or Schmitt might have it, the differential application of law by those who exercise prerogative power and arrogate sovereign functions is justified through a civilizing imperative that opposes the state of nature. The differentials in the application of law are assessed against the threat of the state of nature in this zone.6 The exercise of prerogative powers in biocolonized zones by genetics researchers fits with how “the state of nature has been integrated into civil society” for, “in a modern polity[,] rule of law facilitates the suspension of law and thus prerogative (and the State of Nature) is inextricably linked to the rule of law rather than signifying its absolute negation” (Arnold 2007, 23). According to the political philosopher John Locke, “where law [is] silent,” provided the ruler is wise, “prerogative is nothing but the power of doing public good without a rule” (quoted in Arnold 2007, 10). There is a distinction between those deemed fit for governance through freedom and those deemed still affected to varying degrees by the state of nature, thus requiring coercive authoritarian liberal training or authoritarian governance (or being completely beyond the pale): Correspondingly, liberal democratic governance (guided by the rule of law) administers civil society and prerogative power (the suspension of law) is deployed in the State of Nature. Thus, as Giorgio Agamben (among others) argues, the State of Nature does not precede civil society but is internal to it. It would follow that those who would become objects of prerogative power domestically would be the disenfranchised, those who were conceived of as inhabiting the State of Nature. (Arnold 2005, para. 55)

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 47

Involved scientists justify the exclusion of Indigenous peoples based on the assertion that they are disproportionately affected by the state of nature. However, there is an important difference between the state of exception in metropolitan areas and the state of exception in the colonial context for, in the latter context, the colonizer’s law has never fully existed, so it cannot be said to be suspended (Chowdhury 2007). Rather, the implementation of law is suspended or differentially implemented because of the colonizer’s view that the state of nature persists (or threatens to persist) among the colonized. Thus, an important part of the colonizer’s civilizing project is to train the colonized, thereby allowing them to someday be-able-to act within the polis as fully realized autonomous political agents, just like the colonizers. Until they are able to appropriately and prudently exercise despotism over the self, they should be governed through a form of authoritian liberalism (Valverde 1996). As J.S. Mill argued: “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion” (Mill 1878, 6). In this view, until that day arrives, colonizers must act with paternalistic beneficence toward the colonized in order to protect them from manifestations of the state of nature. In order to understand the sovereignty-like capacities held by scientists, it is useful to consider Ong’s work on assemblages. Ong argues against Agam­ ben’s approaches because they are too state-centred and because they emphasize the concentration camp as a paradigm of modern governance. This, she argues, misses many complex interactions of local, national, and transnational levels (Ong 2006b, 23; Ong 2007, 124). In her analysis of China and Southeast Asian countries including Taiwan, Ong (2006b, 19) further contends that these states follow a logic of the exception in which “neoliberal calculations are applied to practices of human territoriality, or to the control of human populations by the reinscription of geographical space” and that this “fragments human territoriality in the interests of forging specific, variable, and contingent connections to global circuits.” The resulting, often stark, differences in citizenship no longer accord neatly with sovereign states as genetics researchers and other biotechnology scientists are readily mobile and marketable. This is because they are in demand in multiple states and because biotechnology networks are often transnational in scope. As well, genetics researchers are generally not engaged in pure science but, rather, in biotechnology, which is increasingly seamlessly integrated with commerce, state industrial policy, transnational corporate business, and related agendas.

48 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

Genetics researchers are consequently able to negotiate sets of citizenshiplike rights that are, in many ways, superior to those of local people in their host jurisdictions (Ong 2005; Ong 2006a). In genetics research, researchers speak and represent Taiwan Aborigines, and Taiwan Aborigines’ agency is restricted to participation (or non-participation) as sources of samples and information. In this way, genetics research can inclusively exclude Aborig­ inal peoples in that they are at once human (zoe) but are also translated into objects called “Aboriginal genes.” This translation into genes creates hybrid agents, or boundary objects, that scientists and others use to represent Aboriginal peoples as they see fit. These genes circulate within and help articulate networks spanning transnational biotechnology, settler states, and Aboriginal peoples. Rhetoric in Aboriginal Defence A critical component of Aboriginal resistance organizing involves what the Anishinabe (Ojibway) scholar Scott Richard Lyons (2000, 449-50, emphasis in original) terms “rhetorical sovereignty,” which he defines as “the inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires in this pursuit, to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles, and languages of public discourse.” The right to self-representation, being able to represent oneself or appoint one’s representatives, is critical to any type of sovereignty. Aboriginal peoples have long struggled for rhetorical sovereignty against the ontological and epistemological violence of colonialism. Colonialism’s ontological violence involves the forceful marginalization of other worldviews (Walker 2004), while its epistemological violence involves constructing the Other as problematic (Teo 2008). However, there are extensive struggles over deciding the exception within the graduated sovereignty zones through which Taiwan Aborigines’ and other Indigenous peoples’ genes are constituted. Involved scientists advocate pursuing genetics research projects for the benefit of humanity and/or in the name of (or to help) particular biosocial groups, such as those affected by particular diseases. They have often framed Aboriginal peoples’ critiques and legal action as irrational and unfounded, even as a threat to science. This condescension was evident in an important case in which researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Arizona took samples from four hundred Havasupai tribe members, starting in 1990. The samples were supposed to be used for diabetes research but ended up being used, without consent, for “research on schizophrenia, inbreeding, and to support the ‘Bering Strait Theory’ of ancient-human migration” (Harry and Kanehe 2006, 1). Deborah Harry and Le’a Malia Kanehe (Kanaka Maoli) write:

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 49

The Tribe says this further research contradicts their spiritual beliefs and has caused grave emotional distress and mistrust. To shield themselves from further exploitation, the Havasupai Tribe has placed a moratorium on biomedical research on their reservation. The Havasupai’s reaction to their experience has been characterized by the lead researcher and defendant, Dr. Therese Markow, as “hysterical” and by Nature, a well-known science periodical, as “hypersensitive.” (Harry and Kanehe 2006, 1)

These involved scientists and institutions attempted to exclude Havasupai peoples’ claims over their genetic samples. The Havasupai only recently recovered their samples and received US$700,000 in compensation in 2010, following a long battle in the US courts (Harmon 2010). By acting through assemblages that span transnational, national, and local time-spaces, Aboriginal peoples have attempted to ensure that scientific research respects their sovereignty and their rights. Mapping Genetics Research Disputes Aboriginal peoples’ long-term resistance has reshaped the terrain of genetics research in what we might call, in Gramscian terms, a sustained war of position (Gramsci 1971; Reynolds 2004, 322-23, 363-65). The shelving of the HGDP indicates how Aboriginal peoples have been able to reshape the terrain through organizing narratives that seek redress for violations of their human rights and their Aboriginal rights by deciding where the norm and the exception apply. In the diagram below, we have two archetypical narrative schemata mapped out in relation to each other: the genetics research project (“Gene” and its phases enclosed in ovals) has its manipulation phase rooted in the epideictic rhetoric of transnational science. Scientists accept the quest then gain state authorizations and funding, travel to Aboriginal territories, enrol Aboriginal participants, translate them into blood samples, process these samples in laboratories, and then publish the results. Aborigines’ resistance organizing narratives are rooted in their own spacetimes when scientists have violated their rights and dignity. The isomorphism between narrating and organizing means that either narratively organized network is susceptible to disruption anywhere along that network. The Aborigines’ competence phase has two temporally and spatially disparate sets of competence sub-narratives: one set in the transnational area and one in the settler state. These two sets are complementary. For example, Aboriginal peoples might cite international bioethics codes (such as the Helsinki Declaration) or biocolonialism discourses in news releases aimed at the national press. These might be used in conjunction with legal actions such

50 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

Figure 4 Archetypical narrative contestation

as filing complaints over ethical violations by using domestic laws such as the Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples Basic Law. For example, as we see in Chapter 4, a Kavalan Aboriginal community successfully mobilized a complaint process under the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law in conjunction with mass media stories citing international bioethics norms and researcher Lin Ma-li’s violations of the aforementioned law. The Kavalan succeeded (performance phase) and were positively sanctioned in their quest when Lin’s Mackay Memorial Hospital returned the illegally obtained blood samples. This narrative mapping shows how Aboriginal peoples’ genes are contested. Scientists epideictically root their narratives in transnational science, stateoriented national development, and/or biopolitical optimization of the population in order to include Aborigines as research subjects within genetics research organizing narratives. In contrast, Aboriginal organizations root

Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 51

their resistance narratives in their own institutions, cultural values, history, norms, and territories, which can be effectively translated and deployed across multiple forms of space-time, including those of settler state, transnational science, and Aboriginal rights discourses. In this mapping, we see how graduated sovereignty zones function through the narratively organized mediation of objects between interior and exterior. Organizationally, the actants involved in the exercise of (and contestations over) sovereignty try to decide in what ways and how actants are exterior and interior to the affected graduated sovereignty zones. In the case of genetics researchers, they are able to span and articulate these different time-spaces through narratively organized networks based on their quest to know more about their research object – Aboriginal genes. It is this narratively constituted relationship that defines researchers as adept modern subjects and Aboriginal genes as their objects of research. And this is key to genetics researchers’ enrolment of allies (e.g., funding agencies, ethics review boards, journals, etc.) involved in their network. In contrast, the epideictic rhetoric of Aborigines’ resistance narratives brings attention to the political power relationships, particularly the inequities and racialization of the research process itself, thereby undermining the status of the gene as a thing, as an object. Aboriginal peoples are asserting an important right – that of representation of oneself. In a number of cases, Indigenous peoples have challenged the legitimacy of scientists’ authorizations to represent them. For example, in the case of the HGDP, Aboriginal peoples undermined the project’s overall organizing narrative to the extent that American government funding agencies withdrew their support, thus effectively shelving the project. Conclusion Genes as agents have important organizing properties – particularly their materiality, plasticity, and instrumentality – that bridge the micro (local) and macro (non-local) levels. Their materiality translates, and thereby mediates between, scientists across time-spaces. This is because genes are shared circulating objects that genetics researchers can act on instrumentally, thus enabling them to conduct genetics research within their respective timespaces. The materiality and instrumentality of genes allows their local agency in different time-spaces to persist through translations that span transnational science, settler states, and Aboriginal peoples. The plasticity of the genes means that they carry traces of agency from their various past translations. Genes are inscribed through organizing/narrating genetics research so that racially con­ figured agency in one time-space can transcend and persist as this agency is translated into time-spaces both temporally and/or spatially distant.

52 Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages

Aboriginal peoples have undermined the past agency of scientists by high­ lighting how scientists’ re-inscribing of genes can be overtly racist. As described in Chapter 5, Maori-led efforts completely disrupted a team of New Zealand scientists whose organizing narrative claimed that a variant of a gene called MAO-A was implicated in Maori social problems (such as violence and risk taking). Similarly, in the case of the HGDP (see above), Aboriginal peoples’ past agency was so effective that scientists had to engage in persistent and ongoing efforts to marginalize, discredit, or dissociate themselves from Aboriginal critiques, as has also occurred with regard to the National Geo­ graphic Society’s Genographic Project.7 However, as we see in Chapter 6, the US government-funded Coriell Cell Repositories sells various Aboriginal peoples’ cell lines and expressly denies any Aboriginal claims over these genes. In the name of curing disease and of understanding human origins, scientists can buy and use these samples to represent Aboriginal peoples without obtaining involved Aboriginal peoples’ consent. Genetics research merges biopolitics with sovereignty in the emerging global biotechnology-based political economy of governance. This fusion turns on the biomedical-organized transformation of populations into strategic economic resources.8 Transnational-oriented genetics research and investment capital interact with settler state governments in allocating differential bundles of rights and duties to genetics researchers as opposed to Aboriginal peoples. From the outset, Aboriginal peoples’ position has been that of the exotic other, the repository of human diversity that yields clues to vigilant scientists about human origins and/or curing human disease. Such organizing does not involve blind agency in the present; rather, it is oriented through three forms of rhetoric based on relations between their respective temporal orientations of past (where have we been), present (where we are), and future (where are we going). Narratives are pivotal in this regard as they involve the interweaving of these three forms of rhetoric. These processes of black boxing, through which Aboriginal genes are constituted, also co-constitute and, thereby, reproduce complex relations between transnational science, settler state institutions, and Aboriginal peoples.

Imposing Genetic Distinctions: Aboriginal Peoples and Alcoholism in Genetics Research

3

This chapter deals with how genetics researchers, in fewer than ten years, helped construct Taiwan Aborigines as genetically predisposed to alcoholism. Here are three examples of how this genetic distinction has been translated into various forms. First, in a 1998 Taiwan Central News Agency report, Aboriginal health researcher Ko Ying-chin stated that Aborigines were genetically predisposed to alcoholism and suggested “establishing special hospitals to treat alcoholism and training medical personnel to help people stay on the wagon” (Hsu 1998). Ko’s suggestion uses Aboriginal genes to advocate forms of governance for them that are distinct from those pertaining to settlers. Second, distinctions between Aborigines and Han Chinese are also apparent in an article on alcoholism and its treatment in Taiwan. This one appeared in the June 2002 issue of the Taiwan government’s Sinorama Magazine, and it cites a health researcher named Chen Chiao-chicy: “The incidence of alcoholism is about 1.5 percent in Asia, whereas it is as high as 25 percent in the West. The large difference between East and West is mainly due to the fact that there are differences among the body’s enzymes that process alcohol, differences that vary with race.” The use of the word “fact” indicates that the author is certain of this explanation. The article goes on to state that around 50 percent of people of East Asian descent have a variant of the aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) gene, which prevents them from easily metabolizing alcohol: if they drink even a small amount of alcohol they will experience various symptoms, ranging from flushing to nausea. The article then asserts: This “protective coloring” of greater sensitivity to alcohol in fact greatly reduces the incidence of alcohol dependence among people of Asian ancestry. In this context, it is worth noting that the high incidence of alcoholism among Taiwan’s aboriginal people, similar to the incidence

54 Imposing Genetic Distinctions

among people of European ancestry, is due to the fact that aboriginal people, like Europeans, lack this “protective mechanism.” (Chang 2002, emphasis added)

The Sinorama article uses racial categories in conjunction with genetics research on alcoholism to distinguish Taiwan Aborigines from Han Chinese. Third, a Taipei-based company, Taiwan Genome Sciences, has for several years offered mail-order genetic testing to assess the potential risk of developing different ailments. Trademarked and marketed as CheckYourGenes in English (保健基因檢測 in Chinese), one of its tests is for “ALDH2 (Aldehyde dehydrogenase 2),” which it describes as “a mitochondrial enzyme that metabolizes acetaldehyde into acetic acid, getting rid of alcohol toxicity” (Taiwan Genome Sciences 2012a, 2012b). After ordering online, a buyer receives a test kit in the mail. The kit consists of a cheek-swab that the buyer rubs on the inside of her/his mouth to slough off some cells. The buyer then places the swab inside a container and mails it back to the lab (Taiwan Genome Sciences 2012c). The advertisement says the test will show who has the inactive ALDH2 variant that makes the metabolization of alcohol difficult. The sidebar of this test list has a link to a list of news articles posted on the website. One news article, entitled “Alcohol Addiction in 50 Years Increases 200 Times,” discusses a presentation by the Taiwanese researcher Chen Chao-chi (Yang 2004). This 2004 Minsheng Daily newspaper article begins by describing the tortured path from a teenager’s first drinks to early death from alcoholism. It cites statistics from the 1940s, claiming that alcoholism among “mountain Aborigines” was one in a hundred (which is inaccurate according to Rin and Lin 1962, 138) while alcoholism among Han Chinese was virtually unknown. However, rates have now increased two hundred times, so mountain-area Aborigines have rates of 15 to 25 percent and Han Chinese have rates of 1.5 to 2.5 percent. The article maintains that such increases are in part due to the pervasive role of alcohol in contemporary popular culture. Furthermore, it adds that about half of Han Chinese have a variant of ALDH2 that interferes with the metabolization of alcohol, which severely increases the toxic effects of the substance, thus leading to serious health problems. High Aboriginal alcoholism rates are mentioned to reinforce a sense of crisis, but the article only directly mentions the ALDH2 alleles of Han Chinese,1 who are also Taiwan Genome Sciences’ target market. This omission of Aborigines implies they are genetically distinct. In each of these three different contexts, alcoholism-related genes are translated in ways that genetically distinguish Han Chinese from Aborigines. These genes are boundary objects that circulate in research projects, but they also help constitute boundaries through their translation into markers that

Imposing Genetic Distinctions 55

racially distinguish Aborigines from settlers. Chronologically, these examples illustrate how these genetic distinctions have gone from news to fact to supporting evidence for marketing tests to individuals for the management of genetic risk. In this chapter, through an analysis of the narrative schemata of alcoholism-related genetics research journal articles and mass media representations, I show how these genetic-based distinctions have developed since the late 1980s. Scientific Articles The first scientific journal articles about Taiwan Aborigines appear in the late 1800s. Frequently, these took the form of descriptive travelogues, which were published in journals such as Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London (e.g., Kopsch 1869-70). In the early 1900s, more formal medical research began, with articles like “A Critical Study of the Ocular Asymmetry of the Formosan Savage” (Oliver 1910). The Japanese colonial period saw more research by anthropologists such as Takeo Kanaseki, who conducted craniometrical studies on the skulls of Seediq Aborigines killed in the 1930 Wushe Uprising (Pietrusewsky 2005, 223). Data from these skulls are still in use. Early attempts at genetics research on Taiwan Aboriginal peoples included the 1963 paper “Abnormal Hemoglobin Studies in Taiwan Aborigines” by Blackwell and Huang (1963), which appeared in Science. Chai Chen-kang used blood typing and various forms of physiological measurements in his book Taiwan Aborigines: A Genetic Study of Tribal Variations, which was published by Harvard University Press in 1967 (Chai 1967). Nakajima et al. gathered samples from Taiwan Aborigines that were used in a series of papers in 1971 such as “the distribution of several serological and biochemical traits in East Asia. IV. The distribution of the blood groups in the Taiwanese mountain aborigines” published in the Japanese Journal of Human Genetics (Schanfield 2002).2 However, it was not until the 1980s, with the widespread availability of advanced biotechnology methods, that large-scale and systematic genetics research on Taiwan Aborigines began.3 Communal heavy drinking was an integral aspect of traditional Aboriginal ceremonies, which also included feasting, dancing, and singing (Barclay 2003; Mackay 1896). Using various methods, people made alcohol a few days before the ceremonies by fermenting millet or rice into a type of wine or beer (Barclay 2003, 84). The historical record is one-sided, with various accounts written by Dutch, who criticized Siraya Aborigines’ heavy drinking, a familiar pattern in the upheavals of colonization (Chiu 2008, 202-4). Chinese accounts of the 1600s and 1700s emphasize communal drinking among colonized Pingpu. In his 1746 book Illustrations of the Flora and Fauna of Taiwan, Li Shi-qi writes: “When the harvest is in, the savages invite

56 Imposing Genetic Distinctions

one another for a celebration. Men and women sit together unsegregated. Drinking and making toasts, they enjoy themselves. They do not stop until they are drunk” (quoted in Teng 2004, 283). Since Chinese society was highly gender segregated, these Chinese literati viewed Aboriginal men and women drinking together as an impropriety and a sign of a lack of civilization (Teng 2004, 155). Shepherd (1993, 390) cites missionary accounts of the 1800s as indicating that colonized Pingpu were becoming demoralized, thus contributing to rising levels of alcoholism. For example, Presbyterian missionary George Leslie Mackay (1896, 266), who went into still independent Atayal areas during the 1870s and 1880s, stated that alcoholism, in the sense of habitual drinking that impaired social functioning and caused physical illness, was unknown; however, among colonized groups it was common. Japanese officials criticized Aboriginal peoples’ ceremony-related drinking (Barclay 2003). Similarly, up until at least 1918, Japanese anthropologists, while often criticizing heavy alcohol consumption among Aborigines during ceremonies, still maintained that they were not habitual drinkers. So there is a pattern in the historical record in that alcoholism appears to accompany the breakdown of traditional Aboriginal social organization with the imposition of colonial relations. Field research seems to indicate that alcoholism rates were still very low in many Aboriginal communities in the immediate post-Second World War period. Rin and Lin conducted field research on mental health among a number of Atayal, Saisiat, Ami, and Paiwan rural communities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They found an average alcoholism rate of 0.1 percent, with the Paiwan having no cases (Rin and Lin 1962, 138). Their 1962 paper, entitled “Mental Illness among Formosan Aborigines as Compared with the Chinese in Taiwan,” indicates that they found a total of thirteen cases of alcoholism among 11,442 Aborigines compared to two cases among 19,931 settlers (ibid.). Such low levels, despite the experience of Japanese colonialism, seem to indicate that Aboriginal societies were still able to deal with these stresses. However, according to the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines’ 1993 statement to the United Nations, it was in the post-Second World War period that Aboriginal society started to break down, and with this came a rapid rise in levels of alcoholism. This sort of social breakdown was already evident in an early study in which Rin Hsien (1957) attributed rising alcoholism among the Nan-shih group of the Ami to urbanization-related acculturation pressures (cited in Li and Hsu 1989). Scientists’ Early Speculations on Aboriginal Genes and Alcoholism Theories of the inheritability of alcoholism date back to the late 1800s, and general concepts of its running in families are much older. However, the

Imposing Genetic Distinctions 57

application of biotechnology to the investigation of alcoholism began in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, a number of genes, including ALDH, ADH, and DRD2, were being investigated. One of the first references to potential genetic factors in alcoholism among Taiwan Aborigines occurred in a 1988 paper by Hwu et al. published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. The article is actually a survey of alcoholism among settlers and Taiwan Aborigines, but, in the discussion section, they speculate about potential biological factors. Citing other studies’ findings and their own research, which indicates that Taiwanese Aborigines have higher rates of alcoholism than do settlers, Hwu et al. (1988, 12, emphasis added) state: This might also support the hypothesis of an etiological difference between AA [alcohol abuse] and AD [alcohol dependence] because of the racial dif­ference in the prevalence of alcoholism ... Difference in biological endowment between different races, such as the different sensitivity to alcohol has been proposed as one of the alternatives for explanation of the difference in alcoholic prevalence. Long-term clinical and biological follow-up studies for AA and AD cases identified in the community by DIS-CM [diagnostic criteria] deserves serious consideration to test the etiological hypothesis formulated above.

Though they are rather tentative, Hwu et al. focus on race as central to alcoholism. Hwu and his colleagues further developed this racially configured hypothesis in an influential and oft-cited 1990 article published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica entitled “Alcoholism among Taiwan Aborigines Defined by the Chinese Diagnostic Interview Schedule: A Comparison with Alcoholism among Chinese” (Hwu et al. 1990). In constituting their research question, Hwu et al. first discuss the differences in alcoholism between settlers and Aborigines that Rin and Lin (1962) found in field research conducted from 1949 to 1953: “These studies showed the prevalence rates of alcoholism with severe complications to be 0.01 percent and 0.1 percent in Chinese and aborigines respectively. The ratio for the prevalence rates between the aborigines and the Chinese was 10” (Hwu et al. 1990, 374). Hwu et al. convert Rin and Lin’s (1962, 138) field research finding of thirteen cases among 11,442 Aborigines (0.1 percent) and two cases among 19,931 settlers (0.01 percent) into a 10:1 ratio and a historical baseline for comparison. They cite the Taiwan mass media as a source of information on Aboriginal alcohol problems, stating: “The Taiwan aborigines have given the impression that they drink heavily, and newspapers have reported sporadic observation of alcohol-related physical and behavioural problems in the aboriginal

58 Imposing Genetic Distinctions

community” (Hwu 1990, 374). In these ways, Hwu et al. use statistics to define differences between settlers and Aborigines. Even though Hwu et al.’s article is not a genetics paper but, rather, a survey whose purpose is to determine alcoholism prevalence, they spend several paragraphs speculating on ALDH alleles as potential factors in Taiwan Aboriginal alcoholism (Hwu et al. 1990, 378-79). They cite a 1989 paper entitled “Racial Differences in Subjective Responses to Alcohol: Biomedical Implications for Alcoholism” and published in Chinese Psychiatry. Based on this paper, they argue that some 50 percent of the Chinese population have the “deficient aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH-I)” allele, whereas only 5 percent of Aboriginal participants have this inactive alcohol metabolization allele (ibid.). Again, this involves the 10:1 ratio, this time in the prevalence of ALDH-I (ALDH2). After a discussion of published research findings related to flushing, they state: “In summary, the difference in prevalence rates of alcoholism in Chinese and aborigines may be explained by metabolic differences. The fast-flushing response because of deficient ALDH-I activity may be an effective aversive protective mechanism in Chinese against developing both AA [alcohol abuse] and AD [alcohol dependence] alcoholism” (379). These 10:1 ratios lead them to suggest that the different effects of Taiwan’s rapid industrialization on Taiwan settlers and Aboriginal societies may be unimportant. They contend that, because their research found the same ratio in 1980s as in Rin and Lin’s research from the late 1940s and early 1950s, increases in alcoholism rates observed among Taiwan settlers and Aborigines might be due to genetic factors: As discussed above, the ratio of prevalence rates of AD [alcohol dependence] in Chinese and aborigine samples was 9 and 10, both in the current study and the study 40 years ago. Such similar figures strongly suggest that the pathogenetic effects of modernization in these 40 years on the prevalence of alcoholism were the same for Chinese and aborigines. Socio-cultural effects on differences in prevalence of alcoholism between Chinese and aborigines might not be significant, judging from these data. (Hwu et al. 1990, 379)

A critical aspect of Hwu et al.’s argument is that it does not consider the radically different historical experience of Aboriginal peoples relative to that of settlers under Japanese and KMT colonialism to be significant. In this view, it is the stress due to modernization interacting with distinctions in genetic predispositions that leads to differences in the prevalence of alcoholism between settlers and Aborigines.

Imposing Genetic Distinctions 59

Figure 5 Narrative mapping of genetics research project

The Organization of Genetics Research Papers Scientific research articles have been the critical actants in the imposition of pathological genetic identities on Taiwan Aborigines. The scientific research article as a cultural form developed in Western Europe beginning in the 1600s (Schryer 1999). It has since become the authoritative form for the dis­semin­ ation of scientific research findings. Yet, its authority rests on a highly regimented, epideictically stylized form of communication that does not docu­ment the messy reality of how scientific research is conducted (Latour 1987; Sullivan 1991); rather, each scientific research article is a formalized representation that unfolds in a predictable manner (Latour 1987; Schryer 1999). Researchers translate the form of the scientific article according to its context. In the following section, I analyze how this translation occurs in the narrative schemata of journal articles on alcoholism-related genetics research involving Taiwan Aborigines. The diagram below summarizes how these translations occur in Taiwan and their forms of organization.

60 Imposing Genetic Distinctions

The figure above is a narrative mapping of black-boxing processes in a genetics research paper. It traces the narratively organized articulations (both in the sense of to speak about and to link) of various forms of time-space and zones of graduated sovereignty through which the genes of Taiwan Aborig­ ines, gene research, and researchers are co-constituted. Manipulation Phase In this first phase, transnational science is the sender giving the quest to the receiver. This phase pivots around the construction of a problem that must be solved, involving a deontic modality that Greimas refers to as a “havingto-do” (Cooren and Fairhurst 2004, 802). Epideictic rhetoric is critical as scientists define the problem or disorder through appeals to the values and presumed norms of the audience. For example, Thomasson et al. (1994, 640) begin as follows: “Alcohol use disorders are complex behavioral entities with both environmental and biological origins, and hence have been called ‘ecogenetic.’ The relative contribution of various environmental and biological factors toward development of alcohol abuse and/or dependence is likely to differ among different populations and social groups.” Thomasson et al. adhere to the orthodoxy that alcoholism is due to the interaction of environmental and genetic factors that vary with populations. In another example we read: “Alcoholism is a complex, multifactorial disease, with both environmental and biological origins” (Chen C.H. et al. 1996, 488). In short, alcoholism is a disorder that requires action. In the first few paragraphs of a research paper the authors try to associate it with existing bodies of knowledge by mobilizing supportive citations, which has the added benefit of demonstrating their knowledge of the field (Latour 1987; Sullivan 1991). For example, Osier et al. (1999, 1,147) offer eleven citations from seven dif­ ferent papers in their first paragraph, while Chen C.H. et al. (1996, 488) offer eleven citations from eleven different papers. Commitment Phase In the scientists’ narratives, transnational science is the sender of the quest. That is, transnational science as a macro-actant gives a mission to the scientists either by convincing them or by communicating it to them. In either disease or human origins narratives, transnational science speaks to the researchers through circulating discursive objects such as peer-reviewed articles. Transnational science then gives the scientists a quest to help further knowledge about human origins or human disease so that the scientists now become receiver-subjects. Researchers accept the quest, and genes provide the boundary objects, which they can use to propose research questions, to

Imposing Genetic Distinctions 61

study, and to transform. This commitment creates the modality of wantingto-do (Cooren and Fairhurst 2004, 802).4 The deductive practical syllogism formed by the manipulation phase and the commitment phase constitute the narrative’s problem and define the urgency of the quest (Budniakiewicz 1992, 53-54). This deductive practical syllogism is vital to genetics research problematizations since it sets out the central ethical and normative values of the quest in order to constitute a network that articulates and embeds three distinct forms of time-space: transnational science, settler state, and Taiwan Aborigines in their territories. This practical syllogism defines the settler state as a time-space in which advances in transnational science can be realized through research on Taiwan Aborigines. Thereby, this practical syllogism embeds Aborigines within the settler state and, in turn, embeds the settler state within the transnational scientific time-space. This embedding is evident in the above diagram of the genetic narrative schema articulating different time-spaces. Genetics researchers posit that they can answer a research question raised by transnational science by researching the genes of Taiwan Aboriginal peoples. A research article’s deductive practical syllogism uses epideictic rhetoric in its premises, shifting to deliberative in the syllogism’s conclusion, thus creating a sense of momentum from the present toward the future. As Sheard (1996) comments, by appealing to “what-could-be,” epideictic rhetoric can shift a narrative’s time orientation and space toward the future, which defines time-space (within which social action and agency occur) in terms of possibilities. In this way, epideictic rhetoric proceeds and sets the stage for deliberative rhetoric. That is, epideictic rhetoric outlines the larger social and/ or scientific significance of the quest that is to follow (Sheard 1996; Graff and Winn 2005; O’Gorman 2005) and thereby orients those subsequent actions toward furthering the quest. In alcoholism-related genetics research narratives, this involves a practical syllogism in which the universal major premise of transnational scientific knowledge is that alcoholism may be caused by genetic and environmental factors. For example, in a 1997 paper, Taiwan Aboriginal Study Project researchers at Academia Sinica (Taiwan’s top government research institute) considered racial differences in alcohol metabolization genes. In the manipulation phase of this article, which appears in the journal Biological Psychiatry, Academia Sinica researchers begin with: “Polymorphism [variation] in the three genes that encode for the principal enzymes involved in the metabolism of alcohol and its metabolites, i.e., ADH2, ADH3, and ALDH2, may contribute to the widely observed individual and racial differences in patterns of alcohol consumption and reactions to alcohol, and hence the

62 Imposing Genetic Distinctions

development of alcohol use disorders” (Chen W.J. et al. 1997, 703, emphasis added). This opening statement immediately defines a racially configured quest sent by transnational science to scientists. In this quest, they must learn more about differences between alleles of alcohol metabolization genes in order to better understand alcoholism. In the phrase “widely observed individual and racial differences,” the article uses epideictic rhetoric in its emphasis on the magnitude of the prevalence of alcoholism. This usage defines the racialized normative values and assumptions as well as the general parameters of the quest to follow. This universal premise as defined in the manipulation phase then leads to the commitment phase with the local minor premise that genetics research involving Aborigines can advance scientific knowledge since Aborigines now have high alcoholism rates. For example, Chen W.J. et al. (1997, 704) use a minor local premise that marginalizes the issues of colonialism when they state: “Taiwanese aborigines, who can be distinguished by extensive differences in physiognomy, language and sociocultural institutions, have experienced a sharp increase in the prevalence of alcoholism within the past four decades.” This minor premise defines Taiwan Aborigines as Other and, therefore, as suitable objects on which to conduct such transnational scientific quests, thus embedding Aborigines’ and their territories within the time-space of transnational science. The minor premise leads to the practical syllogism’s conclusion and a shift to deliberative rhetoric as Chen W.J. et al. describe their future plans to fulfill the quest: An investigation of these aboriginal groups may provide an opportunity to further characterize possible interactions between alcohol metabolism genes and environmental factors in the development of alcoholism. In this study, we compared the frequency of genotypes for three alcohol metabolism genes among subjects with alcohol dependence and ethnically matched normal controls in the four largest aboriginal groups in Taiwan. (704, emphasis added)

This submission to the senders’ quest by the scientists creates a fiduciary contract between them and the sender of the quest (Cooren 2000, 74) so that now the scientists are in the service of transnational science. As well, the use of control groups is supposed to cancel out the influence of nontarget variables like environmental factors such as colonialism, something I discuss shortly. The universal premise may simply be implied. For example, an early genetics research article published by Chen Chiao-chicy et al. in 1991 does not include a universal premise. It begins with the minor localizing premise:

Imposing Genetic Distinctions 63

“Alcoholism (alcohol dependence) has become a major public health problem in Taiwan” and uses the first two paragraphs to cite and discuss epidemiological surveys about the rapid increase in Aboriginal alcoholism (Chen C.C. et al. 1991, 409). It then uses a minor premise: “The above epidemiological studies have revealed … striking differences in the prevalence of alcohol abuse and alcoholism among Taiwan inhabitants of diverse ethnic backgrounds.” This minor premise then leads to the conclusion: “The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between ALDH isozymes, flushing patterns, and ethnic groups” (Chen C.C. et al. 1991, 410). Through the use of this deductive practical syllogism, Chen C.C. et al. move from the sphere of transnational science in the article’s premise to their specific project in its conclusion. These deductive practical syllogisms involve ontological and epistemological violence as their various premises reify forms of historical and currentday repression as natural forces. Even when these researchers acknowledge the upheavals of colonization (such as poverty-driven migration to urban areas in search of employment and economic opportunities), they still emphasize the idea that Aborigines are genetic isolates. For example, Thomasson et al. (1994, 641) state: An estimated 125,000 Atayal live in small, closely knit groups in mountainous regions where they are relatively isolated from the Chinese and other outsiders, including other native tribes. Although many young Atayal individuals have emigrated to the plains in recent years, those who stayed in the mountains have remained relatively isolated genetically, since nearly all the marriages are within the same ethnic group.

This paradigm enables researchers to continue to identify involved Aboriginal peoples as exceptional and genetically distinct and, therefore, as suitable transnational research objects for advancing their quest for scientific knowledge about genetics. Competence Phase This third phase accounts for most of a research journal article. As Fahnestock (1998, 333) notes: “Scientific research papers are largely concerned with establishing the validity of the observations they report; thus the swollen prominence of the ‘Materials and Methods’ and ‘Results’ sections.” Thus, the standard scientific paper format involves strong forensic rhetorical aspects. In these sections, scientists provide accounts of why their actions were justified in terms of advancing the overall quest (earlier defined in the epideictic rhetoric of the manipulation phase). For example, they argue that they used

64 Imposing Genetic Distinctions

appropriate scientific methods such as processes, statistical tests, and so on. In other words, the scientists argue, through this series of sub-narratives, that they have carried out the tasks needed to fulfill the quest. By so doing, they claim the modalities that Greimas terms being-able-to-do and knowinghow-to-do (Greimas 1990, 72; Cooren and Fairhurst 2004, 802). Competence Phase Sub-Narrative 1 Spatially this phase of the quest is defined through exchanges between the scientists (generally based at universities or research institutes) with settler state institutions. In this first competence phase sub-narrative, the scientists must gain the financial resources of the settler state. As well, they may claim implied or expressed moral authorizations from institutional review boards, though early papers such as those of Chen C.C. et al. (1991) and Thomasson et al. (1994) make no mention of these boards. Usually stated at the beginning or end of the paper, funding is generally from one or some combination of Taiwan’s National Science Council, Department of Health, National Health Research Institute, or a university (see, e.g., Chen W.J. et al. 1997, 708; Kidd et al. 1998, 225). US-based researchers frequently have US government funding (e.g., Lu et al. 1996, 427-28). With processes of institutional moral approval and/or authorizations, including funding, scientists can now enrol Aboriginal participants in Aboriginal territories. Competence Phase Sub-Narrative 2 The materials and methodology section of an article can involve what the Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, 78-106) calls “research adventures on Indigenous lands.” This is generally a very brief forensic account of how settler and Western researchers travel into Aboriginal territories to enrol Ab­original people as participants through interviews and sampling. The largest and longest-running research study is Academia Sinica’s Taiwan Aboriginal Study Project (TASP), which began in 1986 and involves 993 Aborigines (Chen W.J. et al. 1997, 704; Cheng and Hsu 1992, 258-61). TASP gathers information from a powerful array of local governance institutions as well as health workers, coroners, local government officials, priests, and police (Chen W.J. et al. 1997, 704; Cheng and Hsu 1992, 258-61). Having identified potential participants, the researchers must now complete their enrolment. In the case of alcoholism research, the subjects are clas­sified according to localized translations of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnostic criteria for alcoholism (e.g., DSM-III, DSM-III-R, or DSM-IV) or some similar diagnostic criteria. These DSM criteria are important since they are the critical classification tool through which researchers constitute alcoholic subjects

Imposing Genetic Distinctions 65

and non-alcoholic subjects. For example, Thomasson et al. (1994, 641) used a “Chinese modified diagnostic interview schedule,” developed and described by Hwu et al. (1990), in conjunction with DSM-III criteria to classify Aborig­ inal subjects as alcoholic or non-alcoholic. DSM-III-R fits well with these studies since it is a mixture of social and physical diagnostic criteria and cites twin studies on the intergenerational transmission of alcoholism depend­ ence that “suggest [that] genetics influence the disorder” (American Psychi­ atric Association 1987, 174-75). Researchers use DSM or similar diagnostic procedural narratives to translate Aboriginal participants in their local contexts into transnational scientific standardized subjectivities of alcoholic and non-alcoholic control groups. Alcoholism researchers select participants to reinforce the notion of Taiwan Aborigines as genetically isolated, and different, from settler populations. For example, Chen W.J. et al. (1997, 704) state: “Any subjects born to an intergroup marriage were excluded.” Thomasson et al. (1994, 641) state: “Intermarriage is not common in the villages, and there was no known admixture with the Han in any of the selected individuals.” This is based on the idea that the more isolated a population is, the more genetically homogenous it is. This being the case, due to increased genetic homogeneity it will manifest genetic disorders at higher rates than presumably more heterogeneous settler populations. The researchers may have selected their participants, but critical authorization comes from involved Aboriginal peoples. Informed consent involves scientists fully informing potential research participants about the research project’s purposes as well as any potential risks or benefits for the participants. At this point, the potential participant will be able to make an informed choice about whether or not to consent. Due to the horrors of Nazi medical experimentation in concentration camps and similar abuses committed by Western scientists in colonial and prison settings, informed consent has become an important ethical concept in biomedical research (Black 2003; Chernin 1989). For genetics researchers, the practice of informed consent is important in legitimizing the enrolment of research subjects since the latter consent to being represented by the former. This lends a moral and legal credibility to the research because it allows scientists to render Aboriginal people as having exercised their own free will in agreeing to participate. Yet, the cursory treatment given to informed consent shows how it has been rendered a routine formality. For example, after they were classified according to DSM alcoholism diagnostic criteria, “blood was drawn from subjects after informed consent was obtained, and leukocyte was isolated” (Thomasson et al. 1994, 641). A number of authors argue that the power differentials inherent in the relationship between doctor and patient render

66 Imposing Genetic Distinctions

issues of informed consent highly problematic (Nisker and Door 2006, 115). This asymmetrical relation is evident in widespread and persistent research ethics violations in Taiwan (Taiwan Public Television Service 1999; Chou 2006, 22; Lin M.J. 1999; Liu 2000b; Tsai 2007). These past ethics violations and inequities have become strong elements in Aboriginal resistance to the Taiwan Biobank project (Chou 2006, 22, 29; Tsai 2007). In Aboriginal territories in which there are health care shortages, researchers often offer health check-ups to Aboriginal people in exchange for genetic samples (Chou 2006, 22). This relationship is somewhat analogous to that of employer and employee in a place with high unemployment. If any Aboriginal people choose not to participate in research projects, this has minimal implications for the researchers’ personal well-being; however, Aboriginal people who refuse to participate miss opportunities for health care. Critically missing from medical articles are the thousands of violations of Aboriginal peoples’ rights and dignity that occur when, under the guise of providing health checkups, researchers obtain samples without obtaining informed consent (Taiwan Public Television Service 1999; Liu 2000b; Chou 2006, 22; Li Z.Y. 2007). I discuss these sorts of abuses in detail in the next chapter. Blood samples taken (whether with or without informed consent) and extensive information obtained through the interviewing process have been alienated from Aboriginal participants. These samples and information now become equivalent to the Aboriginal subjects and, through representative sampling, represent the target Aboriginal population. In Callon’s (1986, 214-21) terminology, Aboriginal participants are enrolled, and the scientists are now rendered their spokespeople. The samples, which are deemed equivalent to Aborigines, are mobile, which means that they can be transported or transferred; stable, so (with care) they will not deteriorate or otherwise change form; and combinable with already centralized existing bodies of knowledge (Latour 1987, 223-24). The equivalency of these samples with Aborigines is key to the inductive practical syllogisms that follow. Competence Phase Sub-Narrative 3, In the Lab The methodology section now shifts spatially through another set of translations in which scientists process Aborigines’ blood samples. These technically detailed sub-narratives provide accounts of sample preparation, processing, production of numerical data, and statistical tests. In the preparation subnarratives, the samples are further translated by scientists through standardized testing procedural narratives using various allies, including specialized machines (like centrifuges), chemical agents (such as agarose gel used in electrophoresis), and testing kits. The processing allows for the transformation of the genetic materials into numerical data, which genetics researchers

Imposing Genetic Distinctions 67

test for statistical significance at certain internationally acceptable levels and then interpret. In Aboriginal alcoholism research, testing for differences among population-matched groups is supposed to control for – in effect cancel out and thereby eliminate – non-target actants’ influence. This allows the paper to isolate the correlation between alcoholism and different alleles of genes (like ADH and ALDH) without interference from the effects of colonialism and other non-target variables (like racism), effects that are thereby cancelled out and marginalized. The results, or discussion, phase involves the climax of the paper in which the researchers discuss the relevance of their particular research in relation to the field. This discussion involves an inductive practical syllogism as the researchers attempt to set out the significance of their research. Rather like the climactic conflicts at the end of an adventure movie, the discussion section is where the researchers attempt to rhetorically associate their work with science’s established “body of knowledge.” These claims also contribute to the performance phase that follows. There are two main types of epideictic rhetoric used here. First, the authors make an argument that emphasizes the significance of their results. For example, Thomasson et al. base their argument on a comparison of the statistical frequency of the ALDH2*2 and ADH2*1 allele (related to alcohol metabolization) among Atayal, Koreans, Japanese, and Han Chinese settlers (Thomasson et al. 1994, 641-2). Second, the authors criticize other papers and claim that theirs is superior (Northcut 2003, 1-5). Lu et al.’s (1996, 425-27) discussion section establishes its association with existing knowledge by attacking the methodology of two earlier (1991 and 1993) papers. Against these papers, in an argument based on statistics and statistical significance, Lu et al. argue that the DRD2 haplo­ types (dopamine receptors in the brain) cannot be associated with alcoholism among their settler, Atayal, and Ami study groups. They do not argue against the existence of DRD2 in certain types of alcoholism but, rather, for the need to look at other genes, including DRD4, ADH, and ALDH. In another example, Chen W.J. et al. assert that their population sample made proper use of a control and subject group, which allows them to focus on genetic factors. These assertions involve epideictic rhetoric because they are phrased in terms of magnitude in that they indicate that this study, unlike earlier studies, has been able to constitute a sample of Taiwan Aborigines that is genetically isolated: “In this study, controls were selected from the same community as cases and their ethnicity strictly matched. This was feasible because there are still few intergroup marriages between these aboriginal groups. This would make the relationship between alcohol metabolizing genes and alcoholism confounded by population admixture less likely” (Chen W.J. et al. 1997, 706). They make a strong claim that their subjects are genetic isolates without

68 Imposing Genetic Distinctions

“admixture” and argue for the significance of their paper on the basis that only one other study (Thomasson et al. 1994) used control groups. In their discussion, Carr et al. (1996, 45) argue for the significance of Atayal populations as population isolates for alcoholism research, “because the Atayal have unique genotypes and a higher rate of alcoholism than populations in different areas of the world, this population should continue to be beneficial for identifying biological, as well as environmental, risk factors of alcoholism and its related diseases such as ALD [Alcohol-Induced Liver Disease].” In other words, they view Taiwan Aborigines as isolated populations that provide “beneficial” and “valuable” opportunities to understand alcoholism-related genetics. In this early phase of study, researchers soon contemplate the potential larger genetic governance and policy implications. In 1996, Lu et al. (1996, 427) comment: “Theoretically, genotypes at the ADH2, ADH3, and ALDH2 loci could be used to classify people into several different alcoholic risk groups. After stratification of the samples by ADH and ALDH genotypes, the frequencies of certain genotypes and haplotypes [variants] at other relevant loci might be expected to be higher in alcoholics than those in nonalcoholics.” Lu et al.’s proposed classification of alcoholic risk groups would involve the use of the instrumental organizing properties of genes (something that the Taiwan Genome Sciences is now marketing in its lifestyle genetic testing). The competence phase and its sub-narratives function as premises in an inductive practical syllogism that argues that the local research project has produced valid findings. The next part of this inductive practical syllogism is the conclusion, which follows in the performance phase. Performance Phase The scientists as receiver-subjects claim they have completed the above sequence of competence phase actions, thereby fulfilling the quest given to them by transnational science in the manipulation phase (alternatively, the hero may fail in the quest). This claim allows movement from the particular and local setting, defined in the minor premises of the competence phase’s forensic accounts of the research project, to the epideictically configured conclusion that the project has advanced transnational scientific knowledge. Scientists claim to have articulated and organized the space-times of transnational science, the Taiwan settler state, and Taiwan Aborigines, which involves a modality of to-do (Cooren and Fairhurst 2004, 802). The performance phase involves claiming completion of the quest that the sender gave to the receiver-subject in the manipulation phase. The discussion phase is analogous

Imposing Genetic Distinctions 69

to the climactic scenes of a movie. The experimenters seek, through inductive practical syllogisms, to rhetorically situate their research within the established field of knowledge through either association or disassociation. They claim to have successfully performed their quest and to be worthy of positive sanction for having advanced scientific knowledge. This claim can involve restating the role of the genetic agent(s) in relation to other risk factors. For example: “These data demonstrate that, in addition to the recognized environmental factors such as economic pressures, employment rates, cultural, religious, and familial practice with respect to alcohol, allelic differences at the ADH2 and ALDH2 loci influence one’s alcohol drinking behavior and risk for alcoholism” (Thomasson et al. 1994, 642). Some alcohol papers simply restate the main finding (e.g., Chen W.J. et al. 1997, 708), while others add that there might be other potential genetic factors that need to be explored (e.g., Osier et al. 1999, 1,156). Sanction Phase The sanction phase concludes the narrative. It involves the restoration of order to the state of disorder identified/constituted in the manipulation phase. In this final phase of the narrative, the original sender of the quest rewards or punishes the receiver-subject. In the case of genetics research, other scientists (at arm’s length) act on behalf of transnational science through the peer review process. These scientists, acting on behalf of transnational science, positively sanction the scientist heroes as having completed their quest to advance transnational scientific knowledge. This assessment involves a modality of being evaluated and/or acknowledged (Cooren and Fairhurst 2004, 802).5 This process of sanction is stated briefly in a note listing the date the paper was received and when it was accepted for publication. Those acting on behalf of science through the peer review process could reject the receiversubject, but readers do not see these instances in the research article since each article they see has already been accepted and positively sanctioned. Research Objects Aboriginal participants are now identified by the alcoholism-related subjectivity imposed on them by the project’s organizational narratives. Donor anonymity means that it is difficult for involved Aborigines to commit what Callon (1986, 214-21) terms “treason” (and withdraw) because they are now enrolled and scientists are their spokespeople. As well, because of the random sampling involved, the samples may be claimed to be equivalent to the entire Aboriginal population. Once translated into black boxes, these genes become increasingly mobile, stable, and combinable (see Table 1).

Competence Knowing-how- Forensic (Inductive)   to-do   rhetoric Local premise: “We received authorizations.” Being-able-to-do Local premise: “We enrolled and sampled  Aborigines.” Local premise: “We tested the Aborigines’  samples” Local premise: “We found the following results.”

Transnational science

Manipulation Having-to-do Epideictic (Deductive) Science is the sender that   rhetoric Universal premise: “Science must study   gives quest   genetics to cure disease.” Commitment Wanting-to-do Epideictic Local particular premise: “We’re scientists Scientists as receiver-   rhetoric   and we want to study genetics to cure   subjects accept their quest   disease.” Receiver-subjects define Deliberative Local premise: “Aborigines have disease.”   how they complete quest   rhetoric   (local manifestation of disorder)   creating fiduciary contract Conclusion: “We scientists will study   Aborigines “

Transnational science

Laboratories

Settler state institutions Aboriginal territories

Taiwan

Taiwan

Predominant form of (others forms have implied time-space presence)

Schematic phase Modality Form of rhetoric Syllogism

Summary of genetics research narrative schema

Table 1

Transnational science

Sanction Evaluation and Epideictic Universal conclusion: Peer reviewers say “You   acknowledg-   rhetoric   have contributed to scientific knowledge.”   ment of what   has been done

Source: Based in part on Cooren and Fairhurst (2004, 802) and Fairhurst (2007, 34).

Transnational science

Performance To do Epideictic Universal premise: “We have contributed to  rhetoric  scientific knowledge.”

Local premise: “We discuss our results in relation   to, and thereby associate our results with,   established knowledge.”

72 Imposing Genetic Distinctions

The Organizing Properties of Aboriginal Genes The networks in which genes originate are forgotten over time, and, as a result, genes tend to become black boxes, treated as objects or coherent unified entities imbued with various organizing properties. As objects in these processes, the genes also exert agency, or, in Anthony Giddens’s terminology, they make a difference (Cooren 2001a, 283). Genes enable those who translate and mobilize them by allowing them to do things they could not do without them. However, genes also constrain those who translate and mobilize them for there are limits to the abilities attributable to them. In order to understand genes’ abilities and constraints, I compare this research to an earlier international commodity chain involving Taiwan Aborigines: the camphor trade of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some of the organizing properties of camphor were related to its physicalchemical properties and its geographical distribution in Taiwan within the historical and technological context of the late 1800s.6 This situation speaks to the artificiality of divisions between nature and society. The demand for camphor was due to its chemical properties, which constitute forms of agency and led to it being in high demand for medicines, celluloid, and smoke­less gunpowder during the European industrial revolution of the 1800s. These assemblages were intertwined with those of European imperialism in East Asia and the biological/geographic fact that camphor trees grew in abundance in the territories of Taiwan Aborigines who were still independent. The 1858 Treaty of Tianjin (part of the Second Opium War in which England defeated China) opened Taiwan’s ports to Western traders (Davidson 1903, 174). In Taiwan, this eventually led to split Chinese-British sovereignty over the colonized portions of Taiwan. Western businesspeople and officials were not subject to Ching law, an exception that was backed up by the presence of British naval gunships (188-90). At first, the Ching government maintained a monopoly on camphor, but this was broken in “the Camphor War,” a series of skirmishes between British forces and Ching forces in 1868, after which the British also took over the running of Chinese customs services in Taiwan (190-201, 404-5). The assemblages of the camphor trade articulated Aborig­ inal territories and resistance, Chinese settler business networks, and Western merchants. These networks, when compared with those of present-day genetics research, provide a useful historical precedent for understanding commodity circuits and forms of graduated sovereignty. Camphor was an important industrial commodity and was used in various medicines (e.g., arthritis pain relief balms) as well as in the early plastic known as celluloid (invented in the 1860s). Later the invention of smokeless gunpowder transformed it into a strategic military material. Western merchants, Chinese comprador business networks, and the Ching government,

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though frequently bickering over the spoils, cooperated and mutually benefited from the camphor industry’s invasion of Aboriginal territories (Munsterhjelm 2004, 66-67). Western merchants were largely limited to the ports, and Chinese business networks were responsible for the gathering of camphor, while the Ching government received tax revenues and provided large military forces to be used against Aboriginal peoples when required. The beginning of the typical camphor industry circuit of accumulation involved the armed invasion of Aboriginal territories by local clans, such as the Lins of Wufeng, who had gained some sort of a local monopoly from the Ching government (Barclay 1999, 85-86). These clans generally had their own powerful military formations, which were charged with invading and securing Aboriginal territories within which the camphor trees grew. In effect, through violence they imposed a sort of sovereignty over the camphor production zone within Aboriginal peoples’ territories. Aboriginal resistance to these invasions of their territories was intense, with frequent attacks on camphor workers and the destruction of the distilling stoves (Davidson 1903, 425). Aboriginal resistance continued to be a major problem for camphor extraction during early Japanese colonization, which began in 1895. Accord­ ing to Davidson: “The expense of protection is very high, and the manufacturers are much handicapped by it” (430). Once areas were secured militarily (although sometimes also by temporary negotiated agreements with Aborigines), the next phase involved the extraction of camphor by workers. The extraction process involved first cutting up the trees into chips by hand, using an adze (similar to an axe), and then distilling the chips to produce raw camphor (Davidson 1903, 424). In this way, a typical Chinese distilling unit, generally located within one to two kilometres of the chipping site, could distil some 122 kilograms (270 pounds) of camphor wood chips into about 2.3 kilograms (five pounds) of camphor flakes each day (423). The camphor flakes were then packed and carried by porters down mountain paths to the lowlands and onward to Western merchant houses in the treaty ports. Through this combination of military invasion and chemical processing, the camphor tree on Aboriginal territories was rendered mobile, stable (at least relatively), and combinable. In this first accumulation cycle, the Chinese business networks were vital; however, once the camphor arrived at the treaty ports, their roles ended.7 This next set of accumulation circuits was driven by the demand (i.e., the sender of another quest of accumulation) for camphor. Technological advances and the rise of Western industrialization greatly increased demand, which intensified the colonization of Aboriginal territories through intersecting and mutually reinforcing local and global circuits of accumulation.

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The use values of camphor were its physical and chemical properties. The origins of camphor in, and the horrors associated with the camphor-driven invasions of, Taiwan Aboriginal territories were irrelevant to this use value and, hence, were largely forgotten. In his 1903 book The Island of Formosa: Past and Present, James Davidson, a former US official in Xiamen (Amoy) China, writes: It would be an inviting subject for the statistician, whose hobby is to study problems such as how many days consumption of matches placed end on end it would require to encircle the world, to figure out how many drops of human blood are represented in a few ounces of camphor, which the humane young lady purchases to keep her dainty garments free of moths, or how many lives are lost that some decrepit old gentleman may be cured of his rheumatic pains. (Davidson 1903, 398)

In contrast, today, in genetics research, Taiwan Aborigines’ blood is literally a resource. In constituting the objects called “Taiwan Aborigines’ genes,” genetics researchers define the use values of blood by identifying Taiwan Aborigines’ as geographically isolated populations, such that their genes represent Taiwan both spatially and temporally. As well, unlike the overt coercion and violence typical of colonial-era camphor extraction, today there are moral and legal conditions under which Aborigines are supposed to be enrolled in genetics research projects and represented by scientists. It is useful to compare the organizing properties of colonial-era camphor from Taiwan Aborigines’ territories with contemporary Taiwan Aborigines’ genes: 1 In terms of its material organizing properties, camphor linked together, articulated, and organized agents. Chinese business networks in Taiwanese Aboriginal territories carried camphor to treaty ports like Tamsui, and then Western merchants shipped it to the west for prices determined on commodity markets in Hong Kong, Hamburg, London, and New York (Davidson 1903, 408-9, 438, 442-43). Genes are material in the sense that they allow relations to transcend the immediate transitory character of local interactions. Through research projects, Taiwanese and foreign scientists translate blood samples obtained from Aborigines into cell lines stored and grown in labs, genetic database sequences, and research articles that circulate transnationally. These mobile, stable, and combinable forms mean that it is no longer necessary for researchers to travel in person to enrol Aboriginal participants. Indeed, as is seen in Chapter 6, researchers are even able to buy Aborigines’ samples over the Internet.

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These material linkages transcend not only the spaces involved in the research project itself and subsequent usages but also cross multiple time frames both historically and geographically. For example, questions are used to select only Aboriginal participants without admixture from isolated populations. These selections are based on the idea that these genes will have the special properties of being very different from external groups but quite homogeneous within the group and, therefore, more likely to manifest certain genetic-based disorders. 2 Genes are plastic, and traces of past agency are inscribed on them, making them a “medium of cultural persistence” (Cooren and Taylor 1997, 243). As various genes are researched, each research paper adds knowledge (perhaps removing other knowledge) about them and thereby transforms their meaning and properties. For example, initial speculative hypothesis on differences in flushing in Hwu et al. (1988), Chen C.C. et al. (1989), and Hwu et al. (1990) regarding the potential role of alcohol-processing genes were followed by papers by Chen C.C. et al. (1991) and Thomasson (1994), which state that they found contemporary correlations. So, over the course of a decade, initial speculations were translated into genetic predispositions as reported in the Taiwan mass media (i.e., Hsu 1998) The camphor production assemblages involved extensive translation as Chinese business networks cut camphor trees into chips, distilled the chips into flakes, and then shipped these to Western industries that manufactured camphor into medicines, celluloid, and smokeless gunpowder. However, once the physical-chemical abilities of any given unit of camphor were used up, new camphor had to be obtained from Taiwan Aborigines’ territories (at least until chemical processes for the manufacture of synthetic camphor were developed in the early 1900s). In contrast, if stored properly, Taiwan Aborigines’ genes continue to circulate indefinitely as blood samples that can be immortalized as cell lines (which can be grown), DNA sequence data, and in other forms as well. 3 Genes have “inherent properties of their own.” Put another way, they have abilities and agency that are expressly their own and are attributed to them. Taiwanese genetics researchers have attributed Aboriginal alcoholism in part to particular properties of different variants of ALDH genes in metabolizing alcohol. In the case of camphor, processed flakes would evaporate if not stored properly. This tendency to evaporate was one of the inherent properties of camphor that caused ballistite smokeless gunpowder to become unstable. This instability led the British government to reject Fredric Nobel’s original formulation for ballistite in favour of cordite, which used petroleum jelly instead of camphor (Parkinson 2008, 135).

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4 Genes are instrumental in that they allow us to do things we could not do without them. For example, knowledge of genes in different populations allows for comparisons and testing for linkages. As well, scientists have proposed the governance potential of identifying the “genetically vulnerable” so they can be helped not to become alcoholics (e.g., Hsu 1998). Camphor had a range of chemical properties that made it valuable. 5 Objects can constrain humans such that they “may control people’s behaviour in the absence of any immediate human source” (Cooren and Taylor 1997, 248). If we consider genetic identifications again, as objects genes also restrict potential linkages by the presence or non-presence of particular variants of them in two or more populations. For example, Taiwan Aborigines cannot be readily genetically associated with Europeans through research on the settlement of the Pacific. In the case of camphor, the geographic distribution of the camphor trees in Taiwan Aboriginal territories and the physical-chemical properties of processed camphor shaped its commodity chains. The organizing properties of genes are quite different from those of camphor in another regard – that of morals. End-users of camphor-based products might have variously utilized these to soothe their arthritis, film a movie, or kill someone, but, as Davidson’s earlier “drops-of-blood” comment indicates, the violent colonial origins of camphor production were irrelevant to end usages and were forgotten: the source did not matter. In contrast, in genetics research, the sources of samples and information are critical to the organizing properties of Aboriginal genes, and these samples are supposed to have been obtained with informed Aboriginal consent. Furthermore, powerful epideictic rhetorical foundations that help to advance knowledge of human evolution and human disease morally underpin genetics research projects. These moral claims constrain the genetics research project as well as enable it. For example, questioning the morals of the origins of camphor does not change its explosive qualities. However, when Aborigines challenge genetics researchers’ institutionalized racism and violations of informed consent, they can disrupt genetics research processes and undermine researchers’ epideictic normative foundations. I present a number of such disruptions in this book. However, like camphor, hierarchies of power, privilege, and domination can disappear once the gene is a black box. As black-boxed entities, the genes have their own organizing properties, which are used to blame Aboriginal alcoholism on genetics. Hierarchically configured yet apparently scientific, genes are used to explain social differences between settlers and Aborigines – genetic determinism in action.

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Mass Media Coverage of Aboriginal Alcoholism and Genetics Research In Taiwan, alcoholism-related genetics research has contributed to perceptions of Aborigines as inherently dysfunctional. Led by Cheng Tai-an of Academia Sinica, the Taiwan Aboriginal Study Project has played a significant role. The project is a longitudinal study involving 993 Aborigines from the Ami, Bunun, Paiwan, and Atayal peoples. According to TASP, these four peoples, “occupying nearly 90 percent of the total Aboriginal population in Taiwan,” “represent ethnic groups with different degrees of acculturation” and “represent different linealities in family/social structure” (Cheng and Hsu 1992, 256). TASP has a sweeping research mandate: “In brief, the TASP includes studies of morbidity risks, clinical manifestations, course and outcome of major psychoses, depression, neuroses, alcohol use disorders, suicide and accidental death, and biological and sociocultural risk factors of these morbidities” (Cheng and Chen 1995, 82). Described in terms of “biological ... risk factors,” genetics research is integrated into a multifaceted and largescale project about why Aborigines get sick and die. TASP began in 1986, the year before the end of martial law. In its views of Aborigines, TASP shares significant continuities with earlier colonial-era social evolutionary hierarchies. For example, TASP’s Hsu Mu-tsu has publicly praised the efforts of early Japanese anthropologists (Chiu 2000, 107).8 Under the Japanese colonial administration, a number of ethnologists and anthropologists were employed to go into Aborig­inal territories and gather extensive intelligence on Aboriginal peoples, including military strength, number of villages, customs, and so on (Barclay 1999, 186-223). Using fieldwork methodologies, they would interview officials, police, and workers to gather data on the various Aboriginal peoples. They developed various typologies, dividing Aborigines into six to eight tribal groupings based on things such as extent of rice cultivation, military resistance to Japanese, and physical attributes – groupings that are the basis of the categories still used today (200, 208-9, 221). These social evolutionary-based findings were integrated into colonization efforts. At the bottom of this colonial government hierarchy of civility were the Atayal of northern Taiwan. The Japanese ethnologists Ino and Awano, in a 1900 book entitled Conditions among Taiwan’s Aborigines, state: “Taiwan’s most advanced Aborigines are the Peipo [Plains] tribe, followed by the Parizarizao section of the Paiwan tribe, the Puyuma tribe, the Amis tribe and others who inhabit the plains. The lowest position is occupied by the Taiyal [Atayal] tribe, who all live deep in the mountains, whose steep paths have obstructed intercourse and made travel difficult” (Ino and Awano 1900, 112, quoted in Kyoko 2003, 188). Rin and Lin’s 1962 research paper is based on the field research they conducted between 1949 and 1953, during

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the early stages of the KMT colonization. They utilized a similar social evolutionary view to that put forward by Ino and Awano: Varying levels of social development can be distinguished among these aborigines. To the most primitive belong such tribal groups as the Atayal, Bunun, Tsou and Yami, whose societies are at the level of early agricultural settlement with hunting and fishing. At the other end of the scale one finds the people of the Ami and Saisiat, particularly among the rice growing farmers whose lives resemble those of Chinese villagers. (Rin and Lin 1962, 134).

They also write: “The Atayal are noted as being aggressive, stubborn, very conservative, and responsible for most of the recent major conflicts with outsiders and the government” (Rin and Lin 1962, 135, emphasis added). This negative settler-centric attitude toward the Atayal continued in two TASP papers published in 1992 and 2002, respectively. A paper entitled “A Community Study of Mental Disorders among Four Aboriginal Groups in Taiwan” states: “They [the Atayal] were more aggressive and therefore responsible for most of the major conflicts between aborigines and Japanese forces” (Cheng and Hsu 1992, 256-7, emphasis added). As well, a 2002 TASP paper on suicide among the Atayal and Ami states: “Geographical distance and their aggressive nature considerably delayed their [the Atayal’s] contact with the Han Chinese until the 1960s, much later than several of the other groups” (Lee et al. 2002, 135, emphasis added). Clearly, in TASP research articles, we find that attitudes that were established during the colonial period continue to persist. Japanese Colonialism and Anthropology Beginning with the Japanese arrival in 1895 to 1900, early Japanese colonial policy budgeted for expenditures on alcohol and food to engage in diplomatic feasting in order to gain the allegiance of Aboriginal leaders. This feasting was undertaken, in part, to prevent any alliance between Aboriginal peoples and Taiwanese settlers, thus enabling the Japanese military to crush Taiwanese settler armed resistance (Barclay 2003). However, in 1900, with the Japanese counter-insurgency against Taiwanese settlers winding down, Governor General Kodama declared: “We must shift our military forces to the savage territory. Those who live there are stubborn, and live like wild beasts; if we continue to feast them with liquor and food, staying with the policy of attraction, it will take many months and years for them to reach even a limited degree of evolutionary development” (quoted in Barclay 2003, 87).

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Guided in part by intelligence and analysis from Japanese anthropologists, the colonial administration’s colonization of the remaining independent Aboriginal peoples involved a drawn out state of siege. In the north, the Japanese encircled independent Atayal, Seediq, Truku, and Bunun Aboriginal peoples with what was called the guard line, thus modernizing earlier Ching Dynasty containment efforts. This guard line marked the leading edge of Japanese colonial sovereignty, separating colonized Aboriginal peoples from independent Aborigines – a demarcation based on overwhelming physical violence. The guard lines constituted, in many ways, an expanded and sustained siege, but they were also similar to concentration camps in that they enabled the Japanese to surround and wear down resistance in the Atayal, Seediq, Truku, and Bunun Aboriginal territories. Entry and exit was tightly controlled. As the Japanese advanced guard lines further into Aboriginal territories, nearby Aboriginal villages were given the option of surrender (Barclay 1999, 139). If the villages did not submit, the Japanese subjected them to an economic blockade in which guns, ammunition, and salt were prevented from entering the area in order to reduce Aboriginal peoples’ military resistance and ability to hunt (ibid.). Once the blockade had weakened an Aboriginal community, then police and soldiers, and sometimes Aboriginal auxiliaries from other tribes, were deployed to conquer their territories. The Japanese colonial “police forces numbered between 4000 and 10,000,” which “made the Taiwan uplands the most closely policed area of the empire” (88). Once Aboriginal peoples were conquered, the colonial regime forced them to provide corvée labour and frequently called on them to engage in military operations against still independent Aborigines (146). According to the 1911 Japanese government book entitled Report on the Control of the Aborigines in Formosa: “The guard-line is in reality a boundary line, separating the savage from the peaceful district. If a step is made beyond this line, it is considered as going into the enemy’s country” (Government of Formosa 1911, 17).9 This boundary between Japanese colonial sovereignty and Taiwan Aboriginal sovereignty was engineered as a zone of violence: Where it becomes necessary to perfect the defensive arrangements, wire entanglements, charged with electricity, are used or mines are sunk. These have a great effect in giving an alarm of the invading savages. Grenades are very often used in the course of fighting. Telephone lines are constructed along the guard road, and in certain important places mountain and field guns are placed. One gun is sufficient to withstand the attack of several tribes. (Government of Formosa 1911, 16)

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The guard line was eventually extended over much of the north and east of Taiwan, and, by 1912, the lines contained 756 guard stations, 427 branch stations and 196 superintendent stations, and extended to a total length of 226 miles. For the five years 1909 to 1914, the Taiwan Government-General budgeted over 15 million yen, or about US $7.5 million (6-10 percent of the colony’s annual budget), to push the conquest of the recalcitrant Taiyal [Atayal] villages to completion. (Kyoko 2003, 190)

The guard line represented a major expense for the colonial government, but the bounty of camphor within these conquered territories allowed them to more than recover their costs. The Japanese advanced the guard line when opportunities arose, and these invasions of Aboriginal peoples’ territories were financed in large part by revenues from the international camphor trade. As Japan was the only area other than Taiwan that was producing large amounts of camphor, with the conquest of the latter the former had a world monopoly on camphor production. The Japanese colonial government declared a camphor monopoly in Taiwan in 1899 (Barclay 1999, 133). Because camphor was an important industrial and strategic material, the Western media considered the declaration of the monopoly newsworthy. When this monopoly was extended to the entire Japanese Empire, the New York Times published an article on June 5, 1903, entitled “Japan’s Camphor Monopoly: Now to Be Extended to the Whole Empire – Government Controls the Trade of the World.” Camphor proceeds provided some 15 to 25 percent of Japanese colonial revenues during the initial phase of Japanese colonization from 1896 to about 1910 (Barclay 1999, 133, 155). Taiwan’s Biocolonial Guard Line There are many troubling parallels between the role of anthropologists in Japanese colonization and how Taiwanese and foreign genetics researchers have constituted Taiwan Aborigines’ genes as inferior to those of settlers. These researchers extend the colonial reach of the state into this newly constituted political space using the latest technologies and methods. Further­ more, their efforts are guided by the economies of governance in which biotechnologies are deemed strategically crucial to Taiwan’s development. In a 2004 American Medical Association’s Archives of General Psychiatry article entitled “A 4-Year Longitudinal Study on Risk Factors for Alcoholism,” TASP researchers clearly identify their research’s practical policy and governance implications in colonized territories:

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The findings in this study suggest that early identification and treatment of anxiety disorders may prevent alcoholism and its possible psychiatric complications, including depressive disorders, among subjects with genetic vulnerability to alcohol metabolizing enzymes and with sociocultural risk factors for alcoholism. In addition, as specific protective genetic markers against alcoholism are identified, molecular genetics and genetic epidemiological measures may be used to identify specific environmental targets for primary prevention, particularly among the genetically vulnerable. (Cheng et al. 2004, 190).

These scientists advocate the instrumental governance potential of identifying the genetically vulnerable so that they can be helped not to become alcoholics. Once scientists have identified this genetic source of moral disorder, they are obligated to engage on a quest to restore moral order, a fiduciary obligation rooted in perpetuity in Aborigines’ genes. The properties of Taiwan Aborigines’ genes in biomedical-based understandings guide subsequent action.10 The easy slide into genetic determinism is evident in October 2005 media coverage of another TASP report. The Taiwan government’s Central News Agency published an October 10, 2005, article whose title may be translated as “Unique Aboriginal Genes Are Not Original Sin of Alcoholism” (Wei 2005). This article begins by stating that, although “nearly 100 percent” of Aborigines “inherit a stronger alcohol addiction gene,” the actual causes of the problem are anxiety disorders and assimilation-related pressures. These genetic and social factors lead to a host of public health and social problems, which are being studied in many countries. After a brief introduction to the TASP study, the article asserts that self-medication by Aborigines is more likely to lead to alcoholism relative to settlers since nearly all Aborigines have certain variants of the ADH genes that allow them to metabolize alcohol more easily than many Han Chinese. The article then engages in a discussion of how alcoholism contributes to a host of social problems, including suicide, accidental death, murder, tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases, hepatitis, and cirrhosis of the liver. Finally, it provides a series of statistics on each of these problems with regard to the four Aboriginal peoples: Atayal, Ami, Bunun, and Paiwan. The CNA article also includes Cheng Tai-an’s ideas on how to integrate the TASP study’s findings into the governance of Aborigines. These include the importance of improving education about alcoholism among Aborigines in order to increase their awareness of the problem. Cheng argues for the economic development of mass tourism, including the marketing of Aborig­ inal cultures as “cultural products.” Also, he advocates the development of

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computer networks and other measures to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban areas in order to improve economic development as well as to reduce conflicts between Han Chinese and Aborigines. The conclusion is that, when such measures are taken, alcoholism will naturally drop among Aborigines. In effect, this article follows the familiar heroes-rescue-Aborigines organizational narrative by advocating that benevolent settlers transform Aborigines’ social-economic situation in order to minimize the threats posed by Aborigines’ supposed innate genetic dysfunctions. Coverage of the 2005 TASP research findings varied in other newspapers. The China Times account was entitled “Academia Sinica Genetic Researchers’ Amazing Discovery, Never Get Drunk, Aborigines Have Drinking Gene” was very similar in content to the CNA account, but it emphasized how Aborigines’ genes increased their alcohol-processing capacities relative to those of Chinese settlers (China Times 2005a).11 The mass circulation Liberty Times article on this TASP study featured a headline that may be translated as “Indigenous People Have a Good Drinking Capacity through Strong Acetaldehyde Metabolization Gene Activity” (Guo 2005). A day later, the Taiwan CNA translated the Liberty Times account from Chinese into English and distributed it internationally with the still derisive headline: “Being Able to Hold Drinks Is All in the Genes.” The English version begins: The Biophysical Medical Science Institute of Academia Sinica has completed a long-term study of the problem of alcoholism among Taiwan’s Aboriginal peoples, and results indicate that the tribes seem to have a naturally high tolerance for alcohol. Over 99 percent of Aboriginal people in Taiwan carry a gene that enhances the breakdown of alcohol, meaning that they are much less likely to experience discomfort caused by acetic aldehyde after drinking. (Central News Agency 2005a)

The CNA article also briefly describes how differences in genetics affect the metabolization of alcohol, particularly how flushing and nausea limits the ability of many Chinese to drink large amounts. As well, it briefly describes TASP. However, the Liberty Times version cites findings that were published in the 2004 American Psychiatric Association article (Cheng et al. 2004) regarding the heightened risk among twenty-five- to thirty-four-year-old Aborigines. Cheng et al. emphasize that, although the longitudinal study findings are inspiring, Aborigines have inherited genes that give them a large alcohol capacity and that what is needed are governance measures to treat anxiety disorders and to deal with environmental risk factors related to alcoholism.

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The alternative social affairs newspaper Lih Pao published an article that criticized the above media coverage for emphasizing Aborigines’ genetic abilities to process alcohol (Wu 2005). It also reports how, after reading such coverage, Kung Wen-chi, an Atayal member of the Taiwanese Parliament, sharply criticized TASP for contributing to negative stereotypes of Aborigines and demanded that Cheng Tai-an publicly apologize to Taiwan Aborigines (Cheng did not). However, based on my searches of the Factiva newspaper database and Google, coverage of Kung’s criticism appears to have been limited to Taiwan’s alternative press. There is no mention of it in either the mainstream Chinese-language press or the English-language press. The marginalization of Kung’s public apology demand stands in contrast to what occurred in New Zealand in 2006, when the Maori were effectively able to disrupt the propagation of the warrior-gene findings (see Chapter 5). Settler scientists might argue that such genetic determinism and underlying derision is due to a misinterpretation of their results. However, neither Cheng Tai-an nor any of the other involved TASP scientists came forward to correct these denigrating translations of their findings; rather, they let the media’s genetically deterministic translations continue. In effect, having constructed and put these Aboriginal alcoholism-related genes into circulation, these scientists took no responsibility for any negative effects – an attitude that is pervasive among scientists (Lai et al. 2001; Chen S.J. 2002). Sovereignty and Anomie A long line of research theorizes alcoholism in terms of anomie. Anomie, according to Durkheim and his interpreters, involves the breakdown of order and social norms, the descent into normlessness and moral chaos. Similarly, concepts of the border as the limit of sovereignty and law and order imply that those who live beyond the boundary (e.g., the colonial-era guard lines) are viewed as being in a state of nature and, thus, as outside the law (Agamben 1998). The state of nature always looms and threatens at the boundaries and interstices of society (Foucault 2003, 90). Therefore, the attribution of Aboriginal alcoholism to genetic factors in effect designates Aboriginal genetics as a lawless area and source of anomie that disrupts society. This designation means that genetics researchers are not merely explorers but are also on a quest to help impose sovereign order on the state of nature. Genetics researchers’ imposition of genetic distinctions between Taiwan Aborigines and settlers accords with Foucault’s arguments that racism is a key mediator between sovereignty (based on the right to kill) and biopolitics (based on optimizing conditions for life). In understanding the seemingly paradoxical relationship between sovereignty and biopolitics, Foucault

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(2003, 255) posits that racism “is primarily a way of introducing a break into the domain of life that is under power’s control: the break between what must live and what must die.” Not only does racism introduce this break but it also, without recourse to war, justifies it through reference to social evolutionary ideas that the death of weak and inferior people makes the species stronger overall (ibid.). According to Mills (2007, 186-87): “In this way, then, the normalizing forces of racism, which allow for the biological fracturing of a population and designation of some races as inferior, are the mechanisms by which a state is able to ‘exercise its sovereign power.’” One of the main ways this break is created is by designating peoples as overly affected by, or as manifesting, the state of nature and therefore as being outside the law (Agamben 1998; Arnold 2005). Foucault (2003, 256) is not just referring to physical killing: “When I say ‘killing,’ I obviously do not mean simply murder as such, but also every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on.” In his view, to kill means not only to physically kill (such as a massacre) but also to utilize various forms of epistemological and ontological violence that render individuals, groups, or populations more exposed to death through the imposition of boundaries that exclude and marginalize them. This graduated, or incremental, killing translates Aboriginal peoples into living dead (bare life), with the status of being biologically alive but politically dead due to having been excluded from the polis, or sphere of public discourse. These genetics-research-based exclusions of Aboriginal peoples are shaped by the larger political economy of the settler state within a globalized capitalist system. The genetics research project involves the hierarchical constitution and articulation of different forms of time-space. This is because it is the dis­course of transnational science that, in genetics research articles, is the sender of the quest in the manipulation phase and the sanctioner in the sanction phase and that decides on the success or failure of the scientists. The scientists submit to transnational science, which assesses them. In turn, it is Aborigines who are assessed by scientists through these narratives (not vice versa). The hierarchical relationships and translations between different forms of space are mediated through practical syllogisms and attendant shifts in forms of rhetoric. Forms of rhetoric are vital because they define the values of each of the forms of space, while the practical syllogisms are critical to connecting these different forms of space into a coherent narrative. Transnational scientific orthodoxy defines alcoholism as being caused by the interaction of genetic and environmental risk factors, and these norms shape the quest. This epideictic rhetoric functions as a type of communion with the audience as it presents the accepted knowledge and norms of the

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field, which provide the foundation for the values and norms of genetics research narratives. When genetics researchers translate these norms in Taiwan, it results in racially configured hierarchical power relationships between genetics researchers and Indigenous peoples. The ontological and epistemological violence of the narratives designating Aborigines as genetically predisposed to alcoholism and associated increased morbidity and death suggests that genetics researchers have taken on an important role with regard to determining the prerogative powers of sovereignty in opposition to the state of nature. Genetics research seems, then, to be a type of technology of sovereignty that is adapted and translated to fit particular local contexts (Kelly 2008, 43). Because scientists’ expertise makes them central actants in such localized translation processes, they are disproportionately able to determine the exception and the norm, to determine who has what rights and obligations. In this sense, scientists’ ability to mobilize the organizing properties of Aboriginal genes is vital to the enactment of sovereignty. The premises of genetics research exclude potential alternative lines of research that might approach alcoholism and related morbidity within the particular historical context of Taiwan Aborigines’ multigenerational experience of colonialism. Such excluded approaches would accord with how Mann et al. (1999, 7) advocate researching public health problems: “For example, epidemiologically identified clusters of preventable disease, excess disability, and premature death could be analyzed to discover the specific limitations or violations of human rights and dignity that are involved.” Mann et al. argue that conventional biomedical perspectives have “ignored the societal roots of health in favor of interventions which operate farther downstream” (3). Given the massive historical upheavals of colonization and continued marginalized position of Taiwan Aborigines, approaches based on Mann et al.’s suggestions would not require genetics research. As well, such approaches appear to be in accord with Indigenous peoples’ advocacy of their own sovereignty and self-determination, including mutually respectful relationships with settler states and scientists. Within the particular political economy that guides this technology of sovereignty, it is the scientists who are able to organize and articulate the exceptions in all zones of the global assemblage. Like its colonial camphor predecessor, genetics research projects are global assemblages in which “the sites of citizenship mutations are not defined by conventional geography. The space of the assemblage, rather than the territory of the nation-state, is the site for new political mobilizations and claims. In sites of emergence, a spectrum of mobile and excluded populations articulates rights and claims in universalizing terms of neoliberal criteria or human rights” (Ong 2006a, 500). Due to their key organizing roles in these assemblages, scientists are

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able to disproportionately realize benefits from genetics research projects through the arrogation of sovereignty and the exercise of prerogative powers. Critically, determining the exception is inherent in deciding who is a spokesperson for, and acts on behalf of, whom. Involved scientists define the research question by positing transnational science as the sender and themselves as the receiver-subjects who are morally committed to carrying out the quest. As Arnold (2005) argues, the arbitrary exercise of prerogative power over marginalized groups as manifestations of the state of nature, with its increasing criminalization and general denial of citizenship, is based on their alleged failures to live up to the ascetic norms of society and exercise requisite despotism over the self. New technologies of sovereignty that can define spaces as a state of nature (such as biotechnologies) are being integrated into emerging forms of surveillance and increasingly coercive forms that blur the distinction between biopolitics and the arbitrary exercise of prerogative powers. Being designated as living in a state of nature is sufficient for routine authoritarian liberal governance based on an arbitrary diminishment of citizen­ship rights. With the contemporary emphasis on personal disciplinary biopolitical regimes, alcoholism is viewed as a violation of neoliberal demands for a type of asceticism (Arnold 2005). Citing the work of Edward Said (1994) on orientalism, the Pangcah activist and intellectual Isak Afo (2000) writes: The colonial myth-makers have characterized the Aborigines of Taiwan as “inherently lazy,” “unproductive,” “hooked on booze” and “lawless,” or else as “good at singing and dancing” and “natural born athletes.” The colonizers meanwhile see themselves as “benevolent and generous,” “active and assertive” and “disciplined.” The media repeats these stereotypes, with superficial understanding.

Genetics researchers have enacted this normative hierarchy in their imposition of these morally configured genetic distinctions between settlers and Aborigines. The powerful norm-shaping effects of scientific discourses suggest the need for greater attention to how genetics researchers exercise prerogative powers. Involved scientific researchers have proceeded based on their designation of Taiwan Aborigines as living in a state of nature, and they have succeeded in constituting them as genetically outside the law.

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

4

Taiwanese nationalists and Chinese nationalists both contest the Taiwan settler state, with each making particular claims over Taiwan Aborigines. Since 2008, the pendulum has shifted back toward Chinese nationalism with the de facto One-China unification agenda of the KMT administration of President Ma Ying-jeou, who was elected in 2008. Following his re-election, Ma stated in his 2012 inauguration address: “The people of the two sides of the strait share a common Chinese ethnic heritage. We share common blood lines, history and culture” (Ma 2012). This speech makes no direct mention of Taiwan Aboriginal peoples; rather, Ma subsumes them under a Chinese identity. According to some Aboriginal critics, Ma views Taiwan Aborigines as just another Chinese minority (Loa 2008). Ma’s administration has discontinued state support for the Taiwan-centred identity project. This has included the end of official state efforts to use Austronesian linkages to distinguish Taiwan from China as well as the end of support for Austronesianbased diplomacy in the Pacific. However, in this chapter, I analyze two cases of genetics research that were part of the Taiwan-centred state identity project and unofficial (i.e., track-two) diplomacy during the 2000s. Because genetics research on Taiwan Aboriginal peoples’ origins spans transnational science, the settler state, and Taiwan Aborigines, it involves an interesting intertwining of track-two diplomacy and the Taiwan state identity project. The first case study concerns the extensive mass media coverage of a 2005 Mackay Memorial Hospital Transfusion Medicine Laboratory (TML) genetics research report, published in the journal Public Library of Science, that indicates that Taiwan was the homeland of the Polynesian and Austronesian peoples. However, when the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs tried to promote Taiwan’s diplomatic position through a news conference on the research findings, it was sharply criticized in a number of press reports. The second case study involves how the Kavalan Aboriginal community of

88 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

Xinshe in Hualien County organized a network by mobilizing Aboriginal rights legislation and transnational Aboriginal rights discourses to pressure the TML to return samples that it had taken without proper community consultations or informed consent. This case is significant as it represents the first time that Taiwan Aborigines used the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, which the Taiwan Parliament passed in 2005, to force a genetics researcher to return samples taken without proper community informed consent. This chapter demonstrates how fluid global assemblages of transnational mass media, settler state, and Aboriginal peoples can involve new contested configurations of sovereignty. New Taiwanese Go South Conventional conceptions of the exercise of national sovereignty consider both internal recognition and external (diplomatic) recognition. As these forms of recognition can be mutually reinforcing, the KMT dictatorship suffered an internal loss of legitimacy among Taiwan’s population when foreign countries withdrew diplomatic recognition during the 1970s and 1980s (including the 1970 loss of the China seat at the UN to the PRC). In the early 1980s, Taiwanese nationalist intellectuals began incorporating the historical intermarriage that occurred during the 1600s and 1700s of Hoklo and Hakka settlers with Plains Aborigines into the construction of a unique Taiwanese identity in order to counter the KMT’s official One-China policies (Hsiau 2000, 161). These earlier efforts were subsequently integrated into the Taiwan-centred identity project begun in the early 1990s after President Lee Teng-hui’s Taiwan faction of the KMT marginalized the remaining One-China elements within the party. Lee utilized the concept of “New Taiwanese” to incorporate Ab­ origines, Hakka and Hoklo long-term settlers, and post-Second World War Mainlanders in a “community of fate.” In his 1999 book entitled The Road to Democracy: Taiwan’s Pursuit of Identity, Lee (1999,193) describes this Taiwancentred identity as follows: “All of us who grow and live on this soil today are Taiwanese people, whether we be aborigines or descendants of the immigrants from the mainland who came over centuries or decades ago.” This amalgamation, which was meant to distinguish Taiwan from China, still retained an internal hierarchy: “Taiwan’s national wealth has increased very rapidly, but some of our people have not yet been able to share in that affluence. In the case of indigenous people, they lost the base for their traditional lifestyles but failed to adapt to another way of life” (213). Lee views Aboriginal peoples as failing to adapt to modernity and in need of rescue (Munsterhjelm 2004, 37-38).

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 89

Internationally, the PRC’s One-China policy, which requires recognition of its claim over what it terms a renegade province, has successfully isolated Taiwan diplomatically. Currently, Taiwan only has official diplomatic relations with twenty-three countries. Such formal recognition is often referred to as track-one diplomacy and includes an exchange of ambassadors, official state visits, and treaties. Denied such official diplomatic recognition by most countries during the 1990s, the Taiwan government shifted toward peopleto-people relations, what is called track-two diplomacy, which consists of cultural exchanges, scientific and academic exchanges, athletics, memoranda of understanding, and so on. Austronesian research was integrated into these efforts early on. In 1994, following his so-called golf course diplomacy tour of Southeast Asia, Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui made his first public announcement of the “Go South” policy. This unsuccessful government policy was an attempt to stem the accelerating flow of Taiwanese overseas investment into China by trying to persuade investors to shift it southwards toward areas like the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Pacific. This policy was implemented because of the political-economic threat represented by the increasing integration of Taiwan and China (Chiu 2000, 135-36). Academics were told that they had an important role to play in this policy and that it involved constructing a discursive historical and cultural basis for it – a role that they uncritically and even enthusiastically accepted. Taiwan was to become a centre of Southeast Asian research. In an example of this people-to-people diplomacy, President Lee addressed the International Conference on the Formosan Indigenous Peoples, which was held in 1999 at Academia Sinica and involved over two hundred Austronesian specialists from Taiwan and abroad (Kuo 1999). According to a May 1, 1999, CNA article on Lee’s address: “Taiwan, with its invaluable legacy of indigenous culture and a well-established research regime, is promising to become a stronghold of Austronesian studies, President Lee Teng-hui said on Saturday. Addressing an international workshop on Taiwan’s indigenous people and culture, Lee said Taiwan’s indigenous people are part of the Austronesian-speaking population, which inhabit the largest geographic area on earth” (Kuo 1999). Through this Austronesian subjectivity, Taiwan is part of something very big – even, potentially, the Austronesian homeland – rather than just 23 million out of China’s population of 1.3 billion. As well: “Lee called for concerted efforts from society and the academic sector to help improve the educational, social and economic development of Taiwan’s aboriginal people” (another example of the rescue narrative) (Kuo 1999). By the end of the Lee administration in 2000, genetics research involving Aborigines had

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taken on an important role in the assertion of the sovereignty of the Taiwan settler state. The Chen Shui-bian administration (2000-8) attempted to further develop this melding of diplomacy, national identity, genetics, and investment. This was evident in a Taiwan government news report on the opening ceremony of the government organized and sponsored 2002 Assembly of Austronesian Leaders, which states: “The territory defined by the language group stretches from Easter Island to Madagascar and from New Zealand to the northern tip of Taiwan. It covers nearly one-third of the globe and represents a population of nearly 300 million people” (Fanchiang 2002). Genetics research is integrated into this Austronesian zone concept: “A DNA analysis conducted by Mackay Memorial Hospital provided evidence of a genetic relationship between Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples and peoples of Austronesian descent from other areas of the Asia-Pacific.” The news report then commented on the opening speech given by President Chen Shui-bian: President Chen Shui-bian cited the nation’s academic studies of Austro­ nesian peoples, languages and cultures as well as recent efforts to preserve indigenous cultural assets. Chen expressed his desire to open the lines of communication with other Asia-Pacific countries, adding that the “go south” investment policy that the government is currently touting would further expand Taiwan’s cooperation with other countries that share a common Austronesian ancestry. (Fanchiang 2002)

In effect, this is a sweeping reaffirmation on the part of the Chen administration of its predecessor Lee Teng-hui’s earlier policies of linking Austronesian research with Go South investment policies. Austronesian identity was supposed to become part of Taiwan’s overseas capital accumulation circuits and diplomacy, though China’s rapid economic growth meant that Taiwanese investors never really heeded the call to Go South. During the Lee and then Chen presidencies, assemblages emerged in which genetics research on Taiwan Aborigines served both the Taiwan-centred identity state project and diplomatic efforts. The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan The Mackay Memorial Hospitals commemorate George Leslie Mackay, the Canadian missionary (1844-1901) who was one of the founders of the Pres­ byterian Church in Taiwan. During the 1980s democracy struggles against the KMT dictatorship, the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT) was an important non-government space for organizing and educating Aboriginal and settler intellectuals. However, the KMT leadership in the immediate

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 91

post-Second World War period allotted the PCT a type of de facto sovereignty that enabled it to engage in missionary and organizational activities in Aboriginal territories (Chiu 2000, 119). The post-Second World War saw Aborigines massively convert to Christianity, so that today some 70 percent of Aborigines are nominally Christian, including 30 percent who are Pres­ byterian. In contrast, settlers are only around 2.8 percent Christian, though Taiwan’s settler elites are somewhat more likely to be Christian such as the late military dictator Chiang Kai-shek, who was a Methodist or Lee Tenghui, who is a Presbyterian.1 In some ways, the PCT arrogated this sovereignty and secured its position by virtue of its ability to mediate relations internationally, which gave it both material resources and personnel. Critically, its Western, particularly American, relationships (at a time when the United States was the KMT regime’s main economic and political benefactor) gave it a degree of political protection from the most violent practices of the KMT police state. In these ways, it was allotted, but also arrogated, a type of graduated sovereignty in many Aboriginal communities. This de facto graduated sovereignty, along with its material resources, allowed the PCT to develop an extensive infrastructure, including educational, health, church, and local organizations within Aboriginal communities. This infrastructure integrates Mackay Memorial Hospital branches located in the urban centres of Taipei, Hsinchu, and Taidong (which has a large Aboriginal population) with an extensive array of health care stations and facilities in Aboriginal territories. TML scientists have used this health care infrastructure in order to gain access to Aborigines for genetics research (see, for example, Lin M.L. et al. 2000, 1).2 In what appears to be a melding of sovereignty and biopolitics, genetics research carried out by the TML on Taiwan Aborigines has played a central role in the development of Aborigines as signifiers of Taiwan-centred settler identity. Institutional Assemblages in Genetics Research TML began genetics research involving Taiwan Aborigines in the early 1990s (Lin M.J. 1999). The TML’s Aboriginal genetics and Austronesian origins research projects are examples of how genetics research can develop into steady long-term assemblages in which the configurations of involved institutions, government agencies, personnel, and actants (such as gene samples) can be relatively stable over time. Similar stability is also apparent in the transnational assemblages of Austronesian migrations research. Taiwan Aborigines’ genes have been important boundary objects in human migrations research since the mid-1990s. Involved scientists have frequently organized assemblages that represent Aborigines’ genes as exceptional. A 2001 conference held in Perigueux, France,

92 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

was funded by a combination of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (named after the late dictator), which supports Taiwan-related research, and French government agencies. Routledge published the conference proceedings in a 2005 book entitled The Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics. This 2005 book epideictically emphasizes its importance by asserting: “One of the most dynamic research areas in the prehistory of East Asian regions is the synthesis of the findings of archaeology, linguistics and genetics” (Sagart, Blench, and Sanchez-Mazas 2005, emphasis added). In their chapter in this book, TML researchers use epideictic rhetoric when they state that Taiwan Aborigines have “remarkable inter-tribal diversity and a high intra-tribal genetic homogeneity,” which indicates long-time occupancy of Taiwan (Lin M.L. et al. 2005, 234, emphasis added). Many of the same editors and authors were involved in a June 2004 conference entitled “Human Migrations in Continental East Asia and Taiwan: Genetic, Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence,” which was held at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. This conference was sponsored by Taiwan’s National Science Council, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education, Council of Indigenous People, and the Mackay Memorial Hospital as well as by various Swiss institutions (University of Geneva 2004a). This large array of Taiwan government agencies indicated that the conference was part of the Taiwan government’s track-two diplomacy with countries with which Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic ties.3 This conference featured a who’s who of Austronesian-related research from the fields of linguistics, archaeology, and genetics. Some of the featured speakers included the aforementioned Austronesian linguist Peter Bellwood, the geneticist Peter Underhill of Stanford University (whose patents are discussed in Chapter 6), and a number of Taiwanese participants, including the TML’s Lin Ma-li. The conference website used the overall organizing theme of understanding human origins: “This meeting will welcome 25 invited speakers during a period of 3 full days to discuss on the peopling history of East Asia and Taiwan” (University of Geneva 2004b). Not only some of the most prominent researchers in the field of Austronesian migrations research but also an array of state institutions organized around this goal of discussing the origin of Taiwan Aborigines.4 Routledge published the conference proceedings in a 2008 book entitled Past Human Migrations in East Asia: Matching Archaeology, Linguistics and Gen­­ etics. The involved researchers continue to identify Taiwan Aborigines as ex­ceptional in a chapter entitled “The GM [gamma globulin] Genetic Poly­ morphism in Taiwan Aborigines: New Data Revealing Remarkable Differ­ entiation Patterns” (Sanchez-Mazas et al. 2008, emphasis added).5 Though

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 93

emphasizing Aborigines as exceptional, the book also positions itself as contributing to an understanding of Taiwan Aborigines and groups else­ where, claiming that it “also draws attention to the roles of minority peoples – hitherto underplayed in accounts of the region’s prehistory – such as the Austronesian, Tai-Kadai and Altaic speakers, whose contribution to the regional culture is now becoming accepted” (Routledge 2008).6 In short, involved researchers’ renderings of Aboriginal peoples’ genes as exceptional function as significant boundary objects around which various assemblages of personnel, institutions, and agents organize. Aborigines’ Ancestors as International News The above long-term academic networks are international in scope, but they are not large scale, in the sense of attracting attention from outside their respective scientific fields. However, genetics research on findings regarding human origins can be translated into news content for the international mass media through short-term assemblages of much greater scale and scope. In July and August 2005, the TML was involved in the largest-scale assemblage of Austronesian-related genetics research to date, with an article published in the journal Public Library of Biology entitled “Traces of Archaic Mitochon­ drial Lineages Persist in Austronesian-Speaking Formosan Populations.” The July 4, 2005, release of the journal article was accompanied by its own news release on the Eurekalert science news service website. This news release was picked up and subsequently translated into various stories by Reuter’s News Service on July 4, the influential news magazine the Economist on July 7, and TV New Zealand interviewed TML director Lin Ma-li for a report broadcast on July 10 (this report is analyzed in Chapter 5). In the following section, I discuss how this journal article imbued Taiwan Aborigines’ genes with a new set of abilities and traits, and how these were translated by mass media renderings. The journal article’s title posits Aborigines’ genes as having archaic material linkages to the very distant past – to the last Ice Age, when Taiwan was still connected to Continental Asia. The first paragraphs indicate that “only 1.5 percent of today’s population of Taiwan is represented by Austronesian speakers” (Trejaut et al. 2005, 1). In this way, statistics function as topoi of quantity that define the magnitude of Aborigines’ isolation and function as a form of epideictic rhetoric. They also emphasize geographic isolation: “During the massive immigration of Han speakers to the western plains of Taiwan, most tribes took refuge in remote regions such as the central mountain ranges or the east coast of Taiwan” (ibid.). Similarly, Austronesian languages serve as a type of essence that functions to distinguish Aborigines

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from Chinese settlers. Trejaut et al. state: “It is believed that this geographical isolation has largely contributed toward maintaining their culture and languages until the present day in contrast to the plains tribes that are characterized by high levels of admixture” (ibid.). The reference to Plains (Pingpu) Aborigines as having high levels of admixture implies that cultural identity is genetic, a concept that would come back to haunt the TML, as we see later. In this article, Aborigines are depicted as small populations living in the mountains and long geographically isolated from and by an influx of Chinese settlers. This makes them unique (except for the Pingpu). Trejaut et al. (2005, 2, emphasis added) claim that Aborigines have great significance to transnational science, contending that their role in Austro­ nesian migrations “has come under intense discussion during the last two decades, in particular among geneticists working with mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), Y chromosome, and HLA loci.” The Mackay researchers then accept their quest, stating how they will fulfill it by analyzing an mtDNA haplotype called B4a to determine how long Taiwan Aborigines have been isolated from mainland Asia and what relationships exist between them and Indigenous peoples in the Pacific (ibid.). Because mitochondrial DNA does not recombine (i.e., mix) during fertilization of the egg, it is transmitted intact from a mother to her children, both female and male (whereas Y chromosomes only pass from father to son). Therefore, genetics researchers analyze mutations called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in particular regions of the mtDNA to identify common ancestors. Such mutations (or variations) are referred to as haplotypes (e.g., B4a). Furthermore, related haplotypes are grouped together under a haplogroup. So, for example, haplotypes B4a, B4a1, and B4a1a are part of haplogroup B. The TML researchers emphasize that differences in the proportions of haplotypes and haplogroups distinguish Taiwan Aborigines genetically from people in mainland Asia: “Four basic haplogroups – B, E, R9, and M7 – accounted for more than 90 percent of the variation observed in aboriginal Taiwanese.” They contrast this 90 percent finding with how these four haplogroups account for only 40 percent of variation among Chinese samples (of which southern Chinese samples had greater variation than northern Chinese samples) with the E haplotype being nearly absent in continental Asian samples. They then continue: “On the other hand, haplogroups A, D4, G, and M8-M10 accounted approximately for 41 percent of the sequences from the mainland, whereas it [sic] was rare or absent in Taiwanese Aborig­ ines” (Trejaut 2005, 3). In effect, the differing distributions of haplotypes are used to dissociate Taiwan Aborigines from China and Continental Asia by assessing the respective proportions of haplogroup variation for which they account.

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 95

The section of the article entitled “Fitting the mtDNA Heritage of the Taiwanese Aboriginals into the Models of Austronesian Expansion” begins with a discussion of these genetic findings. Trejaut et al. (2005, 8) consider contradictions with other research on Y chromosome and mitochondrial markers that trace the origins of the Pacific’s prehistoric peoples to East Indonesia or Melanesia, not Taiwan, something that is also supported by “the phylogenetic analyses of Polynesian rats, Rattus exulans.” While this B4a mtDNA haplogroup is common in Polynesia, Taiwan, and East Asia, Trejaut et al. state: “Phylogenetic analysis of complete mtDNA sequences in this study reveals the presence of a motif of three coding region mutations (nps 6719, 12239, and 15746) that define haplogroup B4a1a and are shared among Taiwanese, Melanesians, and Polynesians. No mainland East Asian population has yet been found to carry lineages derived from these three positions” (9). Therefore, this “motif of three coding mutations” connects Taiwanese Aborigines, Melanesians, and Polynesians and “suggests that the motif may have evolved in populations living in or near Taiwan at the end of the Late Pleistocene period.” Identifying this motif allows the following important claim: “These findings provide the first direct phylogenetic evidence for the common ancestry of Austronesian and indigenous Taiwanese maternal lineages and their maturation phase in East Indonesia or Melanesia” (9). Trejaut et al. also speculate that early Proto-Austronesian societies were “matriarchal and matrilocal,” which would help account for the lack of male lineage Y chromosome linkages found in earlier studies. Having constituted B4a1a as agents, in their concluding claim regarding performance of the overall narrative quest, the scientists argue that the B4a1a sequences have powerful inherent abilities: “The time element (13.2 plus/ minus 3.8 thousand years to the MRCA [most recent common ancestor]) obtained from the phylogenetic reconstruction of complete B4a1a sequences requires that we adopt a model according to which the origin of Austronesian migration can be traced back to Taiwan, and allows for the notion that it was followed by interaction periods elsewhere in Indonesia and finally in Melanesia where the complete motif specific to Polynesian B4a1a1 sequences (Polynesian motif) was developed” (Trejaut 2005, 9, emphasis added). Put another way, B4a is common to East Asia, Taiwan, Melanesia, and Polynesia. However, the B4a1a variant comes from an ancestor who did not live on the East Asian mainland, and so it is not found there. Therefore, the B4a1a variant links Taiwanese Aborigines with Melanesian and Polynesians, while the most recent variant, B4a1a1, developed after the Polynesians’ ancestors left Taiwan. The B4a1a variant connects Taiwan Aborigines with Polynesians and Mela­ nesians, and it disconnects them from the East Asian mainland, which makes it a very important agent in the subsequent media translations.

96 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

Having reached their conclusion, Trejaut et al. (2005) provide an appendix entitled “Materials and Methods,” which describes the technical process used to sequence two regions of the mtDNA (Hypervariable segment). They used “640 samples drawn from nine Taiwan indigenous mountain tribes representative of most languages, cultures, and geographical settlements seen on the island before the last four centuries” (10). In effect, they claim to have a representative sampling of the island’s Aboriginal populations that goes back to pre-colonial times. Their attendant concern about admixture is apparent in the selection criteria: “All indigenous people had both parents belonging to the same tribe and gave consent to participation in this study” – an act of their own free will (10). This seamless enrolment of Aborigines rendered Trejaut et al. spokespeople for them and for their ancestors. Organizing Properties One way to test the organizing properties of genes is to track how they shape subsequent translations. Trejaut et al. (2005) attribute a number of properties to Aborigines’ genes, including:

1 Genes are material linkages: they connect Taiwan Aborigines with Mela­ nesians and Polynesians. 2 The genes are plastic: over time and space, mutations reshaped them, so B4a emerged in China, B4a1 in Taiwan, and B4a1a in the Pacific. 3 The genes are instrumental: they finally allow us to explain where Poly­ nesians came from. 4 The genes have inherent properties that “require us to” associate Taiwan Aborigines with Melanesians and Polynesians and dissociate Taiwan from China and “mainland East Asia.” 5 The genes constrain and, thereby, prevent associations of Taiwan Aborig­ ines with China. Mass Media Coverage Translations When scientists or institutions send out science news releases to the mass media, they try to use them to gain attention and to persuade science reporters to translate them into news stories. While there has long been media interest in science, due to neoliberal transformations new types of synergistic relationships are emerging between the mass media and scientific research. Media outlets routinely translate press releases about genetics researchers’ findings into free sources of content for news products. Science reporters have to produce more content in the same amount of time because the mass media is under severe competitive pressures due to media consolidation and decreases in advertising revenues thanks to the widespread availability of free

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news content on the Internet (Williams and Clifford 2009, 17-19). With the neoliberal-driven reorientation of scientific research toward the market­­­ place, and greatly intensified competition for available funding, publicizing scientific research findings through press releases and other types of public relations techniques has become common practice. Under these conditions, when scientists receive media attention, they are able to claim a public education function, which can help funding applications. Such public visibility, as measured according to the number of TV and radio appearances and inter­views, news stories, and expert panel appearances and so on, are now part of the general accounting of outputs in researchers’ reports to funding agencies. This synergy appears to be at work in the following case study. The publication of the Trejaut et al. (2005) article was accompanied by a news release through the Eurekalert science news website, a major outlet for science news based in the United States. The July 4, 2005, news release was entitled “Genetic Link Confirmed between Polynesians and Indigenous Taiwanese.” Its epideictic rhetoric emphasizes the magnitude of a definitive relationship between Polynesians and Taiwan Aborigines. The release’s point of communion with the audience reads: “According to folklore, Polynesians originated from a mythical homeland called Hawaiki” (Eurekalert 2005). The next sentence (a minor premise) defines the quest: “Their origins and the existence of such a place, however, have been the subject of much speculation” (ibid.). This defines the narrative’s quest to provide to the reader information regarding a new finding: “In a new study in the premier open access journal PLoS Biology, Jean Trejaut and colleagues now provide the first direct evidence for the common ancestry of Polynesians and indigenous Taiwan­ ese” (ibid.). While there has been mitochondrial DNA research on the relationship between Polynesians and Taiwan Aborigines: “Early results were conflicting or inconclusive; however, the research by Trejaut et al. has finally nailed this down.” Again, the release asserts that this research has answered an important question by showing that “the indigenous Taiwanese, Mela­ nesian, and Polynesian populations share three specific mutations in their mtDNA that do not occur in mainland east Asian populations.” These findings accord with archaeological evidence, “suggesting a long period of habitation.” Consequently: “These results indicate that Taiwanese aborig­ inal populations have been genetically isolated from mainland Chinese for 10,000 to 20,000 years, and that Polynesian migration probably originated from people identical to the aboriginal Taiwanese” (ibid.). This statement defines (1) a set of rhetorical dissociations between Taiwan Aborigines and mainland East Asians and (2) genetic/migrations associations between Taiwan Aborigines and Polynesians. Aborigines’ genes are identified as having particular traits materially linking Taiwan Aborigines with Polynesia but

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not with China. In typical journalistic fashion, the concluding sentence of the third paragraph of the news release suggests future action: “Further research will be necessary to precisely determine the origins of the aboriginal Taiwanese; however, these results are a step towards clarifying the origins of Polynesians” (ibid.). The press coverage in the United States- and the United Kingdom-based media outlets translated a number of important elements from the original press release and the Public Library of Science article. All four accounts use the topos of the mystery of the mythological Polynesian homeland of Hawaiki. However, each uses different points of communion to situate the findings. The Reuters’s report, dated July 4, 2005, basically summarizes the report findings. The July 5, 2005, account in the Scotsman considers how the research report findings discredit the well-known Kon-Tiki thesis, first proposed by Thor Heyerdahl, that Polynesians originated in South America (Johnson 2005). The reference to the Kon-Tiki functions as a form of communion since Heyerdahl’s theory has been widely popularized through his best-selling book and documentary film about his expedition, which sailed from Peru to the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia on a balsa raft (the film won a 1951 Academy Award). The Guardian story recycles the familiar madein-Taiwan topos with an article entitled “A Population Made in Taiwan.” Its point of communion is the colonial trope of one of the well-known English explorers of the European imperial expansion: “Captain Cook, 250 years ago, asked the great question about the people he found on Pacific atolls and island groups. How did they get there? Where did they come from?” (Guardian 2005). The Economist’s (2005) translation, dated July 7, is entitled “Taiwan, Twinned with Hawaii” and repeats the Made-in-Taiwan topos. It begins with a paragraph framed in terms of Hawaiki as the mysterious homeland of the Polynesians, who were “arguably the greatest seafarers in history,” and it posits that Jean Trejaut and Lin Ma-li may have solved this mystery. All four accounts accept Trejaut et al.’s (2005) interpretation of the research, which concludes that Taiwan is the homeland of the Polynesians, thus disassociating Taiwan from China and East Asia. The first published coverage of the Trejaut et al. paper on July 4, 2005, was the Reuters News Service account: “Gene Study Suggests Polynesians Came from Taiwan” (Reuters 2005). The Reuters account uses a time machine-type metaphor: “Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along virtually unchanged from mothers to their children, provides a kind of genetic clock linking present-day Polynesians to the descendants of aboriginal residents of Taiwan” (ibid.). Similarly, the Economist briefly mentions these properties of mtDNA. The Reuters account, along with those of the Scotsman, the Guardian, and the Economist, restates the

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theory that three distinct genetic mutations link Melanesian, Taiwan Aborig­ ines, and Polynesians and that these mutations indicate a ten- to twenty thousand-year separation from East Asia. The Economist adds that linguistics has already indicated Taiwan as a Polynesian homeland but that Trejaut and Lin “nail the question down with that talisman of modern research, genetics.” By repeating the nail-down metaphor of the Eurekalert release, the Economist attributes certitude to the journal article’s findings. Taiwan Mass Media Coverage A search of the Factiva database reveals less (and delayed) coverage in Chineselanguage publications and Taiwan-based media in comparison with that provided in English-language media. There was a Reuters Chinese-language story on July 5, 2005 (that has the same content as the English version), which was published in Nanyang Siang Pau, a Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper, on July 6, 2005 (Nanyang Siang Pau 2005). The next stories were not published until July 28, with a Taiwan CNA article (reprinted in United Daily News) and two articles in a Taiwan national evening paper, the China Times Express. The Taiwanese coverage gives attention to the genetics research findings. All three articles state that the main association of Taiwan as the Polynesian homeland, including the three mutations that link Taiwan Aborigines to Melanesians and Polynesians, indicate that Taiwan has been separate from China for at least ten thousand years and that the study involved 640 Ab­ original participants from nine tribes. However, there are two major differences. First, the international mass media attention was itself considered newsworthy in two of the Taiwanese articles, even though the international coverage had only consisted of short, popular science-type articles, not major headlines. The CNA article has the headline “Mackay Memorial Hospital Scholars: Taiwan’s Aborigines Ancestors of Polynesians” and concludes by stating that Lin’s research, since its publication in Public Library of Science, has generated extensive academic and scientific discussion (Central News Agency 2005c). The Minsheng Daily account translated and published by the CNA with the English title “Taiwan’s Aboriginal Peoples Could Be the Forefathers of Polynesians” identifies Lin’s findings between Polynesians and Taiwan Aborigines: “The two groups show a clear and direct link, and the research study has been accepted by the international scientific community” (Central News Agency 2005d). After publication of the Public Library of Science article, we read: “Even the noted monthly ‘The Economist’ has picked up the story, and the issue has sparked a global response,” which somewhat overstates the significance that international mass media coverage gave the research report (Central News Agency 2005d).

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The second major difference in the Taiwan reports is that Lin Ma-li (also known as Marie Lin) is a major figure, in a way personifying the research, while the rest of the research team receives no attention. The director of the Mackay Memorial Hospital Blood Transfusion Lab, Lin has emerged as something of a pop star of genetics research scientists. She began genetics research on the origins of Taiwan Aborigines in the early 1990s (Lin M.L. 2001, 242). Today, she is referred to as the “mother of Taiwanese blood,” and her work has been frequently cited by Taiwanese nationalists.7 The China Times Express article concludes with how Lin considers that this research is academic and should not be interpreted politically (China Times Express 2005a). As well, in the same issue of the China Times Express, there is an article with a title that can be translated as: “Though the Outside World Often Links Her Research with Politics, Lin Ma-Li Looks for Origins: She Is Not Afraid of Being Criticized.” This article describes how, despite external criticism that her research has political intentions, she continues her research on Taiwanese origins (China Times Express 2005b). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs News Conference There was no more substantial reporting on the Trejaut et al. (2005) paper until the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) organized an August 18, 2005, press conference with Lin Ma-li.8 In the organization of an assemblage, the cooperation of other actants cannot be assumed. This is because attempts to translate the attractive passage point project can lead to indifference and even outright hostility, which defines the limits and boundaries of a given assemblage. In the preceding section, science news reporters willingly translated the Trejaut et al. (2005) Eurekalert news release into a number of mass media stories that were propagated globally. However, in its attempt to capitalize on the international interest in the Trejaut et al. findings, MOFA tried to strengthen Taiwan’s diplomatic status by organizing a news conference featuring Lin Ma-li and the Taiwan foreign minister – efforts that met with considerably less success. The MOFA News Conference Announcement The August 17, 2005, MOFA news conference announcement sought to translate the Trejaut et al. (2005) findings into diplomatic recognition for Taiwan by emphasizing that it was the Polynesian homeland. The news conference was entitled “Mother Taiwan: Taiwan Aborigines and the Poly­ nesians.” The MOFA announcement states that, in order “to enhance under­ standing of Taiwan history and Austronesian culture,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has invited Lin Ma-li of Mackay Memorial Hospital to speak at the news conference(Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2005). As well, it mentions that

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Foreign Minister Tan Sun Chen would also make a speech. In the commitment phase, the speech by Lin Ma-li is promoted, as is her ethos, which is defined by her being both the TML director and a doctor. As this announcement temporally involves a future event, it has a somewhat different narrative structure than an account of the past, and this makes it quite unlike a scientific research experiment. Rather, the balance of the narrative is an attempt to create the necessary ethos of the speaker, which is then supposed to satisfy the performance requirements of the narrative quest of enhancing understanding of Taiwan as distinct from China (Torronen 2000). The competence phase involves embedding short hero story-type episodes of Lin Ma-li’s quests to gain abilities and to carry out research. This series of competence sub-narratives actually involves forensic accounts of the past, about either Lin Ma-li’s professional credentials or the inter­national attention paid to the Trejaut et al. (2005) paper. The announcement emphasizes international recognition of Lin’s expertise as a blood expert. It also cites international news coverage: “In addition, some of Dr. Lin’s research has received international attention, the British ‘Economist’ magazine in the July issue had an article entitled ‘ Taiwan, Twinned with Hawaii.’” Here MOFA attempts to mobilize the status and prestige of the Economist as independently attesting to the significance of Lin’s research findings. However, the press announcement erroneously states that “Australian Aborigines have a Maori legend” indicating that their homeland is Hawaiki. The announcement cites the above 2004 University of Geneva event, which MOFA directly sponsored, as evidence of Lin’s ethos. There is no concluding sentence overtly expressing a performance claim and sanction; rather, the narrative is interrupted, and it leaves it up to the reader to complete the performance and sanction phases, perhaps even to attend the news conference (Torronen 2000). This announcement involves a practical syllogism in which the competence phase as a series of minor premises tries to lead or persuade the reader to the implied conclusion, which is attending this event. Translation Failures in the August 18, 2005, News Conference In this news conference, MOFA attempted to mobilize and use the international attention given to Trejaut et al. (2005) to further its diplomatic goals. However, reporters largely rejected MOFA’s epideictic rhetoric of enhancing understanding about Taiwan and the Pacific. In my searches of the Factiva database and other sources, I found two foreign newspaper articles and a Taipei Times account of the MOFA-sponsored news conference. All emphasized MOFA’s central organizing role and its overt political intentions. The only Chinese-language article that I could find briefly mentioned MOFA’s political intent but in less critical terms. Media coverage indicates that MOFA’s

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effort to mobilize Trejaut et al.’s report on Taiwan Aborigines’ genetic links to Polynesians and Melanesians was an open black box. The narrative structure of the Hindustan Times article entitled “Taiwan Says Its Blood Ties Are with Polynesians, Not Chinese” is framed in terms of the threat of war between Taiwan and China. Its first sentence reads: “Taiwan declared Thursday that its blood ties were with Polynesians and not Chinese, a move that could anger China” (Hindustan Times 2005). The article highlights MOFA’s role and intentions: “The foreign ministry invited local and foreign reporters to a seminar, at which a scientist announced that Taiwan aborigines have the same DNA as Polynesians, the indigenous people on South Pacific islands like Hawaii, Fiji and the Solomon Islands” (ibid.). It also notes that the Taiwan foreign minister was in attendance. It then states that China considers Taiwan a “renegade province” and threatens to use force to achieve reunification. The article then shifts attention to Lin Ma-li: “In her speech, Lin Ma-li, a blood analyst from the Mackay Memorial Hospital, said Aus­ tralia’s aboriginal Maori people believe their ancestors came from a place called ‘Hawaiki.’” Here the article repeats the earlier confusion of Maori and Australians found in the MOFA conference announcement. Then it states: “From her research, Lin believes Hawaiki is Taiwan” (ibid.). The remaining sub-narratives continue the theme of conflict between Taiwan and China. In this account, the Trejaut et al. (2005) research findings, which were so prominent in the July 2005 mass media accounts, are missing, particularly regarding how genetic differences between mainland and Taiwan Aboriginal peoples indicate a separation of ten to twenty thousand years. Instead, the entire article is about how the Taiwan government is trying to use genes to prove that Taiwan is not part of China (Hindustan Times 2005). Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post article is entitled “Bloodlines Show Taiwanese ‘More Maori Than Chinese’” (Hsu 2005). It begins: “In an effort to weaken the island’s links with the mainland, Taiwan said yesterday that Taiwanese bloodlines had nothing to do with those of China and were closer to the Maori of New Zealand” (ibid.) The dominant topoi are blood relations and related familial metaphors. The first competence sub-narrative concerns Lin describing her findings, and it begins: “Lin Ma-li, a blood researcher at Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei, announced at a seminar organised by the diplomatic affairs council of the Foreign Ministry that the ancestors of Taiwan’s aborigines were possibly the forefathers of the Maori” (ibid.). The article does repeat these genetic findings; however, by beginning each of four successive paragraphs regarding these findings with “She said” or “She based,” it intentionally emphasizes that it is Lin who is speaking. For example: “She said Taiwanese aborigines came to Taiwan more than 10,000 years ago at the end of the glacial period, before the ice melted and separated the island from

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the mainland. This meant the bloodlines of the Taiwanese were not the same as those of the mainland” (ibid.). This account has more references to the specific genetics research findings of Trejaut et al. (2005) than does the Hindustan Times article. However, by shifting attention to Lin’s role as propagator and mediator of this information (and thus indicating the event’s obvious political intent), the repetition of “She said” undermines the ability of Taiwan Aborigines’ genes to link Taiwan to the Pacific. As well, the article notes: “Ms Lin was invited by the council to speak on her findings at the seminar, attended by foreign and local journalists. [Taiwan] Foreign Minister Mark Chen Tan-sun addressed the opening of the seminar” (ibid.). The article rejects this MOFA-orchestrated event, noting Lin’s popularity among supporters of Taiwanese independence. The Taipei Times article is entitled “Taiwan Could Be Mythical ‘Hawaiki,’ a Researcher Says” and opens with Lin publicly stating that, based on genetic evidence, Taiwan could be Hawaiki. Then it states: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs-backed seminar invited local and overseas reporters to attend in an apparent attempt to distinguish Taiwan’s indigenous heritage from China” (Williams 2005). The reporter, Martin Williams (who conducted doctoral research on post-Second World War Taiwanese Aboriginal politics), picked up on Lin’s error, writing: “Lin Ma-li said that ‘Australia’s Aboriginal Maori people’ believe that their ancestors came from a place known as ‘Hawaiki.’” Williams then retorts: “Maori are in fact the indigenous people of New Zealand, and Australia’s Aborigines are not ethnically related to the Maori” (ibid.). He further notes that “Foreign Minister Mark Chen attended the meeting” and concludes that “it was not clear what fresh political purpose the genetic evidence might serve.” In effect, Williams portrays the news conference with contempt. He gives little specific attention to the alleged genetic evidence since his focus is on the political intent of the news conference. The China Times article begins by briefly noting the news conference’s political intent. It summarizes Lin’s research and the extensive coverage it received. It also notes that, in his speech, Taiwanese foreign minister Mark Chen stated that this type of research contributes to and helps to develop a sense of shared identity between Taiwan and Pacific island nations (China Times 2005a). The rest of the story then discusses Trejaut et al.’s (2005) findings, which, through genetic mutations, link Taiwan Aborigines to different islands of southeast Asia as well as to migrations that occurred over ten thousand years ago (China Times 2005a). This August press coverage was in sharp contrast to the earlier July coverage of Trejaut et al. (2005). In early July 2005, Trejaut el al.’s finding on the genes of Taiwan Aborigines were readily translated and embedded in popular

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scientific accounts that were framed and narrated using topoi relating to the mysteries of Polynesian origins as well as to Captain Cook and/or the KonTiki adventure. Within these narratives, the genes were highly translatable organizing agents that dissociated Taiwan from China, associated Taiwan with Polynesia and Melanesia, and helped answer the mystery of the origins of Polynesians. The Taiwan government had only an indirect supporting role, with the Taiwan National Science Council and Department of Health providing research funding to Trejaut et al. (2005). However, the general rejection of the August 18, 2005, MOFA-organized news conference indicates the limits on the ways in which Taiwanese state institutions can use genes to further Taiwan’s diplomatic goals. As well, scientific researchers have a vital role as credible organizers of genetics research assemblages in mass media science news, but they, too, can be discredited for engaging in such overtly political events. Kavalan Resistance In a 2001 journal, researcher Lin Ma-li stated that, since 1990, the TML had gathered some 1,337 samples of thirty-seven kinds of red blood cells from eleven different Aboriginal peoples (Lin M.L. 2001, 242). In a 2000 Taipei Times article, another Taiwanese genetics researcher, Chen Shu-juo, charged that, during the gathering of these samples, “the ethical principle of informed consent was ignored,” an accusation that was also extended to other institutions (Liu 2000b). At the time, aside from such occasional criticism in the media, genetics researchers did not face any significant repercussions for violations of Aboriginal informed consent. However, this changed for the first time during a 2007 controversy over samples taken by TML researchers from twenty-nine Kavalan Aborigines. In this controversial case, involved Kavalan were able to organize assemblages mobilizing new Taiwan Aboriginal rights laws and the mass media that changed the outcome. The difference between the two times reflects shifts in Taiwan’s democratization and the rise of universal human rights, privacy, and Aboriginal rights discourses in Taiwanese society. A crucial change occurred in 2005, when the Taiwan Parliament passed the much-delayed Indigenous Peoples Basic Law (sometimes referred to as the Aboriginal Basic Law). Part of Section 21 of the Basic Law states: “The government or private party shall consult indigenous peoples and obtain their consent or participation, and share with indigenous peoples benefits generated from land development, resource utilization, ecology conservation and academic research in indigenous people’s regions” (Indigenous Peoples Basic Law 2005). Controversies in 2006 and 2007 over violations of Section 21, which occurred when Taiwan government officials and academics failed to consult Aborigines in the planning

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and implementing of the Taiwan Biobank, had rendered genetics research more politically charged (Munsterhjelm and Gilbert 2010). In this atmosphere, Kavalan activists were able to mobilize this law, along with informed consent discourses, into a strong enough network to make the TML return the twenty-nine samples taken by the team led by Lin Ma-li, Taiwan’s most famous genetics researcher. In this section, I briefly examine how the Kavalan destabilized and reconfigured a genetics research network that spanned transnational science, Taiwan settler state institutions, and Taiwan Aboriginal peoples. The Kavalan traditionally viewed blood as sacred and as connected to childbirth and menstruation as well as to rain and rice production (Liu 2006, 77). More recent struggles over Kavalan and Taiwan Aboriginal identity have once again made blood important socially, politically, and culturally. Section 21 of the Basic Law mandates equitable long-term relations based on dialogue between Aboriginal peoples and scientific researchers. Before this legislation, in practice Aborigines’ provision of informed consent seemed to imply a type of transaction through which genetic samples effectively became the property of the researchers (Liu 2000b; Lai et al. 2001). Crucial to the efforts of the Kavalan activists was the ability to reshape the terrain of discourse and argument – in particular, their use of epideictic rhetoric, through which collective informed consent violations are viewed as injustices that must be rectified. Kavalan resentment of Lin Ma-li, and subsequent resistance to her genetics research, stems, in part, from Lin’s earlier public statements that the Kavalan and other Pingpu Aborigines were virtually extinct (Chen S.J. 2009, 78-79). For example, in a 2001 article, Lin (2001, 243) writes: “Because other Pingpu peoples have nearly disappeared, we cannot trace them.” On August 28, 2004, the CNA published a report on a Mackay Memorial Hospital news conference attended by two representatives of the Pingpu. One of the intentions of the conference was to patch up relations between the hospital and the Pingpu since, “in the past[,] Lin Ma-li published research that stated Pingpu peoples had disappeared as a group, causing Pingpu Aborigines [to express] resentment” toward her (Central News Agency 2004c). This event was part of Lin’s efforts to continue her research on Pingpu peoples. Evidently, such efforts did not completely succeed because it was Lin’s state­ments about the extinction of Pingpu Aborigines (including the Kavalan) that partly motivated Kavalan activists’ efforts (Chen S.J. 2009). As Chen writes: In January 2007, days after Marie Lin collected saliva samples from Kavalan people in Xinshe village, the Kavalan sample donors held a meeting to

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dis­cuss Marie Lin’s collection behavior in public. They decided to call for the return of all the saliva and extracted DNA from Marie Lin, and additionally to admonish her to stop publishing their genetic data. They also filed a complaint with the National Science Council charging her with unethical conduct in her collection behavior. (79-80).

In Xinshe, a communal understanding emerged from these meetings that Lin had violated Kavalan rights and dignity, which became the basis of their charges against her. On April 2, 2007, several newspapers carried stories on the brief fifteenminute ceremony in the Kavalan community of Xinshe, during which the twenty-nine saliva samples were publicly destroyed by being dumped in a ditch (Li MY 2007). The United Daily News carried several stories on the incident and related events. The stories range from accounts given by a Kavalan woman who was sampled to praise for Lin Ma-li’s achievements. One article provides an account of the sample given by a seventy-three-yearold Kavalan elder named Pan A-Yu (Zhang 2007). Pan said that she was riding her motorcycle by the restaurant where the sampling was taking place when one of the research personnel waved her over and asked her to participate. The research personnel then gave Pan an informed consent sheet, but they did not give her a clear explanation of the research project’s purpose. However, Pan said that, because she saw her friends sign the form, she decided to participate. The research personnel were collecting saliva samples, so they asked Pan to spit in a collection container. However, initially, she could not do this, so the research personnel gave her some water to drink, and a little later she was able spit some saliva into a collection container. Afterwards, she chatted with a couple of other villagers, then said goodbye and left. The article shows that the involved research personnel went to considerable lengths to assist Pan to physically give the sample but failed to properly inform her of the purpose of the research. Pan’s account of her sampling experience clearly indicates ethical consent violations for, not only was there no type of community consultation, but Pan, as an individual participant, was not clearly informed of the project’s purposes. Pan’s experience indicates the practical limitations of individual informed consent and points toward the need for Aboriginal communities to have collective informed consent and attendant communal understandings when assessing the significance of research projects. One of the United Daily News stories, with the headline “Only 29 Samples But for Human Rights a Big Leap Ahead,” considered this case to be an important landmark in Taiwan and Aboriginal human rights (Li MY 2007). This is because it was the first time that senior research scientists had been

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forced to return samples to Aboriginal peoples due to ethics violations. As a result of this case, the Mackay Memorial Hospital said it respected the Kavalan decision and promised not to carry out any more sampling without proper informed consent and community consent. Another article, entitled “Mackay Hospital Destroys Aboriginal Samples,” briefly describes how sampling took place at the restaurant and how, as news of the sampling spread, some people started to say that Mackay Memorial Hospital had violated informed consent and principles of equity in research ethics (Chen and Zhang 2007). The Kavalan held that the TML had breached Section 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law. The TML gave in, immediately stopped using the samples, and destroyed them in front of the community. Chen and Zhang’s article links this incident to the 2006 controversies over the failure to consult Aborigines about the Taiwan Biobank. Because of the personification of the conflict in terms of Lin Ma-li, her ideas and life were central in three articles. One article, entitled, “‘Impure Ancestry’ Mistaken Message Explodes in Dispute,” considered how Lin’s earlier comments that the Kavalan had impure ancestry had upset many Kavalan and had contributed to the dispute (Shu J.R. 2007). In one United Daily News article entitled “Lin’s Academic and Personal Life are Both Exciting” (Chen H.H. 2007b), Lin’s various achievements become important symbols of her moral ethos and impeccable credentials. This article verges on maudlin in its acclaim of Lin. It begins by stating that some readers may be alive due to her research on blood typing tests, and it goes on: “Helping Taiwan’s indigenous people find their relatives has been Lin Ma-li’s focus of research over the years” (ibid.). It lists more of her credentials, including her being the first Taiwanese winner of the UNESCO-L’Oreal Helena Rubinstein award for women scientists. It concludes that this “unassuming woman of small stature” has not only achieved professional success but has also survived breast cancer and divorce (Chen H.H. 2007b). In this way, various authorizations and credentials become powerful agents in defence of Lin Ma-li’s ethos and moral character and, by extension, the Mackay Memorial Hospital’s TML, of which she is director. As well, TML personnel, including Lin, maintained throughout the stories that the Kavalan’s objections were totally unexpected. Lin stated in one arti­ cle that she had been collecting samples for twenty years, collecting nearly one thousand saliva samples, and that she had never encountered anything like this before (Chen H.H. 2007a). Rhetorically, Lin uses the magnitude of her previous experience over two decades during which she collected nearly a thousand samples to isolate this incident as an aberration. Lin’s claim is typical of how Mackay Memorial Hospital personnel attempted to maintain that this dispute was a matter of misunderstanding and procedural error. For

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example, Lin Ma-li is quoted as saying: “I never knew this kind of thing would happen,” adding that she had “never encountered any situation like this” (ibid.). In this way, the TML is able to contain the incident as a negative sanctioned sub-narrative that then leads to new abilities based on this experience. In effect, we have an example of the pattern of revelation, reflection, and reform that Dean (1999) identifies in liberal governance. In this way, the topoi and epideictic rhetoric of the overall organizing narratives of the institution and the project remain coherent. Mackay Memorial Hospital never described this incident in terms of human rights violations; rather, its personnel attempted to render it in terms of miscommunication. By doing so, the TML attempts to translate, and there­ fore embed and incorporate, Kavalan resistance efforts into its own organizational narratives. In these translations, Mackay researchers are rendered as reacting morally by destroying the samples and, thereby, redeeming their unintentional error. These efforts are part of a strong defence of the epideictic rhetoric that is the foundation of the researchers’ organizing narratives. This defence seeks to contain this dispute as a competence sub-narrative schema of researcher/Indigenous miscommunication problems due to language differences in the field. Thus, through the ritual of revelation, reflection, and reform, the Mackay Memorial Hospital is supposed to emerge as having learned a lesson that it will incorporate into its research practices. The NSC’s Tepid Correction The story disappeared from the news until August 23, 2007, when there were three articles in the China Times: one on the Xinshe community, another on the National Science Council (NSC) decision, and one on the text of the NSC decision regarding Lin’s correction. The first article, entitled “Lin: I Will Not Harm Aborigines; Kavalan: Ready to Begin Public Hearings,” came out before the NSC’s announcement, and so it does not have the Xinshe community’s reaction to the decision (China Times 2007). A representative of the Kavalan, Bauki Anao, stated that if the NSC did not investigate the case, then the Xinshe Kavalan community association would begin public hearings into the human rights violations involved. He also stated that the association was not against genetics research but that researchers had to respect Aborig­ inal rights and the NSC and the Department of Health had the responsbility to thoroughly investigate medical research ethics violations. Anao stated that a ban should be placed on any future use of research data from these twentynine samples. Finally, Anao said that if Lin considered research on the Kavalan to be important to her studies, then they welcomed her to come to have an open discussion about conducting future research. The second article is entitled “Researching Kavalan Saliva, Lin Ma-li Is Corrected” (Li Z.Y. 2007),

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and it summarizes the events of the case. As well, it outlines the NSC’s decision, which cited Lin’s violations of medical research ethics, the destruction of the samples, and the NSC’s ban on any publication of research based on the disputed samples. However, the article reiterates that much of the incident was a result of miscommunication, and so it terms the NSC’s decision as a correction rather than as a censure. The text of the NSC decision features the headline: “Tracing Austronesian Origins, Misunderstanding Causes Controversy.” This reiterates earlier TML attempts to render these events as a miscommunication that led to a procedural error (National Science Council 2007). The NSC announcement’s competence phase sub-narratives state that TML researchers were engaging in an NSC-organized project about the “Classification and Diffusion of Austro­nesians,” which sought to understand the relations between ancient and modern Taiwan populations by conducting mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome research. It then says that the ancestors of Taiwanese Aborig­ ines likely came from Southeast Asia and that there is plenty of evidence to support this hypothesis but that there were still big gaps in knowledge that need to be filled. Mackay Hospital researchers were involved in this project under an NSC grant and had been gathering samples from Siraya, Ketagalan, Kavalan, and other Pingpu peoples for comparative analysis. Pingpu elders were chosen for the saliva testing in order to minimize the potential effects of intermarriage with Han Chinese settlers. The article’s performance and sanction concludes rather abruptly: “Unexpectedly, language communication problems caused misunderstanding and a dispute.” In effect, the article minimizes the negative sanctioning of Lin. The narrative organization of the NSC announcement moves from a general statement about the NSC project through finer points of the project, with the final sub-narrative focusing on gathering samples from elders in order to minimize the effects of intermarriage. There is no attempt to say why the misunderstanding occurred, only that it was unexpected. The overall effect of this NSC decision is to render the entire issue as little more than a procedural matter. In an August 24, 2007, China Times opinion column in support of the Kavalan entitled “Say No to Violators of Research Ethics,” Duan Hong-kuan, a Siraya Aboriginal leader, states that he refuses to accept the NSC’s interpretation that the Xinshe incident was all a matter of misunderstanding (the Siraya are a Pingpu people) (Duan 2007; Chen S.J. 2009, 90). Rather, Duan counters that this was a matter of researchers violating the human rights of Aboriginal peoples. He writes: “From here, we see the arrogance of intellectuals in scientific institutions, which gives us the feeling [that scientists think], “Even if I explain, you still do not understand” (Duan 2007). Duan continues, saying that, having reflected on the events in the Xinshe Kavalan

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community, the Siraya in his village have also decided to assert a new relationship with research scientists. After all, he notes, Lin had already made disrespectful comments to the effect that the Kavalan and other Pingpu groups were extinct. Thus, Duan frames this conflict in terms of defending Aboriginal rights against Lin – a repeat offender. Duan also argues that the Kavalan have provided a good learning experience for other tribes. For example, following the Kavalan precedent, Duan helped to organize the Siraya community to reject a research project that appeared to be conducted in the same arrogant manner as had the one perpetrated on the Kavalan. Duan continues by saying that he strongly agrees with the NSC’s efforts to correct Lin’s conduct, but not if that simply means publishing a newspaper article that says the dispute was merely a matter of miscommunication and offering no proper explanation. At the core of the Lin-Kavalan dispute is the right to represent and to interpret events: Procedural error or human rights violation? Who determines the exception? Where does the law apply and where does it not apply? The Kavalan, Duan argues, are used to living with different groups, and most are proficient in Mandarin, Taiwanese, and the Ami Aboriginal language, so to say that there was miscommunication is to oversimplify and to gloss over improper conduct. Duan asserts that Lin’s violations are significant and that they included (1) the use of an informed consent form that did not dis­ cuss publication of results, (2) research personnel who failed to adequately explain the purpose of the research, and (3) a failure to provide copies of the informed consent form to the participants for their future reference. Duan then says that he agrees with the Kavalan holding public hearings to discuss these human rights problems in order to remind researchers to treat Aborig­ ines with proper respect. In effect, Duan’s arguments state that the Kavalan and other Pingpu Aborigines will not put up with such violations and will attempt to reclaim their sovereign rights of representation. Zhuo Ya-xiong, a settler senior correspondent for the United Daily News, wrote a critical opinion piece entitled “National Science Council Only Said Half,” which was published on September 6 2007. Zhuo places this conflict within the context of a larger international resource grab: “Northern developed economies have loudly proclaimed ‘genetic resources are the common shared property of humanity’ carrying the banner of public welfare and love, but behind scenes they are stealing the genetic resources of weak nations” (Zhuo 2007). He argues that, even though the Kavalan samples have been destroyed and Lin has been corrected, the research results should remain sealed and not be used in any future research. He contends that this case is like a case that occurred a decade earlier, when foreign researchers carried out sampling among Taiwan Aborigines and now had their genetic

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 111

information: “Put simply, ‘gene thieves’ are rampant.” Furthermore, he contends that this failure on the part of a cutting-edge scientific team at the Mackay Memorial Hospital to recognize the importance of protecting Taiwan’s genetic heritage, reflects the country’s superficial understanding of protecting genetic information. He concludes by stating that “a ban on use of the Kavalan sample data is not enough to solve the underlying problem. Rather, relevant government agencies cannot delay making laws and engaging in advocacy.” In an apparent response to these charges, Lin (2007b) wrote a September 22, 2007, United Daily News article entitled “Ethnic Research Cannot Allow Foreigners Anything and Everything.” This article follows a narrative schema similar to the August 23, 2007, NSC announcement. Lin’s manipulation phase begins by stating the out-of-Africa theory of migrations (universal major premise), then asking where Taiwan Aborigines came from, thereby defining Taiwan Aboriginal research in terms of human evolution (minor local premise). The commitment phase summarizes evidence of Taiwan Aborigines’ genetic origins, stating, however, that there are still many questions to answer (conclusion). It is only after these sub-narratives that Lin begins to discuss the researcher/participant relationship. She states that this depends on mutual trust in a project, so that scientists will make the best use of participants’ good will while contributing to scientific progress. Lin claims to have made use of informed consent since she first began her research. In effect, she is saying that Aborigines have participated of their own free will and for the good of science. She then shifts to a defence of the need for Mackay Memorial Hospital networks to be able to determine who has what rights and obligations. She states that Mackay Memorial Hospital is in a race with foreigners, who also have Taiwan Aboriginal blood samples (although she did not provide these). Mackay Memorial Hospital must con­ duct research on Taiwan Aborigines or someone else will, thereby taking away the country’s right to represent itself. If the country does not carry on its own research on its peoples, this opens the door to foreign academics and the interests of Taiwan’s ethnic groups will be adversely affected. In effect, she argues that if Taiwanese scientists do not use Aboriginal genetics to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty then outside enemies will use them to draw lines hostile to Taiwan. Lin states that this, in fact, occurred in 2000, when Mainland Chinese scientists published a report denying the foundational position of Taiwan Aborigines in the Austronesian language group.9 She argues that, although not every scientific report has express political intentions, nonetheless, each country has its ideologies, and these will affect scientists’ research conclusions. Lin concludes by saying that she is happy to see so many Aboriginal scientists able to participate in research and that she

112 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

hopes more Aborigines will become scientists to help with Aboriginal health problems, which are related to how Aborigines have been treated by Han settlers (Lin M.L. 2007b). In effect, Lin says that foreigners’ access to Taiwan Aborigines genetic materials must be controlled for it poses a potential threat to Taiwan, but the TML’s cooperation with foreign researchers does not. The TML has been cited as the source of many samples in circulation and has engaged in a number of major international projects in which it supplied Taiwan Aborig­ inal blood samples. The TML had a joint project in the early 1990s with the University of Tokyo (1999). As well, in a 2000 article in Tissue Antigens, Lin M.L. et al. (2000, 2) appear to consider their efforts to circulate samples as a significant achievement: “For the past four years (1994-98), we were able to submit samples from our 10 indigenous groups as panel cells at the Japanese Red Cross Central Block Histocompatibility Workshop (JRCW).” And then there are further projects in the 2000s, such as the aforementioned European conferences and Routledge books. The contention is that the TML has enrolled Aborigines’ genetics to defend and advance Taiwan’s best interests. Pingpu Go from Extinct to 85 Percent of Taiwanese In 2001-2, Lin’s controversial assertions that Taiwan settlers descended from the ancient Yueh peoples of southern China and are therefore not Han Chinese caused something of a regional stir, receiving extensive coverage in Taiwan and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. For example, the Singapore-based Straits Times printed a story on the claims made by Lin and angry comments by PRC-based scientists; this story was then cited in an article in the PRC government’s People’s Daily (Hsieh 2002; People’s Daily 2002). The Straits Times article is entitled “Chinese, Taiwanese ‘Come from Same Family’” and begins: “Chinese scientists have dismissed as ridiculous, shameful and unscientific the conclusion by a Taiwan geneticist that Taiwanese do not share common ancestry with the ethnic Hans of the mainland” (Hsieh 2002). After this brief controversy, public interest in Yueh origin theories quickly faded (Chen S.J. 2009). Chen Shu-juo argues that Lin returned to using Pingpu Aborigines as signifiers of Taiwan-centred identity but transformed Aboriginal ancestry among long-term Taiwanese settlers into a marker of Taiwanese identity. When Taiwanese nationalists rejected Lin’s 2006 findings that some 26 percent of Taiwan’s settlers had some Aboriginal ancestry in favour of higher estimates, she then radically revised these figures upwards (80-81). In an 11 August 2007 article in the Liberty Times, entitled “Non-Aboriginal Taiwan­ese Genetic Structure,” Lin claimed that 85 percent of Taiwanese had Aborig­inal ancestry (Lin M.L. 2007a). This 85 percent claim did not generate

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 113

much interest until Lin held a news conference on 18 November 2007, which received extensive, largely uncritical coverage in Taiwan. For example, a Taipei Times article entitled “Most Hoklo, Hakka Have Aboriginal Genes, Study Finds” begins: “Eighty-five percent of Hoklo and Hakka people have Aboriginal ancestry, according to a study on the DNA of non-Aboriginal ethnic Taiwanese conducted by Mackay Memorial Hospital’s transfusion medical research director Lin Ma-li” (Hu 2007). Lin later presented the research that she had used as the basis of this 85 percent figure at a 2007 conference in a paper entitled “Endless Siraya,” which, Chen charged, involved improper statistical calculations (Chen S.J. 2008, 2009). For example, a very controversial interpretation in Lin’s paper held that only 3.5 percent of Siraya were “pure” because only 3.5 percent had HLA, mtDNA, and Y chromosome SNPs, which the TML identified as belonging to Mountain Aboriginal peoples. Siraya activist Duan Hong-kuan challenged Lin: What do you mean “Endless Siraya”? Do you mean that the Siraya are maintained by blood? You say that 95 percent of Siraya people have Mountain Indigenous genes and only 3.5 percent of Siraya people are “pure” – do you mean that 91.5 percent of Siraya people are “impure”? Do you mean that only you can identify how pure a Siraya individual is? You said that 85 percent of Taiwanese Han have Mountain Indigenous genes one month ago; do you mean that the genetic difference between Siraya people and Taiwanese Han is only 10 percent? You must give explanations to my questions in detail because your words have hurt our cultural revival movement. (quoted in Chen S.J. 2009, 91)

According to Chen, after this criticism, Lin admitted that since people have twenty-five thousand genes, her 3.5 percent calculation based on three genes was erroneous (Chen S.J. 2009, 91-92). Duan’s criticisms clearly indicate the continuing significance of Aborigines being able to decide who represents them and how. Lin Challenges the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law In 2008, Lin publicly challenged the necessity of the community informed consent process and its attendant Aboriginal collective rights. In a May 24, 2008, column in the Liberty Times newspaper entitled “How to Deal with Aboriginal Health?” Lin made use of a settler heroes-rescue-Aborigines narrative (Lin M.L. 2008a). In this rescue narrative, scientists must be-able-to-do genetics research in order to provide the best possible medical care to Aboriginal peoples. Lin phrases the manipulation phase quest in terms of advancing Aboriginal health. The competence phase’s first sub-narrative uses

114 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

forensic rhetoric to demonstrate a modality of being-able-to-do, stating that she began sampling Aborigines in 1995 while conducting research on HLA (human leukocyte antigen), which is a popular gene in human origins studies. Then, after 2000, Lin expanded her research to include tissue antigens, mitochondrial DNA, and Y chromosomes to build up foundational knowledge in order help deal with disease. The second sub-narrative addresses the April 2007 dispute over the twenty-nine Kavalan Aborigines’ saliva samples. Lin argues that the “media and relevant agencies only focused on the failure of the Mackay Memorial Hospital researchers to properly inform Aborigines of the purpose of the experiment as a violation of Aboriginal rights.” Due to this emphasis, they unfortunately missed the medical significance of the research. Righting these misunderstandings constitutes Lin’s subnarrative quest. First, she states that the Mackay Memorial Hospital researchers had tried their best to explain to the Kavalan the purpose of the research before the sampling began. However, the researchers did not have a detailed understanding of Section 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, including what constitutes Aboriginal territories and collective informed consent. In this way, Lin continues to maintain that the incident was about miscommunication, both with regard to the Kavalan and with regard to the researchers’ understanding of Section 21: consequently, this research remains fundamentally moral. However, Lin says they have recognized that there was miscommunication and so have corrected the problem. This fits with liberal governance’s cycle of problematization, reformation, and replacement (Dean 1999). This error-correction organizational sub-narrative asserts that TML research practices fulfill important knowing-how-to-do and being-able-to-do modalities, particularly with regard to their competence in administering informed consent: Manipulation phase: TML is committed to and serves Aboriginal peoples’ health, but there was miscommunication.  Commitment phase: TML is now committed to resolving why this error occurred.  Competence phase: TML did not have the requisite modalities of ableto-do and know-how-to-do because it lacked full understanding of Section 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, including what constitutes Aboriginal territories and collective informed consent.  Performance: TML now knows how the miscommunication occurred.  Sanction: The sanction phase is a bit different because there is not a clearly identified sender, only an implied one, such as humanity, the people, the common good, or some other type of macro-actant. This sender says you 

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 115

have rectified the error and can continue to serve Aboriginal peoples’ health. In this way, TML is able to maintain its epideictically defined foundational moral and normative values, and even celebrate these values, which have once again shown their usefulness in doing good. Having reasserted the morality of the TML, Lin (2008a) turns to the main quest of advancing Aboriginal peoples’ health, stating: “In medical research the necessity of having the approval of the entire tribe is questionable.” She then argues that Aborigines are genetically unique isolated populations. Furthermore, she asserts that recent foreign studies challenge the ways in which Western medicine has treated everyone in the same way for a given disease. Such studies indicate it is important to understand each ethnic group’s unique environment, culture, geography, and genetics. However, research on Aboriginal patients “requires the high standards of tribal approval,” which, Lin argues, “is not only a time-consuming, cumbersome, and thankless task, but also involves being charged that they [the researchers] are gaining benefits by conducting research on Aborigines, as well the privacy of Aboriginal patients is exposed through the tribal consultation process” (ibid.). Therefore, Lin concludes that government officials, by only focusing on Aboriginal rights, interfere with the diagnosis of Aboriginal patients’ diseases and, thereby, place their health in jeopardy. Unlike Mann et al. (1999) or others who apply human rights-based approaches to health, Lin separates health issues from human rights and Aboriginal rights concerns. Lin uses a hierarchy of topoi in which Aborigines’ health at a bodily level takes precedence over potential Aboriginal rights concerns: Aborigines are inclusively excluded from the polis. These arguments seem to justify this inclusive-exclusion through a paternalistic arrangement, with its underlying beneficent fiduciary duty to restrict Aborigines’ rights in order to improve their health. Lin asserts that Aboriginal people are in a health crisis, a state of emergency, which justifies the exercise of prerogative powers to deal with the often-large gaps between the realities of the state of emergency and the (dis)organizing properties of laws requiring collective informed consent. If followed to the full letter of the law, collective informed consent would actually exacerbate this emergency and injure Aborigines further, so the law must be limited and graduated in its application. This line of argument seems to imply that, until the state of emergency pertaining to Aboriginal health is alleviated, there must be restrictions on Aboriginal rights. Lin is one of the most influential figures in Taiwan when it comes to Aboriginal genetics research. Lin’s argument is all the more significant since she also serves on

116 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

the Taiwan Biobank Advisory Committee (Taiwan Biobank 2006; Taiwan Biobank 2010). The Stanford Connection In an August 27, 2008, article entitled “Talking about the 85 percent of Taiwanese with Aboriginal Genes,” Lin defends her 85 percent figure, stating that, in his criticism, Chen Shu-juo had misrepresented her statistics (Lin M.L. 2008b). Importantly, she accuses Chen (who was her former Master’s student) of multiple ethics violations. The first of these involves Chen taking credit for her research on HLA variants among the Ami. She then considers the more recent case in which Chen is credited with providing samples from 220 Taiwan Aborigines in a paper with PRC-based scientists (Li et al. 2008) (he was then doing his PhD at Stanford), asking whether this research was approved by a Tzu Chi University (where Chen was also conducting research) institutional review board.10 Furthermore, she asks whether the 220 samples were processed in Taiwan or if they were exported, and if the samples were exported, did they have approval from the Tzu Chi University IRB and Department of Health? She argues that Chen’s actions violated the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law. Her ethics violations charges against Chen undermine his ethos. She shows how these 220 samples had been included in a 2008 article that Chen, along with Hsu Mu-tsu of Academia Sinica, had co-authored with Jin Li and other researchers from the PRC (Li et al. 2008; Lin M.L. 2008b). In particular, Lin points out that this 2008 article, co-authored with Chen, says Taiwan Aborigines are related to Daic peoples of Southern China and also defines Taiwan as a province of China, thus undermining Taiwan’s sovereignty. In her concluding paragraph, Lin accuses Chen of causing the Kavalan saliva sampling dispute, stating that he had said to them: “‘Why were you so stupid as to give saliva samples to Dr. Lin’ (tribe members recounted)” (Lin M.L. 2008b). Lin’s argument that Chen provoked the entire Kavalan ethics dispute by calling community members stupid for participating seeks to reassert the morality of her research by saying that Chen misled the Kavalan and also implies that the Kavalan were easily led. She further argues that she and most medical researchers are against gene patenting as it impedes medical research. She concludes with the “hope[] that justice will be quickly served, so that academic research circles can return to their former simplicity, we who are concerned with Aboriginal peoples’ well-being can then put our full talents into improving their welfare in their areas” (ibid.). Lin’s conclusion reasserts the morality of her work, which is only concerned with Aboriginal peoples’ well-being.

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 117

In May 2010, Lin again discussed some of her accusations against Chen Shu-juo in a Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV) Aboriginal Weekly News Magazine report entitled “My Blood Flows Toward Shanghai” (Taiwan Indigenous Television 2010). The flow of Taiwan Aboriginal samples, cell lines, and research data follows a circuitous route through Stanford University in California, which has become an important centre (of accumulation) for genetics research on Indigenous peoples. The report’s investigation of some of Lin’s accusations against Chen Shu-juo and Hsu Mu-tsu (a researcher at Academia Sinica) documents how an assemblage developed, beginning in the mid-1990s, between Taiwan researchers at Academia Sinica, Stanford Uni­­ versity, and Fudan University in Shanghai. Between 1992 and 1996, Academia Sinica researchers took some 2,000 to 3,000 samples from Taiwan Aborigines without proper informed consent (TITV 2010). From 1992 to 1996, according to Chen, taking samples from Aborigines only involved getting the per­ mission of the Aboriginal village head official or the local health station head. Hsu described the procedure for obtaining Aborigines’ samples during this time; first, “they would contact the Aboriginal village head and verbally ask their permission to obtain samples from the village. Then the village head would inform the village.” According to Hsu, “participation by villagers was considered equivalent to their consent: ‘If they came, means they agreed.’ During the visit, the researchers provided free health checkups and took samples” (Taiwan Indigenous Television 2010). These samples taken from Aborigines were now to be distributed. In 1996, Academia Sinica hosted an international conference on connections between Taiwan Aborigines and other Indigenous peoples in South­east Asia (Fan 1995).11 Hsu Mu-tsu was credited with providing genetic samples from twenty Ami, twenty Yami, twenty Paiwan, and forty Atayal Aborigines to the Stanford University team of Jin Li, Peter Underhill, Lucas CavalliSforza, C.T. Lam, and B. Sun (Jin et al. 1996, 5, 13). Jin moved to Shanghai’s Fudan University in 1997 and, according to Chen, took the Taiwan Aborig­ inal samples with him (Genographic Project n.d.b; TITV 2010). A 1998 article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and co-authored by Jin, thanks Hsu Mu-tsu for providing Ami, Yami, Paiwan, and Atayal samples to these researchers in the PRC. This 1998 paper, entitled “Genetic Relationship of Populations in China,” states: “Samples of four Taiwanese Aborigine populations were kindly provided by M. Hsu (Academia Sinica, Taiwan)” (Chu et al. 1998, 11,763).12 In the article, Taiwan is referred to as a province of China (11,764). The PRC-based researchers compared Taiwan Aborigines to samples from the PRC’s Chinese Human Genome Diversity Project (which was independent of the HGDP and unaffected by Indigenous

118 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

peoples’ organizing efforts against the HGDP) (11,763).13 In this way, the Ami, Yami, Paiwan, and Atayal samples provided by Hsu became integrated into a new PRC-centred assemblage.”14 Lin shows that these Taiwan researchers’ role was not just limited to supplying samples – rather, they were active participants in these assemblages. An early example of this that is not mentioned in the TITV report is a 2002 paper co-authored by Chen Shu-juo and Hsu Mu-tsu entitled “Recent Anthropo­­logical Genetic Study of Taiwan Indigenous Populations,” which was presented at the International Symposium of Anthropological Studies held at Fudan University in Shanghai, PRC (Chen et al. 2002). Central to Lin’s charges is that the Li et al. (2008) paper that Chen Shu-juo (who was then studying his PhD at Stanford while doing field research in Taiwan) and Hsu Mu-tsu co-authored with Jin Li’s team of PRC-based scientists undermined Taiwan’s sovereignty claims by calling Taiwan a province of China (TITV 2010). In response to the charge, Chen stated that he asked his coauthors in the PRC not to call Taiwan a province of China, but they ignored his request. As well, this paper entitled, “Paternal Genetic Affinity between Western Austronesians and Daic Populations,” asserted, “we show that, in contrast to the Taiwan homeland hypothesis, the Island Southeast Asians do not have a Taiwan origin based on their paternal lineages. Furthermore, we show that both Taiwan aborigines and Indonesians likely derived from the Daic populations based on their paternal lineages” (Li et al. 2008, 146). Such findings make claims over the ancient dead, which in Lin’s view also supported PRC claims over Taiwan. Furthermore, Li et al. (2008) also received funding from the controversial National Genographic Project (Li et al. 2008; TITV 2010). Lin’s charges and Chen’s responses along with those of Hsu in the 2010 TITV report highlight the problems of how samples taken from Aborig­ines without informed consent become de facto forms of property that scien­ tists exchange with each other. Even if taken with informed consent, these samples, cell lines grown from them, and associated data continue to circulate as boun­dary objects that take on very different meanings due to the abilities of genes to create associations and dissociations between ancient peoples in different times and places. These disputed exchanges raise critical issues, particularly who is authorized to represent Aborigines, and how, in genetic research assemblages.15 These contestations over the significance of Taiwan Aborigines’ genetics, as they appear in the flows and networks of personnel, knowledge, and Indigenous peoples’ samples, extend to Stanford, which is an important node in global genetics research networks and whose activities extend to US patents (with samples also supplied by Hsu Mu-tsu), as we see in Chapter 6.

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 119

While Lin Ma-li helped bring attention to the assemblage of Taiwan researchers with Stanford and Fudan University, the TML also continues to be involved in high-level international research assemblages with similarly troubling ethical implications. In 2008, TML supplied Ami and Taroko sam­ ples to an international project, which produced a paper entitled “The Genetic Structure of Pacific Islanders” (Friedlaender et al. 2008). Among the coauthors of this paper are Kenneth Kidd and Judith Kidd of Yale University, who have extensively used Taiwan Aboriginal peoples’ genetic materials in their research, and who have even provided some Ami and Atayal cell lines to Coriell Cell Repositories, where they have been sold since 1995 (see Chap­ ter 6).16 As well, the research of two other co-authors, Jeffrey Chambers and Rod Lea, provoked the 2006 warrior-gene controversy in New Zealand (see Chapter 5). This 2008 paper even used samples from the long-discredited HGDP, including samples from Karitiana Indigenous people of the Western Amazon in Brazil (Friedlaender JS et al. 2008, 187; Rosenberg 2006), which have been the subject of long-running informed consent disputes (see Rohter 2007). Finally, though this article was not part of the Genographic Project, research for it was funded by the National Geographic Society (Friedlaender et al. 2008). Such research projects indicate how genetics research assemblages involving Taiwan Aborigines and other Indigenous peoples can be full of complex and conflicting ethics, interests, and goals. Focusing only on informed consent in obtaining samples misses the larger issues of whether Taiwan Aborigines and other Indigenous peoples are able to determine how they are researched and represented. The 2010 TITV report highlights this problem with its criticisms of the National Geographicorganized Genographic Project. It featured clips of a number of Indigenous activists and scholars like Deborah Harry, who rebuked the Genographic Project for its lack of consultations with Indigenous peoples and for transforming Indigenous peoples into research objects, terming it a new version of the Human Genome Diversity Project (Taiwan Indigenous Television 2010). In the TITV report, one segment featured Jason Pan, a Pingpu Ab­ original rights activist, discussing how the Havasupai Indigenous people had asked Arizona State University (ASU) scientists to research their high rates of diabetes but instead the ASU scientists abandoned the diabetes research and used the Havasupai samples to study human origins and other research. Pan considers the precedents set by the Havasupai’s legal case of violations of informed consent and the potential for similar cases in Taiwan. In this view, informed consent is but the first step in an extended equitable relationship based on mutual trust and respect, in which Aboriginal peoples play a central role in directing any research in their communities.

120 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

The TITV report and the Kavalan sampling controversy illustrate the progress in Aboriginal rights in Taiwan during the 1990s and 2000s. In the early 1990s, Hsu and other researchers routinely violated informed consent in obtaining samples from Aborigines. However, by the late 2000s, Taiwan Aborigines could constitute assemblages that mobilized the mass media (including TITV), international bioethical norms, laws, Aboriginal rights and human rights organizations, to effectively challenge and sometimes de­ stabilize genetic researchers’ assemblages. No longer are scientists able to exercise prerogative powers to decide unilaterally and arbitrariliy who has what rights, benefits, and obligations. Rather, previous conflicts like the HGDP, new laws, court cases, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and international bioethical instruments such as the Helsinki Declaration are all actants, whose presences potentially haunt any research project and researcher (in Derrida’s sense). For these actants can be translated locally and directly mobilized by affected Aboriginal peoples and their supporters in organizing assemblages to challenge research violations. Conclusion Genes played a critical role in determining the exception in these events because their importance was not as physical objects but, rather, as agents in organizational communication. Acceptance and contestations over the genes’ abilities were key to defining these assemblages. In the July 2005 coverage of the Trejaut et al. (2005) paper, the abilities of Aborigines’ genes were readily translated from transnational science into transnational mass media by answering the question about the location of Hawaiki, or Captain Cook’s question about the origins of the Polynesians, or by quashing the Kon-Tiki theory. Genes functioned effectively as boundary objects in organizing large-scale, short-duration assemblages based on their abilities to translate into these multiple narratives. Clearly, the genes exerted agency here as their inclusion made a difference to the assemblages: without the genes there would have been no global assemblages. However, the Taiwan MOFA largely failed to enrol reporters with its August 18, 2005, news conference, which tried to promote an understanding of Taiwan as distinct from China through the findings of Trejaut et al. (2005) and Aborigines’ genes. Overall, the mass media coverage translated the news conference as a blatantly political attempt by MOFA to use Taiwan Aborigines to advance Taiwan’s sovereignty claims. Resistance to the TML focused on the genes’ associations and linkages to human rights violations and Aboriginal rights violations, and to how Lin made genes into weapons of ontological violence when she denied the

Material

Plastic

Instrumental

Inherent properties

Constrain

4. TML, NSC Genes are links to Gene projects can have Genes answer human Aborigines’ genes are TML research did response to   ancient migration   procedural problems   migrations   important in research   not involve HR Kavalan Gene research   questions   on disease and   violations, only   is still moral   human evolution   procedural errors

3. Kavalan Genes linked to human Lin remoulds genes to TML uses Aborigines’ Genes belong to The genes do not resistance to   rights and Aboriginal   context: Lin once said   genes to advance its   Kavalan   belong to TML so violations   rights violations   Pingpu were extinct, but   goals   they can’t be used   now Pingpu ancestry in   by TML   85% of Hoklo and Dumped in ditch   Hakka settlers

2. MOFA News Taiwan Aborigines are MOFA says genes support Use genes to enhance Support sovereignty Cannot associate Conference   linked to Pacific   Taiwan sovereignty and   understanding   and diplomacy   with China August 2005   peoples by B4a1a   diplomacy in Pacific   of Taiwan history

1. Trejaut et al. Linked Taiwan to TML discovered genes Allowed translators to: Nails down and Cannot associate    Claim 10 to 20,000   requires acceptance   Taiwan with China coverage July   Melanesia, Polynesia   as B4a1a; haplotype 2005 Translated by   differences; three    years in Taiwan   of linkage theories    Quash Kon-Tiki  international mass  mutations Supports SE Asian    Answer Hawaiki’s   migration route   media    location

Event

The organizing properties of genes in Trejaut et al. (2005) coverage and Kavalan dispute

Table 2

▶

Table 2

Material

Plastic

Instrumental

Inherent properties

Constrain

6. Pingpu reject Genes linked to human Lin distorts and Allows appropriation Unjust and damage Not helpful Lin’s 85%   rights and Aboriginal   manipulates gene traits   into identity claims   Pingpu Genes are not assertion   rights violations Genes are not equivalent   by Nationalists   equivalent to   to being Pingpu   being Pingpu

5. TML says Links 85% of Taiwan Lin’s research findings go Assert genetic basis Common Taiwan Cannot associate with 85% of   settlers to each other   up from 26% to 85% of   of Taiwanese   identity   China settlers have   and to Aboriginal   Taiwan Hoklo and Hakka   identity Aboriginal   ancestors   having Pingpu ancestry genes

Event

◀ 

Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 123

existence of the Pingpu. As for the Kavalan, the TML violated their rights of representation, their right to appoint representatives collectively, their collective and individual autonomy, and their right to informed consent. Yet, in accordance with racialized hierarchies of genetics research on Aborigines, the NSC denied all of these violations when it asserted that the dispute was merely a procedural error born of inadvertent miscommunication, which also implied that Aborigines cannot communicate well. The NSC and other Taiwan government agencies denied the Kavalan community of Xinshe an investigation into whether or not these charges were valid. The nonchalant and cursory way in which the NSC dismissed these charges glossed over their severity. When it did not thoroughly investigate these events, the NSC, in effect, placed restrictions on the rights of the Kavalan. Lin Ma-li first denied that the Pingpu existed. Then, in order to meet popu­ lar Taiwanese nationalist demands, Chen Shu-juo alleged that Lin increased the number of Taiwan’s settlers with Aboriginal ancestry from 26 per­cent to 85 percent. Through such statements, Lin’s research team arrogated Pingpu rights of representation, including the right to demarcate group membership and the right to self-identification. These actions encourage and allow the appropriation of Aboriginal identity by Taiwanese nationalists. In the TITV report “My Blood Flows toward Shanghai,” Lin’s allegations against Chen Shu-juo and Hsu Mu-tsu focused on who could use Aborigines’ genes to represent what. Lin criticized how Chen and Hsu’s research cooperation with PRC-based scientists constituted representions of Taiwan Aborigines’ genes that supported PRC sovereignty claims over Taiwan. However, Lin (2008a) criticized the concept of Aborigines’ collective informed consent, arguing that it was a threat to Aboriginal health and well-being, in effect claiming the right to represent Aborigines as she saw fit. In such ways, genes become critical mediating agents in the interactions between and contestations within graduated sovereignties. Yet, translations can change drastically, depending on context. Recently, during the 2011 presidential election campaign, hundreds of Pingpu held protests at the various campaign offices of the three main parties: the KMT, the DPP, and the Peoples’ First Party. According to a November 20, 2011, Taipei Times article entitled “2012 ELECTION: Pingpu Aborigines Stage Series of Rallies for Recognition,” as they arrived at each protest location, the Pingpu would sing: “We are Pingpu Aborigines, we’ll never forget who we are, let’s stand up and remind them not to forget their great-great grandmas,” a line from the theme song behind the movement that they hope will see them gain official recognition ... In the song, the Pingpu said they wanted to remind people

124 Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland

of their “great-great grandmas” because most of the early Han immigrants to Taiwan were men who married Pingpu women. (Loa 2011)

Pingpu protesters made use of historical intermarriage in their claims for Taiwan government recognition, which continues to be denied under the Ma Ying-jeou administration. The TML has become an important conduit and centre of regional accumulation in global circuits of genetics research. This status has been based on the ability of TML researchers to engage in research in Taiwan Aboriginal territories and to act as spokespeople for Aborigines via genetics. Trejaut et al.’s 2005 Public Library of Science Journal received spectacularly successful transnational news coverage. However, TML-affiliated networks can fail, as occurred when MOFA’s attempts to mobilize this success were overt, suspect, and largely untranslatable. Furthermore, while the TML remains a centre of regional accumulation, the Kavalan community of Xinshe’s ability to force it to return samples taken from twenty-nine community members demonstrates that its ability to represent Aborigines can be disrupted. These differing interpretations and controversies over genetics research involving Pingpu Aborigines show the centrality of genes’ abilities as boundary objects that help constitute and organize assemblages. This analysis of the important roles of genetics with regard to issues of identity reveals the complementarity between colonial governance and that of core areas. The TML has moulded and remoulded Taiwan Aborigines’ identities to fit with Taiwanese blood nationalist criteria and to enact Taiwan state sovereignty claims both domestically and internationally. It is here that the Kavalan redefined those relations by asserting their sovereignty and defining the exception.

Were the Maori “Made in Taiwan”?

5

Genetic links between Taiwan Aborigines and Maori were cited as part of the rationale for a 2004 memorandum of understanding (MOU)(a type of diplomatic agreement) on Aboriginal cultural exchanges between the Taiwan government’s cabinet-level Council of Indigenous Peoples and the New Zealand Ministry of Maori Development. According to a Taiwan CNA report, this agreement was signed by the Taiwan Council of Indigenous Peoples chairperson Chen Chien-nien: “Despite many informal cultural exchanges between the two countries over the past few years, the conclusion of such an official agreement did not gain momentum until he [Chen Chien-nien] took a trip to New Zealand last month following the announcement that DNA analysis had provided scientists with a genetic link between the Maori and Taiwan’s indigenous peoples” (Lin F.Y. 2004). This report portrays genetics research findings as the impetus that drove the signing of this MOU. However, it is not only Taiwanese nationalists and/or the Taiwan government that make use of the Austronesian zone. The three made-in-Taiwan documentaries analyzed in the first part of this chapter offer their own translations of this zone as they retrace the migrations of Maori and Poly­ nesian ancestors from New Zealand back to Taiwan. Yet, not all attempts at linking Taiwan Aborigines and Maori succeed, and, in the second part of this chapter, we see that research conducted by a team of New Zealand scientists that would have constituted new genetic linkages between Taiwan Aborigines and the Maori was disrupted in a major controversy that erupted in August 2006. In this controversy, which played out in the New Zealand and international media, Maori politicians and intellectuals sharply criticized involved scientists’ attempts to attribute Maori community violence and criminality to what were termed “warrior genes” (MAO-A, or monoamine oxidase alleles).

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Made in Taiwan Utilizing Taiwanese research findings, a team led by Geoffrey Chambers at Victoria University in New Zealand stated in a 1998 Victoria University research report that they had linked Taiwan Aborigines to Maori through alcohol metabolization genes. Of seventeen reports on Factiva database regarding these findings, only one, by Agence France-Press, directly mentions ADH2*2, which is associated with the rapid metabolization of alcohol into acetaldehyde: “Comparisons of a key set of three genes related to the metabolism of alcohol, ADH 2-2, ADH 3-1, and ALDH 2-2, showed the relatively high frequency of ADH 2-2 found in New Zealand Maori, linked them with Cook Islanders and ultimately with Oriental populations” (Agence FrancePresse 1998). However, the ALDH2*2 that was common among Han Chinese and had a 5 percent prevalence among Taiwan Aborigines was absent in Maori, Rarotongans, and Samoans (Royal Society of New Zealand 1998). This 1998 report by Chambers et al. was not a peer-reviewed paper or study but, rather, a set of research findings directly released to the mass media.1 Similarities in the frequencies and type of ADH2*2, ADH3*1, and ALDH2*2 alcohol metabolization alleles indicate links between Taiwan Aborigines and Maori. Concerning the rates of ADH2*2, they state: “The ADH2*2 variant is present in Polynesians, but at a lower frequency (0.54) than in Taiwanese natives (ranging from 0.70 in the Ami to 0.91 in the Atayal), cf approximately 0.69 to 0.79 in Asians” (Chambers et al. 2002, 952). Chambers et al.’s comparative data come from earlier alcoholism genetics research on Taiwan Aboriginal peoples conducted by Thomasson et al. (1994) and Chen W.J. et al. (1997). These theories of alcohol metabolization as key to alcoholism among Taiwan Aborigines were translated and began to shape discourses on Maori morbidity and mortality. Another one of the most persistent traces of this initial translation has been the made-in-Taiwan (MIT) rhetorical figure. It appears this figure was first used in the headline of an article about the Chambers announcement on these ADH2*2- and ALDH2*2-based linkages. Written by Kent Atkinson of the New Zealand Press Association and published on August 10, 1998, this article was entitled “Maori ‘Made in Taiwan’ according to New DNA analysis” (Atkinson 1998). This MIT figure was subsequently used in a number of New Zealand newspapers, including the Evening Post (1998) the Daily Telegraph (1998), and the Dominion (1998). As well, the announcement of the findings, though without the MIT figure, received coverage internationally in Taiwan through the CNA, in the United Kingdom through the BBC, and in the United States through Time magazine (Central News Agency 1998; Dunlop 1998; Robinson 1998). Rhetorical figures often play on knowledge

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that the speaker anticipates the audience will have and, therefore, does not need to be stated, so none of the 1998 New Zealand media stories using the MIT figure bothered to explain it. Linking Taiwan Aborigines and Maori In the above news coverage and the three documentaries analyzed in this chapter, MIT provides an initial and guiding rhetorical association. In conventional terms, the Maori MIT figure combines ideas from two different domains to create a dissonant, or contradictory, metaphor that functions as a hook to grab the reader’s attention because, of course, the Maori could not have been literally manufactured in factories in Taiwan. For example, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) consider metaphors to be condensed analogies. A conventional definition of analogy is A is to B as C is to D, so new information that Maori ancestors come from Taiwan is combined with existing concepts of ubiquitous consumer goods made in Taiwan. However, more recent work in the field of cognitive linguistics by Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier suggests that this MIT metaphor involves what they term “conceptual blending,” in which concepts from two or more input spaces combine to create a novel conception (Fauconnier and Turner 2001). In this metaphor, Maori ancestry is compared to the country of origin of a consumer product, which also involves concepts that the homelands of ancestors somehow shape identity as a presence that is inscribed in, and inherited through, genes. Rather than delve into a discussion of conceptual blending, I am more interested in seeing how this metaphor can be analyzed in terms of the narrative schema.

Manipulation phase: The sender’s metaphor creates cognitive dissonance (because the Maori could not have been manufactured in Taiwan), which causes a state of disorder.  Commitment phase: The receiver must sort out this dissonant figure.  Competence Phase: – Sub-narrative 1: The receiver learns or perhaps already knows the universal premise that people who share variants of a given gene may have common ancestors who lived in particular places. This association involves a sort of metonymy since genes are considered to be material linkages inherited across generations (Shea 2001). This sub-narrative may be only implied and folded into sub-narrative 2. – Sub-narrative 2: The receiver learns that New Zealand scientists have found the same alleles of alcohol metabolization genes in both Taiwan Aborigines and Maori. 

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Performance: Receiver now understands that the sender means the Maori originate in Taiwan.  Sanction: The sender gives the gift of knowledge to the receiver. 

The sub-narratives function as premises leading to the conclusion of the practical syllogism in the performance phase. Understood literally, the Maori MIT metaphor is illogical and counter-factual because Maori are not consumer goods from Taiwan. The suppression of this literal meaning is also evident because there is no transfer of other common connotations associated with consumer goods manufactured in Taiwan, such as their low quality (particularly before the 1980s) or inauthenticity (e.g., mass-produced tourism souvenirs), nor is there any reference to today’s advanced high-tech industry (e.g., computers), the latter being the Taiwan government’s preferred interpretation. But cognitive processes allow us to quickly work through such contradictions and to create new sets of associations and understandings (Fauconnier and Turner 2001). These processes are what make metaphors so fundamental to human communication for they work by selectively translating between two or more distinct input spaces, depending on context. Another interesting aspect of the Maori MIT metaphor is that it rests on a universal premise, which is conventionally understood as metonymic, that genes are direct material connections to our ancestors. The rhetorician Kenneth Burke (1969, 506) states: “The basic ‘strategy’ in metonymy is this: to convey some incorporeal or intangible state in terms of the corporeal or tangible. E.g., to speak of the ‘heart’ rather than the ‘the emotions’” (see also Shea 2008, 10). Using Burke’s concept of metonymy, Shea (2008, 10) contends that genetics is based on “scientific realism [that] relies on metonymy as a ‘substantial reduction,’ or a figure that is not to be recognized as a figure and is to be taken literally.” The concept of ancestry is a particularly incorporeal concept that gives presence to the dead and the time-spaces in which they lived. The following analysis of three documentaries shows the interesting ways in which the Maori MIT metaphor and the underlying metonymy of genetics as ancestry guide the organizing narratives. Made-in-Taiwan Documentaries The MIT documentaries involve a New Zealand domestic news report, an independent film, and an interview based on the independent film:

1 On July 9, 2005, T V New Zealand’s (T VNZ) Sunday current affairs program broadcast a report entitled “Made in Taiwan,” which combines recent

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genetic findings by New Zealand and Taiwanese scientists with a trip to find the “Maori motherland” (Harrington 2005). 2 The 2006 film by Auckland-based George Andrews Productions entitled Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure is a road movietype “journey of self-discovery” (Salmon 2006). Based on evidence of Taiwan as the Austronesian homeland, Nathan Rarere (who is Maori) and Oscar Kightley (who is Samoan) travel from New Zealand to Rarotonga (Cook Islands), Samoa, Vanuatu, Taiwan, and then back to New Zealand. In addition to its broadcast on Al Jazeera, this film has played and won awards at international film festivals (Banff, South Korea, New Caledonia) and been shown on TV3 and Maori Television in New Zealand, ABC in Australia, and Link TV in the United States (Maori Television 2007; Smiley Films 2008). 3 The 2007 Al Jazeera English channel Witness special, entitled “Made in Taiwan,” used scenes from Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure in conjunction with a conversation between host Rageh Omaar and the population geneticist Bryan Sykes. TVNZ’s Quest for the Maori Homeland On July 10, 2005, the TVNZ current affairs program Sunday broadcast this fifteen-minute report, which involved timely news coverage that translated and interpreted new scientific findings by Chambers et al. (published in April 2005) and Trejaut et al. (released on July 4, 2005), discussed in Chapter 4. The report’s producer, Chris Harrington, appears to have known about the Trejaut et al. (2005) findings well in advance since his team visited Taiwan and interviewed Lin Ma-li in June 2005, before the July 4, 2005, Eurekalert news release. Utilizing these scientific research findings, Harrington organized a neoliberal, structured, short-term media assemblage. A TVNZ corporate brochure has as its “vision statement”: “TVNZ is New Zealand’s television public broadcaster. Our Nation. Our Voice” (TVNZ n.d., 3). New Zealand’s radical neoliberalization since the 1980s means that TVNZ is termed a public broadcaster despite broadcasting extensive foreign content and receiving 90 percent of its revenues from commercial sources and only 10 percent from the government (ibid.). In accordance with the State-Owned Enterprises Act, 1986, TVNZ and other government enterprises are to be “run as commercially successful businesses” (11). Accordingly, the producer of the segment, Chris Harrington, obtained a NZ$3,507 grant from the New Zealand government-funded Asia New Zealand Foundation (Asia New Zealand Foundation 2004/5, 12). In the 2004-5 annual report, which lists Harrington’s grant, the foundation states that its “strategic objective” is to “initiate and

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provide well-informed input into policy and public thinking on Asia-related issues” (11). Harrington also received organizational assistance from the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Office when his film crew visited Taiwan during the middle of June 2005 (New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade n.d.). The TVNZ documentary segment is an assemblage organized through translations of genetics research narratives, government institutional mandates, and international trade-related commercial imperatives. The manipulation phase of the TVNZ segment begins with the white male presenter, Phil Kitchin, positioned to the left of a picture of a Bunun Ab­ original man (named Adul). A double helix is superimposed over the Bunun man’s face and the phrase “made in Taiwan” is written below. This powerful visual epideictic rhetoric (Prelli 2006) helps identify the space-time of the quest by articulating the face of Adul with the DNA double helix as the metonymic transmitter of ancestral identity and the popular MIT metaphor. Kitchin then defines the practical syllogism’s major premise and the narrative’s quest: “Where did New Zealand’s first settlers come from? Was it from some mythical place in the Pacific or someplace further, much further, away?” In defining the quest, Kitchin uses the rhetorical technique of amplification when he emphasizes the magnitude of the historical time and geographic distance through the use of the words “mythical” and “much further.” He implicitly identifies the sender of the quest as the haunting presence of the transcendent nation of New Zealand, which extends back to include Maori ancestors. This assumes a nationalistic shared value, which is the belief that knowing where the first “New Zealanders” came from is something honourable and important. Having defined the major premise and attendant quest, Kitchin then begins the commitment phase, in which he accepts the quest with a minor local premise: “Try an island next door to mainland China. Find that hard to believe?” Next, in the deductive practical syllogism’s conclusion, he states: “Well not according to Kiwi and Asian scientists, who are shattering our theories about Maori migrations.” The use of the verb “shattering” in the practical syllogism’s conclusion emphasizes the magnitude of these findings, signalling a significant advance in knowledge. In addition, the use of continuous-tense verbs functions as a cue that this is an ongoing and unfolding story in which the presenter and the audience are active participants. The basic quest involves redefining Taiwan temporally and spatially as the Maori homeland. So not only do they define their own quest but they also define it in opposition to China. China functions as the antagonistic anti-subject, which overshadows, hides, or masks Taiwan’s identity as the Maori homeland. This task involves using rhetoric that associates Taiwan with the Maori and disassociates it from China.

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Excellent Adventure The 2006 film Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure (hereafter Excellent Adventure) was released the year after the TVNZ report. The title mixes the MIT metaphor with a pop culture reference to the 1989 Hollywood film Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure about two dim-witted young men and their adventures using a time machine. The film’s protagonists are Nathan Rarere and Oscar Kightley.2 Rarere is a Maori radio host and actor, while Kightley, a Samoan who grew up in New Zealand, is a TV and film actor. The film was funded in part by the New Zealand government’s New Zealand on Air funding agency, which provides funding for local programming. The film credits indicate the film also had the assistance of Robert Kaiwai and the New Zealand Commerce and Industry Office in Taipei; Adele Whyte (as a genetics consultant); the Taiwan government’s Council of Indigenous People; EVA Airlines (based in Taiwan); and Bryan Sykes of Oxford Ancestors Ltd., who conducted genetic testing (Salmon 2006). Again, we have a configuration of disparate agents organizing by translating a narrative about retracing Maori and Polynesian peoples’ origins. The manipulation phase of Excellent Adventure involves the generic universal major premise/question: “‘ Where am I from’ in a land of settlers?” This premise minimizes Nathan and Oscar’s Indigenous identification with their respective homelands. During a sequence of shots of different people walking on streets, including East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and settlers of Euro­ pean descent, Nathan uses the epideictic technique of amplification to emphasize the magnitude of the quest by deeming it applicable to all people in New Zealand: “In New Zealand, we all come from somewhere else. It’s a place we remember or we’ve been told or we’ve been taught about.” Nathan’s repetition of “we” in successive clauses makes use of the rhetorical figure of anaphora, an amplification technique that emphasizes the magnitude of the theme (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, 175-76). Again, the major premise that knowledge of our ancestry is honourable and important is presumed but not stated. Next, there is a shift to a minor premise, with Nathan stating: “But now you can find out where your distant ancestors actually lived. From a tiny sample of DNA, they can link us back to real people tens of thousands of years ago. At Oxford University, they call them clan fathers and clan mothers.” The major premise and minor premise function as a quest that is given to Nathan and Oscar, which thereby creates a modality of having-to-do. By agreeing to accept the quest in the commitment phase, Nathan and Oscar become receivers. This acceptance involves a transformation in modality to wanting-to-do, committing them to the quest that follows as Nathan states: “I’m Maori, Oscar’s Samoan; we want to know where our Polynesian ancestors came from. Our DNA can tell us.” This commitment

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involves a shift to deliberative rhetoric by indicating that they will use DNA testing to find out where their ancestors originated. The 2007 Al Jazeera Witness documentary entitled Made in Taiwan embeds scenes from Excellent Adventure into a thirty-minute interview. The host, Rageh Omaar, begins: “Wherever we live, whatever our backgrounds, there is one question that fascinates all of us. Where am I from?”3 His epideictic rhetoric involves the use of amplification to emphasize the universal magnitude of the quest to know our ancestry. Again, the major premise that knowing where one’s ancestors are from is important is implied rather than stated. Then Omaar sets out what is to follow by outlining the quest’s opposition, its antagonistic anti-subjects: “But these days between political correctness, paranoid suspicion, and racial sensitivity, this simple polite inquiry has become a very complex issue.” This opposition functions in terms of deliberative rhetoric for it sets up a challenge, or set of norms, with which to assess whether genetics research is a technology of racism or anti-racism. Omaar accepts this quest as he shifts to deliberative rhetoric: “Two guys living in New Zealand decided to investigate their own provenance a little more deeply than most. Nathan is a Maori, Oscar from Samoa. The Maori and the Samoans both believe that their ancestors braved the vast Pacific Ocean in only dugout canoes, but where had their journeys begun? Thanks to DNA testing, it is now possible to prove the myths true.”4 He then mentions that his guest is the population geneticist Bryan Sykes, who conducted Nathan and Oscar’s genetic testing, and states: “But first some scenes from Dan Salmon’s film following the guys on their journey of self-discovery to answer the question where am I from? Made in Taiwan.” In this way, Excellent Adventure is embedded within the Witness special’s quest. Competence Sub-Narrative One: Gaining Scientists’ Authorizations and Information In all three of the MIT documentaries, the first stage of the quest involves getting scientific information. From scientists, the documentary team received guidance on how to proceed as well as a type of authorization that they were engaging in a legitimate quest, though they also cite Maori identities, mythology, and origin narratives. Gaining this knowledge functions as both knowing-how-to-do and being-able-to-do modalities. In the TVNZ report, the first competence phase sub-narrative begins with Kitchin using epideictic rhetoric to further define the quest to understand where Maori originated. While he is speaking, we see black-and-white archival footage of Maori in canoes. Kitchin begins by gaining scientific knowledge and authorization through a meeting with Adele Whyte. He identifies Whyte as a Maori geneticist, and the film shows her working in a laboratory setting.

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Whyte states that her research “blows out of the water any theories” that the Maori ancestors arrived in New Zealand by chance. Whyte then explains how, when she goes to a marae (a sacred Maori community meeting place), she is often asked the name of her iwi (clan). She makes an analogy between this and her research: “Finding out who our family is ... who our cousins are out there in the Pacific.” Whyte, in her dual role as Maori and geneticist, both authorizes genetics research on behalf of Maori and conducts genetics research into Maori origins. Importantly, Whyte uses the familial metaphor of cousins in the Pacific in the present tense, which is quite different from referring to them as only ancient ancestors. Next, a brief sub-narrative presents the knowledge that Kitchin has gained from Adele Whyte through the use of a map of East Asia/West Pacific. Over this map, an animated whirling DNA double helix begins in New Zealand and moves northwards across the islands of the Southwest Pacific to Indonesia. During this animation, Kitchin narrates how Whyte’s research traced Maori origins back to Melanesia and East Asia, but it did not indicate precisely where. This image of the DNA helix floating over the map involves what Mikhail Bakhtin calls a “road chrono­ tope” in which the journey through space from New Zealand through the Pacific is also temporally coded as a journey back in time (Bakhtin 1981). Next in this sub-narrative to determine the Maori ancestors’ original route, Kitchin completes his acquisition of scientific authorization by speaking with Jeffrey Chambers. The documentary again mixes Maori and scientific identifications when Kitchin interviews Chambers (who is a white immigrant from England) not, like Whyte, in a laboratory but, rather, in front of a traditional Maori building (perhaps on Victoria University’s Te Herenga Waka Marae). Briefly summarizing Chambers’s findings regarding the similarity of certain alcohol metabolization genes common to Taiwan Aborigines and Maori, Kitchin then asks him whether this is a “smoking gun.” To which Chambers responds that it is. Through these meetings with scientists, the TVNZ documentary team members now know that Maori came from Taiwan, and so they can continue the quest. In Excellent Adventure, Nathan and Oscar do not visit scientists directly to gain (claim) scientific knowledge and authorization. Though the film credits list Adele Whyte as a scientific advisor, Nathan and Oscar gain their main scientific authorizations through commercial genetic testing. While sitting in a café in an urban setting (presumably in New Zealand), Nathan and Oscar took genetic samples with swabs that they each rubbed on the inside of their respective cheeks in order to gather some cells. They then placed these samples in envelopes and sent them to an Oxford University spinoff venture, the Oxford Ancestors genetic testing service. Located in Oxford, England, Oxford Ancestors provides genealogical genetics testing for a fee,

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which constitutes a routine commercial transaction. With its continuous verb usage, the earlier TVNZ report was engaged with interpreting and establishing the significance and, hence, the facticity of recent findings for a New Zealand audience. However, Excellent Adventure assumes that the facticity of genetic science is already established. This certainty is evident when, having completed the brief genetic sampling process, Nathan and Oscar toast each other with a cup of tea (or coffee) and Oscar says: “Here’s to knowing where your ancestors came from 30,000 years ago.” In the next sequence, Oscar and Nathan are on a waka, the catamaran-type vessel that the ancestors of the Maori used to sail to New Zealand from the Cook Islands (though Nathan says that they will actually travel by plane). The scene then shifts to a shot of the waka on the ocean, over which is superimposed an animated arrow flowing over a map of the West Pacific from Taiwan to New Zealand. During this animation, Nathan states that “DNA evidence says” his and Oscar’s ancestors “came from Taiwan” and that “scientists can now trace the genetic path” from Taiwan through Pacific islands, including Vanuatu, Samoa, and Rarotonga, to New Zealand. With their ancestors’ migrations metonymically encoded in their genes, Nathan continues: “They used the stars to get here, we’re using our genes to go back and meet the Pacific people who share our DNA.” Here, though genes are used as a means of going back in time, Indigenous peoples are set in the present, not the past. In this sequence, Nathan and Oscar, through this combination of Maori myths and genetic evidence, claim they possess the modalities of being-able-to-do and knowing-how-to-do. The Al Jazeera Witness program also uses genetics testing in its quest to answer the universal question: “Where do I come from?” First, it shows several scenes from Excellent Adventure, including Nathan asking where their Polynesian ancestors come from, taking the cheek swabs for the genetic tests, recounting Maori myths and genetic evidence, and then, with his parents, opening up the Oxford Ancestors results. After these film scenes, Omaar first states Sykes’s ethos, or qualifications, as the Oxford University geneticist who conducted Nathan and Oscar’s genetic testing. Omaar then asks Sykes why people are undergoing genetic testing to find out where they are from. Sykes answers by making a series of claims about the infallibility of genetic testing that serves to authorize the science: Well, first of all it is because it can be done more easily and ... DNA is a different kind of [evidence], and independent and very trustworthy. You know it is not the priest making a mistake when he writes it down, and it actually is there. That’s a very, very powerful and profound sensation once you realize it; it actually is in your body.

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In effect, Sykes’s epideictic rhetoric emphasizes the great magnitude of the power and profundity of the ability of genetic testing to detect the material persistence of our ancestors. Genes are metonymic as they have been passed across time from the ancestors to present generations and, thereby, provide an awe-inspiring type of communion with the past by giving presence to the ancestors in the present. In the above competence phase sub-narratives, all three documentaries have now associated themselves strongly with genetics research findings, thereby claiming authorizations that they have a scientifically valid quest.5 In the following sections, I consider the remaining competence sub-narratives as well as the performance and sanction phases of each documentary. Competence Section Two: Places, Time, and Sacred Spaces One form of metonymy involves substituting a place for an event in order to create presence. In this form of metonymy, for example, Auschwitz represents the horrors of the Holocaust, or the Watergate Hotel represents the downfall of Richard Nixon. In the three documentaries, a journey to Taiwan is central to the encounter with the Maori ancestors’ presence. Organizationally, Cooren and Fairhurst (2009) argue that micro-actants can gain considerable agency by speaking on behalf of macro-actants, thereby giving the latter presence. For example, political leaders routinely invoke the nation at various historically significant sites, saying that they speak on behalf of “the people” and so on. Similarly, by visiting Taiwan, the members of the TVNZ film crew imply they are in the presence of such phantasmal macro-actants – the Maori ancestors. Having visited Whyte and Chambers and gained further information as well as their scientific authorizations, the TV New Zealand documentary team members now depart on their own trip to Taiwan to find the “Maori homeland.” In the first scene in Taiwan, Kitchin uses epideictic rhetoric as he stands on a beach and emphasizes that they are eleven thousand kilometres from New Zealand. There is shot of Nabu, a Bunun Aborigine, that is intended to create a metonymy of appearance, as Kitchin then states: “The people you are about to meet will amaze you. They’re almost walking talking genetic fossils. Human beings who form the first part of a people puzzle that goes straight to the heart of what it means to be Tangata Whenua, New Zealanders.”6 By introducing Taiwan Aborigines as genetic fossils, Kitchin stresses that they carry genes from ancient dead Maori ancestors. In this way, Taiwan Aborigines function as ancestral living dead because their main significance is primarily as living conduits to dead Maori ancestors. These relationships are further elaborated on in the form of a metonymic emphasis on cultural similarities, which is established through a series of

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visuals that compare Taiwan Aboriginal and Maori cultures. One example of this involves a Taiwan Aboriginal men’s martial ceremonial dance, which Kitchin says resembles a Maori men’s haka. He concludes this sub-narrative by epideictically emphasizing the proximity to China: “These people live on China’s doorstep.” In the next scene, Kitchin describes Taipei as “a stopover in our trip tracing the Maori motherland,” a place that must be passed through, and one that is not necessarily friendly. He uses a pollution/purity metaphor (Moore 2000) in which Chinese are associated with modernity, urban space, and pollution, which threatens and contaminates. Noting various Chinese Nationalist monuments, Kitchin describes Taipei: “There’s no mistaking this is a Chinese city. It hums, but parts of it are not pretty, soiled by 21st century pollution.” During this narration, there are shots of garbage floating in the Keelung River, which runs through Taipei, the site of the 2005 dragon boat races. Here he meets his first helpers, who are participating in these: “By that polluted river, is where we found a Kiwi father and son.” Robert Kaiwai is identified as a Maori diplomat working for the New Zealand government in Taipei and his son, Josh Kaiwai, as a sports coach in Taipei. Kitchin states that Robert Kaiwai feels a “powerful bond” with the Aborigines of Taiwan, having met them during his travels around the island. He then left the Kaiwais, who had to finish the dragon boat races. Prior to his departure for Aboriginal areas, Kitchin makes use of deliberative rhetoric, stating: “We left for our journey back in time.” This deliberative rhetoric links what is to follow to the overall quest of identifying Taiwan Aboriginal territories as the ancient space-time of the Maori homeland. In the next sub-narrative, Kitchin is in Taidong in southeast Taiwan, which he characterizes through the use of stereotypical Orientalist phrasing. He stands on a busy street and uses the amplification technique of anaphora in his description of Taidong, repeating the initial word “it” in successive phrases: “It’s hot, it’s steamy, it’s Asia and it looks as Chinese as it gets.” This use of anaphor sets up a process of dissociation as he continues: “But scratch the surface and you will quickly find this is the genetic fault line where Asia meets Polynesia.” This rhetorical process of spatial and temporal dissociation is further reinforced by the visuals, with a shift from the busy street scene to a shot of forested mountains, as he states: “On one hand, these people profoundly urban Chinese [sic] are the modern face of Taiwan. On the other hand, locked away in these mountains is another world.” Using a series of historical photos, Kitchin then describes how Taiwan Aborigines were “fiercely independent,” how some were head-hunters, and how there was little intermarriage with outsiders until very recently. And so today: “They are people frozen in time. Their language part of the Austronesian-tongue,

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their genes preserved, but their culture now struggling to survive.” In this way, urban areas of Taiwan are stereotypically designated and defined as Chinese through references to “hot and steamy,” the use of busy street scenes, and descriptions of urban pollution and Chinese monuments. This temporally and spatially dissociates the mountainous areas of Taiwan from Asia and associates them with New Zealand as the ancient Maori homeland. Having introduced Taiwan Aborigines and their territories, the host’s next sub-narrative involves visiting these areas in his quest for the Maori homeland: “Could it be that Hawaiki, the mythical Maori homeland, is a 4,000-yearold misty memory of these valleys?” Having arrived in Taiwan Aboriginal areas, the host uses deliberative rhetoric to briefly introduce the helpers who will assist him in carrying out this sub-narrative quest of finding the Maori Motherland. First, Niwa Maibut, who is his guide in Aboriginal territories, says: “I am Niwa, Bunun tribe, I am not Maori, I am from Taiwan.” The me­ tonymy of appearance is important for next there is a shot of Robert Kaiwai, who describes his relation to Taiwan Aborigines as “looking in a mirror, only 6,000 years apart.” But these appearances are then given more authority by the scientist Geoffrey Chambers, who uses anaphora to emphasize that genetic, linguistic, and archaeological findings all support Taiwan as the Maori homeland: “Out of Taiwan, out of Taiwan, out of Taiwan.” The host then travels to Niwa’s home village, where Niwa briefly describes, through a story about her grandmother, the history of the forced Japanese resettlement of Bunun Aborigines from their homelands high in the mountains. They then shift to another area as “the trail to the ground zero of Maori genes leads us higher into the mountains.” Here they meet a Bunun man, Nabu, whom Kitchin describes as “looking like he would be at home in Aotearoa [the Maori word for New Zealand].” Kitchin and Nabu briefly discuss how the Maori and Taiwan Aborigines are both engaged in a quest to try to recover their cultures. In the next sequence, Kitchin describes how Niwa’s brother uses hunting to help recover their culture. However, according to Kitchin: “[Niwa’s brother’s] genes are speaking to him, but the forced removal of the Bunun tribe has seen their blood mixed with Chinese. It spills out in the faces of Niwa’s family. A daughter [a close-up shot of Niwa’s daughter] and a nephew [close-up of her nephew], they are dead ringers for Polynesians. And a mother [close-up of her mother] and a brother [close-up of her brother], they both look mainstream Taiwanese.” These close-up shots give presence to DNA through the use of the metonymic relationship between DNA and appearance. This is possible because differences in physical appearances are supposed to be due to the effects of Aboriginal genes and Chinese genes. According to this view, these genetic differences mean that Aborigines sometimes look Polynesian, while others have Chinese blood

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that “spills out” in their faces. This documentary has created a number of temporal or historical associations between Maori and Taiwan Aborigines through references to similar experiences, including a common history of colonization and of cultural survival, and even a heroic journey to save their cultures. The host dissociates Aborigines from Chinese spatially (by situating Aborigines in mountains while placing Chinese in polluted Asian urban environments) and genetically (through differences in appearances that, metonymically, represent blood and ancestry). In the next sub-narrative, the documentary shifts to associating Maori and Taiwan Aborigines in the spaces of transnational science as the host visits Taipei’s Mackay Memorial Hospital Transfusion Medicine Laboratory. Kitchin uses epideictic rhetoric to emphasize the magnitude of Lin Ma-li’s ethos as he describes how “geneticist Marie Lin” has the “world’s largest collection of Taiwan tribal blood samples,” a claim of superiority based on quantity (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969). He interviews Lin, briefly stating that she and her team have found three genetic linkages between Taiwan Aborigines and Maori, though they do not give any additional details about this (see Chapter 4). Summarizing the genetic findings on relations between Taiwan Aborigines and Maori, Kitchin asks: “It is like blood brothers isn’t it?” To which Lin replies: “Between Maori and our tribal people, yes.” This approval, like Chambers’s “smoking gun” comment, constitutes another scientific authorization of sorts. Another Mackay Memorial Hospital researcher, Jean Trejaut, then informs Kitchin that the Ami on the eastern coast of Taiwan have the closest genetic linkages to the Maori. In the next scene, Kitchin is walking with a traditionally dressed Ami man. He begins this subnarrative about the visit to the Ami with epideictic rhetoric, stating the significance of the information to the overall quest of retracing the scientists’ findings: “This was yet another lead as we trailed the DNA detectives. It led us to the Ami tribe, the closest genetic match to Maori.” There is footage of a celebration, with Kitchin dancing with the Ami. However, the documentary does not go on to further discuss the research findings about the Ami and Maori; rather, it abruptly drops the topic. Maori helpers play an important role in the TVNZ report by verifying the similarities between Maori and Taiwan Aborigines. After being delayed by weather, Josh Kaiwai, who was introduced earlier, was finally able to visit Niwa’s village. At the end of the visit, Kitchin then asked Josh: “Well, what do you think?” Josh replies that the Aborigines he met would fit in with Maori on New Zealand’s east coast. The host then states: “So Niwa would be quite at home as a wahine [Maori for woman] in Tokomaru Bay [on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island]?” To which Josh replies: “Yeah,

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no problem at all, she’d have all the cousins hitting on her.” With this misogynist comment directed toward Niwa, Josh sanctions the report’s quest to associate Maori with Taiwan Aborigines. This exchange ends the series of sub-narratives pertaining to Kitchin’s visit to the Maori homeland, which demonstrates various modalities of being-able-to-do and knowing-howto-do. These sub-narratives include meeting local Taiwan Aboriginal people, metonymically comparing similarities in appearances with genetic linkages, language, culture, and brief mentions of the historical experience of colonialism. Having taken us to the Maori homeland, the documentary team can now rejoin the scientists. By doing so, it also returns spatially to New Zealand and temporally to the present day for the climactic sequence. Spatially, here we re-enter the space of transnational science as enacted at a New Zealand university. The return begins with a shot of ultraviolet light shining on electrophoresis gel solutions used in DNA sequencing in a laboratory. Kitchin narrates: “Back at Victoria University, and the map of Maori migration is being dramatically rewritten.” Next, in an animation sequence, a twirling double helix hovers over a map of East Asia and the South Pacific. The host describes the twirling double helix’s progress from Taiwan through time and space across the map and summarizes the research findings, which hold that, around five thousand years ago, people who spoke Austronesian languages left Taiwan. “In an incredibly fast migration” with “some intermarriage” along the way, they “moved through” Southeast Asia, including the Philip­ pines and New Guinea, then through “remote parts of Polynesia some 2,500 years ago,” eventually reaching New Zealand in a “final push” around seven hundred years ago. Geoffrey Chambers, again sitting outside a Maori building, describes the migrations as an “absolutely stunning story.” Next, there is an additional climactic sequence in which Kitchin comments: “That wasn’t all they discovered.” At this point, we are told that Whyte has calculated that at least 190 women were involved in this original migration and that, since it is likely there were more men than women, more than seven waka sailing vessels might have been used in the migration from Rarotonga to New Zealand. This is a reference to Maori stories of how their ancestors first arrived in seven waka. These research findings conclude the forensic rhetoric of the competence phase. In the documentary’s performance phase, Kitchin asks: “So what does it all mean to Maori living in Taiwan?” New Zealand Trade Office representative Robert Kaiwai then uses anaphora in a type of syllogism that is both inductive and abductive: “Seeing the men, seeing the women, seeing the older people, seeing the children, it is that kind of final piece in the puzzle

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that says, well gee if we are not related, I do not know what else we could be.” Kaiwai uses the metonymy of appearance as an indicator of common ancestry between Taiwan Aborigines and Maori. In the sanction phase, Kitchin reiterates the quest’s epideictic rhetoric, which emphasizes the magnitude of the spatial and temporal distance, as he asks Kaiwai: “Did you ever look at the beach there and think what it must have been like to launch yourself off into the Pacific?” Kaiwai responds: “I think that is what is remarkable about this place, that it is, it is the face of the Pacific, but here we are just off mainland China.” With this, Kaiwai repeats the report’s earlier manipulation phase epideictic rhetoric, which emphasized the spatial magnitude of Taiwan being next to China (the anti-subject that threatens their quest). So, in effect, Kaiwai delivers a type of positive sanction of the narrative’s quest, with his dual authority as both a Maori and a New Zealand government official.7 Excellent Adventure’s Competence Phase Sub-Narratives Nathan and Oscar have already scientifically authorized their quest through genetic testing at Oxford Ancestors by citing genetics research on Maori migrations. The remaining competence narratives constitute forensic rhetoric as these are Nathan and Oscar’s accounts of how they fulfill their quest by travelling in order to retrace the settlement of Polynesia, thereby associating themselves with those places and gaining knowledge about language, culture, physical appearances, archaeology, and genetics. In effect, these actions disassociate them from the anti-subject’s quest, which would involve cultural loss or not knowing where your ancestors originated. Through the use of a map of New Zealand with Mahia indicated on it, the documentary now shifts as Nathan and Oscar go to this place on New Zealand’s east coast, where Nathan’s father was born and where Nathan’s ancestral waka first arrived several centuries ago. There they meet with Nathan’s parents, and they ask his mother where her ancestors originated. She replies that, to the best of her knowledge, they came from Cornwall in England. With much anticipation and nervousness, they open the envelopes from Oxford Ancestors containing Nathan’s genetic test results. Based on testing of Nathan’s mitochondrial DNA, the authoritatively named “matriline certificate” identifies Nathan’s mother’s maternal line ancestry as going back to a Native American woman. Nathan describes this unexpected result as a “curve ball.” Afterwards, they have a meeting with Nathan’s father’s extended family in a community hall. There Nathan announces the test results to the assembled community members and identifies his mother as an “American.” Nathan considers that not only is he taking a journey but he is doing so on behalf of all his relatives. His father says that Nathan and Oscar are the “pilots” on a journey

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that involves all of them. In this sense, the film claims major authorizations from the DNA results as well as from Nathan’s family and community. Perhaps, by extension, authorization from other Maori may also be implied. Nathan and Oscar engage in epideictic rhetoric in the last scene in Mahia as they reflect on what it must have been like for Nathan’s ancestors to land there hundreds of years earlier. Throughout the film, at the end of each segment, before moving on to the next island, they engage in an epideictic reflection on the overall quest. Competence sub-narrative two concerns Rarotonga (Cook Islands). Again, this segment begins with the use of epideictic rhetoric pertaining to the map. This time, in the first scene the whirling double helix flows over New Zealand and then Rarotonga, indicating Nathan and Oscar’s progress in their quest as they travel from New Zealand to Rarotonga. They meet with a local Rarotongan family. Among other things, Nathan discusses with their hosts the mutual comprehensibility of, and close similarities between, the Maori and Rarotongan languages. As well, they visit the place from which Nathan’s ancestral waka is traditionally said to have departed on its voyage to New Zealand some seven hundred years ago. Here again Nathan and Oscar engage in epideictic rhetoric as they reflect on Nathan’s ancestors setting out on a great voyage from this place. Competence sub-narrative three concerns Samoa. The scene begins by defining Nathan and Oscar’s further movement in their quest with a map of East Asia/West Pacific that includes New Zealand, Rarotonga, and Samoa (but not any of the other surrounding islands). In Samoa, they meet with Oscar’s family. In one scene, Oscar describes how, as a child, if he had been given three wishes he would have wanted: lots of money, everything to go well for his family, and to know where Polynesians came from since there were so many different theories about their origins. Next, they prepare to open Oscar’s results. Oscar asks his grandmother (with his mother trans­ lating) where the Samoans think they came from. Oscar’s grandmother replies they come from Samoa. Like Nathan and his family, Oscar and his family are joking and nervous as they open the envelopes and read Oscar’s maternal line and paternal line certificates from Oxford Ancestors. The certificates indicate that their ancestors originated in Asia. Oscar jokes that he will “have to show love for Asians,” to which his mother responds with a comment about his criticisms of “Asian drivers.” Oscar’s mother indicates her approval of the genetic testing, saying that it has enabled her to know where she comes from before she dies. Opening up and reading the Oxford Ancestors’ certificates took on ceremonial aspects as both Nathan and Oscar did this with their families in their respective ancestral homelands. So it would appear that genetics research helps mediate relations with one’s ancestors. Significantly,

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these certificates displace the grandmother’s idea that the Samoans originated in Samoa. There is the familiar epideictic rhetoric in the final scene in Samoa, in which Nathan and Oscar reflect on their journey so far while walking down a path. Oscar states that the greatest “curve ball” was finding out that Nathan’s mother’s maternal line led back to “Pocahontas.” Competence sub-narrative four concerns Vanuatu. This sub-narrative opens with a map of East Asia/West Pacific; now including New Zealand, Samoa, Rarotonga, and Vanuatu; superimposed over a series of street scenes and in which Nathan and Oscar comment on the appearance of Vanuatu peoples, indicating they are from many different islands and that the people are “darker” than those found in other places on their journey. The metonymic relationship between DNA, material artefacts, and ancestors is evident as Nathan narrates: “Before our Polynesian DNA got to Samoa, it landed here 3,000 years ago in the canoes that brought the Lapita people. Their pottery has been found all the way east to Samoa and Tonga. Holding a piece in my hand was like touching the past.” They talked about Lapita pottery artefacts with an archaeologist named Stuart Bedford and compared a pattern on a pottery shard to the pattern of a tattoo that Oscar had on his arm, another form of metonymy. Oscar and Nathan then visited a Vanuatu village. Nathan and Oscar most directly encounter the presence of the ancient dead when Bedford drives them to an archaeological dig he is conducting of a Lapita burial site. At the burial site, Oscar says that he felt mixed emotions since this burial area was “tabu” (sacred). However, he concludes that it is okay because the Vanuatu people thought it was okay. Toward the end of this sub-narrative, again we have the metonymic relationship between DNA and appearance as Nathan narrates: “It seems weird that the trail of our ancestors leads us from here back to Taiwan, but that is what the DNA says. I can’t imagine what a Taiwanese person with Polynesian genes would look like.” Nathan and Oscar then sit on a beach and assess their journey so far. Competence sub-narrative five concerns Taiwan. This opens with a map of East Asia/West Pacific with New Zealand, Rarotonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, and Taiwan superimposed over a Taipei street scene. Like the TVNZ documentary, Excellent Adventure has a sequence identifying Taiwan with Asia. This identification involves Nathan and Oscar walking down a street in Taipei as the former says: “In New Zealand, it’s easy to think of Taiwan as Chinese. And if you go to the capital Taipei you could be anywhere in Asia.” Like the TVNZ Sunday segment, the film uses a similar pattern of transition and dissociation as Oscar and Nathan travel from Taipei, which is identified with Asia, to Taiwan Aboriginal territories. In this transition, genetics helps define

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a non-Chinese Polynesian space as Nathan comments: “But then we landed in Taidong in the south-east. I’d heard how scientists had traced Polynesian DNA back to Taiwan and when we met Niwa, she’s even got a Maori name.” They exchange greetings and Oscar says: “How are you?” Niwa replies: “Pretty good,” with Oscar then adding, “Wow, you look Polynesian.” To which Niwa replies: “I am.” Niwa Maibut is once again the guide as she drives them to the National Museum of Prehistory. During this drive, they compare languages. Nathan then indicates that he thought New Zealand was like Taiwan since its Aborigines had also been colonized. At the Taidong Museum, the film stresses similarities in appearance. First, Nathan, Oscar, and Niwa comment on how old photographs indicate that the Atayal have facial tattoos that are similar to Maori facial tattoos. Oscar and Nathan then made several more comments about how some Aborig­ ines in photographs on the museum wall resemble people they know or have seen in New Zealand or Samoa. Nathan takes some photographs and comments that his relatives will not believe the similarities. This visit to the museum makes metonymic use of photographs to show contiguity between physical appearances and genetic relationships. The climactic competence sub-narrative and performance involves their visit to an Ami artist who is a friend of Niwa. There they have some food and a few drinks, then they go to see the artist’s works. Following the Ami artist’s lead, they do an impromptu Aboriginal dance, during which Nathan narrates: “Taiwan was incredible, all the connections came together: language, culture, people. It was strange to realize that after this whole journey, we didn’t even need the DNA. We looked the same, we felt at home, in every cell of our body we carried the same DNA. This just had to be the beginning of the Pacific story.” In effect, Nathan claims performance of the Taiwan sub-narrative and the overall quest for the ancestral homeland. Sanction of  Excellent Adventure There is a shift to the epideictic rhetoric of the overall narrative sanction phase as Nathan and Oscar sit on the coastline of eastern Taiwan contemplating what it might have been like to set out on a journey five thousand years ago. The film then begins its return to New Zealand through a sequence of shots, beginning with Niwa and her family; then Oscar and villagers in Vanuatu; Nathan, Oscar, and Oscar’s family in Samoa; friends from Rarotonga; and finally Nathan’s community in Mahia. During this return sequence, Nathan and Oscar recount their various rewards for having completed this quest to gain understanding of their ancestors. According to Nathan: “The moment for me when I thought, ‘ah, these are the ancestors,’ was meeting Niwa.” This indicates that the people they met along the way,

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who were their helpers in the competence sub-narratives, are now also metonymic figures that stand for the ancestors via DNA, appearance, culture, and language. In the concluding scene, which occurs on a waka, Oscar continues: “It’s been profoundly changing for me, just in terms of how I look at myself and my peeps [people]. You know other brown peeps. Now the Pacific makes more sense, I really do see it as a backyard.” Nathan states: Now more than anything I’m really grateful to have done it really. My Maori tongue was really not that strong growing up, so to go back home and say to everybody in Mahia, that we went out and achieved what we set out to do. That I’ve gone and had a look with my own eyes and from the look of them in Taiwan, and from the DNA evidence, and from the mythology evidence, and all the other ones, they’re our cousies [cousins].

To which Oscar replies: “Far out.” And this concludes the film. Their quest has transformed Nathan and Oscar, instilling in them confidence of their identity as Maori and Samoan, respectively, as well as a type of panPolynesian identity. In effect, the entire documentary is a journey of selfdiscovery that involves retracing a series of ancestral spaces. In Excellent Adventure, the Chinese in Taiwan do not hold the overt pollution signification that they do in the TVNZ report. Furthermore, the narration does not position Taiwan Aborigines as signifiers of the past in the overt genetic fossil manner employed in the TVNZ documentary. Although Excellent Adventure still makes metonymic use of Taiwan Aborigines as ancestor figures, it places Taiwan Aborigines temporally and spatially in the present by terming them “cousins.” Where Am I From? The Al Jazeera Witness documentary embeds many scenes from Excellent Adventure within an overall narrative of human origins. This narrative takes the form of a discussion between Rageh Omaar and Bryan Sykes, a genetics researcher who is also the bestselling author of, among others, the book The Seven Daughters of Eve.8 Their discussion focuses on how people can use genetics research into human origins not only to construct identities but also to challenge racism. The main anti-subjects in the Witness quest are (1) loss of cultural identity and (2) racism. In effect, the Al Jazeera Witness program’s quest to use genetics testing to answer the question “where do I come from?” embeds Nathan and Oscar’s quest. To use Callon’s terminology, Omaar and Sykes are spokespersons for Excellent Adventure. Omaar asks Sykes: “What kind of people are coming to you?” To which Sykes responds: “All sorts of

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people.” And he mentions English people who may want to know whether their ancestors were Celts or Vikings. Sykes then describes how one client of Caribbean background was very happy to find confirmation of her African ancestry because she had a strong African cultural identity but her ancestry had been lost during slavery. Sykes comments: “[During slavery] their individuality was deliberately suppressed. And so ... the DNA result ... [is] like documentary proof of a special kind because it was carried in every cell of her body. So there it was, the proof of her African ancestry, almost smuggled in the bodies of her ancestors under the eyes of the plantation owner.” Sykes metonymically ascribes to genetics a materiality that gives presence to the ancestors in his client’s body. Sykes contends that genetics testing is an empowering type of technology that allows recovery of identity, thereby defeating one of the lingering effects of the racist repression of slavery. The next scene is from Excellent Adventure and involves Oscar opening the Oxford Ancestor’s DNA test results with his family in Samoa. Sykes describes this scene as “charming.” Omaar asks whether clients usually react so positively, to which Sykes replies that they generally do. But then he comments on the case of an American woman “who thought that she had an absolutely pure European line dating back to seventeenth-century Hampshire.” However, her genetic tests (like Nathan Rarere’s mother’s) indicated her maternal line actually went back to a Native American ancestor. Rather than being pleasantly surprised by what Sykes terms “exotic ancestry,” the woman, according to her husband, was very upset and “she went into some sort of coma, and wouldn’t get out of bed for weeks.” At this point Sykes and Omar laugh. This condemnation involves the use of the ridiculous in argumentation, with laughter signifying the violation of accepted norms and rules (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, 205-10). In this case, they ridicule the racism of this American woman. The customer’s reaction to Indigenous ancestry is rather like TVNZ’s treatment of Chinese ancestry: both are seen as a sort of pollutant. The Witness special then features some scenes from Excellent Adventure that occur in Vanuatu: (1) a scene in which Lapita culture is held to have arrived some three thousand years earlier; (2) the scene indicating the similarity between patterns on Lapita pottery and Oscar’s tattoo; and (3) and the scene in which it is held that this pottery is a material connection to ancient ancestors. Following these scenes, Omaar and Sykes then have a short conversation about how people identify with being from certain places. However, Sykes argues that there is no such thing as someone who is genetically pure and that we are all descended from millions of ancestors. He adds that, by following the maternal or paternal line exclusively, it is possible to identify the locations that people travelled through and settled.

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There is then a further series of scenes from Excellent Adventure, including the one indicating that the Vanuatu people have been there for three thousand years and can trace their roots back to the Lapita people. The series concludes with the scene in which Oscar and Nathan discuss what they have seen so far, including similarities, culture, physical differences, and their uncertainty about what a Taiwanese with “Polynesian genes would look like.” Omaar then asks Sykes whether he thinks this type of research contributes to breaking down racial stereotypes. Sykes responds that genetics research undermines racist claims about group differences based on genetics by showing that there is no genetic basis for group superiority claims. Next we see a series of scenes of Nathan and Oscar in Taiwan, in which they meet Niwa, comment on how she looks Polynesian, and then travel to the National Museum of Prehistory. The final Excellent Adventure segment focuses on when Oscar, Nathan, and Niwa began making comparisons between Aborigines in the museum’s photographs with people they knew or had seen in Samoa or New Zealand. In the performance phase, the host and Sykes conclude with epideictic rhetoric as Omaar asks Sykes: “Do these links really stay in our bodies?” While they talk, there are a few scenes of Oscar, Nathan, and Niwa looking at the photographs on the walls of the National Museum of Prehistory. Sykes says that he was not aware of how closely the Maori, Samoans, and Taiwan Aborigines physically resembled one another. However, he adds that it was important to have undergone genetics testing since a trip to South America would have found many people who also looked similar but who had different genetic ancestry. Sykes restates something he said at the beginning of the show to the effect that genetics testing is authoritative because it is accurate and therefore avoids incorrect perceptions. In the sanction phase, Omaar says “very interesting” and thanks Sykes. He then says that the full version of Excellent Adventure would be aired on the next edition of Witness. Excellent Adventure was translated and embedded in the Al Jazeera Witness narrative that answers the universal question “where am I from?” and that is in keeping with the Al Jazeera English Service’s trans­ national audience. The dialogue between Omaar and Sykes depicts genetics research as a liberating and anti-colonial technology, one that can be used to counter racist stereotypes and to help reconstruct lost cultural identities – a technology that challenges the inclusive-exclusion wrought by racist sovereign violence. The Myths Are True In general, all three documentaries are very positive about genetics research involving Aboriginal peoples. Such representations contrast sharply with the

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controversies surrounding genetics research and its frequently negative effects on Taiwan Aboriginal peoples and Maori.9 Indigenous peoples are important markers of the past and of geographical locations, both in genetics research and in commercial applications such as the genetic databases used by the Oxford University commercial genealogy spin-off known as Oxford Ancestors Limited. Genetics research into human origins involves the application of scientific ontology and epistemology to the understanding of ancestry and human origins that constitute, encode, and govern new forms of relationships with the dead. Sommer (2012) argues that Sykes is engaged in modern forms of origin mythmaking. According to Sommer, through his popular books, “[which] accompany the Oxford Ancestor services, Sykes provides point mutations with faces and inscribes into nucleotide-sequences stories that would otherwise be of little interest to the customer” (233-34). Similarly, Excellent Adventure and the Witness program provide faces and stories that metonymically give meaning to genetics testing findings. In this way, genetics research becomes a rational approach to the contentious issue of human origins, seemingly objective, yet profound in its mythological and political implications since it speaks the modern truth of DNA (provided you have the means – technological, financial, and otherwise – to mobilize it). This approach involves communion, both in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s sense of connecting with the audience and as a sacred and/or religious experience of the world. It is this relationship to the dead through time and space, with its underlying awe, that is foundational to any discourse on human migrations. The experience of awe is expressed through epideictic rhetoric in that it is experienced in the present in terms of powerful, often contradictory, emotions – a complex combination of fear, reverence, and humility. Such an experience has important organizational implications for awe “has been defined as an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that overwhelm current mental structures, yet facilitate attempts at accommodation” (Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman 2007, 944). Thus, the experience of awe primes us for subsequent change (ibid.). I think it is fair to say that the experience of awe is central to any journey of self-discovery. These three MIT documentaries recode Indigenous descent and ancestry narratives, implying that genetics may prove and thereby approve Indigenous origin narratives and identities, something with strong implications for Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty. Contested Warrior Genes Not all rhetorical figures used in genetics research are as successful as MIT. The remainder of this chapter analyzes how a genetics research project’s use of a controversial rhetorical figure became the focus of a major dispute.

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A controversy erupted on August 9, 2006, when, at an international genetics research conference in Brisbane, Australia, a team of New Zealand-based scientists presented a paper on the supposed role and legacy of so-called warrior genes in the settlement of the Pacific. Maori resistance disrupted the translation of the genetics research on Maori MAO-A alleles into scientific knowledge. This controversy destroyed the public translation and development of a newly constituted genetic linkage between Taiwan Aborigines and the Maori. On July 11, 2012, I conducted a search of the US government’s PubMed database (www.pubmed.gov) and Google Scholar, and I found no articles that uncritically cite Lea et al.’s findings. Rather, all of the scientific literature generated by Lea et al. (2006) is about the controversy and none has cited this research, except for a chapter in a 2007 book by Lea and Chambers (2007b). As well, no Chinese-language coverage appears in the Factiva database, so it was not translated into the Taiwan mass media (likely because there was no mention of Taiwan in the controversy). Therefore, the controversy thoroughly disrupted the black-boxing process, although, to some extent, the “warrior gene” has persisted in public discourse. The strength of a network that constitutes and remoulds genes depends on its ability to resist external criticism (Latour 1987). Usually one or two criticisms are not sufficient to destabilize a strong network. The disruption of the Lea et al. (2006) network is a useful case for analysis because the destabilization occurred at multiple stages in the black-boxing process. It is difficult to say which criticisms were most significant in destabilizing the network that made up Lea et al. However, I think it is useful to consider the range of criticisms and how each of these contributed to the overall destabilization. The Lea et al. Abstract In order to understand how this genetics research was disrupted, it is first necessary to consider the rhetorical and narrative structure of the original abstract for their conference presentation that summarized Lea et al.’s claims. The central point of contention was the “warrior” topos. The term “warrior gene” was coined in a 2004 Science article entitled “Tracking the Evolutionary History of a ‘Warrior’ Gene,” which discusses a paper presented at the 2004 American Association of Anthropologists meeting. The article considers the monoamine oxidase gene’s potential relationship to aggression in humans as well as in primates (Gibbons 2004). The title of Lea et al.’s conference presentation is “Tracking the Evolutionary History of the Warrior Gene across the South Pacific: Implications for Genetic Epidemiology of Behavioral Disorders.” This title uses and thereby translates and elaborates on the original Science article’s title. As well, by referring to “the Warrior gene,” not simply to “a warrior gene,” Lea et al. give their title

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much more specificity and certainty. Critically, they associate this supposed warrior gene with the Maori, creating an articulation that functions as a form of communion with the audience. However, the usage of the term “warrior gene” also resonates strongly in New Zealand as it was shaped by the Maori Alan Duff’s very controversial novel as well as a subsequent movie, both of which are entitled Once Were Warriors and depict domestic violence among poor urban Maori.10 The abstract begins with the universal premise that, in the historical past, the ancestors of the Maori had been “extremely adventurous risk takers and fearsome warriors.” This concept became a major point in the subsequent controversy for it invokes Once Were Warriors’ negative stereotypes of violence. In the minor premise, they associate a polymorphism (variant) of the monoamine oxidase gene with “risk taking and aggressive behaviour,” which led to its being called “the Warrior gene,” which is capitalized in the abstract. They next introduce the idea that MAO was chosen non-randomly – that is, that this gene was a positive selection among Maori ancestral populations, whose risky way of life favoured the selection of one variant of the gene over another. This selection claim then sets up their association with their research findings, in which they found “striking over-representation” of this monoamine oxidase polymorphism among Maori men when compared with “Caucasian” men – a phrase that was subsequently repeated in many of the newspaper articles. This disassociation and differentiation between Maori and Caucasians became pivotal in the dispute as these racial differentiations can be interpreted hierarchically in terms of the attribution of abilities and disabilities. They describe their methodology, and a way to check for the presence of the MAO-A variant, stating that they found two “tagging SNPs” (single nucleotide polymorphisms) that act like flags to indicate the presence of a haplotype and to provide a quick method with which to identify the “common haplotype” among Maori. They next make their central claim, which became the focus of the controversy, stating that the prevalence of this mono­amine oxidase haplotype that is linked to the warrior polymorphism suggests that positive selection occurred: “This MAO haplotype is associated with the Warrior allele in Maori males suggesting that variation in the MAO gene has been under the influence of positive selection during the risky Poly­ nesian voyages and wars” (Lea et al. 2006). Lea et al. argue that Maori’s ancestors’ constant exposure to death in a state of nature is etched in their genes. One element of this conference abstract was lost as soon as the disputes erupted. Lea et al. were also attempting to create further linkages between Taiwan Aborigines and the Maori, citing evidence from linguistics, genetics, and cultural comparisons that indicate Taiwan was the “staging post of Maori (Polynesian) voyages” that occurred some five- to ten thousand years ago.

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With this evidence in mind, they argued that their comparison of MAO-A genetic data from Maori and Taiwan Aborigines would illuminate the “evolutionary history of the Warrior gene in the South Pacific” (Lea et al. 2006). Therefore, the destabilization of the warrior gene that occurred during this dispute prevented the remoulding of the MAO-A gene as a Maori-Taiwan Aborigines linkage and thereby stopped it from contributing to the MIT thesis and its popularizations (e.g., see the above three documentaries).11 However, the conclusion of the abstract, which considers the potential study of MAO-A variants in research on alcoholism and tobacco dependence, is important to the subsequent controversy (Lea et al. 2006). The contestation over these attributes disrupted the translation process that would have created further MAO genetic-based linkages between Taiwan Aborigines and Maori.12 Initial Media Coverage The very first reports of Lea et al.’s (2006) presentation activated and mobilized the existing “Once Were Warriors” stereotype and its connotations of violence and criminality. The first report appears to have been the August 8, 2006, article by Tamara McLean of the Australian Associated Press entitled “‘Warrior’ Gene Blamed for Maori Violence: NZ Study.” This article was also published by Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald (2006) with the headline “Once Were Warriors: Gene Linked to Maori Violence” and begins: “Maoris carry a ‘warrior’ gene that makes them more prone to violence, criminal acts and risky behaviour, a scientist has controversially claimed.” Although the article briefly qualifies the research findings as controversial, the rest of it lays out a series of abilities attributed to this warrior gene. It only once mentions Lea et al.’s contention that this gene variant may have helped in the Maori ancestors’ migrations; rather, the bulk of the article deals with the MAO-A gene variant’s present-day implications. It quotes Lea regarding how this gene variant helped explain Maori problems: “Obviously, this means they are going to be more aggressive and violent and more likely to get involved in risk-taking behaviour like gambling” (Sydney Morning Herald 2006). Lea did qualify the role of genetics by saying that environmental aspects were important. The article then describes the warrior gene’s relationship to the risky behaviours of alcoholism and smoking, quoting Lea to the effect that this means Maori are “much more likely to binge drink than other groups” (ibid.). The article then says that researchers are busy collecting thousands of Maori samples. Lea also repeats genetics researchers’ conventional wisdom that Maori are opportunely homogeneous gene pools, a collective population trait that makes identification of disease-causing genes much easier among them than among heterogeneous Caucasian populations. In its narrative

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structure, this article is basically a standard report on the allegation that a new gene has abilities that can help explain Aboriginal peoples’ problems (like those in Chapter 3, which attribute Taiwan Aborigines’ high alcoholism rates to their alcohol metabolization genes). Mapping the Destabilization of the Warrior Gene The first article published in the Sydney Morning Herald was a regular news report on the conference presentation. However, within a day, the presentation and its assertion had become a controversy that ultimately destabilized the warrior gene. Below is a map of how these critiques disrupted the narrative schema of Lea et al. (2006). Rather than using a chronological approach, it is analytically more useful to consider how the different critiques contributed to the disruption of Lea et al.’s organizing narrative. In Figure 6, the curving line indicates the flow of the narrative through the various phases of the Lea et al. narrative schema and their forms of spacetime (transnational science, NZ settler state, and Maori). The criticisms (C1C7) strongly contradict, and thereby discredit, the various modalities claimed in the sequence of phases of Lea et al.’s narrative. These criticisms break the flow of the narrative at multiple junctures, thereby disrupting its overall coherence and credibility and its articulation of different time-spaces. Criticism C1: Invalid Scientific Question The warrior gene came under sharp attack for constituting an invalid scientific question – that is, for not meeting the required criteria and norms of scientific inquiry. In other words, science had not sent a quest to Lea et al. The Maori health researcher Dr. Nicola Poa described the concept of the warrior gene as “appalling”: “Genes are the basic building blocks. It’s a big leap to adapt it to someone’s behaviour” (Stokes 2006b). Similarly, the Press article entitled “Biologist Scoffs at Gene Theory” addresses how Nobel Prize-winning biologist Sir Paul Nurse, who was on a lecture tour in New Zealand during this time, rejected the idea that a single gene could be responsible for such behaviours (Hayman 2006). Later, in March 2007, the New Zealand Medical Journal carried extensive critiques that emphasized the very preliminary and cursory character of the research on the relationship between MAO and aggressive behaviours (discussed below). Such critiques disrupted the epideictic rhetorically defined normative foundations of Lea et al.’s quest by rejecting the idea that they had been sent a legitimate quest by transnational science. If science had not sent Lea et al. a quest, they could not claim to be receiversubjects. Without this claim, Lea et al. are without a having-to-do modality and without a major universal premise for the deductive practical syllogism that defines the problem.

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Figure 6 Criticisms disrupted the flow of Lea et al.’s narrative across different forms of space

Criticism C2: Lea et al. Have No Fiduciary Contract Critics also took aim at the deductive practical syllogism of the minor local premise that violence among Maori might be related to unique MAO-A variants and targeted the apparent conclusion that transnational science is advanced by conducting research on Maori. In the Press news article entitled “‘Warrior’ Gene Claim Slammed by Maori,” Alan Duff, the author of Once Were Warriors, said Lea’s claims could be repudiated by examples of Maori being raised in non-Maori environments who became super-violent or non-violent. “I’ve always had a bit of a dilemma about the nature-nurture thing,” he said. “I would say that the last thing that we need is another excuse or another

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reason for Maori dominating in the violence stakes and all the bad stats.” (Bennetts and McLean 2006)

The Maori Party also played a significant role. At the time, it had five members in New Zealand’s 122-seat Parliament (New Zealand Parliament 2009). In the Press article we read: Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia last night dismissed any suggestion Maori were genetically predisposed to violence and criminal acts. “This is incredible,” she said. “I realise that violence is an issue to us, but there are very common factors as well with violence which are not really related to race.” Turia said she had heard of Maori having a genetic disposition towards alcoholism, but it was a big leap to include violent tendencies in that. (Bennetts and McLean 2006)

Here Turia sharply critiques Lea et al. However, she seems to have internalized the concept that Maori have a genetic disposition toward alcoholism (see below). Maori Party MP Hone Harawira criticized these associations of the warrior gene with Maori. In an August 9 Agence France-Presse story we read: “Maori MP Hone Harawira believed social issues – including high unemployment, poor educational achievement and in many cases severe poverty – to be the main contributors to Maori violence rather than a ‘warrior gene’” (Agence France-Presse 2006). According to Harawira: “If you put any group in that situation ... I dare you to point at the group that wouldn’t be aggressive as a result of being treated that way” (ibid.). The Maori Party sharply criticized not only the scientific research but also how the mass media invoked “Once Were Warriors” stereotypes in reports on this scientific research. The Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia issued a press release – “Turia: Will Anyone Pick up This Story?” – which suggested positing the MAO-A gene for Maori risk taking in a positive light, such as indicating a high level of entrepreneurship (Turia 2006). Ironically, such a critique sought to disassociate monoamine oxidase from the “Once Were Warriors” stereotype in favour of a neoliberal-friendly evaluation of the Maori as courageous risk-taking entrepreneurs. Turning the tables in this way still maintains the validity of Lea et al.’s assertions about the Maori having a warrior gene. The Maori Party made another set of critiques that was satirical in tone. For example, in a New Zealand Press Association story, Maori Party MP

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Hone Harawira framed the story in terms of yet another allegation of genetic determinism: “When I was a kid people said Maori had a natural inclination to play the guitar, that Maori had a natural inclination to play rugby, that Maori were good on bulldozers ... I’ve stopped listening to all that sort of carry on” (New Zealand Press Association 2006b). Maori academics also figured prominently in the critiques. TVNZ News broadcast a story about the controversy in which Maori professor Margaret Mutu argued: “It’s alright for scientists to say that there is a warrior gene, but to extrapolate beyond that to criminality and violence, I think is making a judgment call, and it certainly is not a scientific call” (TVNZ 2006). The Christchurch School of Medicine’s Maori Indigenous Health Unit director, Suzanne Pitama, asserted that Lea et al.’s claims oversimplified complex social phenomena like violence in the Maori community: “It just reinforces stereotypes,” she said. “It goes back to [the] claims of Darwin that there’s one race that is superior. It’s dangerous” (Bennetts and McLean 2006). Aroha Mead, the noted Maori scholar whose work deals with the impacts of genetics research on Indigenous peoples, was scathing in her rebuttal of Lea et al.’s ethos: It came from a “privileged non-indigenous scientist who regarded the world as his laboratory, and people and cultures as the raw resources for his flights of fantasy.” “This guy is dangerous. You don’t make generic statements – if you’re going to dabble in this area, you put a lot of effort into how you articulate it.” (Walshe 2006)

Mead goes on to say that genetics research can only be equitable and just if involved Aboriginal peoples play a central role in forming research questions: “Ms Mead said there was ‘good science’ as well. ‘But that comes from within cultures. The best examples are when families have approached researchers because they want to understand a condition that is clearly familial,’ she said.” (Walshe 2006). These conditions are very similar to those that some Taiwan Aborigines say are required if genetics research in Taiwan is to become just and equitable (Lai et al. 2001). These academics rejected Lea et al.’s quest to research Maori. In the New Zealand Herald (New Zealand’s largest newspaper), the nonMaori settler columnist Brian Rudman was similarly scathing in his critique of the quest and ethos of Lea et al. (2006): What was this Aussie immigrant trying to do? Achieve fame – or notoriety – and bugger the consequences? Having discovered the scientific key to Maori criminality, what’s his next move? A grand plan to breed it out of

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the population? Or worse? Does he know nothing of the ghastly eugenics experiments to achieve racial purity that spread through the “civilised” Western world in the first half of the 20th century, culminating in the Nazi death camps? (Rudman 2006)

The cumulative effect of these lines of sharp and sustained critique destabilized Lea et al.’s claims to have a legitimate quest and fiduciary contract, with­out which they had no moral basis for continuing their quest. Also significant was the quality and quantity of attention and coverage given to the Maori critiques. Criticism C3: The Warrior Gene Might Be Used as a Legal Defence by Maori Unlike the other criticisms, this one is driven by settler concerns. In effect, it involves an argument that the settler state should not authorize, and be an ally in, this research because it might provide Maori with a genetically deterministic component for a criminal defence for violent behaviours. For example, on August 12, 2006, the Daily Post ran an article entitled “Violent Genes No Excuse for Maori Violence: Lawyer,” which begins: “Fears are mounting that violent Maori offenders may use claims they possess a warriortype gene as a defence for criminal behaviour” (Taylor 2006). The article states that, while a defence based on the warrior gene might not be possible, the warrior gene might be entered as a mitigating circumstance in a case. Criticism C4: Maori Do Not Consent Several of the critiques made by the Maori Party and other Maori focused on Lea et al.’s right to act as spokespeople for the Maori. Informed consent at both the individual and community levels is increasingly becoming what, in genetics research, is termed “best practice.” The push by many Indigenous peoples for collective consent recognizes that the effects of genetics research are matters of concern at the collective level. Aroha Mead’s arguments are important as she emphasizes that this MAO-A research project was Lea et al.’s initiative and that it did not involve the Maori communities either in formulating the research questions or in organizing the project (Walshe 2006). Lea’s Restabilization Efforts These four major lines of critique clearly shook the foundations of Lea et al.’s (2006) organizing narratives, so Lea attempted to restabilize his research’s epideictic rhetorical foundations. For example, the Australia Broadcasting Corporation reported: “On [New Zealand] national radio this morning [Lea] was choosing his words more carefully” (Lewis 2006) as Lea downplayed the supposed abilities of the gene and emphasized environmental factors.

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He stated: “Well, this ... this gene has been linked to different anti-social behaviours and risk taking behaviours, but the link that’s been made is usually quite weak and often is only present in association with non-genetic factors, that is other factors such as upbringing, socio-economic circumstances, other lifestyle factors” (ibid.). Similarly, in an August 9, 2006, TVNZ news report Lea described the relationship between the gene and social behaviours as “tenuous,” emphasizing the crucial importance of environmental factors. In these efforts, Lea attempts to distance himself from the controversy by downplaying the strong genetically deterministic implications of Lea et al.’s original conference presentation and the initial news coverage. This restabilization effort also attempted to protect Lea’s ethos. Mariano Lea, who is Maori and Rod Lea’s wife, was the subject of an August 12 article published in the New Zealand Herald and entitled “Family Tragedy behind Gene Work” (Stokes 2006a). She states that her husband’s research had a strong personal basis as its purpose was to understand why so many of her extended family members were dying of cancer. However, this study had attracted controversy and was being used by those eager to add substance to negative stereotypes[] and [had] been vilified by a number of Maori including Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia – Ms Lea says the research has a very personal basis. “His researches stem from the fact that my mother died from breast cancer, my brother died from liver cancer, many of my aunties have died from cancer.” (Stokes 2006a)

The restabilization effort attempts to deflect criticisms through two powerful epideictic foundational topoi, that of helping to improve health and that of helping one’s family and the Maori people. But in doing so it actually shifts from a Maori-wide scope to a familial one – investigating the predisposition to cancer in Ms. Lea’s family, which involves the sort of research on familial dispositions that Aroha Mead advocated earlier. In some ways, this restabilization effort is like Mackay Memorial Hospital’s denials of any wrongdoing involving the Kavalan. This effort also claims innocence by portraying the whole controversy as an unintended and unforeseen consequence or misunderstanding (not as a violation of Maori rights and dignity). Criticisms in Scientific Journals Mass media coverage quickly dropped off during the period of August 12 to 19, 2006, and there is little mention of it until March 2007, when the New Zealand Medical Journal published three articles on the warrior-gene controversy. There is one by Rod Lea and Geoffrey Chambers that focuses on their

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research and the controversy, while the other two articles are sharp critiques of Lea et al. (2006). Lea and Chambers (2007a, 1) defend their science as credible and their ethos as moral, stating that their findings were distorted by politicians and the mass media: “Much of the controversy was unjustified because it stemmed from a combination of misquotes and misunderstandings printed in the original article released by the Australian Press Association.” They then outline their quest: “Despite our sincere efforts to set the story straight through subsequent high-profile media interviews, the critical commentary continues in this issue of the Journal. We therefore welcome this opportunity to present the scientific rationale behind our mono­amine oxidase gene research – including our findings to date and the relevance to medicine, ethics, and Maori” (ibid.). Lea and Chambers are going to set the record straight; they are even going to try to close the black box a little. The rest of the article attempts to assemble a strong network by citing different research literature and abilities attributed to MAO-A as well as evidence for positive selection for the warrior gene through Polynesian migrations and various wars along the way. They then state that they are on good moral ground as this research will contribute to Maori health, “with the aim of developing more personalised disease treatments based on MAO-A genotype” (4). They then discuss the controversy: “In conclusion, the ‘warrior gene’ controversy, although largely based on negative media hype and misconception, has catalyzed important social and scientific debate about genetic screening in human populations” (Lea and Chambers 2007a, 5). This is similar to how Taiwan’s National Science Council and Lin Ma-li, in the dispute with the Kavalan, used the recognition, reform, and redemption sub-narrative, stating that some good had come out of a miscommunication. Lea and Chambers try to reassert their right to enrol and act as spokespeople for the Maori. They claim to have good relations with Maori and to have engaged in extensive community consultations, including at the extended clan level, but that this event would lead to further improvements in these already just relations. Their conclusion is that their work is fundamentally moral and necessary, for: “Indeed, ignoring evolutionary forces (such as gene selection), and assuming that all population subgroups have the same genetic background when designing diagnostic, prevention, and treatment regimes, is both unscientific and unethical and destined to do minority groups such as Maori a disservice in terms of health care” (5). Chambers and Lea argue that not carrying out genetics research based on population subgroup differences would be unethical. Tony Merriman and Vicky Cameron’s article critiques the validity of the scientific question (C1) and the representativeness of the sample (C4). First,

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they engage in a detailed summary of MAO-A research done to date, showing it to be of a largely cursory and speculative nature. They then argue that the study’s sample of only seventeen non-randomly selected Maori men is unrepresentative of the Maori population. Their conclusion is devastating: There is no direct evidence to support the claim that the MAO-A gene confers “warrior” qualities on Maori males, either modern or ancestral. Furthermore, the assumption that a genetic association in Caucasian applies in Maori; the use of the “warrior gene” label in the context of human MAO-A aggression studies; generalising from a sample of 17 individuals not representative of the general Maori population; and the lack of scientific investigative journalism have combined to do science and Maori a disservice. (Merriman and Cameron 2007, 3)

In their article entitled “Warrior Genes and Risk-Taking Science,” Peter Crampton and Chris Parkin’s critique involves C1 (invalid question); C2 (no fiduciary contract); C4 (unrepresentative sample); C6 (contributes to racism); and C7 (no peer review). They argue that Lea et al.’s lack of peer review raised serious concerns about the “veracity and ethics of such extravagant speculation regarding the causality of complex social issues” (Crampton and Parkin 2007, 1). They questioned the use of MAO-A, given the very weak correlations described by Merriman and Cameron. The small size (seventeen) and non-randomness of the sample meant that any extrapolation to the “contemporary Māori population of several hundred thousand but also to past generations of Māori back to the migrations, is risky in the extreme” (2). Furthermore, they point out that, despite Lea’s attempts to situate the gene in relation to environmental factors, “the popular rhetoric of a ‘warrior gene’ offers what appears to be a ‘simple’ explanation, almost certainly to be seized upon as such” (ibid.). Crampton and Parkins contend that any “harm is likely to have been amplified by the very high level of media interest following the death of the Kahui twins [whose deaths were attributed to domestic violence in their Maori family] and the generally negative portrayal of Maori in the media” (ibid.). This leads them to conclude that, in politically charged settings, scientists are “responsible for the way in which findings are disseminated and for ensuring a clear public understanding of the limitations of the work to date” (ibid.). This critique is equally applicable to the ways in which Taiwan scientists propagated the notion that Taiwan Aborigines were genetically predisposed to alcoholism. The above New Zealand Medical Journal articles generated only one story in the New Zealand mass media, and this appeared in the New Zealand Herald. Entitled “Scientist Defends ‘Warrior’ Gene,” the article outlines the

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criticisms but emphasizes Lea’s defence against these charges and how they have led to Lea and Chambers’s rethinking best practices regarding genetics research, including their consultative relationships with iwi. In a 2008 Journal of Medical Ethics article, Wensley and King criticize Lea et al. (2006) in a manner similar to that evinced by the two New Zealand Medical Journal articles just discussed. They critique Lea et al. for neglecting to consider the impact of their genetics research outside the scientific community. They reject their attempts to blame the controversy on misquotation and media hype, arguing that Lea et al. had to consider both the internal (within the scientific community) and external (involving “application of scientific knowledge within society”) responsibilities of their research (Wensley and King 2008, 508, emphasis in original). Wensley and King state: “Using this discourse we argue that when the researchers ventured to explain their research in terms of social phenomena, they assumed a duty to ensure that their findings were placed ‘in context’” (ibid.). Citing the Australian Associated Press report (McLean 2006), the authors say the researchers failed to properly contextualize genetics research within a much larger framework of social, political, and economic factors (Wensley and King 2008, 508). As well, Lea et al. lacked the right to represent and act as spokespeople for Maori (Critique C4) because they did not have community consent to conduct this research, having instead used stored samples from other projects. New conceptions of medical ethics led them to emphasize the social responsibility of research. Wensley and King conclude: “The ‘warrior gene’ controversy has shown how failing to emphasise the complexity of gene-environment interactions and their influence on behavioural differences between groups can plunge research into disrepute, and fuel harmful discriminatory attitudes in society” (509). The critiques of Lea et al. in the scientific journals are comprehensive. In particular, these criticisms emphasize the necessity of considering well in advance the broader implications and potential effects of genetics research on Indigenous peoples’ social problems. Yet, all maintained the need to carry out such research. None goes so far as to say there should be a moratorium on it; rather, what this scientific critique seems to involve is a boundary maintenance exercise in which the fundamental hierarchies and normative values that make up scientific research’s epideictic foundation are maintained. In effect, there is an emphasis on how: 1 They did not properly conceive of a quest – that is, their quest is not justified on the basis of earlier scientific research. 2 Lea et al. used an unrepresentative sample that was too small (only seventeen) and not randomly selected.

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3 They failed to properly consult with Maori before undertaking such research; rather, without Maori consultation and consent, they used existing Maori samples from other projects. 4 Their lack of proper peer review prior to going public with their findings was also criticized. The controversy disrupted Lea et al.’s attempt to associate Maori ancestral migrations and modern social problems with a warrior gene and prevented the acceptance of such associations as valid scientific knowledge. Nonetheless, a Google search of the terms “warrior gene” and “Maori” brings up hundreds of different references, which indicates that the concept of a Maori “warrior gene” is still circulating and exerting agency. Conclusion Since the late 1990s, the articulations and linkages created between Taiwan Aborigines and the Maori have taken on a multitude of different forms. There is a complex relationship between genetics research and governance in settler colonial states. Alcoholism-related genes originally constituted in Taiwan through research on Taiwan Aborigines circulated, and New Zealand researchers eventually translated these genes into research on Maori. In 1998, media coverage of these research findings linking Taiwan Aborigines and Maori led to the coining of the MIT figure. These earlier linkages have been further elaborated on in the commercially oriented MIT documentaries and through mass media coverage of research like Trejaut et al.’s (2005) paper on Taiwan as the Polynesian homeland. In contrast, the warrior-gene controversy shows how concerted Maori resistance destabilized genetics research by mobilizing sufficiently strong networks against the relatively weak scientific network assembled by Lea et al. As well, non-Maori scientists, including a Nobel Prize winner, also engaged in a strong critique, greatly undermining Lea et al.’s authority to speak as scientists. This controversy reveals the relatively stronger position of Maori in relation to settlers in New Zealand compared to Aborigines in relation to settlers in Taiwan. First, the Maori appear to be better organized and more able to have their views translated into mass media coverage. The Maori Party’s role points toward the importance of Aboriginal peoples having their own organizations, which are able to respond to such situations in a quick and decisive manner. In addition, in New Zealand there seems to be greater attention paid to Aboriginal rights and viewpoints in the mass media than occurs in Taiwan. In this sense, Maori have much stronger abilities to influence mass media discourse than do Taiwan Aborigines. Second, in New

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Zealand, scientists are willing to engage in public critiques of their colleagues regarding Aboriginal rights violations. In sharp contrast, in Taiwan, genetics researchers and other scientists (with a few exceptions) have not engaged in public criticisms of violations of Aboriginal rights (suggesting a culture of impunity, or at least conformity, among Taiwan scientists). In Taiwan, it is permissible for scientists to publicly attack Aboriginal rights, as Lin Ma-li did in her May 2008 Liberty Times article, which argues that the Kavalan’s case and Section 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law constitute restrictions on medical research and, thus, threatens Aborigines’ health and privacy (Lin M.L. 2008a). There are approximately similar total numbers of Maori (680,000) and Taiwan Aborigines (500,000 Aborigines who are officially recognized by the state plus unrecognized Aboriginal people). The relative power differentials between Taiwan Aborigines and the Maori are, in some regard, a function of their relative proportions in each country. Maori and Pacific Islanders account for some 15 to 20 percent of the New Zealand population, whereas Taiwan Aborigines account for about 2 percent. As well, the Maori are much more culturally and politically unified. In contrast, Taiwan Aborigines are divided along not only traditional political, cultural, and linguistic lines but also religious and settler state political party lines. As well, there are significant historical differences. The Treaty of Waitangi signed in 1840 between the British Crown and the Maori has no equivalent in Taiwan, nor is there an equivalent of the Maori Party in Taiwan. As well, the recentness of Taiwan’s democratization means that the Taiwan Ab­ orig­inal rights movement dates from only the mid-1980s, with Taiwan Aboriginal leaders imprisoned as recently as the mid-1990s for leading protests (Agence France-Presse 1995; Covell 1998, 291-92). Genetics retain important organizing properties. In the warrior-gene dispute, we find evidence of how attributions of alcoholism and genetics had already been incorporated into Maori discourses. Since the 1980s, through their research on the genetics of alcoholism, Geoffrey Chambers and his colleagues have played a central role in developing this concept. Chambers’s work has been reported in the media. For example, the findings of a 1994 paper on ALDH connecting Maori and Asian populations were covered by Reuters News: The Wellington team discovered that two genes protect Asian people against alcoholism, and one of these genes is found among native New Zealanders – that is, Maoris and New Zealand Polynesians. “For the first time we have a proper chain of causality which explains the link between genetic makeup and alcoholism,” Chambers, who specialises in molecular biochemistry,

162 Were the Maori “Made in Taiwan”?

said in an interview. Parallel studies in the United States and Britain have also identified the genes that give Asians protection, but the New Zealand study is the first to discover the gene in Polynesians. (Louisson 1994)

Chambers later incorporated alcoholism research on Taiwan Aborigines into his 1998 findings, which were the basis of the first MIT linkages. The genetic contribution to Maori alcoholism has taken on the status of fact in New Zealand. For example, a 2002 article in Victorious (published by the Victoria University of Wellington) entitled “Alcoholism – In the Genes” outlines Cham­bers’s research and states: “Those with ADH2*2 in their genetic kit are unlikely to drink alcohol to excess and are therefore unlikely to develop alcoholism.” The ADH alleles distinguish between Asian populations, which have a high percentage of ADH2*2, but it is nearly absent among Euro­peans: “Almost all Europeans belong to a group that lacks ADH2*2: their bodies produce a lower amount of acetaldehyde, which the liver is able to effectively detoxify.” So they say that drinking is more “pleasurable” for Europeans and that this leads to alcoholism. The Victorious article continues: A third of the New Zealand Mäori population, like Europeans, lacks ADH2*2. An analysis of blood samples of young Mäori males with drinking problems showed that three quarters of them were drawn from this group. Geoff’s research also offers some of the most compelling evidence yet in support of the idea that genes influence our lifestyle choices and can be used to predict human behaviour. “One day these new molecular tools might give you a genetic profile, which you’d want to consider in regard to a whole range of lifetime decisions,” he says. (Victoria University of Wellington 2002, 10)

In its reasoning, this article has a considerable resemblance to those coming out of Taiwan (such as the 2002 Sinorama article) regarding potential governance implications. These findings also introduce a division among Maori, between the two-thirds with ADH2*2 and the one-third without this allele. The findings discussed in the Victorious article were covered in New Zealand, including in a June 24, 2002, New Zealand Press Association article entitled “Genes Make Polynesians Less Likely Alcoholics – Researcher” and in the Dominion article entitled “Polynesian Gene Inhibits Alcoholism” (New Zealand Press Association 2002; Samson 2002). This led to the Maori alcoholism genetic thesis being cited by the leader of the Maori Party, Tariana Turia, who told the Press that she had “heard of Maori having a genetic disposition towards alcoholism” (Bennetts and McLean 2006). This statement to the Press was restated several times in other newspaper articles (e.g.,

Material

Persist, plastic

Instrumental

Inherent properties

Constrain

Connections to Cannot be used ancestors persist   to justify racial in our bodies  superiority

Scientific No substantial linkage Lea et al. have dis- Genes can be used by MAO-A remains little Findings cannot   critiques   between MAO-A and   torted these genes   racists   understood in the   be used by  Maori    scientific literature  moral people Small non-random sample     of 17 was unrepresenta   tive of Maori

Maori critiques Warrior genes are made These genes hide Used by racists to Risk-taking genes   of Lea et al.   by racists   issues of inequality   maintain hierarchies

Lea et al. “warrior Links to ancestors’ MAO-A remoulded Predisposes Maori Ancestors’ positive Maori may be   gene”   journeys   into Maori   to risk-taking   selection for courage   limited by   warrior gene   behaviours   affects Maori risk   these  and violence  taking

Al-Jazeera Connections to ancestors Anti-racist   Witness   persist in our bodies Reclaim lost    ancestry

Excellent Oscar and Nathan share We share the Genes are connections  Adventure   DNA with Pacific   same DNA   to ancestors   peoples they visit

TVNZ Sunday Aborigines’ genes link to Geneticists “shat- Hawaiki Aborigines are “genetic Chinese genes “spill   Maori   tering” conceptions   fossils”   out” in the faces of   of Maori origins   many Aborigines

Source

Taiwan Aborigines and Maori genes’ organizing properties

Table 3

164 Were the Maori “Made in Taiwan”?

Manawatu Standard 2006; New Zealand Press Association 2006a; Agence France-Presse 2006). Coming from a prominent Maori leader, Tariana Turia’s matter-of-fact statement indicates that she had internalized the idea that some Maori were genetically predisposed to alcoholism. The warrior-gene dispute was national news as well as international news, which shows how the Maori were able to affect and destabilize the knowledge claims made by Lea et al. Based on searches of PubMed and Google, there has been minimal usage of this research in scientific literature, except by Lea and Chambers in their 2007 article. However, Chambers and his colleagues have nonetheless quietly perpetuated the warrior-gene hypothesis. Lea and Chambers subtly included a citation for a table in a chapter entitled “Pharmacogenetics in Admixed Polynesian Populations,” which they wrote on Polynesian migrations for the 2007 book Pharmacogenomics in Admixed Populations (Suarez-Kurtz 2007). This usage in a table entitled “Allele frequency estimates for Maori and Caucasian groups at genetic loci thought to be of medical importance” describes MAO-A as a “3 repeat allele” in relation to the “disease” of “addiction,” which is found in 56 percent of Maori and 30 percent of “Caucasians.” The source they cite is, ironically, their 2007 article in the New Zealand Medical Journal (Lea and Chambers 2007a), which defends their warrior-gene research (Lea and Chambers 2007b, 169,178). This instance raises questions about their use of the citation process, which generally implies peer review acceptance; however, in their case, their research was sharply rebuked. In this way, despite the sharp criticism they received, Chambers and Lea have nonetheless managed to slip their warrior-gene research back into transnational scientific circulation. MIT and the warrior gene are both metaphors for Maori. They had very different roles in their respective contexts, but both were based on the metonymic figure of the gene as foundational truth. The MIT documentaries show how the genes, constituted through genetics research as linkages to ancient ancestors, are translated in popular culture and Maori origins discourses. The TVNZ report engages in ontological violence that renders Taiwan Aborigines as archaic living fossils and Chinese settlers as pollution. Excellent Adventure is a feel-good journey of discovery in which genetic links are used to create linkages between present-day Pacific peoples, albeit with Taiwan Aborigines as ancestor figures. The Al-Jazeera Witness special renders genetic testing for ancestry as a liberating anti-racist technology. In contrast to the MIT documentaries, in the warrior-gene dispute, Maori contested Lea et al.’s (2005) attempts to explain modern Maori social problems in terms of positive selection during the migrations of ancient Maori ancestors. In these varied examples, genes connect the dead, the living, and the unborn.

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6

By presenting settlers as modern and Aboriginal peoples as premodern, scientists perpetuate the Hobbesian colonial metonymy of Aboriginal peoples as being corporeal manifestations of the incorporeal state of nature. This chapter considers how this contrast is critical to the commodification of genetics research involving Aboriginal peoples. Through this contrast, scientists have positioned Aboriginal peoples as different, as Other. As sources of difference, Aboriginal peoples are attributed a set of unique characteristics, or traits, which allows for product differentiation in the marketplace, for the creation of what has been termed biovalue (e.g., Rose 2007). The Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999, 89) sketches the parameters of this: “Trading the Other is a vast industry based on the positional superiority and advantages gained under imperialism. It is concerned more with ideas, language, knowledge, images, beliefs and fantasies than any other industry. Trading the Other deeply, intimately, defines Western thinking and identity.” Smith notes that this is not a bilateral trade in which Indigenous peoples participate equitably but, rather, a worldwide trade in products and knowledge based on conceptions of Indigenous peoples as Other. This emphasis on the commodification of difference has long been central to an extensive array of cultural products, such as Hollywood “Cowboys-and-Indians” movies, children’s toys, and New Age spirituality. This commodification is clear in the emphasis on difference as an important organizing trait in a host of genetics research-related assemblages, such as the Mackay Memorial Hospital 2005 news coverage, the made-in-Taiwan documentaries, and modern genealogy testing like that offered by Oxford Ancestors. In the contemporary political economy of biotechnology, whatever makes a product different, whatever makes it stand out, can make it valuable in a crowded marketplace. This chapter considers how such difference is commodified in the following case studies:

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1 Coriell Cell Repositories’ grows and sells Atayal and Ami cell lines as part of its Human Variation Collection. 2 Stanford University researchers used data from Atayal and Ami genetic samples in two US patents, which are now owned by Stanford. 3 The prominent researcher on Aboriginal health, Ko Ying-chin, and his colleagues, filed a number of patent applications in the United States (along with versions in Taiwan) involving research on over fifteen hundred Atayal Aborigines and eventually nearly two hundred Solomon Islanders. In the preceding three chapters, scientists have engaged in varied assemblages in which the positioning of Aboriginal peoples as the Other, as some variant of living dead, has been central to how they have been formed and organized. Each of these assemblages has organized, and thereby advanced, particular disparate agendas through this central set of narratives in which Aboriginal peoples are portrayed as either genetically dysfunctional in the modern present and/or as time machine-like linkages to incorporeal ancient ancestors who lived in a primordial state of nature. In each of these cases, various forms of property rights have played a supporting role (e.g., copyright on the MIT documentaries, the alcoholism articles, and the Mackay Memorial Hospital articles). This chapter focuses on the commodification of Taiwan Aborigines’ genetic materials in the United States and how this has led to various major controversies not only in Taiwan but also regionally in Taiwan’s diplomatic relations with the Solomon Islands. Racialized distinctions emphasize contrast rather than comparison because it is the degree of difference between Aboriginal peoples and settler populations that is deemed valuable. The Human Genome Diversity Project began in 1990 with the goal of mapping a typical or composite “normal” genome. In a 1991 article in the journal Genomics, emphasis on Indigenous peoples as different is central to the call of two prominent population geneticists for the HGDP. This article stresses the potential complementarity between the two projects: In general, the best way of studying interindividual variation when detecting or describing new polymorphisms is to include interethnic variation. This increases the amount of diversity available and generates information of enormous importance for understanding human evolution. The majority of aboriginal populations of interest from this point of view are rapidly dis­appearing, suppressing forever the possibility of learning about our past. The two endeavors, the study of the human genome and the study of human

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variation, could profit greatly by being linked. (Bowcock and Cavalli-Sforza 1991, 491)

Speaking on behalf of humanity, Bowcock and Cavalli-Sforza emphasize how the study of the normal human genome would be profitably complemented by the study of Indigenous peoples as sources of human variation who are outside the norm. This complementarity has remained central to the rationale of the biocolonial political economy that organizes genetics research involving Taiwan Aborigines and other Indigenous peoples. Aborigines in Researchers’ Shopping Carts In the mid-1990s, the US National Institutes of Health attempted to patent various Aboriginal peoples’ genetics and to establish the HGDP: both led to major controversies, which resulted in the withdrawal of these patent applications and the shelving of the HGDP. However, it was during this time that US government-funded research agencies and US universities began the commodification of Aboriginal peoples as sources of variation. One of the pioneering centres of this commodification has been the US governmentfunded Coriell Cell Repositories (CCR) in Camden, New Jersey. Buyers need only enter “http://ccr.coriell.org” into their browser address, select the “Populations” link, and a list of non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples appears. With a click of their mouse on the “Add-to-Cart” button, commercial and non-commercial researchers can choose from products grown from samples taken from ten Atayal and ten Ami men in the early 1990s. These products include an individual DNA sample for $55, cell line for $85, a “Human Variation Panel” of ten Atayal or Ami cell lines for $200, and five of the Ami cell lines included in a 110 sample “Human Variation Panel” for $4,000 (e.g., Coriell Cell Repositories 2009a; 2009b). The different samples include a resumé-like list of publications that have used these samples. GM13607, taken from an Ami man, has ten publications dating from 1998 to 2010, in a way constituting something of a resumé. No long trips to Indigenous peoples‘ territories and no informed consent issues, just a few mouse clicks and a courier delivery is all it takes to obtain a population sample that represents an Aboriginal people. The earliest reference to these samples is a journal article entitled “No Association between Alcoholism and Multiple Polymorphisms at the Dopamine D2 Receptor Gene (DRD2) in Three Distinct Taiwanese Popu­ lations” (Lu et al. 1996). A 1997 article gives more detail about the samples’ origins as it thanks the “805 Army Hospital, Hualien, Taiwan; Tri-Service General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan; and Army Psychiatry Center, Taipei, Taiwan,

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for help in diagnosis and sample collection” (Chang et al. 1997, 403). Lu Ru-band works for Tri-Services Military Hospital in Taipei. In Taiwan, military hospitals are also open to the public, so the researchers utilized this dual-use civilian/military infrastructure within Aboriginal territories to gain access to participants. Lu et al. (1996, 420) describe the process through which these samples were acquired: “In addition, from the villages of Hualien County on the East Coast of Taiwan, 42 Atayal males (21 alcoholics and 2l normal controls), and 40 Ami males (20 alcoholics and 20 normal controls) were sampled. The diagnosis of alcohol dependence was made after a clinical interview according to DSM-III-R (APA 1987) criteria.” This in­ volves a familiar biopolitical justification: scientists are researching Ab­ origines in order to rescue them. Aborigines did not enact some somatic individual-based biosociality and pressure scientists to help them, as Rose’s (2007) political economy of hope might predict. Although classified using DSM-III-R diagnostic criteria, the research participants were not yet mobile, stable, and combinable, so the scientists performed “Cell Line Transformation and DNA Extraction”: “After informed consent was obtained, 20 mL of venous blood was withdrawn from the antecubital vein by aseptic technique. The blood was divided into two parts: one for direct DNA extraction and the other for establishing cell lines. The procedures of cell transformation by Epstein-Barr virus, and of DNA extraction, have been published previously” (Lu et al. 1996, 421). The beginning of the research and commercial life of these samples involved scientists using the Epstein-Barr virus to transform the blood samples through a process called “immortalization.” Human cells have proteins (called p53 and USP7) that regulate their division; however, the Epstein-Barr virus produces its own protein (EBNA1), which interferes with the proteins that regulate cellular division, causing the cells to reproduce indefinitely (Medical News-Net 2005). Frozen in liquid nitrogen until needed, cell samples can be thawed then placed in a growth medium, which is a thirty-seven-degree Celsius combination of various nutrients with foetal bovine serum (this serum is made from cow foetuses) (Coriell Cell Repositories 2009c). Transformation into Marketable Sources of Human Variation A number of the scientific articles written by Kidd Lab-affiliated researchers refer to the availability of the Ami and Atayal samples from CCR. The earliest reference that I can find is a 1995 paper, which states: All these population samples exist as Epstein-Barr virus-transformed, lymphoblastoid cell lines, most of which were established by us under

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approved human subjects protocols. The Coriell Institute for Medical Research (NIGMS Human Genetic Mutant Cell Line Repository) in Camden, New Jersey has available for distribution 5-10 cell lines from nine of the populations in this study: Ami, Atayal, Biaka, Mbuti, Druze, Han(S), Maya, Karitiana, and R. Surui. (Castiglione et al. 1995, 1448, emphasis added)

Castiglione et al.’s view that these cell lines exist for research purposes accords them a dehumanized living dead status. This view presumes a servile status, in which these samples serve researchers by representing Indigenous populations and function as a means of gaining access to ancestors, explaining disease, and constructing history and identity. The Atayal and Ami samples are included along with those of the Karitiana, an Amazonian Indigenous people whose samples have been the subject of an international controversy since the late 1990s (Rohter 2007). This indicates that, once the Atayal and Ami participants’ samples taken in 1993-94 were transformed into cell lines, they were fairly quickly commodified as this paper was “Received May 17, 1995; accepted for publication August 23, 1995” (Castiglione et al. 1995, 1445). This early inclusion after the sampling process in Taiwan would indicate that Lu et al. made a decision, either during the original sampling process or shortly thereafter, to transfer the samples to CCR for public commercial distribution. While there has been some criticism by Taiwan Aboriginal activists over CCR’s selling these Atayal and Ami cell lines, the Taiwan government has been largely mute (though some questions were finally raised in 2011 and are discussed below). In contrast, the Brazilian government and Karitiana and Surui Indigenous peoples have strongly protested CCR’s sale of Karitiana and Surui samples (Leahy and Osava 2004; Rohter 2007). These samples were originally taken by Francis Black in the late 1980s and given to Kidd Labs, which, in turn, transferred them to CCR as well as to the HGDP (Castiglione et al. 1995, 1447; Kidd Labs 2012a). As one of the Karitiana leaders states: “We were duped, lied to and exploited,” Renato Karitiana, the leader of the tribal association, said in an interview here on the tribe’s reservation in the western Amazon, where 313 Karitiana eke out a living by farming, fishing and hunting. “Those contacts have been very injurious to us, and have spoiled our attitude toward medicine and science.”(Rohter, 2007)

According to this 2007 New York Times article on Karitiana protests against CCR’s selling their genetic samples: “Coriell says it provides specimens only

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to scientists who agree not to commercialize the results of their research or to transfer the material to third parties” (Rohter 2007). This claim is problematic, particularly given the ready translatability of genetics into different forms (such as sequence data). On its FAQ webpage, CCR uses a very narrow definition of what constitutes commercialization: “Will samples from the Repository be used for commercial purposes? Samples obtained from the Re­pository, and material derived from the samples, may not be used for com­mercial purposes, although knowledge gained from their use may be used” (Coriell Cell Repositories 2009d). CCR continues by expressly denying donors any subsequent claims over such commercialization: “Donors will not be compensated in the event that knowledge gained from use of Repository materials leads to a commercial product” (ibid.). For example, CCR’s Atayal cell lines (originally taken by Lu et al.) have been used in research that is the basis of a forensics-related patent application filed with the World Intel­ lectual Property Organization (Gabriel, Frudakis, and Thomas 2008, paras. 52, 60, 62). Racialized Patents Historically, the US patent system is linked to the colonization of Taiwan Aboriginal peoples. Camphor is a central raw material in the July 12, 1870, US patent number 105338, granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office to John W. Hyatt Jr. and Isiah S. Hyatt and entitled “Improvement in Treating and Molding Pyroxyline.” This early plastic was commonly known as “celluloid.” The patent shows the important role of camphor, stating: “The product is a solid about the consistency of sole-leather, but which subsequently becomes as hard as horn or bone by the evaporation of the camphor. Before the camphor is evaporated the material is easily softened by heat, and may be molded into any desirable form, which neither changes nor appreciatively shrinks in hardening” (Hyatt and Hyatt 1870). Camphor was critical to the process because it was the plasticizer that softened the mixture and allowed it to be moulded. When the camphor evaporated, the mixture hardened. This patent and invention fuelled the demand for camphor, which helped drive the invasion of Taiwan Aboriginal areas in the late 1800s. Patents are one of the most important means of commercializing scientific research. On behalf of the US people, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) carries out a constitutional mandate. Article I, Section 8, of the US Constitution states that Congress “shall have power ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” The USPTO defines a patent as “a property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor ‘to exclude others from making,

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using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States’ for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted” (United States Patent and Trademark Office 2010). The major financial effect is that the patent gives its holder a temporary state-backed monopoly that allows the latter to earn far higher profits from the invention than would be possible without it. Patents involve the exercise of US state sovereignty in determining the exception in the market activities claimed by the patent. Patenting includes the exercise of exclusionary power under state sovereignty – a power that is enforceable through courts of law and the judiciary. In this sense, the patent is a type of differentiated sovereignty zone in which the state constitutes legal subjects with differential sets of rights depending on whether these subjects are included or excluded by the patent. Evidence suggests that racially differentiated genetics research can be a significant source of novelty used to justify the awarding of a patent as a market space-time. In his analysis of NitroMed’s BiDil (a heart medicine re-patented as specific to African Americans), Kahn (2007, 414) argues that commercial imperatives, including market share and profits, are driving the racialization of market spaces constituted through patents: In these cases, racial marking made the neighbourhood of the patented biotechnology more valuable. Significantly, however, the added value provided by race is appropriated by the patent holder – the landlord, so to speak – rather than by the community whose race has been commandeered into the service of producing the relevant product. Indeed, to the extent that a patent is conceived of as a right to exclude others from use of a particular invention, a racialized patent gives the patent holder the right to exclude members of the identified races from access to or control over the terms through which the patent process appropriates and commodifies their racial identity.

The racialized patenting process involves the imposition, by the state and genetics researchers, of sovereignty zones with differential bundles of citizenship-type rights based, in part, on racial categories. In this way, the patenting regime reinvigorates racial categories through the power of the market (Kahn 2007). The racialization of patents makes genetics research a neoliberal market-oriented technology of sovereignty and biopolitics. The Stanford Patents Stanford University has emerged as an important centre of accumulation, to use Latour’s (1987) terminology, which fuses genetics research with

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commerce and state sovereignty. The origins of this Stanford-Taiwan Aboriginal connection date back to the mid-1990s. During this time, Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui called for academics to help the Taiwan state identity project to further state sovereignty claims by transforming Taiwan into a centre of Southeast Asian research and improving informal relations with other countries (Chiu F.Y.L. 2000, 136). In an apparent response, a call for papers for a “Symposium on Cultural as Well as Genetic Affinities among the Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan and Southeast Asia” was sent out, on behalf of Hsu Mu-tsu of Academia Sinica’s Institute of Ethnology, to a number of e-mail listservs (such as bio.net) on November 21, 1995 (Fan 1995). This con­ ference, held from May 21 to 23, 1996, was clearly intended to develop genetic articulations between Aborigines and Indigenous peoples else­­where in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indo­ nesia with the call for papers stating: “All kinds of sociocultural (including myth and legend) and material cultural comparisons between any groups aforementioned are all welcome. Such genetic studies as red blood cell, HLA (including Class 1 and 2), G6PD, and thalassemia focusing on any of these groups are particularly welcome” (ibid.). Not only was the scope of this con­ ference broad but the organizers also appeared to have considerable institutional resources at their disposal as the e-mail states that they would provide return airfare and accommodations. As discussed earlier in Chapter 4, the resources of Academia Sinica’s Hsu Mu-tsu even extended to providing genetic samples from twenty Ami, twenty Yami, twenty Paiwan, and forty Atayal Aborigines to the Stanford University team of Jin Li, Peter Underhill, Lucas Cavalli-Sforza, C.T. Lam, and B. Sun (Jin et al. 1996, 5, 13). Also noted earlier, Lucas Cavalli-Sforza is a pioneering figure in population genetics and one of the original proponents of the HGDP, while Peter Underhill is a noted expert on Pacific migrations. At the 1996 Academia Sinica conference, they gave a paper entitled “Reconstructing the Phylogeny of Human Populations using Microsatellite Loci” (Jin et al. 1996). This 1996 paper, which deals with the evolutionary development of human populations, integrates Taiwan Aborigines into a line of research that culminates in the 2002 and 2005 Stanford patents.1 In 2002, the USPTO granted patent 6453244 “Denaturing High-Performance Liquid Chromatography,” the first to use Taiwan Aborigines’ genetics, to Peter Oefner, with Stanford University as the assignee (Oefner 2002). This proprietary process is significant due to its low cost and its speed with regard to finding polymorphisms (mutations). The 2002 patent was largely based on research contained in a 1997 paper entitled “Detection of Numerous Y Chromosome Biallelic Polymorphisms by Denaturing High-Performance Liquid Chromatography,” which was published in Genome Research (Underhill

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et al. 1997). The article describes a new method for detecting Y chromosome polymorphisms. Underhill et al. used thirty-eight samples from Atayal Aborigines and thirty-eight from Ami Aborigines provided by Hsu Mu-tsu, which totalled seventy-six out of the 718 samples (10.6 percent of the samples) (1003).2 The 2002 patent does not directly mention Taiwan Aborigines, and the 2005 patent makes no mention of the sources of the Atayal and Ami samples. The USPTO granted the 2005 US patent to Underhill and Oefner with Stanford University as the assignee (patent owner).3 United States Patent 6929911, entitled “Method for Determining Genetic Affiliation, Substructure and Gene Flow within Human Populations,” has potential use with regard to, “for example, paternity and forensics” (Underhill and Oefner 2005, abstract). Forensics is part of the enforcement of state sovereignty. The patent claims it will allow easier identification of dead crime victims: “The polymorphic sites and methods of the present invention are also useful in categorizing victims of violent crimes into ethnic and geographical groups. When a large number of victims need to be identified at a crime site, categorizing recovered victims by ethnicity can decrease the overall time for victim identification by reducing the number of comparison samples (samples from members of the victim’s family) to those of similar geographical origin” (Underhill and Oefner 2005, col. 15, 7-13). The patent’s potential uses include identifying murder victims or living individuals in paternity cases by utilizing the racially coded concept of evolutionary heritage. The patent, in its definitions section, states: “The term ‘evolutionary heritage’ as used herein refers to the association of a particular polymorphism with a population having a particular geographic distribution. This includes polymorphisms that are indicative of an ancestral population, i.e., a population from which an individual is a descendant” (col. 9, 18-24). Aboriginal peoples from Taiwan and elsewhere, including New Guinea, Australia, Khoisan (South­­ern Africa), Karitiana (Brazil), Maya, and Bougainville Islanders, function in the patent as corporeal agents that provide metonymic links to the incorporeal ancient dead and their particular territories. In the 2005 patent, Atayal and Ami Aborigines constitute a significant role in a few different ways. First, they are a significant portion of the research sample, some seventy-four of 1,062 “globally diverse samples,” or about 7 percent of the total (Underhill and Oefner 2005, cols. 23-26). Second, they make up seventy-three of the 137 participants who constitute Haplo­ group XII, which represents East Asia. Third, of the fifteen haplotypes attributed to Haplogroup VII, which are described in Table 2 of the patent (Underhill and Oefner 2005, col. 21, ll. 0-25), Taiwan Aborigines constitute all or nearly all of the subjects in four of these haplotypes. Fourth, Taiwan

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Aborigines are the source of a number of markers. In particular, of the 320 markers identified in the patent, the markers M50, M103, and M110 come from Taiwan Aboriginal participants (cols. 23-26). For example, the marker M50 is composed of 354 bit pairs, of which position 175 is deemed significant because it is the site of a T to C mutation (col. 41). This mutation allows this marker to be identified, thereby giving it agency, a being-able-todo. The two shorter sequences, 144 and 145, are called forward and reverse primers, and these allow for the testing of the presence of the M50 marker.4 Therefore, the patent itself not only identifies and claims the marker but also describes the primers through which this M50 marker can be put to use. These three sequences – 143, 144, and 145 – are repeated in DNA nomenclature in a second section of 952 genetic sequences (col. 181).5 The patent subtly incorporates Taiwan Aborigines’ genes as “globally diverse samples.” Such subtlety differs from the 1992 patent application on a person from the Solomon Islands that begins: “The present invention relates to a human T-cell line persistently infected with a Solomon Island HTLV-I-related virus, for example, the cell line, and to the infecting virus, for example, the HTLV-I-SI variant” (Yanagihara R. et al. 1992, 1). This 1992 patent application expressly states that it seeks exclusive commercial rights derived from an Indigenous person’s cell line and a virus that could only exist within that cell line. In contrast, the 2005 patent integrates Taiwan Aborigines in a more low-key, piecemeal manner but still as geographically defined isolated populations. Atayal and Ami samples are sources of evolutionary heritage, genetic variation, and connections to the ancient dead of geographically defined areas. The Atayal and Ami Aborigines whose samples were originally taken by Taiwan government agencies are now subject to patents granted by the United States, which is both a foreign government and Taiwan’s main benefactor in the post-Second World War period. Taiwan as a Neoliberal Biotech Island The interaction of neoliberalism with democratization and human rights in Taiwan has been played out in a wide range of social struggles in the country’s transition from an authoritarian development state to an increasingly neoliberal democratic advanced industrial state. While Taiwan Aboriginal criticisms of genetics research date back to the late 1990s, it is only since the mid-2000s that these have gained national attention as human rights groups, privacy advocates, Aboriginal rights, and environmental organizations have brought sustained critical attention and resistance. Though such resistance has not radically transformed the planning and implementation of Taiwan’s biotechnology industrial policies, it has forced more attention to be paid to

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the various social impacts and dangers of biotechnology. This spatial reorganization of Taiwan involves shifting configurations of graduated sovereignty zones in which different state, transnational, national, and local actors contest and cooperate to determine the differential regimes of governance and citizenship-like rights of those within these zones. Since the mid-1990s, biotechnology has gained prominence in Taiwan state industrial planning with the goal of transforming the country into a global biotechnology hub (Wong 2005, 173). For example, Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian said in a 2007 speech to the Nineteenth Taipei International Show on Medical Equipment, Pharmaceuticals, and Bio-technology: “Over the past several years, we have been working to build Taiwan into a centre for genomic medical research and clinical trials in Asia with the Biomedical Technology Island Plan” (Chen S.B. 2007). Chen’s comments underscore this interaction of transnational biotechnology in spatially transforming and redefining Taiwan’s economy and society. Hoping to repeat the success of Hsinchu Science Park in computing, government implementation of these plans has involved the spatial reorganization of Taiwan in order to encourage biotechnology development, including biotechnology industrial parks in Taipei (adjacent to Academia Sinica), another near Hsinchu, and several in other locations. This biotechnology development has also involved the reorganization of Taiwan’s research facilities to most efficiently utilize available resources, with different institutes being allotted various roles (Biotech East 2005a; Wong 2005). For example, Academia Sinica is involved in promoting and implementing biotechnology through upstream primary research and downstream joint commercial undertakings, including joint ventures with foreign biotechnology companies (Biotech East 2005b; Wong 2005, 174). In addition to offering various attractive tax and investment incentives to foreign companies, the Taiwan government also provides extensive protection of their investors’ rights. For example, the Central Taiwan Science Park ensures that “foreign and/or overseas Chinese investors enjoy the same rights and privileges as local Taiwanese investors” (Central Taiwan Science Park 2009).6 These biotechnology sectors are highly neoliberal in their organization and legislation, recruiting foreign personnel and trying to attract transnational and transnationally oriented domestic capital that might otherwise be invested abroad. In addition to efforts to attract foreign capital and personnel to Taiwan, recent changes in legislation not only allow government-funded research to be commercialized but also actively encourage Taiwanese researchers to do so. According to Article 5 of Taiwan’s Fundamental Science and Technology Act: “For the purpose of promoting the research and development results of

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applied scientific and technological projects funded by the government, the government shall supervise or assist the research organizations and units mentioned in the preceding Paragraph to industrialize or commercialize their research results.” Implicit in such legislation are expectations that researchers will take on duties and obligations to commercialize their research in order to advance economic development. Biotechnological development involves the transformation of Taiwan’s population into a strategic resource through the integration of transnational and domestic capital, the Taiwan national health care system, and genetics researchers. An early proposal for this sort of integration appears in a Vita Genomics webpage in 2002. Vita Genomics is a biotechnology company that was started by Elison Chen (a former Celera Genomics researcher) and that received Taiwan government financial support (Nystedt 2001). In 2002, a Vita Genomics webpage stated that Taiwan’s single national health care system covered its population of 23 million and that, of these, “6 million arrived in Taiwan 50 years ago from Mainland China. 500,000 are native Taiwanese, a population isolated for thousands of years” (Vita Genomics n.d.). It further states: “Vita Genomics intends to access these unique and valuable populations through a network of research hospitals, CROs [clinical research organizations] and medical facilities” (ibid.). In effect, there are two types of scales, or scopes, at work here. First, settlers are resources that are considered representative of the larger Chinese population and, thereby, allow access to a large potential Chinese market, particularly for drug testing. Second, Aborigines are the spatial-temporal Other, which constitutes a commercially valuable resource by virtue of consisting of isolated populations. While Vita Genomics has indeed carried through with this strategy and been granted patents based on research involving Taiwan settlers, I have been unable to find any patents based on research involving Taiwan Aborigines.7 How­ever, beginning in 2003, other researchers did so, when Ko Ying-chin and his colleagues filed a series of US and Taiwan patent applications. These applications integrate not only Taiwan’s national health care system and state biotechnology development efforts but also Taiwanese diplomatic activities in the Pacific. For this reason, Ko’s applications represent important new developments with significant implications for Indigenous peoples. Applying to Patent Taiwan’s “Gift to the World” In the above CCR and Stanford cases, Taiwan Aborigines, along with numerous Indigenous peoples from elsewhere, are incorporated as sources of human variation and as representative of particular geographical locations. The remainder of this chapter shifts to a series of attempts to obtain US

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patents on research based mainly on Taiwan Aborigines as part of Taiwan’s biotechnology efforts. A common form of arthritis, gout involves the build-up of uric acid crystals in the joints, particularly of the big toe and the hands. The prevalence is much greater among men compared to women and tends to increase with age (Chou 2003; Doherty 2008). Gout is associated with hyperuricemia (heightened levels of uric acid in the blood), likely due to kidneys not removing sufficient uric acid (though only a fraction of those with hyper­ uricemia eventually develop gout). According to a 2007-8 US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the prevalence of gout in the US was 3.9 percent (though this estimate may be inflated), and it “more than doubled between the 1960s and the 1990s,” tripling in the UK during the same period (Zhu, Pandya, and Choi 2011, 3,136; 3,139). Because rates are increasing, according to Zhu, Pandya, and Choi, in dealing with gout and hyper­ uricemia, “modifiable risk factors for these conditions should be considered, including lifestyle and dietary factors (obesity, alcohol, fructose, purine-rich fatty foods), certain drugs (thiazide and loop diuretics), and disease conditions (hypertension, renal insufficiency, and heart failure)” (3,140). In addition to these risk factors, studies have found associations with a number of genes, including URAT1 (SLC22A12), SLC2A9, SLC17A3, NPT1, and ABCG2 (Basseville and Bates 2011, 24; Doherty 2008). A recent twins study by Krishnan et al. (2012) concludes that, while hyperuricemia appears to have a strong hereditary component, the onset of gout was mostly due to environmental factors and, hence, was preventable. Therefore, while genetic factors appear to be relevant, there is no consensus on the exact mechanisms through which these and other genes may contribute to gout and hyperuricemia. Estimates of gout and hyperuricemia prevalence among Taiwan Aborig­ ines vary. For example, Chou (2003, 965-66) puts them at 11.7 percent and 41.4 percent, respectively, compared to about 3 percent and 11 percent among Taiwanese settlers. As well, research indicates high levels of hyperuricemia among Aboriginal children and adolescents, which Ko et al. (2002) and Chou (2003) consider to indicate a combination of environmental and genetic factors at work. While Aboriginal children display higher levels of hyper­uricemia, a critical factor in the development of gout appears to be alcohol consumption, something that has sharply increased among Taiwan Aborig­ines since colonization (see Chapter 3). Gout and hyperuricemia have a complex aetiology, in which genetics may play a role, but in complex relation with the environment and diet, both of which are affected by socioeconomic status, including access to good health care. The above brief review of a few articles does not do justice to the vast body of literature on the

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subject, and my point is not to refute genetic factors; rather, it is to ask, given the still unresolved complexity of gout and hyperuricemia, why genetics researchers in Taiwan have cast Aborigines as genetically dysfunctional in their attempts to commercialize gout and hyperuricemia-related research findings through patent applications. Ko Ying-chin’s Legacy The vice-president of Kaohsiung Medical University and a Taiwan National Health Research Institutes fellow, Ko Ying-chin is arguably the most influential figure in issues related to Aboriginal health in Taiwan, particularly those pertaining to genetics. Ko began research on Aboriginal health in the early 1990s, and he has received awards for this work from the Taiwan government, including the Council of Indigenous People and the Office of the Taiwan President (National Health Research Institutes n.d. a). Ko holds a powerful position within the formation of Aboriginal health-related policy and discourse within transnational science, national government policy formation, and in Aboriginal communities as well as among the small but growing number of Aboriginal medical practitioners (many of whom have been trained by Ko). Yet, Ko’s legacy in genetics is problematic, as is indicated by his 1998 pronouncements that Aborigines are genetically predisposed to alcoholism (Hsu 1998) and his other public statements to the effect that Aborigines are genetically predisposed to diabetes, obesity, and gout (Central News Agency 2004a). Taiwan’s Gift Ko Ying-chin co-authored a July 21, 2004, Taiwan National Health Research Institute news release about findings he and his colleagues had made regarding genetics research on gout that involved Taiwan Aborigines. The news release is entitled “Taiwan’s Gift to the World: Taiwan Aborigines’ Hereditary Gout Gene Discovered through Research” (Ko and Huan 2004). The news release’s title incorporates the title of the American anthropologist Jared Diamond’s 2000 article “Taiwan’s Gift to the World,” which appears in the prominent journal Nature, regarding Taiwan as the homeland of the Austro­ nesian languages, and which the news release also cites (Diamond 2000; Ko and Huan 2004). To describe gout and hyperuricemia as a “gift to the world” involves what Birch (2007) terms a logic of morbidity, with Ko representing pathologies affecting Aboriginal peoples as an opportunity to advance scientific knowledge. Birch’s concepts are worth considering. The logic of morbidity prevalent in “bioeconomics embodies a reversal of eugenics in that morbidity both produces economic value (i.e., national competitiveness) and moral value

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in the form of individual responsibility to acquire, develop and maintain the vitality of our own bodies” (Birch 2007, 95). Under eugenics regimes, the state took an interventionist role against those deemed genetically defective (manifestations of the state of nature) and a financial burden to society, subjecting them to various measures, such as forced sterilization (Black 2003). Birch’s critique is aimed at a number of theorists, among them the much cited Nikolas Rose and Carlos Novas, who have argued that a logic of vitality drives modern genetics research, which differentiates it from eugenics, and that this vitality is the source of bioeconomic value guided by an ethos of hope within an overall political economy of hope (Rose 2007; Rose and Novas 2000). In Rose’s view, somatic individuals who are affected by genetic-related diseases organize themselves to acquire knowledge and to lobby and pressure genetics researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and funding agencies within the polis to find solutions (Rose and Novas 2000, 506; Rose 2007).8 Somatic individuals’ agency within the polis stands in sharp contrast to the inclusive-exclusion of those who scientists deemed defective under eugenics, when they might have been considered to have lives not worth living. The concept that the pursuit of well-being is the driving force in the production of bioeconomic value seems to contradict a logic of morbidity. Birch and Rose both discuss the contemporary moral value associated with individuals taking responsibility for their own well-being. However, scientists operating in settler states frequently view Indigenous peoples as lacking the requisite ability to exercise such responsibility, so they take charge and benevolently enact heroes-rescue-Aborigines organizing narratives. A central question is: Did Ko follow this organizing narrative when he investigated Aborigines’ gout and hyperuricemia and filed the following patent applications without informing involved research participants of the following commercialization attempts? a US patent application 20050170387, entitled “Gout Related Genetic Locus” (Taiwan patent application 200521132). b US patent application 20090098056, entitled “ALPK1 Gene Variants in Diagnosis Risk of Gout” (Taiwan patent application 200923103). c US patent application 20100035255, entitled “Method and Kit for Assessing Risk of Gout and Hyperuricemia” (Taiwan patent application 201006498). d US patent application 20100248253, also entitled “Method and Kit for Assessing Risk of Gout And Hyperuricemia,” was a continuation-in-part of patent application 20100035255 (there was no equivalent Taiwan patent application).

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In the following analysis, I focus on the US patent applications because these were the centre of the controversies of 2009 to 2011. The 2005 US Patent Application Ko and Cheng Li Shu-chuan filed US Provisional Application No. 60/530,271 on December 16, 2003. A provisional patent application is less technically stringent than a formal application, initially staking out a claim over an invention, and must be followed within one year by a formal application (or else the application process stops). Entitled “Genome-Wide Scan for Gout in Taiwanese Aborigines Reveals Linkage to a Longevity Locus on Chromosome 4q25,” the provisional patent application placed an emphasis on Aboriginal peoples as predisposed to gout-related morbidity and mortality.9 On December 15, 2004, Ko and Cheng filed US patent application 20050170387, entitled “Gout-Related Genetic Locus,” which was then published on August 4, 2005. This application represents the first attempt to constitute an invention and US patent based primarily on genetics research involving Taiwan Aborigines. They applied for a patent for a diagnostic test on what they argued was a gout-related locus (location) called 4q25 on chromosome 4. Yet, this application does not attempt to patent Taiwan Aborigines in the direct way that the US NIH Solomon Islands patent did in the early 1990s. Instead, the patent application enrols Atayal Aborigines as an isolated population that exhibits a high prevalence of gout, which Ko and Cheng say allows easier detection of genetic factors. The application consists of four sections:

1 The cover page lists the title, applicants, and an abstract. It functions as the manipulation phase and the commitment phase. 2 A series of diagrams with descriptions begins the competence phase, setting out the areas of interest. 3 A “specifications” section sets out a detailed description of the invention. This is part of the competence phase. 4 It concludes with a series of eighteen claims, which function as a performance phase. The Cover Page The narrative of a gout patent application involves a somewhat different assemblage of time-spaces and macro-actants than a scientific journal article. In the patent application’s manipulation phase, the USPTO is the sender of the quest to the patent claimants, and it is also the sanctioner of this quest as it can reject the application or grant the patent.

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Organizationally, the application cover page is actually the conclusion of a deductive practical syllogism. This syllogism uses epideictic rhetoric in its universal major premise, which is that the USPTO is acting on behalf of the US people, with the goal of advancing scientific progress by providing patent protection. The local particular premise is that Ko and Cheng believe they have a valid invention. The process of narrative embedding continues with the commitment phase, in which Ko and Cheng (2005b, abstract) use deliberative rhetoric to briefly define their invention as being worthy of a patent: “The present invention relates to a gout related gene locus located in the genomic region of about 90 cM to about 150 cM on chromosome 4, which region is flanked by genome markers D4S2361 and D4S1644.” They are claiming exclusive rights to conduct gout-related tests in this area bounded between 90 cM (centimorgans, or about a million base-pairs) and 150 cM on the fourth chromosome, a range of just under 60 million base-pairs. Haplotype testing of markers in this “genomic region” can be used to determine whether the relative of someone with gout has a genetic tendency to develop gout. Their abstract concludes the commitment phase by setting out the broad parameters of the patent claims in a deductive practical syllogism that summarizes their quest to define an invention worthy of a patent. Diagrams with Descriptions The competence phase involves a series of sub-narratives in which the applicants attempt to demonstrate they have fulfilled the necessary USPTO criteria for a novel, non-obvious, and useful invention. The first embedded sub-narrative’s manipulation phase begins with two diagrams that function as epideictic rhetoric (Prelli 2006) (n.b., patent applications, including the diagrams, are freely available on a number of patent-related websites, including that of the USPTO.)

a “Sheet 1 of 2”: This graph correlates the magnitude of the correlation between the incidence of gout among the Atayal Aboriginal participants with locations on the twenty-two autosomes (non-sex chromosomes). b “Sheet 2 of 2”: This diagram zooms in on the spike in chromosome 4, providing a detailed view of the region. The top is divided into units called “cM,” which stands for centimorgan (a million base-pairs) and indicates the location on chromosome 4, like kilometre signs on a high­ way (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 19). Along the bottom of the diagram are the names and locations of the various markers. The “LOD Score” on the vertical axis stands for the “logarithm of odds.” This is a logarithmic scale, so an LOD score of four means the chances of a linkage or correlation

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are ten thousand times greater than for the same data occurring by pure chance. The main spike in the LOD score rises above four, which involves a type of visual epideictic rhetoric that represents the magnitude of the association between gout and the area claimed between markers D4S2361 and D4S1644. By associating the spike with the claimed genomic region, these diagrams attempt to create a sort of visual “Ah ha!” moment that allows the reader to metaphorically see the magnitude of the invention’s significance (Latour 1986, 16-7; Prelli 2006).10 The Patent’s Scientific Sub-Narrative In addition to diagrams, the spatially oriented logic of the formal patent application is also evident in the phrase “field of invention,” which is described as “a gout-related genomic region.” The heading “Background of the Invention” indicates the beginning of a scientific sub-narrative and a deductive practical syllogism. The accepted norms of transnational science are stated with the universal major premise that gout is “a disorder of uric acid metabolism.” Next, the minor premise states that this is significant to the “Pacific Austronesian population because the population, including Taiwanese aborigines, has a remarkably high prevalence of hyperuricemia and gout, suggesting a founder effect across the Pacific” (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 3). The use of the phrase “remarkably high” emphasizes magnitude and, there­by, identifies Aboriginal peoples as an important research opportunity, while the phrase “founder effect” asserts that there is significantly less genetic variation within these populations since they derive from small initial populations. Ko and Cheng emphasize racial distinctions, describing research in the Pacific region on Indigenous peoples that “show significantly higher uric acid levels than that found in the white populations” (para. 7). Thus white populations are the norm against which this disorder is assessed (cf. Kahn 2007). By distinguishing Pacific Indigenous peoples from white populations, Ko and Cheng attempt to show an able-to-do modality. Next, there is a series of claims that they have found proof. The “Detailed Description of the Invention” further defines the invention. They emphasize the magnitude of this research’s superiority versus the shortcomings of previous research: “The conducted study has great power from both the multiplexity of the pedigree samples and unique nature of an isolated population, the aborigines in Taiwan” (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 12, emphasis added). Ko and Cheng identify Aborigines as “an isolated population,” which, “presumably, is more homogeneous in genetic and common environmental effect” (ibid.). Therefore, they argue, Aborigines are evolutionary isolates that are genetically different relative to other populations but that, within the population, are genetically homogeneous.

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Patent Adventures in Atayal Aboriginal Territories In the section and sub-narrative, entitled “The Gout-Related Locus,” Ko and Cheng’s (2005b, para. 28) paper more precisely identifies the Aboriginal territory that has been researched: “The present invention provides the findings of a genome-wide linkage study on 21 multiplex gouty pedigrees from an isolated highland aboriginal tribe in Taiwan.” It supports the selection of this group, repeating that it is a genetically homogeneous isolated population, which provides “a better power to illustrate genetic effects than other populations” (ibid.). As well, Ko and Cheng hypothesize that, based on “observations of familial clustering, early onset of gout, and clinically severe manifestations,” there may be one or more “major genes” involved (ibid.). Ko and Cheng have identified Aborigines as genetically isolated research opportunities. Defining the Spatial Parameters Having identified the research population as suitable objects of research, the narrative shifts to a series of spatially configured genetic-level claims. First, the scientists outline their method for identifying and mapping the gout locus, including the specific markers and the region, in centimorgans (cM). Ko and Cheng assert various spatially defined claims over the regions of the chromosome 4 genome centred on marker D4S2623, which corresponds to the peak of the spike in their graph at 114cM (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 29). Having defined the regions of the genome that are claimed, the patent then describes the potential gout diagnostics that can be carried out in this region among the gout patient’s family members for “determining propensity to gout” (para. 32). Next, there is a discussion phase, in the form of something like a scientific research paper, which speculates on the significance of the findings in a section with the subheading, “Implication of the Gout Locus.” Perls, Kunkel, and Puca (2004) identified this longevity-correlated locus in a 2001 paper and were subsequently granted a patent in January 2004, based on genetic testing of long-lived individuals over the age of ninety-eight (Perls, Kunkel, and Puca 2004; Puca et al. 2001, 10,505). Ko and Cheng (2005b, para. 37) try to make an association between their claimed gout locus and the longevity locus: “Interestingly, the strongest signal, marker D4S2623, located at 114 cM of the Marshfield genetic map is about 1.4 cM [about 1.4 million base pairs] apart from a longevity locus.” The gout locus patent application again associates their claimed region with the already patented longevity locus: “The coincident mapping of a gout candidate gene and a longevity gene implies either that this region may harbor two separate susceptibil­ ity genes for gout and longevity, or that a common gene in this region is

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responsible for both traits” (ibid.). Ko and Cheng then speculate that there may also be a relationship between gout and longevity. In addition, that high uric acid levels in the blood in humans and great apes is due to uric acid’s antioxidant properties and ability to scavenge free radicals, processes that may greatly increase human life expectancy compared to that of other primates (para. 38). The centrality of the living dead in both the patent application and the journal article (Cheng et al. 2004), point toward scientists’ potential use of this alleged gout locus to explain Aborigines’ lower life expectancy. The Five Examples Sub-Narrative Another major scientific sub-narrative involves five examples that are supposed to show the overall utility of the patent. This is the main exposition of scientific and technical research in the patent application. The sequence of the examples generally follows the same sequence as occurs in the scientific research paper by Cheng et al. (2004):

1 “Example 1 Assemblage of Study Subjects” provides an account of the trip into indigenous territories to enrol Aborigines. The authors only state that the subjects are from an “aboriginal tribe in Taiwan,” the specific Aboriginal people are not named in the patent or in the journal article (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 46); rather, the journal article states that it is the same population as appears in a 2004 article by Wang et al. (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 46). Wang et al. (2004, 243) states that the population consists of Atayal Aborigines. The patent describes how the gout participants were found: “The ascertainment of the gout probands (subjects) was initially made through a community public health survey conducted in the local Health Stations in Taiwan, with the aim of health education and prevention. Through the health survey, general health history and specific conditions, including gout and hypertension, of middle-aged and elderly people were collected” (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 46). Under the guise of a community health survey, Ko made use of the government health care system, in much the same manner as Vita Genomics proposed in its 2002 webpage or how Lu Ru-band et al. obtained the Atayal and Ami samples that were later commodified by Coriell Cell Repositories. A rheumatologist classified the 154 participants into various groups, ninety-two with gout and sixty-two without. Next, samples were taken: “Blood was drawn by trained medical technologists. Informed consent from each study subject was obtained before the study” (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 46, emphasis added). Therefore, Ko et al. only obtained individual informed consent: it appears that this project lacks

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community informed consent (issues that would become major controversies in the later patent applications). 2 “Example 2 Comparison of Characteristics of Gout Affected and Un­ affected Subjects” gives a brief discussion of the health status of the gout and non-gout groups. This includes how those who drank alcohol twice or more each week had higher rates of gout but that there was no major difference in liver function (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 47). 3 Rendered mobile, combinable, and stable in “Example 3 Genotyping,” the genetic samples were transported to the Marshfield Clinic’s Mammalian Genotyping Service in the United States, where they were genotyped for 382 genome markers known as short tandem repeat polymorphisms, which are distributed across the twenty-two autosomes (non-sex chromosomes). The genotyping was completed in May 2003 and transformed the samples into the data required for statistical analysis (Marshfield Clinic 2006, 22-23). 4 “Example 4 Statistical Analysis” describes a number of statistical methods used “to determine and confirm [a] gout related genetic linkage” to the location of 114cM on chromosome 4, indicated by the peak in the application’s Figure 2.11 The statistical analysis focused on an analysis of the familial relationships among “the 23 pedigrees,” such as sixty-six pairs of siblings and thirty parent-child pairs (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 50). Ko and Cheng claim performance in their various sub-narratives to define the location of the gout locus: “The above results demonstrate that using different analytical approaches and different traits, a gout susceptibility locus is identified on chromosome 4q25 through a genome-wide search on an isolated aboriginal tribe” (para. 58). Once again, they try to associate the close proximity of D4S2623 to the patented longevity locus, stating: “Interestingly, the marker D4S2623 located at 114 cM of Marshfield genetic map is flanking (only 1.4 cM apart) the Longevity 1 locus (OMIM 606406), marker D4S1564” (ibid.). 5 Having claimed the location of the gout-related locus allows them to transition to the fifth example. This is entitled “Determination of the Propensity for Gout and Hyperuricemia” and it sets out the patent’s potential commercial activity within this claimed genetic space-time (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 59). They give more details about the genetic markers themselves.12 They state that a set of “diseased polymorphisms” tend to be inherited as a group known as a “haplotype block” (para. 60). They then identify these “diseased polymorphisms” as an “invaluable tool” for testing “among distantly related affected individuals” (ibid.). Ko and Cheng then conclude that, if family members of someone with gout or hyperuricemia share “the same disease haplotype, preventive measures

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can be taken for the family member to avoid or decrease the environmental risk factors such as alcohol drinking, high purine diet etc.” (para. 61). Therefore, Ko and Cheng are not only trying to identify the genes involved but also advocating potential racialized biomedical governance usages of this genetic testing. The Patent’s Claims They now reach the performance phase of the patent application in which the claims are made. The list of claims summarizes the main points of the patent application in a very concise manner. Sixteen claims are asserted over the locations in the chromosome related to gout and hyperuricemia and methods for testing for the propensity for both of these (Ko and Cheng 2005a, 6-7). Claims 1 to 7 relate to the gout-related genome locus. For example, claim one defines the parameters of the locus as “an isolated DNA segment, wherein the segment is on chromosome 4 in the genomic region flanked by genome markers D4S2361 and D4S1644” (6). Claims 8 to 10 involve a series of the increasingly narrow claims made over the 4q25 region of chromosome 4 be­tween (8) 90cM-150cM, (9) 100cM-140cM, and (10) 110cM-120cM (5). Claims 11-13 summarize the method for testing for propensity to gout (ibid.). Finally, the patent application concludes with claims 14-16, which summarize the method for determining propensity to hyper­uricemia (ibid.). Having claimed performance of the quest to define a new invention, the patent application must next be assessed and sanctioned by the USPTO patent examiner. The Patent Disapproval Process The USPTO’s Patent Application Information Retrieval database has an extensive public record of exchanges between the patent office and the law firm representing Ko and Cheng. The disapproval process is the sanction phase of the patent application as an organizational narrative. Stephen Kapushoc, the examiner who acted on behalf of the USPTO, negatively sanctioned Ko and Cheng, giving them a negative evaluative modality. The major two documents in the rejection of the Ko and Cheng application are the “Non-final Rejection” of October 12, 2006, and the “Final Rejection” of March 26, 2007. These documents are the USPTO examiner’s narratives, which identify how the 2005 Ko and Cheng patent application violates the Patent Act (Section 35) of the United States Code. The United States Code constitutes “the codification by subject matter of the general and perma­nent laws of the United States” (United States Government Printing Office 2009). The rejection centres on the idea of the Ko and Cheng patent application being too broad in its scope and too vague in its specific details

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Figure 7 Narrative map of how the examiner destabilized the gout patent application

regarding the location and characteristics of the six markers described in the application (Kapushoc 2006; Kapushoc 2007).13 I want to briefly consider the particular statutes of patent law that were used by the examiner and how these destabilized the Ko and Cheng patent application’s narrative, resulting in its rejection. I think it is a useful counterpoint to the destabilization of the warrior gene analyzed in Chapter 5. In Figure 7, the boxed areas linked by the long curving line are the phases of Ko and Cheng’s application narrative, while the unenclosed comments with arrows are the patent examiner’s grounds for rejection. Most of the examiner’s critiques target the application’s manipulation and performance phases. 35 USC 101 – Already Exist in Nature: This grounds for rejection was not in­cluded in the Non-Final Rejection but was added in the Final Rejection, citing 35 USC 101, which considers that naturally occurring DNA sequences are non-statutory subject matter and cannot be patented. (Kapushoc 2007, 2)

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35 USC 112 Second Paragraph – Indefiniteness: In the non-final rejection, claim 1 is rejected for “being indefinite for failing to point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which applicant regards as the invention” (Kapushoc 2006, 3). 35 USC 112 First Paragraph – Description: Next the examiner rejected claim 1 for “failing to comply with the written description requirement,” citing the broad and vague nature of the area claimed on chromosome 4 (Kapushoc 2006, 3-4). For example, the examiner argues that the claimed genomic region between 90 cM and 150 cM encompasses some 57 million base pairs. In the first 10 million base pairs of the claimed region there are already some “90 genes/exon structures and several hundred genetic markers (such as polymorphic markers)” (Kapushoc 2006, 4-5). 35 USC 112 First Paragraph – Enablement: The non-final rejection cites claim 1 for “failing to comply with the enablement requirement” (Kapushoc 2006, 7). Essentially, the examiner argues that the invention would be very difficult to use. The only thing the application specifies is a correlation between these genetic markers and gout without identifying any specific sequences for the markers (9). This contrasts with the 2005 Stanford patent above, which provides very specific genetic marker and primer sequences to enable it to be used. 35 USC 102(b) – Violating Existing Patents: Both the non-final rejection and final rejection spend several pages outlining how the application violated existing patents. For example, it states that the application infringes on Gray et al. (1998) US Patent 5756696 regarding “the isolation and separation of human chromosomes, including human chromosome 4” (Kapushoc 2007, 17).

In the non-final rejection, the examiner challenges the applicability of this research elsewhere. While Ko and Cheng’s application emphasizes that the ability to detect gout-related genetics was strengthened because Aborigines were “isolated populations,” the examiner uses this isolation to question whether this is applicable elsewhere: Determining the propensity for gout is the subject, encompassing any subject, the data presented in this specification is generated using a very specific population of an Aboriginal tribe in Taiwan. (Kapushoc 2006, 9)

The examiner then cites differences in uric acid levels, stating that “Indigenous groups from Taiwan show significantly higher uric acid levels than that found in white populations,” that Aborigines are related to other Austro­ nesian groups, and that previous research had not found any “genes for complex gout related traits” (Kapushoc 2006, 9). Therefore, he asserts: “It is

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thus highly unpredictable as to whether or not a DNA segment useful in the analysis of gout in a Taiwan Aboriginal subject would be useful in the analysis of any other subject from a different population” (9-10). The racialized rendering of Atayal Aborigines as an isolated tribe with a propensity to gout is critical to how Ko and Cheng constitute the market time-space of the patent application. This rendering is criticized by the examiner as inapplicable to white populations, which constitute the racialized norm of these sorts of patents, as Kahn (2007) argues. The examiner also contends that previous genetics research had failed to find any relationship between gout and chromosome 4 and that other papers had variously linked it to locations on chromosome 2, chromosome 11, and the X-chromosome (Kapushoc 2006, 10). The examiner then states that, because the patent application does not describe any particular genetic sequences, it would be difficult for anyone to use this invention. In the Final Rejection, in response to the claimants’ lawyer’s counterarguments, the examiner accepted the potential use on people other than Taiwan Aborigines (Kapushoc 2007, 10), though this did not change the overall outcome. This acceptance shows how the white population constitutes the racial norm central to the evaluative criteria of the US patent evaluation process. The cumulative effect of the examiner’s rejection is the destabilization of the patent application narrative. The Final Rejection’s “Conclusion” is brief: “No claim is allowable.” The claimants filed an “Applicant Arguments/ Remarks Made in Amendment,” which was a fifteen-page attempt to refute the arguments made in the Final Rejection (Patent Application Information Retrieval System 2007a). Though the applicants initiated the appeal process, they did not pursue it, and the patent application was declared abandoned on August 7, 2008 (Patent Application Information Retrieval System 2007b, 2007c, 2008). The examiner mobilized the US Legal Code to deny the patent application, supporting each of his objections with particular examples. Yet, the denial of the application itself was not due to racism issues but, rather, because of technical issues, particularly the unclear definitions of the various claims of the invention and potential conflicts with existing patents. Indeed, the only one of the claimants’ objections accepted by the examiner focused on whether research involving Taiwan Aborigines could be applied to white populations. In this initial 2005 application, Ko and Cheng mobilized a conception of Taiwan Aborigines as an isolated group with a genetic predisposition to gout. In the above US patent application, both the applicant and the patent examiner agree that Taiwan Aborigines are an isolated population. However, they failed to agree on how this genetic information might be patented. This patent

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application illustrates the ways in which origins research and disease research meld into a third narrative, which involves understanding Aboriginal peoples as genetically predisposed to disease due to their ancestry, which is etched into their genes. The New 2009 Application Although the 2005 application failed, Ko Ying-chin and Tsai Shih-feng filed the new, very detailed, US patent application 20090098056 entitled “ALPK1 Gene Variants in Diagnosis Risk of Gout,” which was published on April 16, 2009, and which raised even greater ethical problems and conflicts of interest than did their former application. The Taiwan government’s National Health Research Institute (at which Ko is a faculty member) gave Ko a grant (NHRI-EX 91-8803PL) entitled “Genetic Epidemiology of Important Aborig­ inal Diseases” for the gout research project on which the 2005 gout-related patent application was based (National Health Research Institutes 2002). Even though the 2005 patent application failed, Taiwan government funding continued underwriting the research on which the 2009 application was based. Ko and his co-researcher/co-inventor Tsai Shih-feng received Taiwan Nation­­al Science Council funding totalling NT$11,237,000 (about CDN$332,000) for a three-year project (funded from May 2006 to April 2009) entitled “Genetic Polymorphism of Chromosome 4q22-25 Region: Application for Disease Gene Mapping” (Science and Technology Policy and Information Centre 2006, 2007, 2008).14 During this time, Ko and Tsai began pursuing another, more detailed and focused, application that was provisionally filed on September 10, 2007, followed by a full application filed on September 10, 2008 (Ko and Tsai 2009b). Temporally, these filing dates would allow the maximum potential US patent protection period of twenty-one years. This new 2009 application is, in various ways, more sophisticated and technically detailed than the previous one. The 2005 application emphasized the proximity of the supposed gout-related locus at 4q25 on chromosome 4 to the already patented longevity locus. The 2009 application continues to try to stake a claim in the same 4q25 region of chromosome 4, but this time it drops any reference to longevity. Instead, the 2009 application focuses on associations between gout and mutations in a gene called ALPK1. This new application contains 160 paragraphs versus the 2005 application’s sixtytwo paragraphs (Ko and Tsai 2009b; Ko and Cheng 2005b). One of the patent examiner’s criticisms of the 2005 application was a lack of genetic sequence information. In contrast, this 2009 application has eight pages of sequence information that identifies fifteen sequences. Twelve of these sequences are short, between twenty-nine and thirty-one base pairs, but three

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are long: 550, 565, and 1,244 base pairs (Ko and Tsai 2009b, 19-26). With a significantly higher level of technical detail, this application is more like the successful 2005 US patent obtained by Underhill and Oefner. The complexity and scale of the network mobilized in this application is far greater than that mobilized in the 2005 application. However, despite its greater internal complexity, the examination of this US patent application was never completed because external events intervened. Evidence of Ethics Violations and Conflicts of Interest When I first found the US patent application 20090098056 while working on my PhD dissertation in June 2009, the scale of it shocked me. The application involved over fifteen hundred Atayal Aborigines, and it appeared to involve serious violations of Section 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law and constitute significant conflicts of interest. In the patent application, Ko and Tsai (2009b para. 130) state: “A population-based epidemiology survey in Dayan [Atayal] tribe communities in Taiwan was conducted during 2004-2007.” The application states: “Informed consent for collecting blood samples, anthropometric measurements and the survey questionnaires was obtained for each study subject before the study” (para. 131, emphasis added). This study, which Ko and Tsai ran from 2004 to 2007, appears to violate Section 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, passed on February 5, 2005, because they had obtained only individual informed consent, not community informed consent. This violation seems similar to that which Lin Ma-li committed against the Kavalan community. However, the scale is much larger. There are about eighty-one thousand Atayal, so the 1,522 Atayal participants account for almost 1.9 percent of all Atayal. Ko et al. (2009a, para. 130) again carried out the sampling through the Taiwan public health care system: All 1522 subjects including 917 male (422 gout cases and 495 controls) and female 605 (126 gout cases and 479 controls), responded to questionnaires on the information, such as demographic information (age, gender, and ethnicity), alcohol consumption (the frequency of intake of alcoholic beverages), general and detailed medical history including current/past medications, during the survey conducted at the local health stations in Taiwan, with the aim of health education and disease prevention. (Ko and Tsai 2009b, para. 130)

Ko and Tsai carried out this project under the guise of “health education and disease prevention,” but with clear commercial intentions and the support of over NT$11 million in government funding.

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This application raises greater ethical issues than the last one because Ko and Tsai are the co-inventors in the patent application, while the patent itself was assigned to the Taiwan National Health Research Institutes. In other words, a Taiwan government agency would end up owning a patent based on research involving Taiwan Aborigines (Ko and Tsai 2009b). Further­more, the project was approved by the NHRI ethics committee and the Kaohsiung Medical University Institutional Review Board (Ko was then a vice-president of Kaohsiung Medical University), so this represented a severe conflict of interest (para. 131). In particular, how could the same institution ethically approve a research project by one of its faculty members and then own a patent based on the results of that project? Oversight usually means that there is an arm’s-length relationship between the regulator and those being regulated. When I checked the NHRI website on June 14, 2009, it was even promoting this patent application in the technology transfer section, where it was listed under gene detection technologies with the same title as the patent application: “ALPK1 Gene Variants in Diagnosis Risk of Gout” (National Health Research Institutes n.d. c).15 After this initial analysis, I began making a number of preliminary inquiries. In August 2009, I contacted the ETC Group, a biotechnology and social justice non-governmental organization based in Ottawa, Canada, and was told that it would investigate this incident further. The ETC Group’s predecessor, the Rural Action Foundation International, had been involved in the challenges to the HGDP and the patents on Indigenous peoples’ genetics filed by the US National Institute of Health in the early 1990s. In November 2009, Neth Dano, a representative of the ETC Group, visited Taiwan to investigate Ko’s patent applications. In addition to interviewing Ko, Dano contacted and spoke with Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV). TITV included the interview as part of a news report entitled “My Blood Your Patent,” a title that emphasizes hierarchical power relations and that helped to define much of the subsequent reporting. In this report, broadcast on December 4, 2009, Ko admitted that he had only obtained informed consent for the health research project, though he stated he had conducted community consultations prior to starting the project. Under incisive questioning from Watan Baser (the TITV interviewer, who is a Sediq Aborigine), Ko defended his actions, saying he had followed the law and that no country required that donors of genetic samples be informed of patent applications based on their samples. In an attempt to deflect criticism, Ko showed Watan a statement in which he announced that, if this patent application were to be commercially successful, a portion of the proceeds would be given to the Medical Association of Indigenous Peoples Taiwan (though they would have to apply and be approved by Ko).16 However, this TITV report also criticized Ko’s

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proposal as vague and short on details. Subsequently, a December 30, 2009, TITV article argued that Ko’s promise was not legally binding because there was no law covering this situation (Ji and Dao 2010). According to a transcript of a January 27, 2010, meeting whose ostensible purpose was to deal with the ethics of Aboriginal participation in the Taiwan Biobank, Ko announced that he and the NHRI were withdrawing the second patent application (Taiwan Biobank 2010). At this meeting, Ko framed this set of events as a major error on the part of his critics, repeatedly stating that this gout-related research was Taiwan’s “gift to the world.” However, he also stated that, due to criticism by Aboriginal organizations and attention from international organizations, he and the NHRI had decided to withdraw the application. Ko’s announcement was met with considerable criticism from Aboriginal participants in the meeting, with his gift metaphor coming in for particular criticism (Taiwan Biobank 2010). However, the Biobank meeting did not attract any media attention, and there was no further reporting through January and February 2010 in the mainstream press. In early January 2010, the United Daily News, having heard about the TITV reports, contacted the ETC Group and myself about doing a report on this case. Over the next two months, we cooperated with them, with numerous e-mails and a number of phone calls. On March 21, 2010, the United Daily News published a five-article special report. The articles covered the case from a number of different angles: 1 “My Blood Your Patent: Aborigines Sacrificed?” uses the December 4, 2009, TITV report’s title and summarizes the controversy and those involved. Of particular interest is Ko’s implied defence of his exercise of prerogative powers, which he indicates by stating that, though the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law governed academic research, there was no law preventing him from filing patent US20090098056, so he did not violate any laws, and he said “there was not need” to inform the Aborig­ inal donors about the patent application (Wang and Lin 2010a). The NHRI, which approved Ko’s research and sponsored this patent application publicly supported Ko. The NHRI general secretary Chiang Hung-Che stated, “so far there has been no commercialization, where is the benefit? So the NHRI did not need to apologize,” to the involved Aborigines (Wang and Lin 2010a). This condescending NHRI reasoning could be summarized as “no profit, so no harm.” It effectively reduces the conflict to a dis­pute over unrealized benefits from commercialization and ignores the Aboriginal rights violations.17 Ko, in the absence of clear laws, exercised prerogative powers in the name of “Taiwan’s gift to the world.”

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2 “Whistleblower: Ignoring Genetic Property Rights” summarizes the ETC Group’s and my criticisms of Ko’s ethics violations (Wang 2010). 3 “Aborigines’ Father, Ko Ying-chin Delivered Betel Nut Prevention Day” praises Ko, with the reference to “father” invoking a familial patriarchal figure (Lin X.M. 2010a). This imagery is similar to that used to depict Lin Ma-li as the mother of Taiwan blood (Lin S.M. 2010). The title refers to Ko’s research on betel nut, an addictive mild stimulant used throughout East Asia. Betel nut is made from nuts from the areca palm that are chewed together with leaves of the betel plant. Ko’s research shows how betel nut is implicated in oral cancers and other health problems, and this helped lead to various public education efforts to limit its use. It also mentions that he has published over two hundred academic papers on numerous subjects, including various aspects of Aboriginal health.   In defence of the US patent application, Ko argues that his gout research findings were an important discovery, and this application was “intended to protect intellectual property rights and prevent foreigners from getting it first” (Lin X.M. 2010a). This justification of protecting Taiwan interests from foreign claims implies that Ko is engaged in the exercise of prerogative powers premised on protecting Taiwan’s sovereignty at the genetic level, something that Lin Ma-li also implied in a 2007 article and a 2008 article defending her research on Kavalan Aborigines (Lin M.L. 2007b, 2008b). 4 “Aborigines’ Pain: One Year Blood Sampled Eight Times, Another Kind of Suffering.” This title refers to a tribe in Hualien that had been sampled eight times in one year and it asks whether researchers were “consuming” Aborigines with all this sampling. It features one of Ko’s supporters, who argues that Ko should not be criticized. It gives a brief account of the devastating impact of gout on the lives of Atayal Aborigines who suffer from it in Wufeng Township in Hsinchu County – people who had been sampled by Ko (Wang and Lin 2010b). It cites the case of one Atayal man who, at the age of fifty-one, was bedridden and suffered from the debilitating pain of gout. The article states that most Atayal gout sufferers looked forward to better treatments and that, if patents were possible, that would be all to the good. So the interviewed Atayal gout sufferers supported the research, provided it would improve the treatment of gout. 5 “Medical Science and Human Rights Conflict Unresolved” compares this controversy to the 1995 patent controversy involving the US National Health Institutes patent on a Solomon Islander’s cell line as well as to another US patent application involving Indigenous peoples from Papua New Guinea (Lin X.M. 2010b). It concludes that these conflicts between medical science and human rights remain in a legal “gray area.”

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The special report immediately created a national controversy, with the news being picked up by other media outlets. In apparent response to the controversy, twenty-three hours after the United Daily News reports were published online, Ko and Tsai’s patent attorney electronically filed an express abandonment to withdraw US patent application 20090098056 with the USPTO (Patent Application Information Retrieval System 2010).18,19 There was a strong public response, including a joint statement entitled “My Genes, Your Patent?,” which was signed by a number of Aboriginal rights organizations and the Taiwan Association for Human Rights. This joint statement criticizes Ko’s violations and the lack of strong government legislation. In particular, it argues that Section 21 of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law is still ill-defined, and it calls on the Taiwan government to pass effective implementation legislation (My Genes, Your Patent? Joint Statement 2010). As well, on March 23, 2010, the United Daily News published an opinion piece entitled “Research Ethics Already Distorted,” written by Xi Ya-te and Wu Luo of the Taiwan Aboriginal Peoples’ Policy Association, that strongly criticizes the practice of medical ethics in Taiwan. It concludes that, in order to prevent abuses, representatives from human rights organizations should be included in the ethics review processes (Xi and Wu 2010). Over four months between November 2009 and March 2010, the assemblage that developed of ETC Group, Taiwan Aboriginal and human rights organizations, TITV, and the United Daily News had destabilized Ko’s US patent application 20090098056 by emphasizing his failure to get informed consent for this commercialization. However, Ko had already filed another US patent application 20100035255 entitled “Method and Kit for Assessing Risk of Gout and Hyperuricemia” (Ko 2010b). This application used data from the same group of over fifteen hundred Atayal Aborigines. It was published on February 11, 2010. I found this new application in the first week of April 2010 and immediately informed the other organizations in our assemblage, including the United Daily News and TITV, but these two media outlets did not cover this new patent application. So Ko still had US application 20100035255 under examination by the USPTO, but again, external events would intervene, this time in the Solomon Islands. Gout Genetics in Pacific Health Diplomacy and Patent Applications In the concluding section of this chapter, human origins research, health research, Taiwan diplomacy, biotechnological development, and violations of Indigenous peoples rights meld. Currently, Taiwan has formal diplomatic relations with only twenty-three countries, six of which are in the Pacific region. A number of authors have termed Taiwan’s relations with this region as “sub-imperial” because Taiwan attempts to assert its own region of influence.

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Taiwan’s relations with the region is “sub” because it defers to American global hegemony (the Pacific as an “American lake”) and Japanese regional hegemony, while competing with the PRC’s increasing influence in the area (Chiu 2000). Biocolonialism fits well with such a sub-imperial worldview, which supports a colonizing mindset and culture that sees the domination of those deemed the Other as a form of natural and morally necessary beneficence (Said 1994). Such underlying condescension was evident in the heroes-rescueAustronesians narrative schema used by Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian in his December 2, 2004, speech to “Health Ministers and Senior Health Officials from Palau, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands, the Marshall Islands, and Kiribati” attending the 2004 International Conference for Austronesian Health (Chen S.B. 2004). This narrative schema posits the Pacific as a spacetime in which Austronesians departed from their Taiwan homeland to settle the Pacific. Chen conceives of the Pacific Ocean as a vast area in which the small number of ancient founding populations scattered to isolated islands, something that eventually led to genetic founder effects that have left an unfortunate legacy of dysfunction etched in the genes of these populations: Scientific research has indicated the commonality among the Austronesians in the Pacific and Indian Ocean [sic], sharing not only similar characteristics in culture, language, and lifestyle, but also health problems – in particular, genetic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and gout. These scientific “genetic founder effect[s]” may very well span across the Pacific, causing high-rate [sic] of gene expression of those recessive genetic diseases. Therefore, it is necessary for Austronesian countries and communities to exchange medical information and resources, as well as cooperate in related academic research. (Chen S.B. 2004)

These founder effects and recessive genetic diseases function as a type of disorder, and so Taiwan has an important mission. Chen problematically refers to Taiwan Aborigines as the earliest settlers, and he then combines this with a familial metaphor: “The indigenous peoples in Taiwan are the earliest settlers on this land and are also part of the Austronesian family.” Having made these associations, he then claims that, “based on the spirit of ‘medicine without border[s],’ we have the obligation and determination to share our experience in medical care with our Austronesian allies” (Chen S.B. 2004). In the hierarchies implicit in this speech, genetically deterministic translations of disease research and origins research create Austronesian zone-specific genetic disorders. Chen asserts that Taiwan has a fiduciary duty

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to deal with these genetic disorders because Taiwan is the homeland of the Austronesian peoples and has extensive scientific and medical abilities that the other affected island nations lack. Similarly, Ko Ying-chin claims to serve the common good in his repeated public statements referring to his gout research as Taiwan’s “gift to the world.” Ko has engaged in research-related diplomacy, signing at least two MOUs with foreign institutions. Under the subheading “Significance,” Ko and Tsai’s second fiscal year report to the NSC regarding their gout research project states: “This genetics research will affirm Taiwan’s stance in the field of international research, and is a remarkable opportunity to collaborate with our Pacific partners, especially [the] Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) in New Zealand” (Ko et al. 2008, 11). Apparently, gout is a remarkable diplomatic opportunity. Similarly, an abstract on the 2006-7 program is phrased in terms of  Taiwan’s diplomacy in the Pacific. The abstract states: “Due to the Pacific Austronesian population, including Taiwanese aborigines, ha[ving] a remarkably high prevalence of hyperuricemia and gout, a founder effect across the Pacific region is suggested” (Ko 2007a). Here we have the same epideictic rhetoric as is found in the patent application, which emphasizes the magnitude of gout and hyperuricemia pervasiveness (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 3): Therefore, we dr[e]w up international collaboration with the Austronesian countries and have initialled the “Memorandum of Understanding for Research Collaboration Between The National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan and the ESR (Environmental Science and Research), New Zealand” and “Memorandum of Understanding for Research Collaboration Between The National Health Research Institutes, Taiwan and the Ministry Of Health And Medical Services, Solomon Islands.” (Ko 2007a)

Not only did Ko draw up these memoranda, but he also signed them on behalf of the Taiwan National Health Research Institute, in effect on behalf of the Taiwan government (Ko 2007a). By doing so, Ko acted as a Taiwan state diplomatic representative engaged in an external act of state sovereignty. Therefore, this project on gout involves a complex weaving and blurring of business (in the form of the patent application under US sovereignty), Taiwan diplomacy (which also seeks to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty), and health and genetics research in the Pacific.20 The Solomon Islands The Solomon Islands is a new nation, and a former British colony, consisting of a large island chain with a population of nearly 600,000. It is situated

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northeast of Australia and east of Papua New Guinea. Indigenous peoples have lived in the Solomon Islands for thousands of years. Historically, they were not politically unified. The rapid expansion of European and US colonialism in the West Pacific during the middle to late 1800s led to the infamous “blackbird” slavery trade, in which Europeans and Americans enslaved tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples from the Solomon Islands and other Pacific Islands to work on the plantations of Australia, Fiji, and elsewhere in the Pacific (Horne 2007, 33-34). In 1893, the British declared the Solomon Islands a protectorate on the basis that its Indigenous peoples needed to be protected from the slave trade. Later, during the Second World War, the American and Japanese empires fought a number of major battles on and around the Islands, which were the southernmost extent of  Japanese military expansion. The Solomon Islands gained independence from British colonial rule in 1978. Like many postcolonial countries, the Islands have a weak sense of national identity, and people mainly identify with their traditional clans. During the 1980s and 1990s, a resource boom based on the over-exploitation of the Solomon Islands forests by Asian logging firms (from countries like Malaysia, Taiwan, and [later] China), fuelled corruption among the emergent political elite and decimated the forests while bringing little benefit to local people (Aquorau 2008, 247-54; Solomon Islands Parliament 2006, 13-14). Against this background of endemic corruption and economic stagnation, escalating tension in the capital of Honiara on the island of Guadalcanal led to a civil war between Malaitan migrants and Guadalcanalians from 1999 to 2003. This war led to hundreds of deaths and extensive property and economic damage (Solomon Islands Parliament 2006, 7-8). In 2003, at the request of the Solomon Islands government, a foreign intervention force led by Australian and New Zealand military forces (along with those of other Pacific nations) landed and began a peace implementation process (Atkinson 2010a; Solomon Islands Parliament 2006). The Australian government, which views the Solomon Islands as part of its zone of regional influence, sharply criticized the Taiwan government’s foreign aid to the Solomon Islands government as contributing to corruption and instability (Atkinson 2010a, 174-76). Popular local sentiments, which held that Chinese immigrants had unfairly benefited from such corruption, were manipulated by a number of politicians immediately following the April 2006 elections, leading to a riot in which much of Honiara’s Chinatown was destroyed (Atkinson 2009, 2010a; Solomon Islands Parliament 2006). This riot was a great embarrassment for the Australian-led stabilization force, and the Australian government stepped up its criticism of the Taiwan government, saying that covert Taiwan

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government funds and influence during the election campaign had helped fuel this violence (Atkinson 2010a, 174-76). Following this sharp criticism, the Taiwan government has been sensitive about its image in the Solomon Islands. Ko Enrols Solomon Islanders Medical facilities and training have been an important part of Taiwan’s foreign aid to the Solomon Islands. The National Referral Hospital in Honiara has a close working relationship with Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, including the training of Solomon Islander medical students, joint research, and care facilities (Shih 2006). In September 2006, a team led by Ko visited the Solomon Islands. A research certificate dated September 14, 2006, was issued to Ko by the Solomon Islands Health and Medical Services’ Ethics and Research Committee. This research certificate, signed by the committee’s chair, Dr. Cedric Alependava, authorized Ko to conduct research between September 19 and 30, 2006, in the Solomon Islands (Ko 2007b). Ko gathered eight hundred samples during this September 2006 trip. Some of the genetics research data that are included in the fourth patent application US20100248253 are also included in a June 2010 article entitled “The SLC22A12 Gene Is Associated with Gout in Han Chinese and Solomon Islanders” (Tu et al. 2010) in the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. This article states: “We further enrolled 54 male gouty cases (age 49.4±11.2) (22 tophi) and 138 controls (age 46.0±14.0) from the National Referral Hospital of Honiara and 2 provincial minihospitals of Southeastern Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The institutional review boards at each participating hospital approved this study” (1,252). As well, the same Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases article states that informed consent was given by each participant. Further: “Ethics approval: This study was conducted with the approval of the Institutional Review Boards of Kaohsiung Medical Uni­ versity, Kaohsiung Chang-Gung Memorial Hospital, the National Health Research Institutes (KMU-IRB:93-063 and NHRIEC: 0940102) and the Ethics and Research Committee of the Ministry of Health and Medical Services in the Solomon Islands in September 2006” (1,253). To all appearances, this article is based on research approved by an impressive array of ethics review boards and with the informed consent of participants. Indeed, in a bioethics lecture delivered on October 12, 2007, Ko discussed the ethical considerations of his trip to the Solomon Islands and showed pictures of his informed consent form, which he received from the Solomon Islands government (Ko 2007b, 2007c). However, this lecture contains a clue to the trouble to follow. Problematically, Ko argued that as a researcher, he had seen instances

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of how “white people” (白人 Westerners) had come to Taiwan, used deception and abused their power to obtain Aborigines’ DNA, and also taken their traditional knowledge to make profitable products (Ko 2007c). He argued that rather than cooperating with white people, Taiwan scientists had to do their own research and apply for patents themselves. Furthermore, he said that even though the Solomon Islands was a less-developed nation, he and other Taiwan researchers treated Aborigines there as equals and would not repeat the sort of abusive treatment that white people had committed in Taiwan. This equitable treatment included a strong respect for Solomon Islands government research ethics review processes. Ko explained how Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU) regularly sent medical teams to the Solomon Islands and also provided scholarships so Solomon Islanders could study medicine at KMU (Ko 2007c). His first claim of protecting Taiwan from white people invokes prerogative powers similar to those asserted by Lin Ma-li (see Chapter 4), who stated that Taiwan scientists must conduct research before foreigners do. Ko repeated this protective justification during the March 2010 US patent application controversy (Lin X.M. 2010a). However, Ko’s exercise of sovereignty involves an extension of prerogative powers outside Taiwan based on the claim that he is serving Austronesian peoples’ genetic common good, which is what President Chen implied in his De­cember 2004 address (see above). The basis of these prerogative powers is situated in Taiwan’s sub-imperial claim over its self-proclaimed Austro­nesian zone – a transcendent claim that derives from Taiwan as the homeland of the Austronesian peoples and that is strengthened through authorizations from transnational science and institutions for the common good of humanity. On June 4, 2010, there were a number of stories in the Taiwan press about the government drafting new legislation on research involving human subjects, including strict new penalties of up to NT$1,000,000 (around CDN$33,000) for violations (e.g., United Daily News 2010; Central News Agency 2010b). These new stories cited the earlier 2009-10 controversy and subsequent March 2010 withdrawal of Ko’s US patent application as an important impetus for this new draft legislation. However, these proposed legal changes and the then recent controversy appear to have had no effect on Ko and his colleagues, who continued with their US patent application 20100035255 by adding US patent application 20100248253, on June 10, 2010, which is known as a continuation-in-part (Ko, Chang, Wang, and Chiang 2010). This continuation-in-part added new data from 317 Taiwanese settlers and 192 Solomon Islanders in order to strengthen the earlier patent application 20100035255 published in February 2010, while still retaining the protection of this earlier patent application’s initial filing date of April 14, 2009 (Ko, Chang, Wang, and Chiang 2010, 6).

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The continuation-in-part was published on September 30, 2010, and I found it in October 2010 while conducting a search of Ko’s name in the USPTO database. After reviewing the available sources, I suspected that, once again, Ko did not have informed consent to file the patent application, so I contacted the ETC Group in January 2011. In February 2011, through the Samoan environment NGO known as the O Le Siosiomaga Society, Dano made contact with representatives of the Network of Indigenous Peoples Solomons (NIPS). NIPS is an Indigenous peoples’ NGO based in Honiara. It was founded in 2006 and is involved in advocacy on a variety of climate, environmental, and human rights issues. NIPS began asking Solomon Islands government officials about Ko’s case. In a March 9, 2011, e-mail, Dr. Cedric Alependava, chair of the Solomon Island Research and Ethics Committee, stated that his committee’s approval of Ko’s 2006 research trip did not cover patents. Alependava was upset by this US patent application, arguing that it must be “quashed” (e-mail correspondence, March 9, 2011). Similarly, Dr. Silent Tovosia, who helped coordinate Ko’s September 2006 research trip to the Solomon Islands, replied that he was “horrified” when he read the e-mail from NIPS about Ko’s patent application, stating that there had been no mention of patents with regard to the research (e-mail correspondence, March 17, 2011). Both Alependava and Tovosia decisively rejected Ko’s attempt to exercise prerogative powers over the people of the Solomon Islands and to incorporate them into Taiwan’s biotechnology development in the name of the common good. The destabilization of Ko’s patent application came in large measure from Taiwan’s marginalized international diplomatic position, reflecting its inclusive-exclusion within the world system of nation-states. I worked with NIPS coordinator Grammie Vahia and other NIPS representatives to create a series of press releases, the first of which were sent out in mid-March 2011. The release entitled “NIPS Urges Withdrawal of US Patent Application” details and criticizes Ko’s ethical violations and demands the withdrawal of US patent application 20100248253, the return of samples Ko had taken, and a ban on publication or use of the data derived from these samples as well as donor information. This first press release was reported on by the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation in March 12, 2011, in radio broadcasts and an article entitled “Indigenous Peoples Network Opposes Patent Appli­ cation,” while the Solomon Times, on March 14, published “Taiwanese Doctor Seeks to Patent Findings in Solomon Islands” (Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation 2011; Solomon Times 2011). Vahia delivered a strongly worded letter to the Taiwan Embassy in Honiara on March 14, 2011. This letter argued that Ko’s patent application involved serious ethical violations and that, as such, was a serious threat to Taiwan’s

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image in the Solomon Islands and to Taiwan-Solomon Islands diplomatic relations. The Taiwan Embassy then started to take the case more seriously, perhaps due to the negative press coverage the case had received. In a March 18, 2011, e-mail, the Taiwan Embassy in the Solomon Islands first secretary Thomas Tsai responded to the March 14, 2011, NIPS letter as follows: “The embassy has raised the matter to the proper authorities of ROC (Taiwan)” (e-mail correspondence, March 18, 2011). These actions by the Taiwan Embassy were apparently successful because, on March 18, 2011, Ko sent an e-mail to Victor Ngele, the Solomon Islands ambassador to Taiwan (a copy of this e-mail was also sent to Roy Wu, the Taiwan ambassador to the Solomon Islands). In this March 18, 2011, e-mail, Ko apologized for his violations, stated he would withdraw the patent applications, and also said that he would return all the Solomon Islanders’ samples to the Solomon Islands. Ko admits he made a mistake and offers an apology: Although you kindly let us know that it was not your sphere of influence to prevent the matter from reaching national stage, we sincerely hope that you would help to create a channel for us to express our apologies to the Islanders participating in this research and the Solomon Islands Government. We also genuinely hope that our genuine regret about our mistake can be accepted and [our] efforts in minimizing the impact on the diplomatic ties between the ROC and the Solomon Islands can be recognized. (e-mail correspondence, March 18, 2011)

Ko clearly states that he was at fault and apologizes so as to minimize any damage to diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the Solomon Islands. This apology is in strong contrast to what occurred in the 2009-10 controversy, when Ko was forced to withdraw the US patent application but steadfastly refused to acknowledge wrongdoing or to apologize for violating Atayal donors’ rights, instead maintaining that his research was Taiwan’s “gift to the world.” The NIPS criticisms and those of the Solomon Islander government officials severely weakened Ko’s authorization to represent Solomon Islanders, and they were able to force him to recognize Islanders as equals within the polis of decision making. On April 1, 2011, Ko’s legal firm filed an express abandonment, thereby withdrawing US patent application 20100248253 (Patent Application Information Retrieval System 2011). We sent a copy of the press release, entitled “NIPS Welcomes Abandon­ ment of Patent Application Involving SI Samples,” to a number of NGOs and media outlets, including the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR) (“NIPS welcomes” 2011). On April 6, 2011, in its blog the TAHR provided a detailed summary of the case, contextualizing it in relation to

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Taiwan’s poor legal regulation of genetics research and the resulting violations of Aborigines’ rights. This blog article is entitled “Taiwan Scholars Seize Indigenous Peoples’ Genetic Property Rights Again, Taiwan Association for Human Rights Calls on Agency in Charge to Take Action to Deter This Devious Tendency” (Taiwan Association for Human Rights 2011). This TAHR article was subsequently reported in an April 9, 2011, Taiwan CNA story entitled “Genes Transformed into Patents, Human Rights Organizations Dis­ agree,” which gained national coverage and was reported in a number of media outlets. This CNA story compared these violations to a number of other recent bioethics scandals in Taiwan (Central News Agency 2011a). As well, the press release was widely circulated internationally through a number of NGO, Aboriginal rights, genetics research, and social justice-related websites. With the withdrawal of US patent application 20100248253, the United Daily News decided to cover the story. It interviewed Ko and myself separately, and the April 9 article entitled “Solomon Islands Blood Sample Controversy, Ko Ying-chin Apologizes” was rather conciliatory in tone, stating that Ko had withdrawn the patent application and promised to repatriate the Solomon Islanders’ samples (Tsai 2011). In this article, Ko defended his patent application, saying that after his thirty years of research on Aboriginal health issues, this patent application had “commemorative significance” for him. He added that because “Aborigines are a minority, and even if I filed the patent only for money, no drug company would make medicine under this patent” (Tsai 2011). Furthermore, he said that he had been misunderstood by human rights groups, that he was very upset and frustrated over the intense criticism, and that for this reason he was withdrawing from all research involving Taiwan Aborigines as well as Indigenous peoples elsewhere. The removal of the Solomon Islanders’ authorization was completed with the repatriation of the Solomon Islanders samples, which was confirmed by Ko in a May 3, 2011, e-mail to Ambassador Ngele of the Solomon Islands: I am writing to reconfirm that at the request of your government and with the permission of [the] Taiwanese government, I have sent 800 samples of DNA and 634 samples of Plasmas to the Permanent Secretary, Dr. Lester Ross, Ministry of Health and Medical Services of Solomon Islands via inter­national express delivery. Our research unit did not keep any of the sample[s] or immortaliz[ed] cell line[s]. (e-mail correspondence, May 3, 2011)

The Solomon Islands representatives’ abilities rest on Taiwan’s peculiar diplomatic isolation, which results in the Solomon Islands being one of only twenty-three countries that actually recognize Taiwan as a formal diplomatic entity. Theoretically, diplomatic relations between nation-states

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are free and reciprocal. However, in Taiwan’s case, because of its diplomatic marginalization and persistent pressure from the PRC, it must engage in a series of complicated negotiations, involving financial, foreign aid, and other measures, in order to maintain relations with small island nations such as the Solomon Islands. Furthermore, in general practice, large industrial states can and do ignore the criticisms of small developing nations, but Taiwan cannot afford to ignore small developing nations without risking further diplomatic isolation. In a Radio Australia (2011) interview with NIPS coordinator Grammie Vahia, Vahia explains how Ko had only received informed consent and research authorizations for health research, not for patent applications. He stated that his organization was not opposed to health-related genetics research involving the Indigenous peoples of the Solomon Islands, but he stressed that any such research must be based on equitable and respectful relationships. While Ko was embarrassed by these controversies, he has faced no longterm legal repercussions, not even a mild censure for his repeated mass violations of Aboriginal rights and dignity. On the contrary, he was honoured in August 2011 at an awards ceremony attended by Wong Chi-huey, the head of Academia Sinica (Central News Agency 2011b). This awards ceremony was sponsored by a foundation run by Far Eastern Group tycoon Douglas Hsu. Ko was awarded a NT$1 million (about Cdn$33,000) prize for his academic work. Douglas Hsu’s Far Eastern Group conglomerate owns Asia Cement Company, which, since the 1970s, has mined disputed lands of the Truku (Taroko) Aborigines. Indeed, his company continues to violate an August 2000 Taiwan court decision that returned a portion of these disputed lands to the Truku Aboriginal landowners, a court decision that local Taiwan government authorities continue to leave unenforced (Chuang 2001; Shiban 1997; Simon 2002). In a way, this awards ceremony summarizes the contradictions inherent in genetics research in Taiwan. Denial of Aboriginal Rights in the Patent Application Process In the gout-related patent applications, the interaction of a number of important actants contributed to the violation of Aborigines’ rights and sovereignty. First, there is the breakdown in the ethics review process, with its serious conflicts of interest. Second, Ko has repeatedly stated that his research is intended to help Aborigines, which involves claiming a fiduciary duty to rescue them. In bioethics, paternalism involves imposing restrictions on patients’ rights in order to help them. Ko appealed to paternalistic criteria to defend his large-scale violation of Indigenous peoples’ rights, arguing that

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he did so in order to help their health and also to protect them from supposed threats posed by foreign agents, such as Westerners (“white people”). His means of achieving this involved a patent application that placed a power­ful limitation on the autonomy of Aboriginal donors. Effectively, the patent application process excluded any recourse by Aboriginal subject donors, individually or collectively, to impose any kind of check or balance on Ko’s paternalistic actions. Ethical and paternalistic claims are irrelevant to a third major agent, the USPTO. The USPTO does not care about the provenance or ethical status of genetics research samples and data used in US patent applications. Whereas some European patent offices include a morality clause, the only external morality considerations made by the USPTO involves an initial screening to assess whether the patent application threatens American security interests (e.g., weapons systems information that is considered secret) or whether the US government has any sort of property interest (e.g., by virtue of having provided funding) (US Patent and Trademark Office 2011). After this initial screening, the examination process only assesses the aforementioned criteria of novelty, usability, and non-violation of existing patents. Such an arbitrary boundary seems to involve an exercise of prerogative powers in the name of the common good, which here is defined as innovation, something that takes precedence over donors’ rights. By selectively protecting only US security interests and then only using narrow patent-related criteria, the patent application examination process allows for the violation of Aboriginal peoples’ and other donors’ rights through their inclusion in patent applications without their consent (consideration of which is excluded). This ability to represent another is an important sort of authority and agency. In practice, informed consent is supposed to provide this type of authorization; however, the patent process, by excluding consideration of such ethical and legal violations, effectively places the burden on donors whose rights have been violated to seek recourse through the civil courts and contractual law. Critically, this legal division means that donors, whose genetics were illegally used, cannot exert any legal influence on the US patenting process. Such evaluations reflect the increasingly neoliberal normative structure through which patents and other forms of intellectual property are examined and allocated, to the detriment of ethical issues. Furthermore, this contributes to a “catch-me-if-youcan” form of ethics in which genetics researchers claim informed consent, but such claims can only be challenged if donors and/or their communities find out about these violations (Munsterhjelm and Gilbert 2010). Ko argued that his patent applications would protect Aboriginal people (Ko 2007a). However, at best, this would have been a temporary measure

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since the patents are temporally limited (e.g., to a maximum of twenty-one years in the US) (Harry 2011, 718). Critically, a patent application publicly describes all the research, and, even if granted by the USPTO or other patent offices, once the patent expires, anyone can use this information. Ko willingly took such risks on behalf of Atayal Aborigines without their informed con­ sent when he filed the patent applications. As things now stand, all of the data in Ko’s patent applications and associated information are in the public domain for anyone to use. Not only did Ko and his colleagues’ first patent application’s organizing narrative rely on the figure of Aborigines as living dead, but it also exercised sovereign powers in what is a legal grey area. The Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Basic Law is still ill-defined, and aspects of it, such as the collective informed consent implied in Section 21, are without any detailed legal agency. As things stand, researchers like Ko operate in a legal void, in which they effectively exercise prerogative powers to serve what they consider to be the common good. The involved Aboriginal people did not consent to being included in such commercial patent applications, and Ko did not tell them about the applications – something he later defended, saying there was no legal requirement to do so (Taiwan Indigenous Television 2009). Like CCR in its denial of the rights of the Karitiana of Brazil, Ko clearly begins to exercise sovereign powers when he arrogates sovereign functions such as deciding what rights and obligations he and Aboriginal peoples have in the absence of clear laws. The important California Supreme Court 1990 decision in the Moore case is relevant here. The United States was the first country to award patents on living creatures, beginning with the famous Ananda Chakrabarty Patent of 1980 (then employed by General Electric) on genetically modified oildigesting bacteria, which was decided by the US Supreme Court in a close five to four decision (Diamond v. Chakrabarty 1980). The scope of US patent law was eventually extended to include human cell lines. The implications of this extension were evident in the California Supreme Court’s 1990 decision in John Moore v. the Regents of UCLA. In this decision, the Court stated that the claimant John Moore had no legal claim over the cell lines that were derived from his spleen (removed during an operation) for cancer research (Harry 1995; Moore v. the Regents 1990). His only right was to sue his doctor for violation of informed consent and then only within the very narrow legal confines of having to prove his doctor committed violations of the informed consent process. The basis of such an argument involves an epideictic rhetoric hierarchy in which finding cures for human disease topoi trump the topoi of human rights. The Moore decision states: “At present, human cell lines are

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routinely copied and distributed to other researchers for experimental purposes, usually free of charge. This exchange of scientific materials, which still is relatively free and efficient, will surely be compromised if each cell sample becomes the potential subject matter of a lawsuit” (Moore v. Regents 1990). The Court also reasoned that such potential claims over cell samples would interfere with medical research and, further, that “there are nearly 350 commercial biotechnology firms in the United States actively engaged in biotechnology research and commercial product development and approximately 25 to 30 percent appear to be engaged in research to develop a human therapeutic or diagnostic reagent” (ibid.). In this legal reasoning, patents have to supersede the rights and claims of willing or unwilling donors of cell lines, a hierarchy that is based on an individualist liberal ethos in which the US government guarantees property rights by excluding other claims. At present the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) follows similar criteria (e-mail correspondence 2011), though none of the three patent applications based on gout and hyperuricemia research on Aboriginal peoples that Ko and his colleagues filed in Taiwan was granted. According to the TIPO website, one was rejected and Ko withdrew the other two (Ko and Cheng 2005a; Ko and Tsai 2009a; Ko 2010a). In a number of cases, such as the Karitiana criticisms of CCR, once the donors complete the informed consent process and give their approval to be represented through that genetics sample, they in effect cede any future claims. In the US, a donor’s rights are effectively restricted to civil law over contract violation. Therefore, scientists in possession of genetic samples can use these to represent the donors and communities in scientific forums, research, patent applications, the mass media, government-funding agencies, ethics review boards, and so forth. Such possession can be construed as a variation of relations that Frantz Fanon (1986, 220) analyzed in his colonial reinterpretation of Hegel’s slave/master dialectic: “For Hegel there is reciprocity; here the master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from the slave is not recognition but work.” What involved genetics researchers want is to transform Aboriginal peoples into research objects that will continue to do work or to make a difference for the researchers who mobilize them. Similarly, many scientists (such as Ko and those at CCR) do not want any meaningful dialogue with Aboriginal peoples as they flatly reject Aboriginal criticisms. These scientists recognize Aboriginal peoples as legal subjects to the extent that they can alienate their own cell lines and information. However, once scientists translate Aboriginal peoples into cell lines and related information, these are recognized as forms of property that do work for the scientists, the benefits of which also accrue to the scientists.

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In the hierarchies of biocolonialism, Indigenous peoples’ cell lines work for scientists by enabling them to represent these peoples within scientific literature and state institutions. At a time of austerity-related cuts to state-funded research budgets, and attendant neoliberal emphasis on researchers demonstrating palatable returns on state and institutional “investments” in the sciences, it is not surprising that involved scientists do not wish to give up this privileged set of relations, which have been so scientifically productive and that now have an increasing potential for commercialization. Conclusion This chapter analyzed a series of successful and failed attempts to incorporate Taiwan Aborigines and Solomon Islanders into US patent applications as well as into three Taiwan patent applications. Though some were unsuccessful, these efforts mark an escalation in the integration of Indigenous peoples as sources of novelty and Otherness in patenting and intellectual property rights regimes. The failure of these patent applications occurred due to two reasons: first, technicalities within US patent law, particularly the violation of existing patents, the lack of definition, and the difficulty in using the first application; second, Ko and his colleagues withdrew the later two applications because of challenges by two differently configured assemblages to their right to represent Atayal Aborigines and Solomon Islanders in the US patent application process. These cases show how emerging regimes of biocolonial governance integrated genetics research, Taiwan’s national health care system, and the transformation of Taiwan’s population and those of Taiwan’s allies into strategic resources. But they also show that there are always ways in which such integration can be resisted.

Conclusion: The Agency of the Living Dead in Contested Sovereignty

7

The title of this book, Living Dead in the Pacific, refers to the various ways in which genetics research inclusively excludes Taiwan Aborigines and other Indigenous peoples. Genetics researchers’ ability to include and to represent Aborigines in genetics research has rested in large measure on excluding them from full participation in decision making and attendant claims. In particular, there is an underlying normative evaluation that deems Aborig­ ines as living dead who somehow manifest the state of nature and, therefore, are unworthy and incapable of exercising full political and social participation in the polis. For this reason they must either be represented by those benevolent enough to care or, to paraphrase Shih Cheng-Feng (1999), be abandoned to their dysfunctions. These delineating abilities indicate that genetics research functions as a technology of sovereignty by distinguishing between those who are included as full citizens within the polis and those who are excluded. In Foucault’s terms, a technology is “a body of technical knowledge and practices, a raft of techniques, which once developed and understood, can be applied to various situations” (Kelly 2009, 43-44). This translatability across time and space is what allows a technology to be adapted in Taiwan and elsewhere. More specifically, the technology of sovereignty “aims to guarantee the certainty of a territory, which is a juridical and jurisdictional bounded space. Sovereignty establishes hegemonic control over a spatial territory. Its infrastructure is law, a discursive device that works essentially through prohibition (legal philosophers confirm that forbidding is the original deontic form)” (Brighenti 2010, 59-60). A technology of sovereignty focuses on differentiating, claiming, and prohibiting by creating selectively exclusionary boundaries in and between different space-times that make up genetics research assemblages. The figure of the living dead in a state of nature becomes central to how genetics research functions as technology of sovereignty in biocolonial political economies. Hobbes (1651, chap., 8) wrote of the state of nature: “In

210 Conclusion

such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea.” Given that the state of nature impedes commerce, so, conversely, the imposition of sovereignty on the state of nature advances commerce.1 In this way, the state of nature can be profitably integrated within the political economy of governance.2 Genetics research as a technology of sovereignty seeks to impose order on the state of nature, and this imposition is important to consider in what is termed the creation of biovalue, including the differential allocation of various property rights, legal rights, and obligations. Like transnational corporations, genetics researchers have a unique set of citizenship-type rights that allows them to move readily across the world and across different forms of timespace (Ong 2008). In their pivotal organizing mediating roles, genetics researchers can enrol Aboriginal peoples as donors and translate them into forms of living dead, including disembodied samples, cell lines, DNA, and intellectual property such as patents and data, that become the property of researchers, institutes, corporations, or governments. In large measure, the differential allocation of rights and obligations derives from how organizing narratives of genetics research exclude any consideration of Aboriginal peoples’ colonial political and historical contexts, particularly how they systematically deny Aboriginal rights and sovereignty. Through the use of matched control groups, or equating Aborigines’ and settlers’ experiences, involved scientists seek to cancel out or naturalize these political and historical factors and the continuing hierarchies between settlers and Aborigines in order to focus on biological factors. This fundamental exclusion involves ontological and epistemological violence for it shifts the cause, which it presents as somehow originating in Aborigines’ biology. This reduction to the body reproduces existing negative stereotypes of Aboriginal peoples as being somehow essentially physical beings who are driven by an instinct that was honed in the state of nature and who, consequently, are ill-suited to modernity. The metonymic characteristics of genetics have been readily translated in terms of these stereotypes. This view underpins explanations of Taiwan Aborigines’ high levels of alcoholism as being due to their ALDH2 alleles and of Maori community violence as being due to their MAO-A alleles. Genetics researchers’ designation of an area of the genome as a manifestation of the state of nature involves a shift from biopolitics to necropolitics, with an emphasis on death and morbidity. This involves scientists acting as if Aborigines are affected by manifestations of the state of nature. This means that, for Aboriginal peoples, the full exercise of law and political discussion implicit in collective informed consent practices and the ability

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of communities to control research about themselves would be contrary to the common good, even endangering their health. In this sense, genetics research as a technology of sovereignty seeks to identify manifestations of the state of nature, to bring attention to them, and (often) to propose measures (such as genetic testing) to deal with these disorders within the bio­ colonial political economy. The assemblages that make up genetics research projects are racially ordered. They involve graduated sovereignties in that differential bundles of rights and duties are hierarchically accorded to transnational capital and science, scientists, settler state governments, and Aboriginal peoples in configurations that no longer accord with state boundaries. Scientists become important agents of sovereignty because they are able to order assemblages of human and non-human agents in multiple time-spaces (Ong 2006b). Aboriginal peoples, in comparison to scientists, have restricted rights and onerous obligations within these research-oriented assemblages. Scientists emerge as the key organizers in these networks, which constitute Taiwan Aborigines’ genes as boundary objects and circulate them. Scientists organize these genes by translating and, thereby, speaking for others, “proclaiming [that] unity to induce cooperation amounts to associating, identifying, or translating other’s interests to link them with one’s own interests” (Cooren and Taylor 2000, 175, emphasis in original). It is the scientists who constitute themselves as helping Aborigines because they believe the latter suffer from genetic problems that render them genetically vulnerable. In the remainder of this concluding chapter, I review my four main findings: 1 State institutions and sovereignty remain critical in transnational-oriented genetics research. 2 There is an isomorphism of racialized rhetoric, narrating, and organizing in the black-boxing process through which Aborigines’ genes are constituted. This theoretical model is the basis of the methodology through which I show the various forms that the living dead, as inclusively excluded, take. 3 Aborigines’ genes have significant organizing properties in research on human migrations, diversity, and genetic determinism. 4 By focusing on genetics researchers’ violations of their rights and dignity, Kavalan Aborigines, Maori, and Solomon Islanders resisted and disrupted researchers’ organizing narratives and authorizations to represent them. This resistance asserted political relationships that overcame scientists’ inclusive-exclusion of these involved Aboriginal peoples as living dead.

212 Conclusion

Narrating/Organizing the Assemblages In this book, I develop a theoretical model and attendant methodology for analyzing genetics research as a technology of sovereignty based on a combination of organizational communications, social semiotics, actor network theory, and rhetoric. This shows how these assemblages involve interaction between rhetoric, narration, and organizing, particularly in articulating human and non-human actants in multiple scales of time-space. Practical syllogisms are crucial to this articulation. The weaving together of these forms of rhetoric through deductive and inductive practical syllogisms is central to the narration and organization of the black boxes because practical syllogisms associate and, thereby, articulate the actions of human agents and non-human agents in multiple time-spaces. Greimas’s universal narrative schema posits five phases, which involve a sequence of modalities and attendant time-spaces. Any narrative uses forms of rhetoric mediated by practical syllogisms to articulate these phases, modalities, and time-spaces. A scientific research narrative typically involves two sequences of practical syllogisms. First, deductive practical syllogisms move from the universal to the particular in the manipulation and competence phases. Second, this deductive practical syllogism is followed by inductive practical syllogisms moving from the local to the universal in the competence, performance, and sanction phases. Critically, in the manipulation phase, epideictic rhetoric is used by a sender to define the time-space and magnitude of a disorder through hierarchically ordered topoi, like heroic scientists and living dead, and their attendant norms and values. This manipulation phase creates the modality of having-to-do (e.g., scientists have-to quest to rescue the living dead). In the commitment phase, the quest to rescue the living dead is accepted in the local particular context (e.g., Taiwan) by scientists, thus creating a wanting-to-do modality. The commitment phase constitutes a type of fiduciary contract, which means that scientists must carry out the quest. Scientists use deliberative rhetoric (based on the quest’s epideictically defined morals and values) to briefly describe how they will carry out this quest. This conclusion of the deductive practical syllogism is the key to the translation and articulation between the manipulation phase (with its universal transnational science discourses) and the commitment phase (with its particular local context of Taiwan), including discourses like state biotechnology, development planning, and/or nationalism. The deductive practical syllogism’s resulting conclusion uses deliberative rhetoric to define a plan to study Taiwan Aborigines and, thereby, to contribute to scientific knowledge. The shift to inductive practical syllogisms in the competence phase involves the use of forensic rhetoric (again based on the earlier epideictic rhetorically

The Agency of the Living Dead in Contested Sovereignty 213

defined values) to give accounts of how scientists demonstrated the modalities of knowing-how-to-do and being-able-to-do in rescuing living dead. The accounts involve moving across multiple time-spaces: such as travelling to Aboriginal areas and enrolling Aborigines as participants, testing samples in labs, and conducting statistical analyses. Forensic rhetoric defines each of the local and particular premises. The induction process functions through the flow of the practical syllogism as these local and particular premises build toward an epideictic rhetorically constituted universal conclusion in the performance phase. In this performance phase, the receiver-subjects claim to have completed the quest and to have demonstrated a modality of to-do by rescuing the living dead. The concluding sanction phase involves an evaluative modality in which peer review is used to decide whether the scientists have succeeded or failed in their quest. Through peer review, scientists claim to act on behalf of the original sender – transnational science. Due to its attention to modalities and rhetoric, the narrative schemata provide an adaptable device with which to analyze the narratives of genetics research. Living Dead in Genetics Research’s Three Main Narrative Schemata Analysis of narratives using the above model shows that genetics research has consistently rendered Aboriginal peoples as some variant of the living dead: as connections to the ancient ancestors, as sources of otherness, or as genetically predisposed to death and morbidity in the present. These actant roles have taken a number of forms, and these are discussed below. Ancestral Living Dead For nations who claim the ancestral dead, war memorials become time-spaces in which citizens of the nation experience awe in the presence of and communion with the glorious dead (Smith 2000). The experience of awe renders these time-spaces as sources of power and sovereignty. Similarly, within Taiwanese nationalism, Aboriginal peoples become living memorials to the ancient dead. Because genes are perceived as plastic, inscribed by each generation, traces remain etched in them so that they become powerful links to the incorporeal ancient dead. Scientists consider mitochondrial DNA or the Y chromosome to be time machines, as they change slowly over time. In the epideictic rhetoric that defines the norms and values of this narrative schema, genetics researchers constitute Aborigines as isolated populations that provide linkages to ancient Austronesian dead ancestors and prehistoric migrations in the Pacific. Once they have been black boxed, the genes can be translated in various ways, which give those who translate them particular new abilities because these genes have agency. In other words, they make a difference to those who

214 Conclusion

mobilize them. Particularly in ancestry and migrations research, the critical organizing property is the material, in which Aboriginal genes are time machines that associate and articulate connections to ancient peoples and their prehistoric migrations. With regard to genes, “materiality is vital because it is this that permits organization to transcend the bounds of local interaction, which is inherently ephemeral, transitory” (Cooren and Taylor 1997, 247). The organizing property of Aborigines’ genes as material connections to ancient migrations in the Pacific is central to mass media popularizations. Such material connections are central in the three made-in-Taiwan documentaries. Similarities in physical appearance are popularly considered indi­ cators of common ancestry and are important ways of translating genetic relationships. That is to say, they are mobilized for their ability to create genetic links to ancestors and so function as a material metonymic link to the incorporeal realm of the ancestors. If we consider Kenneth Burke’s conceptions of metonymy, then DNA and genetics provide contiguity between the incorporeal nature of ancestry and the corporeal nature of physical appearance. This metonymy can also manifest underlying nationalistic pollution/purity metaphors that define borders between inside and outside. The metonymy of DNA and physical appearance is used as evidence of gen­etic pollution in the July 10, 2005, TVNZ News report (Harrington 2005). The TVNZ segment involves a quest for the Maori motherland that inclusively excludes Taiwan Aborigines as “almost walking talking genetic fossils” and Chinese settlers as genetic pollution that “spills out in the faces” of Ab­origines who have some Chinese ancestry. The use of the genetic pollution/purity concept allows the TVNZ report to posit Taiwan as the Maori homeland and, hence, as part of New Zealand’s past. Taiwan Aborigines’ genes have been commodified by commercial genetic genealogy companies. The 2006 documentary Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure, a feel-good journey of self-discovery, uses commercial genetic test results as a type of map that enables a Maori (Nathan) and a Samoan (Oscar) to trace their ancestry back in time to Taiwan. The documentary reveals differences in how genes can be translated, as is shown by its positive reception by the Maori. In particular, this film does not have the same high degree of racialized living dead connotations as does the TVNZ segment’s pollution/purity metaphors; rather, Excellent Adventure emphasizes living familial metaphors such as “cousins” across the Pacific, while still framing Taiwan Aborigines as ancestor figures. In 2007, the Al Jazeera Witness public affairs program presented a discussion of Excellent Adventure. In this discussion, Oxford Uni­ versity geneticist Bryan Sykes argues that genetics testing provides ancestral knowledge that not only furthers self-discovery but that also has instrumental

The Agency of the Living Dead in Contested Sovereignty 215

potential as an antiracist and anti-colonial technology. Rather like Rose and Novas’s (2000) somatic individual who is able to pressure scientists and lobby to further her/his own interests, Sykes’s analysis may, in some contexts, be applicable in the polis. However, the conception of Aboriginal peoples as living dead is foundational to ancestry research. Diverse Living Dead This type of actant is included because it represents sources of genetic otherness that scientists deem valuable to humanity as a whole. In Chapter 6, blood samples taken from forty-two Atayal and forty Ami Aboriginal men by Lu Ru-band in the early 1990s in Eastern Taiwan were transferred to Yale University in the United States, where they came under US sovereignty. Some of these Atayal and Ami blood samples were soon thereafter transferred to the US government-funded Coriell Cell Repositories in New Jersey, where, since 1995, they have been grown and sold as part of the Human Variation Collection. Using individualistic liberal norms, CCR has stated that its samples have been “de-identified” so that donors, including Aboriginal peoples, have no legal claim over them – CCR owns these samples forever – thereby excluding Aboriginal claims. It is too early to see whether 2011 changes in CCR’s policies may allow for such claims. As things now stand, CCR’s samples of Ami, Atayal, and other Aboriginal peoples are living dead that exist to serve scientists as sources of human variation. Genetically Predisposed Living Dead Aboriginal peoples are deemed to be predisposed to morbidity and mortality under modernity due to their genes; hence, unlike settler populations, they are deemed to require special restrictive forms of governance in order to manage the risks that their genes represent. Each case study presented in this book involves differences between alleles attributed to Aboriginal peoples and those attributed to the settler majority. These pathological genes are incorporated into the racialized hierarchies of biotechnological hero-rescueAborigines organizational narratives. In these narratives, adept modern settlers or foreigners (presumably protected by their alleles) are required to rescue Aborigines from what happens when their pathological genes interact with environmental threats and social change. There are three major variants:

a

Alcoholic living dead: In the analysis of alcoholism research narratives in Chapter 3, scientists identify Aborigines as worthy of research by constituting them as opportunities to study genetically distinct isolated populations undergoing rapid social change and an attendant rapid increase in alcoholism. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Taiwan scientists

216 Conclusion

began speculating in scientific journals that Taiwan Aboriginal alcoholism might be related to genetics. By 1998, these earlier speculations were translated in the Taiwan mass media into factual-sounding statements like: “[Aborigines] are genetically predisposed to alcoholism” (Hsu 1998). In fewer than ten years, these alcoholism research projects constituted Aborigines as having pathological genes. An inactive alcohol metabolization allele of ALDH2, which is supposed to prevent alcoholism by making drinking alcohol unpleasant, has become the basis of a genetic distinction between Aborigines, who do not usually have this allele, and Han settlers, about 50 percent of whom do have it. By variously ignoring or reifying Taiwan Aborigines’ political and social marginalization as natural forces, scientists have constituted genetic deterministic explanations of the emergence of alcoholism among Taiwan Aborigines. b Positively Selected Living Dead: In the 2006 warrior-gene controversy, New Zealand-based scientists argued that the ancestors of the Maori had gone through a process of positive selection with regard to an allele of the monoamine oxidase gene. Lea et al. hypothesized that this allele gave greater courage, and so it was disproportionately selected because it offered an advantage during risky ocean migrations and attendant war­fare. However, Lea et al. argued, under modernity these positively selected genes have negative implications for Maori, predisposing them to violence and addiction. There is an underlying view that Maori ancestors lived in a state of nature at the very boundaries of human expansion. This assumption implies that they required genetic abilities in order to survive, unlike scientists, who are able to expand the boundaries of human knowledge based on culture. This leads to the view that ancestral genetic adaptation to life in a state of nature has resulted in Maori being ill-equipped for modern life. c Inbred Living Dead. By combining migrations research with human diseases research, scientists have constituted Taiwan Aborigines’ and Pacific Indigenous peoples’ genes as plastic conduits for genetic dysfunctions inscribed through chance mutations, migrations-related genetic bottlenecks, founder effects, and inbreeding. These genetic inscriptions lead to genes being accorded particular inherent properties (e.g., causing diseases like gout). These inherent properties can be translated in different ways. For example, President Chen Shui-bian, in a 2004 speech, claimed that Taiwan should have greater diplomatic relations with Pacific countries because it is the homeland of the Austronesian peoples. President Chen asserted that, as befitting its paternalistic beneficence, Taiwan had a responsibility to help peoples of the Pacific with

The Agency of the Living Dead in Contested Sovereignty 217

genetic-based disease. Ko Ying-chin, in his gout-related US patent applications, claimed that such inherent properties required him to commercialize his research as it constituted Taiwan’s “gift to the world.” In Chen’s speech and Ko’s patent applications, the organizing properties of genes are purported to constrain researchers, requiring them to intervene to help Aborigines in perpetuity. Scientists routinely publicize findings in such a way as to promote genetically deterministic views of Taiwan Aboriginal peoples. They assume that somehow the historical and social experiences of Aborigines and settlers are equivalent, or at least generally comparable, so that differences in outcomes are, in part, seen as the result of cultural and genetic differences. These assumptions naturalize, exploit, and reproduce racialized hierarchies between settlers and Aborigines. This attribution of Aboriginal problems to genetic factors denies full consideration of their social problems, including poverty imposed through the expropriation of Aboriginal territories, unemployment, and racism. By using such genetic attributions, scientists avoid considering Aborigines’ own perspectives on their social problems. Dehumanizing Ab­ orig­ines depends on attributing to Aboriginal peoples the evolutionary status of being genetically different. This status is akin to them being a different species. These genetic differentiations between settlers and Aborigines are foundational acts of racially configured epistemological and ontological violence, which clearly demonstrate that genetics research is an important technology of sovereignty and biopolitics. Aboriginal Political Networks It is in opposition to genetics researchers’ renderings of them as living dead that involved Aboriginal peoples have organized complex assemblages based on concepts from their own traditions and values, Indigenous sovereignty and rights, international instruments such as the Helsinki Declaration on treatment of medical subjects, the UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and settler state domestic law. These heterogeneous resistance networks strive to allow some significant and just level of Aboriginal influence on, and participation in, the decision of the sovereign, particularly regarding who has what rights and obligations. Such resistance involves challenging the inclusive-exclusion foisted on them by scientists. By erasing the lines of exclusion drawn by genetics researchers and attendant claims to represent them, Aboriginal peoples are heard in the polis. When successful, this resistance involves asserting political relations in which Aboriginal people constitute networks that force scientists to deal

218 Conclusion

with them as fully living political agents with dignity, respect, and rights. The Kavalan community of Xinshe forced the Mackay Memorial Hospital to return samples that were illegally taken from twenty-nine community elders. However, though Lin received a correction from the NSC because of what it termed miscommunication with the Xinshe community, the NSC refused to investigate further. In the second case study, a coalition of Maori political leaders and intellectuals, along with non-Maori scientists, effectively stopped attempts by a team of New Zealand-based genetics researchers to impose a new genetic-based identity on the Maori. The Australian and New Zealand press coverage associated the warrior-gene figure with the controversial novel and film Once Were Warriors, which focused on violence in Maori communities. Against this environmental genetic determinism, Maori intellectuals argued that Maori social problems are firmly rooted in the inequities of settler/Maori colonial relations, which involve high unemployment, poverty, and other forms of systemic racism.3 This rejection of genetic determinism and rephrasing of the issues in political terms highlighted the racialized violence of the inclusively exclusionary distinctions made by Lea et al. (2006). Maori intellectuals and political organizations, including the Maori Party, in conjunction with supportive non-Indigenous scientists constituted sufficiently strong networks in the mass media to undermine these racially con­figured claims. In the controversy, not only was the warrior-gene link to the Maori destabilized (and since largely disappeared from scientific discourse) but attempts to use this MAO-A gene to connect Maori with Taiwan Aborigines were completely disrupted. The Ko US patent application cases involve different configurations. In­ formed by critiques of genetics research on Taiwan Aborigines and other Indigenous people, I found the patent applications and began to persuade others to form an assemblage. The assemblages that developed in both cases spanned transnational NGO networks, government agencies, human rights organizations, Indigenous peoples organizations, and the mass media in Taiwan and the Solomon Islands. Though these networks were highly contingent and of relatively short duration, they were of sufficient strength to successfully pressure Ko to withdraw two US patent applications. This is because these networks undermined his moral authorization to incorporate these applications into genetics research on Atayal and Solomon Islanders. Beyond the withdrawal of the patent applications, the cases seem to have helped heighten awareness about informed consent issues in Taiwan. In March 2011, in government discussions of biomedical research regulations, the Parliamentary Legislator Huang Sue-Ying (黃淑英) of the DPP sharply criticized the failure of the Department of Health and the Council of Indigenous Peoples to do anything about CCR’s continuing to sell Ami and

The Agency of the Living Dead in Contested Sovereignty 219

Atayal samples (Xie and Wang 2011). This, combined with the Ko case and the Lin case, led to significant amendments to the Human Subjects Research Act (2011), which passed in December 2011. This act carries extensive fines for violations and also prevents violators from applying for government funding for a year after any violations. Section 14, on informed consent, includes provisions that require researchers to reveal any commercial interests. However, according to a Taipei Times report, Section 15, “which was not included in the draft bill presented by the Executive Yuan, was introduced by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ying [who is a Puyuma Aborigine] and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Shao-ping during the deliberation phase” (Shih 2011). Legislator Huang Sue-ying was also involved in these amendments. Section 15 deals specifically with Taiwan Aborigines. It states: Where the research purpose involves indigenous people, then besides the requirements of Article 12 through 14 supra, there shall additionally be required consultations to obtain the consent of their indigenous group; any publication of research results shall require the same consent. The Central Council of Indigenous Peoples shall stipulate the consultation mentioned in the preceding Paragraph, as well as consent, agreed commercial benefits, and other agreed uses in conformity with the competent authority.

However, an initial analysis by Jefferson Lin of the University of Washington Law School of this new act and initial implementation measures, suggests the act is ambiguous about requiring informed consent before any commercialization can proceed (Lin J. 2013). Section 15 directly mentions requiring consent before publication of research results but not before filing of patent applications or other commercialization processes (ibid.). Patents might be covered by Section 15 if filing a patent application is interpreted as a form of publication; however, interpreted narrowly, patenting is not covered since publication and patenting are generally considered distinct processes. Such ambiguity leaves open the potential for further cases like Ko’s patent applications. While ambiguities over patents remain, nonetheless, by setting out formal laws over treatment and rights of Taiwan Aborigines, the Human Subjects Research Act significantly reduces the latitude for genetics researchers to exer­ cise prerogative powers in determining who has what rights and obligations. Section 24 of the Act specifies that violators of paragraph 1 of Sec­tion 15, “may be fined by the responsible ministry of [the] central government a

220 Conclusion

penalty of no less than NT$50,000 nor greater than NT$500,000, and ordered to adjourn or terminate the research project.” Article 19 covers overseas usage and requires that foreign researchers follow Taiwan regulations including gaining the consent of research subjects.4 In effect, overseas researchers can only obtain the samples if they agree to follow Taiwanese law. This reduction in latitude also extends to the act’s clear rules stating that ethics review boards must consist of at least five disinterested panel members (including two from outside the institution). These requirements are backed by penalties, the purpose of which is to ensure that panel members have no conflicts of interest with regard to any project they assess – something the Ko case demonstrates is necessary. However, there are no retroactive provisions in this new legislation, so Ko and other researchers will not face any significant professional or legal repercussions or investigations. A critical question concerns whether genetics researchers, with their pivotal mediating positions between transnational science and settler states, will continue to exercise forms of prerogative powers, interpreting their own rights and obligations and those of Aboriginal research subjects as they see fit, particularly given the institutional pressures on them to commercialize research findings. As well, how will institutions such as Academia Sinica, the NHRI, and the NSC deal with the fundamental institutional conflict of interests between their central roles in the promotion and implementation of Taiwan’s biotechnology development and their legal duties to enforce research ethics and to respect Aboriginal rights and dignity? This act passed by the Taiwanese Parliament involves extending laws backed by state sovereignty to the research relationship between scientists and Aboriginal peoples. At first, this might seem a Catch-22 in which Indigenous peoples’ rights are dependent on the legal instruments of the settler state, which undermine Indigenous sovereignty claims. However, as we have seen, the exercise of Aboriginal sovereignty occurs in complex assemblages, which not only incorporate settler state laws and regulations but also exceed the settler state by drawing on their own legal and governance practices as well as transnational discourses and legal instruments (such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). In this sense, these laws may constitute a new set of tools for Taiwan Aboriginal peoples to ensure their inclusion within the decision-making processes in genetics research and any commercialization that might develop therefrom. Absent or Present: The Figure of the Living Dead What the case studies reveal is that Indigenous peoples’ resistance efforts did not engage in the denigrating epistemological and ontological violence typical of genetics researchers’ racially configured articulation of sovereignty,

The Agency of the Living Dead in Contested Sovereignty 221

biopolitics, and necropolitics because they did not render scientists or other non-Aborigines as living dead. Instead, they focused on and brought attention to the epistemological and ontological violence perpetrated by genetics researchers. In each of these cases, the epideictic rhetoric of Kavalan Aborig­ inal, Maori, Taiwan Aboriginal, and Solomon Islander political agency functioned on a different set of philosophical premises than did that of genetics researchers. The Kavalan and Maori tried to stop genetics researchers from drawing racialized sovereign lines that inclusively excluded them from participating in the polis. They did not turn the tables on genetics researchers; rather, these involved Aboriginal peoples sought to undermine the racist articulation of sovereignty and biopolitics. Will Section 15 and the Human Subjects Research Act lead to scientists using a favourite-settler defence, which holds that Aboriginal peoples are attempting to turn the tables and render them as living dead? In such settler reasoning, Aboriginal peoples’ assertion of sovereignty, if carried to its ultimate conclusion, would mean that all immigrants would have to go back to where they came from, thereby rendering settlers as living dead. Such reasoning plays on the figure of the refugee as zoe (bare life) (Agamben 1998, 75-77). In such fear-mongering, the epideictic rhetoric in which the sovereign hierarchy between settlers included in the polis and Aborigines who are only present through inclusive-exclusion is inverted. This inversion plays on the inherent fear of those settlers within the polis that they might become living dead. The implicit fear of such inversion underlies arguments like that of Lin Ma-li (2008), which hold that concerns with Aboriginal peoples’ rights will interfere with genetics research and thus endanger public health. According to this inversion, it will be Aboriginal peoples who determine where laws apply and how, and who has what rights and obligations, not the networks of research scientists, settler state agencies, and biotechnology capital. Kavalan Aborigines and Maori peoples’ epideictic rhetorically defined foundations assert the sanctity of all life. In the Kavalan and Maori worldviews, blood is sacred. However, such worldviews are marginalized in the epistemological and ontological violence of genetics research. The Maori scholar Aroha Mead (2007, 34-45) argues: Biotechnology is a value system as it requires one to agree to locate, isolate, modify, and commodify the DNA of humans, plants, and animals. For most indigenous cultures, and for many others, this objective is the antithesis of their core beliefs. Central to indigenous cultures is a profound respect and understanding of sacredness and the inherent integrity of the life force of all components of humans, flora and fauna.

222 Conclusion

The epideictic rhetoric of involved Aborigines’ narrative manipulation phases emphasizes how their rights and dignity have been violated by genetics researchers. Their narratives’ deliberative rhetoric makes demands to be treated equally and with respect and dignity as it extends to legal and human rights, both internationally and within the settler state. During their narratives’ competence phases, involved Aboriginal peoples engaged in a series of networks, which contributed to helping to decide the exception. Aboriginal peoples tended to constitute and organize networks that mobilized concepts of their rights and dignity, transnational scientific discourses, bioethics, and moral discourses in conjunction with various state legal instruments such as the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Basic Law or New Zealand’s requirements of com­munity consent. The pivotal agents are the blood samples and cell lines. With their strong connections to ancestors, these agents are considered sanctified and part of the community. Scientists and Aboriginal peoples view blood samples and cell lines differently. Genetics researchers see them as the living dead, a form of property that represents Aborigines and benefits research. In contrast, Taiwan Aborigines and Maori view these blood samples and cell lines as human and, therefore, as inalienable. In this way, the genetics researchers’ figure of living dead is displaced by the Aboriginal perception of the sanctity of all life. These differing conceptions of genetic samples become the crux of the conflicts over genetics research. Genetics researchers generally seek to engage in a type of inclusive-exclusion. The scientists set themselves up as representatives of Aboriginal peoples by virtue of their possession of Aboriginal blood samples and cell lines, but they exclude any Aboriginal claims over these and the extended political relationships that would be involved in recognizing such claims. In contrast, Aboriginal peoples are increasingly asserting that genetics researchers cannot simply arrive, grab samples, leave, and then claim rights to represent Aboriginal peoples in perpetuity – drawing racialized lines of sovereignty that define Aboriginal peoples as inclusively excluded. Rather, Aboriginal peoples’ networks recast their relationships with genetics researchers in ongoing political terms, insisting that they have a significant role in the formulation of any research questions involving them, in the conduct of that research, and in the use of that research. Such extended political relationships are required because Aboriginal peoples are directly affected by any racism constituted through genetics research. I think it is useful to conclude by emphasizing that this book’s analysis challenges nihilistic-sounding concepts that contend that Aboriginal peoples, try as they may, cannot escape from a trap in which whatever they do, they will invariably reproduce the sovereignty of the settler state or emerging transnational biotechnology configurations. This sort of pessimism misses

The Agency of the Living Dead in Contested Sovereignty 223

how involved Aboriginal peoples’ global assemblages can exceed the settler state and, therefore, neither merely reproduce the system of state sovereignty nor be overwhelmed by the power of transnational networks. These case studies show how involved Aboriginal peoples have their own epideictically defined time-spaces from which they often, albeit with varying degrees of effectiveness, resist state sovereign violence and that of scientists and their extended transnational assemblages. Critically, their agency challenges the hierarchies and boundaries of relationships imposed through such forms of violence in order to reassert a political relationship. Yet, it is also apparent why Ong’s concept of sovereignty as graduated is useful. This is because the duties, rights, and attendant outcomes for genetics researchers and Aborigines remain sharply differentiated, though moderated somewhat through Aboriginal agency. These challenges lead to transformed relations based on Aboriginals being included within the polis as self-representing peoples who must be treated with dignity and respect.

Notes



















Chapter 1: Taiwan Aborigines’ Genes as Black Boxes 1 In this book, I order Chinese names according to surname (e.g., Ko) first followed by given names. Given names are transliterated into English, with the first given name capitalized, the second lower-cased, and the two joined by a hyphen (e.g., Ying-chin). 2 In this book, the words “network” and “assemblage” are used interchangably. A simple definition of an assemblage can be conceived of as a contingent network of human and nonhuman agents (called actants) that interact across time and space. Assemblages are assembled and can fail or be destabilized. They can be of varying duration and scale. 3 Ludao and other rebels committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the Japanese. The Wushe Uprising is the subject of Taiwan’s most expensive film to date – Seediq Bale: Warriors of the Rainbow – was released in 2011. 4 The first census conducted by the Japanese colonial government in 1905 stated that there were 2,890,485 Han settlers in Taiwan (Lamley 1999, 210). The PRC White Paper states that, in 1893, there were 2.5 million Chinese settlers (Taiwan Affairs Office and Information Office 1993). 5 In the 1882 Tamsui Trade Report, the British maritimes customs official Henry J. Fisher wrote: “An excellent authority says 45 percent, men and 3 percent, women – in the towns 70 percent, men – smoke opium. The best informed Chinese say one-third adult men smoke. This is probably correct” (Huang, Lin, Ang 1997, 2:582). 6 The French began their imperial efforts in East Asia with their conquest of Indo-China, which started in the late 1850s in the Mekong River region. The French attacks at Keelung were part of their attempts at further imperial expansion in the region. French empire in East Asia ended with their crushing defeat by Viet Minh forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. 7 According to Ka (1996, 84), the Japanese killed over twelve thousand Taiwanese guerrillas by the time organized settler resistance ended in 1902, including 2,998 who were executed following their capture. However, the brutality of this conquest has been marginalized in Taiwanese nationalist histories, which tend to glorify the Japanese regime as stern but fair, while emphasizing the corruption and violence of the KMT regime. 8 Some Aboriginal soldiers identified very strongly with the Japanese military. One extreme example, Attun Palalin, a Pangcah (Ami) Aborigine, held out until December 1974 on the Indonesian island of Morotai. He returned to Taiwan in 1975 and died in 1977 of lung cancer. Palalin’s return to Taiwan was not well received by the KMT dictatorship because it considered him a Japanese loyalist, and he did not receive much attention from the domestic press (Trefalt 2003, 160-78). 9 As an American proxy, the KMT regime also provided support to American-backed dictatorships throughout the world, through the World Anti-Communist League and other organizations with strong fascist leanings (Marshall, Hunter, and Scott 1987). A number of noted

Notes to pages 20-21 225



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death squad leaders from Latin America were trained at the KMT’s Political Warfare School in the Peitou suburb of Taipei, including Roberto d’Aubuisson, the notorious El Salvadoran death squad leader nicknamed “Blowtorch Bob” after his favourite torture implement (Marshall, Hunter, and Scott 1987, 64; Livingstone 1983, 239). Taiwan served as a major base for American wars in Indochina during the 1960s and 1970s. It was a major “R and R” (rest and relaxation) stop for American soldiers on leave. One area of bars and brothels in Taipei, just off Chungshan North Road Section 3, is still known as the “Combat Zone.” The US maintained several military bases in Taiwan, and CIA front organizations like Civil Air Transport and Air America flew covert operations from bases there (Marshall, Hunter, and Scott 1987). The KMT referred to many of the real or imagined opponents it killed as “bandit spies,” people who interfered with its efforts to mobilize Taiwan’s population and resources in order to retake the “Mainland” from the “communist bandits” and to reassert sovereignty over China. Similar legal designations were also used in the West to justify various executions. For example, during the First World War and the Second World War, the British and Amer­ icans routinely executed captured German spies. As well, the US government executed the Rosenbergs in the early 1950s for alleged espionage against the American atomic bomb program. It is possible that the victorious forces of Mao Zedong in 1949 would have conquered Taiwan. However, the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 ensured unconditional American support for Chiang Kai-shek’s corrupt and repressive regime. Prior to the Korean War, senior American officials had argued over whether or not to support Chiang. The influential policymaker George Kennan, of the US State Department, considered the KMT regime a lost cause. In contrast, General Douglas MacArthur described Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that required American support. This expropriation of Aboriginal territories contrasts sharply with the KMT regime’s muchtouted land redistribution program in lowland settler-dominated areas. The redistribution of agricultural lands was meant to maximize agricultural production and to build support for the regime. It benefited from the fact that the KMT then had no political allegiances to local Taiwan elites and landowners, so it could expropriate their lands without significant political problems. The US Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act shortly thereafter. A number of analysts have argued that, because the act is not a treaty between nations but, rather, domestic legislation, it indicates the continuing semi-sovereign status of Taiwan today (Solomon 2001). Far from a panacea, Indigenous sovereignty remains a contentious concept. The noted Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) scholar Taiaiake Alfred argues that European sovereignty is, “an exclusionary concept rooted in an adversarial and coercive Western notion of power. Indigenous peoples can never match the awesome coercive force of the state; so long as sovereignty remains the goal of indigenous politics, therefore, Native communities will occupy a dependent and reactionary position relative to the state” (Alfred 1999, 59). Rather than using the term “network” only, I will use the term “assemblage” in order to understand the ongoing contingent and overdetermined character of what Latour (1987) referred to as networks. In various ways to me, assemblage, with its underlying sense of assemble as a verb, captures the contingent character of these networks of many different forms of human and nonhuman, present and non-present actants. Generally, Aborigines’ names for themselves mean something like, “the people,” “human,” or “real people.” The officially recognized Aboriginal peoples are: Atayal (Tayal, Tayan, Dayan), Truku (Taroko), Sediq (or Seediq), Bunun, Kavalan, Paiwan, Pangcah (Ami, Amis), Puyuma, Rukai, Saisiyat (Saisiat), Sakizaya, Tsou (Cou), Thao, Tao (Dawu, Yami). There are a large number of unrecognized Aboriginal peoples, mainly Pingpu in the Western Taiwan plains or the Taipei Basin in Northern Taiwan. These unrecognized peoples include: Arikun, Babuza, Basay, Hoanya, Ketagalan, Lloa, Luilang, Pazeh (Pazih), Popora, Qaugaut, Siraya, Taokas, and Trobiawan. In Chapter 3, I discuss Taiwanese Nationalist use of Pingpu identity and genetics research.

226 Notes to pages 22-24







15 The 1858 Treaty of Tianjin (part of the Second Opium War) opened Taiwan not only to Western merchants (many interested in camphor from and tea grown in colonized Aboriginal territories) but also to missionaries. Thus, the Presbyterian Church began its missionary efforts among Taiwan Aborigines in the 1860s and 1870s. 16 During the late 1800s, the Canadian George Leslie Mackay, popularly considered one of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, lamented the lack of missionary conversions among still independent Aborigines: “We keep in constant touch with them, and under ordinary circumstances have no fear of personal violence; but all attempts to evangelise them must, for the present generation at least, meet insuperable obstacles. The blankness of their moral life, the blindness of their spiritual vision – not absence – of their receptive facilities, make the effort to move them with the dynamic of truth a seemingly hopeless task” (Mackay 1896, 265-66). However, Mackay was optimistic about future conversions. 17 The rise of Aboriginal rights movements led to the founding, in 1993, of a small but wellfunded and politically influential reactionary organization that began among settler politicians in Nantou and Taichung counties and business interests in Aboriginal territories (Chen 1999, 165 and 170-71). This organization, called the Pingquanhui (Lowlanders Rights Associ­ ation 平權會), engages in anti-Aboriginal rhetoric aimed specifically at undermining Aboriginal identity and territorial claims (Williams 1999). It campaigns for an end to Aboriginal reserve lands in favour of a free market for all lands, and it also undermines Aboriginal rights-related legislation (Chen 1999, 161-71). In addition to using racist rhetoric, it argues that there are no more Aboriginal peoples in Taiwan and rejects the term “Aboriginal,” instead favouring the old KMT designation of Shandibao (mountain compatriots) or, interestingly, “Austro­ nesian,” as these terms weaken Aboriginal territorial claims (170). In his fieldwork, Chen Yi-fong found that, “despite considerable academic proof to the contrary,” the Pingquanhui maintains that Aborigines are historically recent immigrants and that the Aborigines’ actual time of arrival in Taiwan was only 400 years ago when the Dutch and the Spanish brought them to Taiwan as “hunting” slaves from Southeast Asia. In the same argument, [it] maintain[s] that the “slave-needing” Western powers also relocated the Hakka people [a Chinese minority in Taiwan] from Kuangtung [Guang­dong Province in China] to Taiwan as agricultural slaves (Interview D). In the [Pingquanhui]’s petition letter, even the specific sources of the indigenous peoples are identified without any ethnographic support. Paiwan, Rukai, Yami (Dawu), Amis, and Puyuma are said to have come from the Philippines. The Atayal and Bunun are said to have come from Indonesia, and the Saisiat, incredibly from distant Nepal. (174)

Thus, according to the Pingquanhui’s argument, Aborigines are not Indigenous peoples. 18 Chen Shui-bian was less supportive of Aborigines’ rights in practice, particularly in conflicts with big business. A few months after Chen’s March 2000 election as Taiwan’s president, there was a historic August 2000 court decision that returned a small area of land (some eighteen hectares) occupied by the Asia Cement Company to Truku Aboriginal landowners in Hualien County (Chuang Chi-ting 2001). However, despite Aboriginal protests, the Asia Cement Company, owned by the powerful Far Eastern Group conglomerate, has since blatantly defied the court decision and continues to occupy the land in question at the time of writing. 19 There is no common Aboriginal position on unification between Taiwan and China as opposed to Taiwanese independence, and some examples indicate differences between local communities and political elites (Rudolph 2000). Simon (2006) shows how local Truku reacted with cynicism to a June 2005 visit to Japan by a group of Aborigines led by the prounification Atayal parliamentarian May Chin. Chin and her group intended to demand the removal of Aboriginal soldiers’ names from the national Japanese shrine commemorating Japan’s war dead; however, the members of her group were prevented from leaving their buses by Japanese police. In another 2005 example: “An alliance of aboriginal groups announced on Monday that to protect Taiwan’s autonomy, it was opposing a cross-strait peace

Notes to pages 26-46 227











advancement that is being promoted by opposition [KMT] lawmakers. Aboriginal lawmakers dismissed the statement as rhetoric from pro-Democratic Progressive Party groups, and said aborigines are mostly concerned with livelihood-related bills, not proposals dealing with national sovereignty and security” (Central News Agency 2005a). 20 Aborigines’ life expectancies average 8.4 years less for women and 13.5 years less for men than the national average (Wen et al. 2004, 320). From 1998 to 2000, death rates due to suicide were 2.4 times higher for men and 3.2 times higher for women, while death rates due to cirrhosis of the liver were 5.1 times higher for men and 4.6 for women compared to the general population (322). 21 This is not simply a matter of a slip of the tongue or misquotation. For example, on July 2, 2009, I conducted a search of newspaper reports on the Factiva news database, using the Chinese terms 原住民 (Aborigines), 基因 (gene), 問題 (problem), and 馬英九 (Ma Ying-jeou). I reviewed the resulting stories, and it turned out that Ma Ying-jeou had made statements of this sort on at least fifteen separate occasions between June 2002 and December 2007 (e.g., Central News Agency 2002b, 2004b). Ma Ying-jeou was criticized early on for these sorts of discriminatory and patronizing statements (Central News Agency 2002a), but he persisted in making them until the controversies of December 2007, after which he dropped this genetically deterministic phrase from his speeches. 22 Furthermore, another community member asked Ma for his help both to improve the safety of the community (it is located on a floodplain) and to allow them stay in it. Ma responded: “When you come into our city, you become one of us ... I see you as a human being, as a citizen. I will educate you well, and give you opportunities.” Further: “Aborigines should adjust their mentality – if you come into the city, you have to play by our rules” (Loa 2007a). This comment became the focus of the subsequent controversy. Chapter 2: Aboriginal Peoples’ Genes as Narrated and Contested Assemblages 1 A genetics researcher cannot answer such a problem by singing “Happy Birthday” backwards or drawing cartoons of a university president picking her/his nose as, given the problem is curing disease, these responses would be incoherent. 2 According to the philosopher Judith Butler (2002, 216): What it suggests is that certain kinds of practices which are designed to handle certain kinds of problems produce, over time, a settled domain of ontology as their consequence, and this ontological domain, in turn, constrains our understanding of what is possible. Only with reference to this prevailing ontological horizon, itself instituted through a set of practices, will we be able to understand the kinds of relations to moral precepts that have been formed as well as those that are yet to be formed.



3 According to Aristotle (1954, 1,368a): “‘Examples’ are most suitable to deliberative speeches; for we judge of future events by divination from past events.” 4 Alternately, the receiver-subjects may fail in the quest and their performance syllogism would look as follows: Local premise: receivers have not done A, B, C ... Intermediary term: A, B, C ... are equivalent to completing the quest. Conclusion: Therefore, the receiver-subjects have failed to complete the quest.



5 The negative sanction of the receiver-subject involves the following syllogism: Major premise: Restoring order is good, important, and/or needed. Minor premise: the receiver-subject failed to restore the order. Conclusion: the receiver-subject did not do what was good, important, and/or needed.



6 Those interned at Guantanamo Bay as terrorists are not in a state of exception but, rather, are enmeshed in a complex web of legal, social, and moral regulations (Dean 2007, 178-79).

228 Notes to pages 52-72



7 For example, the National Genographic Project tries to dissociate itself from the HGDP in one of its frequently asked questions: How does the Genographic Project differ from the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) proposed in the early 1990s? The Genographic Project has been designed from inception to consider the limitations of other studies such as HGDP – especially in terms of objectives, approach, and methodology. The Genographic Project is studying the human journey – how we are all related and how we arrived at where we live today. There is no medical research of any kind in the Genographic Project. It is nonprofit, nongovernmental, nonpolitical, and noncommercial. No cell lines will be created, and we will not patent any genetic data resulting from the project. All the information belongs to the global community and will be released into the public domain (Genographic Project n.d.a).



8 For example, competition with other East Asian countries is cited by a senior Taiwan government official as part of this biomedical-led transformation of the population into a strategic resource. In a 2005 Taipei Times article on the “Taiwan Biomedtech Island” project, Chen Tzay-jinn, deputy minister of the Department of Health, states in regard to the Taiwan Biobank: “We have to build the genetic database in the very near future because we are competing with others in Asia, such as Singapore. However, the health records collected over the last decade through our single national insurance system are an advantage” (quoted in Chiu 2005).



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Chapter 3: Imposing Genetic Distinctions: Aboriginal Peoples and Alcoholism in Genetics Research An allele is an alternative form of a gene that is located in a specific position of a specific chromosome. These samples were later reused for a 2002 paper by Schanfield et al. that included Lin Ma-li (Schanfield et al. 2002). The set of samples “collected by Nakajima et al. (1971) consists of female nursing students from the nursing school at Hualien who represent different tribes; junior high school students and students in training courses for agriculture for Aborigines at Taitung and Wushe; and a sample of Tayal collected in the village of Wulai” (Schanfield 2002, 366). An early example of this application of advanced genetic research is a 1985 paper on Truku Aborigines entitled “Genetic Markers of an Aboriginal Taiwanese Population,” co-authored by Chen K.H. and L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, and published in the American Journal of Physical Anthro­ pology (Chen K.H. 1985). However, because of the polemical nature of narratives, there are implied anti-subjects who have their own narratives that contest those of the scientist heroes (Cooren 2001b, 182, 188). In these counter-narratives, transnational science has not sent these scientists a quest and so they are in error. I think this also fits as the culmination of the problematization, reformation, and replacement cycle identified in liberal governance by Mitchell Dean (1999, 190-91) or the return that concludes the hero’s adventure in Joseph Campbell’s (2004, 227-28) hero monomyth. This fit is evident in the sanctity accorded to peer review processes in knowledge formation. Indeed, scientists involved in the peer review process might be viewed, in Campbell’s terminology, as guardians of the threshold who allow or disallow the hero’s return (83-85, 227-28). Actants’ organizing properties function and exert agency (make a difference) through relations with other actants (micro and macro) present within a particular historical context. In this sense, reality is not merely socially constructed, because the chemical characteristics of camphor as material capacities are independent of society. Yet, camphor’s potential chemical capacities are only realized and became significant politically and economically with developments in technology. Later, further technological advances, such as the production

Notes to pages 73-92 229



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of synthetic camphor and then developments in the formulation of explosives and plastics production that did not require camphor, rendered camphor insignificant and no longer a strategic material. In order to maintain a balance of payments with the Chinese, Western merchants imported massive amounts of opium primarily from British ruled India. In 1882, Western merchants at the northern port of Tamsui imported some 1,583 piculs (95,438 kilograms) of opium, which accounted for 62 percent of the total value of foreign imports (Huang, Lin Ang 1997, 2:588-89). This led to high levels of addiction among the Chinese settlers, something acknowledged by Western officials. See Chapter 1, note 4. In a 1991 book published by Academia Sinica, Hsu (1991, 21) compares mental and social problems among the Atayal and Ami during Taiwan’s industrialization: “Whatever factors may have helped determine Taiwan’s recent economic achievement, one thing is sure: its shift in economic structure – along with improvements in other social dimensions such as education, nutrition, and sanitation – has benefited Taiwan society as a whole, with aboriginal tribes in particular.” This 1911 book was published in English and was intended to be a report to Western audiences on Japanese colonialization efforts in Taiwan. It features photos of Aborigines, maps, and bar graphs of combat casualties and territory conquered and so on. In their organizational analysis of group sensemaking in medical settings, Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld (2005, 412) state: “If the first question of sensemaking is ‘What’s going on here?,’ the second, equally important question is, ‘What do I do next?’” The phrase “never get drunk” in the China Times headline is a reference to a love song about someone unable to drown their sorrows, no matter how much they drink.

Chapter 4: Informed Consent in the Austronesian Homeland 1 The CIA World Factbook’s Taiwan entry estimates some 4.5 percent, or about 1 million, of Taiwan’s total population of 24 million is Christian. So if we subtract the approximately 70 percent, or about 350,000, of Aborigines who are Christian from that total, it leaves around 650,000 or 2.8 percent of Taiwan’s settler population (Central Intelligence Agency 2013). 2 Lin et al. (2000, 1) state: “We would like to thank Presbyterian churches, health stations (especially the Lai-Yi Health Station of Ping Tong County) of indigenous tribes, Pu-Li Christian Hospital, Tong Ho General Hospital of Tai-Tong City and Prof. Theodore Kay of National Changhwa University of Education for helping us to collect blood samples.” 3 Internal Canadian government documents indicate that, by the late 1990s, the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei (CTOT) had already integrated what, effectively, were subsidies from Taiwan government agencies into its public relations budgeting and planning (including Aboriginal exchanges) (Munsterhjelm 2004). Taiwan and Canada signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Aboriginal exchanges in 1998: The CTOT’s apparent use of this willingness by the Taiwanese government to pay for Taiwan-Canada Aboriginal exchanges was evident in an internal DFAIT [Department of Foreign Affairs, Industry and Trade] letter regarding the original 1998 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). This letter asserts that, “we believe the MOU has enhanced and will enhance the image of Canada in Taiwan, at minimal cost.” This was because “there are no resource implications for the CTOT from this MOU; [since] the AAC [Taiwan government’s Council of Aboriginal Affairs] is well funded, and will absorb most of the costs of the annual plan of activity” (DFAIT 2002, 13-14). In justifying this MOU, the Canadian official appears to take into account the Taiwan government as a source of resources to subsidize the CTOT’s Canada brand public affairs events. (Munsterhjelm 2004, 53-54)



4 While the conference involved a complex array of state and other institutions, it did not receive extensive international or Taiwanese coverage. However, a Mackay Memorial

230 Notes to pages 92-126



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Hospital-sponsored and organized conference with a very similar title held in Taipei on August 28, 2004, generated stories by the Taiwan CNA, the China Times Express, and the Taipei Times (Central News Agency 2004c; China Times Express 2004; Wang 2004). “GM” stands for “gamma globulins,” which are a form of immunoglobulin, part of the human immune system. Chapter 14, entitled “Maternal Lineages Trace the Origin of Polynesians Back to Taiwan,” is written by Jean Trejaut, Toomas Kivisild, Jun Hun Loo, Chien Liang Lee, Chun Lin He, and Lin Ma-li. Chapter 15, entitled “DNA Diversity of  Tao-Yami and Batan Islanders: Relationships with Other Taiwanese Aborigines,” is written by Jun Hun Loo, Jean Trejaut, and Lin Ma-li. For example, a website that is selling Lin’s biography, which is entitled 風中的波斯菊：林媽利 的生命故事, uses the phrase (Mother of Taiwanese blood) 台灣血液之母 in its description of the book. See http://www.books.com.tw/. One article in this period appeared in the August 10, 2005, edition of El Diario Vasco, which is a Spanish-language Basque paper. This is likely a reference to Su et al.’s 2000 article entitled “Polynesian Origins: Insights from the Y Chromosome” in which the authors “postulate that Southeast Asia provided a genetic source for two independent migrations, one toward Taiwan and the other toward Polynesia through island Southeast Asia” (Su et al. 2000, 8225). This paper makes use of Atayal, Bunun, Ami, Yami, and Paiwan samples, the source of which is not identified. Li et al. (2008) includes data from eleven Taiwan Aboriginal groups: Saraiya-Makatao, Thao, Rukai, Saisiyat, Pazeh, Puyuma, Bunun, in addition to Ami, Paiwan, Yami, and Atayal. Ironically, this conference appears to have been part of the Lee Teng-hui administration’s Taiwan-centred identity project to make Taiwan distinct from China (see Chapter 6). However, the samples that Hsu provided to Jin Li and the Stanford team were used in research that had the opposite effect. Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford and Judith Kidd of Yale University also provided some samples from other Indigenous peoples used in the study (Chu et al. 1998, 11, 767). It is likely that the Ami, Yami, Paiwan, and Atayal samples were then integrated into the Chinese Human Genome Diversity Project as “Chinese ethnic-minority populations.” In a 1999 paper, entitled “Y-Chromosome Evidence for a Northward Migration of Modern Humans into Eastern Asia during the Last Ice Age,” co-authored by Jin, used Ami, Yami, Paiwan, and Atayal samples (no other Taiwan Aborigines), though no reference was made to who supplied them (Su et al. 1999). The article states, “the collection of DNA samples from members of twenty-one Chinese ethnic-minority populations was done with the coordination of the Chinese Human Genome Diversity Project” (Su 1999, 1719, 1721). It is difficult to assess the significance of Chen’s extended relationship with this PRC-centred assemblage of researchers; however, his 2009 Stanford University PhD dissertation, while not overtly pro-unification, certainly does not contradict such a PRC-centred assemblage. Entitled “How Han Are Taiwanese Han: Genetic Inference of Plains Indigenous Ancestry among Taiwanese Han and Its Implications for Taiwan Identity,” his dissertation is a strong critique of what he terms “Taiwanese blood nationalism,” particularly as presented in Lin’s work (Chen 2009). His dissertation’s central theme is a critique of the appropriation of Aboriginal identity by Taiwanese nationalists. Lin’s allegations that Chen Shu-juo committed ethics violations during the Li et al. (2008) study have not been investigated by the Taiwan NSC or other agencies to my knowledge. Kenneth Kidd also supplied technical advice to the Li et al. (2008) study that Lin criticized (Li et al. 2008, 156).

Chapter 5: Were the Maori “Made in Taiwan”? 1 I have searched PubMed, Google Scholar, and other databases, but it appears that Chambers and his colleagues never published their 1998 findings in a journal. Furthermore, Chambers et al. (2002) do not mention any Chambers article from 1998.

Notes to pages 131-50 231

















2 The film title and narrative both refer to Nathan Rarere and Oscar Kightley by their first names, so, in the interest of clarity, I use their first names in my analysis. 3 This is a transnational time-space, something that is reinforced by the steady flow of international news headlines running across the bottom of the screen during the program. These headlines describe events whose only articulation is that they occur at the same time. 4 Omaar uses the term “dugout canoes,” despite Excellent Adventure expressly discussing and showing that waka were double-hull catamaran-type ocean-going vessels 5 According to Greimas, in these sub-narratives, the sender sometimes later changes its actant role and becomes an opponent who tests the receiver-subjects (Budniakiewicz 1992). If the receiver-subjects pass the test, they can gain a magical object or knowledge that is needed in order to proceed. Similarly, Joseph Campbell’s (2004) hero’s adventure monomyth identifies a common early phase in which the heroes gain required knowledge from wise people through a series of tests. 6 There is something of a slippage in his terminology because the Maori term Tangata Whenua refers to Maori, not to New Zealand settlers (who are called Tangata Pakeha). 7 This authorization was further evident in a July 12, 2005, New Zealand Press Association article on Kaiwai and the Sunday documentary: “[Kaiwai] has joined forces with DNA experts to try to establish the link ... Mr. Kaiwai, 48, and his son Josh have been pursuing aspects of the link and DNA experts in New Zealand have isolated several DNA strands common only to the two races” (New Zealand Press Association 2005). 8 In The Seven Daughters of Eve, mitochondrial DNA functions as a “time machine” as it is passed on intact from mother to daughter providing a way to find “Eve”: “Sykes’s Oxford group has identified seven major mitochondrial haplotypes (mtDNA sequences) that seem to be found in 95 percent of living Europeans. The book’s major premise is that since mtDNA is (primarily) passed on only from mothers to their offspring, most Europeans belong to one of these seven matrilines, and can therefore trace their ancestry back to one of these European mitochondrial ‘Eves’” (Mai 2002). 9 Indeed, in New Zealand, the MIT thesis has even been utilized by Winston Peters, leader of the New Zealand First Party and member of Parliament, who is of Maori and Scottish ancestry and is known for his anti-Asian immigration stance. Peters stated, citing Massey University research, that it was impossible for him to be racist against Asian immigrants because he was Asian himself, a member of the Gaoshanzu, or “High Mountain Minority,” which is the official PRC term for Taiwan Aborigines. According to Peters: “That means I have Chinese blood in me” (Masters 2002). 10 This is New Zealand’s highest grossing domestic film to date (Alia and Bull 2006, 53). It has had a complex reception within Maori and Indigenous communities elsewhere in the world, including among Inuit and First Nations in Canada (67). It has been criticized by some Maori for reinforcing negative stereotypes among settlers but praised by other Maori for dealing with the critical issue of domestic violence within their communities (54-55). 11 Lea and Chambers co-presented another poster at the 2006 conference, this time with Ko Ying-chin, involving a “genome-wide scan for gout susceptibility” locations and linkage disequilibrium patterns on fifty-two Atayal Aborigines (Fernando, Ko, Chambers, and Lea 2006). Given this cooperation, Ko is the likely source of the Taiwan Aboriginal samples used in the warrior-gene presentation. In 2010, Lea and Ko were co-authors on a paper on monoamine oxidase and gout among Taiwan Aborigines that appeared in Human Genetics (Tu, Ko, Wang, et al. 2010). 12 A rather different conclusion was reached in a 1996 paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry entitled “Association of Monoamine Oxidase A Alleles with Alcoholism among Male Chinese in Taiwan.” This article found no association between MAO-A alleles and alcoholism among four tribes of Taiwan Aborigines, but it did find a significant association among Taiwanese settler men (Hsu et al. 1996).

232 Notes to pages 172-80



















Chapter 6: Internet Shopping Carts and Patenting Taiwan’s “Gift to the World” 1 In the 2000 Nature Genetics article, which shares a significant portion of its content with the patent, the inventors Underhill and Oefner cooperated with Judith Kidd of Yale University, Cavalli-Sforza, Jin Li, and Spencer Wells, who now work with the National Genographic Project (Underhill et al. 2000, 361). 2 It appears then that Hsu Mu-tsu provided at least two different batches of Aboriginal samples to Stanford. Li et al. (1996) used forty Atayal, twenty Ami, twenty Paiwan, and twenty Yami samples. However, Underhill et al. (1997) used thirty-eight Atayal and thirty-eight Ami samples. I don’t know whether some of the Ami and Atayal samples were used in both projects. 3 However, the US government may also have legal rights since the patent begins with a “Statement Regarding Federally Sponsored Research: This invention was made with government support under grant nos. GM55273 and GM 28428 awarded by the NIH [National Institute of Health]. The [US] government may have certain rights in this invention” (Underhill and Oefner 2005). Here we have the US government not only granting the patent but also, by virtue of providing research funding, possibly having legal claims on it. 4 The forward primer, “For:5’-3,’” is nineteen bit pairs long (in lower case) and identifies the first nineteen bit pairs of the M50 sequence (in lower case). The reverse primer, “Rev:5’–3,’” is twenty-one base pairs long (in lower case) and identifies the last twenty-one base pairs of the M50 sequence printed in reverse order (in lower case). Complementary in molecular terminology means that, in the reverse primer: Cs substitute for Gs, Gs for Cs, As for Ts, and Ts for As. This is easier to see if we reverse the order of the reverse primer: “Ctcggagatagaggacttcgt” complementarily matches the final twenty-one base pairs of M50, “gagcctctatctcctgaagca.” This forward primer is used to identify the location on the Y chromosome, where the M50 sequence begins, while the reverse primer adheres to the end and, thereby, identifies the end of the M50 sequence. The front and reverse primers allow for delineation and then isolation of the marker M50 through PCR or other methods of amplification, whereby this section would be reproduced into millions of copies in a few hours for genetic analysis. 5 This entry is more typical of the gene bank entry, with the base pair in groups of ten and the lines numbered. This quickly allows the reader to find the mutation at position 175, the letter “y” near the end on the right of the third line, and other information (Underhill and Oefner 2005, col. 181). 6 However, other strategic considerations can restrict biotechnology development. For example, in May 2012 a planned expansion of the Central Taiwan Science Park in the important agricultural area of Chunghua County was suspended pending an environmental assessment: “The expansion plan has come under intense fire in recent months due to an ongoing water diversion project which aims to redirect irrigation water for use at the science park. ‘In addition to environmental concerns, the science park plan raises serious issues regarding the country’s agricultural and food security,’ said Tu Wen-ling, an associate professor of public administration at National Chengchi University” (Tsai 2012). 7 For example, in Vitagenomics’ 2008 US patent: “Blood samples were collected from 221 chronic hepatitis C patients at National Taiwan University Hospital, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, and Tri-Services General Hospital in Taiwan” (Hwang et al. 2008, 13). 8 As Rose (2007, 14) states: “The ethos of hope links together different actors – actual or potential sufferers for a cure, scientists and researchers seeking a breakthrough that will make their name and advance their career, doctors and health care professionals wanting a therapy that will help treat their patients, biotech companies aiming for products that generate profit, governments looking for industrial and commercial developments that will generate employment and stimulate economic activity and international competitiveness. Hence, the term used by Carlos Novas: this is a political economy of hope.” 9 Part of the provisional patent application was a draft article with the same title as the patent application (Cheng LSC et al., 2003; “Patent Application Information Retrieval,” n.d.). This was a draft of the Cheng LSC et al. (2004) article that later appeared in the American Journal

Notes to pages 182-95 233



















of Human Genetics. The title and content of this draft article seem very intent on making the connection to an alleged longevity locus located at 4q25 on chromosome 4 that has already been patented. As the draft article’s abstract concludes, “this peak region is the longevity locus (LGV1, OMIM 606460) identified by linkage study on longevity trait, suggesting that uric acid, as an antioxidant, may play a role in longevity” (Cheng LSC et al., 2003:2). 10 These spikes on graphs might be considered analogous to colonial-era maps that listed locations of natural resources, such as camphor in Taiwan Aboriginal territories (e.g., Mackay 1896). Our understanding of the spike on the graph as an indicator of magnitude or increase plays on the metaphorical concept of more is up and less is down (Lakoff 1993, 241). 11 The analysis included use of the MERLIN software and another program known as SAGE, or Statistical Analysis for Genetic Epidemiology (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 50). The tendency of scientists to name programs so that the acronyms connote magic or wisdom is hardly coincidental, and it is consistent with the general topos of scientists as heroes on a quest. 12 For example “the marker D4S2623 is a tetra GATA STRPs and is about 225-205 bp long” (Ko and Cheng 2005b, para. 59), meaning that sequence of the four letters “GATA” repeats. 13 The Non-Final Rejection disallowed claims 2 through 16 and therefore only considered claim 1, which it then also rejected. In response to the Non-Final Rejection, the legal firm, while maintaining the validity of claims 2 through 16, nonetheless withdrew them and added two additional claims: 17 and 18. Only claims 1, 17, and 18 remained for consideration by the examiner. The examiner considered these three claims in the Final Rejection and also rejected them. 14 I made this conversion based on the average monthly exchange rates between Taiwan and Canadian dollars for the periods of the grants May 2006-April 2007 (NT$28.78/CDN$), May 2007-April 2008 (NT$31.61), and May 2008-April 2008 (NT28.45). This is based on data from the currency website (http://www.x-rates.com). 15 This webpage states that this is a US patent application, briefly summarizes the invention, its potential usages in determining risk of developing gout, its advantages compared to other technologies, and its potential applications (such as genetic chip diagnostics and medicine development) (National Health Research Institutes n.d. a). The webpage at the time of writing (June 2013) is still up, despite the fact that the patent application was withdrawn over three years ago. 16 Ko was the chair of the Medical Association for Indigenous People of Taiwan (MAIPT), which has about one hundred members (Medical Association of Taiwan Indigenous People 2008a). To my knowledge, the MAIPT has not played a central role in any disputes over genetics research; rather, it seems to position itself in an advisory capacity. While advocating the importance of respect for human rights and Aboriginal rights as determining factors in Aboriginal health, the MAIPT also advocates genetics research as a viable way of dealing with Aboriginal health problems (2008a, 2008b). For example, Kao Cheng-chih, a Paiwan Aborigine and chairperson of the MAIPT, is listed as its representative on the work team charged with founding the Taiwan Biobank (Taiwan Biobank 2006) and, more recently, was elected to the Taiwan Biobank’s advanced planning ethics committee (Taiwan Biobank 2009). 17 Not only did Ko ignore Aborigines’ rights and dignity, he filed this US patent application without telling the other members of his own research team, who were shocked to learn about it (Wang and Lin 2010a). 18 The United Daily News reports were published online at 14:54 EDT on March 21 (2:53 AM March 22, 2010, in Taipei). Just over twenty-three hours later, Ko and Tsai’s law firm electronically filed the patent application withdrawal documents with the USPTO, which are date-stamped at 14:32 EDT on March 22, 2010 (2:32 AM March 23, 2010, in Taipei) (Patent Application Information Retrieval System 2010). 19 There was considerable media coverage during the week of March 22 to March 29, 2010. In addition to United Daily News, it was also picked up by TITV, Taiwan CNA, and other media outlets (e.g., Central News Agency 2010a). Criticism of Ko was mixed, with some of it being

234 Notes to pages 197-220









negative but some of it suggesting that his research might benefit Aborigines. However, after March 30, 2010, there was no further media coverage. 20 In the MOU on gout research signed by Dr. Ko and Dr. Tony Merriman representing the University of Otago, there are strict provisions protecting Maori and Pacifika (Pacific Island) peoples. These require community consultations on any research projects and state that any of their genetic samples must stay in Dr. Merriman’s Laboratory (Ko 2007b). The MOU states: “Prior to the first presentation or publication of data derived from Maori and Pacifika [Pacific Islander] participants, Dr. Merriman will ensure that the knowledge is first disseminated to appropriate Maori and Pacifika groups” (Ko 2007b). However, there are no similar provisions for Taiwan Aborigines. Dr. Merriman, in a March 2007 article published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, sharply criticized Lea et al.’s “warrior gene” research project. Nonetheless, Merriman turned around and signed this very one-sided agreement with Ko in March 2007. Chapter 7: Conclusion 1 Under early capitalism, mercantile companies such as the Dutch East India Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company integrated commerce, military, and sovereign powers. 2 This ties together the Commonwealth and overseas colonies through commerce and governance at a time when England was beginning its overseas colonization projects. Some historians have argued that, while in the service of a Lord Cavendish, Hobbes became quite knowledgeable about Indigenous peoples, including their large-scale political organizations (such as federations), because he participated in meetings as a shareholder in the Virginia Company during the 1620s, a period during which tobacco grown on colonized Indigenous peoples’ lands began to be shipped to England (Malcolm 1981). 3 Involved Aboriginal peoples therefore rejected genetic determinism on the part of scientists – an assertion that is supported by other types of discourses on health and human rights (Mann et al. 1999) in which systemic morbidity and premature death are indicative of a sustained and systematic denial of Aboriginal peoples’ dignity and human rights. 4 Section 19 reads: “Where non-delinked [still identifiable] research materials will be provided for specified research purposes overseas, besides notifying the human subjects and obtaining their written consent, the overseas research entity shall sign a Certification of Guarantee to follow our domestic regulations and research material scope of permitted uses, for review by the IRB, and after approval thereby, for consideration by the competent authority, prior to conduct of any such use.”

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Index

Note: “(f)” after a number indicates a figure; “(t)” after a number indicates a table Aboriginal News Weekly Magazine, 2, 117 Aboriginal peoples as living dead: ancestors as “glorious dead” and basis of sovereignty, 5; scientists’ view as living memor­ials to the ancient dead, 135, 164, 213-15, 222; settler states’ incorporation of to eternalize the state, 5-6; settlers’ fear of becoming, under Aboriginal sovereignty, 221; state of nature as justification for exclusion from polis, 46-47, 84, 209; in state of nature and therefore threat to State, 25, 46, 83-84, 86, 209; through racism and marginalization, 84, 94, 209; TVNZ view of Taiwan Aborigines as genetic fossils or ancestral living dead, 135, 214 Aboriginal rights: allocation under neo­ liberalism, 45; biotechnology’s argument for constraining, 7, 111-12, 174-75; differential allocation of rights and obligations, 4, 45-46, 52, 85-86, 209-11, 220; Lin as “repeat offender” against, 109-11, 113-14; Maori vs. Taiwanese Aborigines, 160-61; patents superseding rights of donors, 205-7; physical health requirements as justifi­cation for ignoring, 11315; progress (1990s and 2000s), 120; protests against ethical and legal violations of rights and dignity, 2, 8-9, 29-30, 33, 49, 66, 193; Universal Declaration of Human Rights mobilized, 45; “value bifurcation” of scientists and Aboriginal peoples, 44. See also Kavalan Aborigines; Ko Ying-chin; sovereignty, Aboriginal; transnational networks, Aboriginal

Aborigines and genetics research. See entries beginning with genetics research Aborigines in Taiwan: Austronesian home­ land concept, 11-12, 28-29, 90, 93-94; Austronesian-language speakers, 11-12, 28-29, 93-94, 136, 139; classification by social development by Japanese, 25-26, 77-78; communal ceremonial drinking, 55-56; linguistic differences among, 2122; peoples and territories, 14(f); power position in society compared with Maori, 160-61; racial discrimination from Han Chinese, 20; social forms and governance practices historically, 21; traditional stories re. origins, 11-12. See also entries beginning with genes, Aboriginal Aborigines in Taiwan, under colonization: alcohol-consumption patterns, 55-56; Chinese colonial rule, 13, 15-17, 18, 25; Chinese disapproval of Aborigines’ drinking, 55-56; control of most of Taiwan under Chinese rule, 15; conversion to Christianity, 22-23; Japanese period, 17-19, 55-56; in need of rescue, 25-26, 47; poverty with expropriation of traditional territories, 20; social breakdown in Aboriginal communities, 20; treatment by Kuomintang (1949 to 1970s), 19-20, 22, 26 Aborigines’ place in society and genetics research: (bio)colonial view of Aborigines as uncivilized, in need of rescue, 25-26, 47, 88, 179, 196, 215-17; collective informed consent viewed as impedi­ment to Aboriginal health care, 113-15; com-

258 Index

pared with Maori, 160-61; differential allocation of rights and obligations, 4, 45-46, 52, 85-86, 209-11, 220; negative stereotypes as dysfunctional, 2, 7, 23, 27-28, 42, 77-78, 82-83; physical health justification for ignoring Aboriginal rights, 115; poverty, marginalization, and racism ignored, 6, 26-27, 85, 217; reducing political significance of Aborigines’ mor­ bidity and mortality, 6-7, 26-27, 58; scientists’ obligation to help vulnerable, 81, 168, 211; state of nature as justification for exclusion from polis, 46-47, 84, 209-10; in state of nature and therefore threat to State, 25, 46, 83-84, 86, 209 Academia Sinica: article on “drinking gene” of Aborigines, 82; article on racial differences in alcohol-metabolization genes, 61-62; attendance at awards ceremony for Ko, 204; conference on links between Taiwan Aborigines and other Indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia, 117-18; promotion and implementation of bio­ technology, 175; provision of Taiwan Aborigines’ genes to Stanford University, 172-74; Taiwanese TV report on international (US, China, and Taiwan) assemblages of genes, 117. See also Taiwan Aboriginal Study Project (TASP) Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 57-58 actor network theory, 9 Agamben, Giorgio, 46 Agence France-Press, 126, 153 Al Jazeera Witness special, “Made in Taiwan”: anti-subjects of racism and loss of cultural identity, 132, 144, 164; competence sub-narratives, 134-35; description, 132, 144-46; genetics testing, 134-35, 145-46, 214-15; interview based on independent film, 128-29, 144; metonymic ascribing of materiality to genes, 145; narrative schema, 144; performance phase, 146; rhetoric used, 132, 135, 146; sanction phase, 146; use of Excellent Adventure segments, 132 alcoholism. See genetic predisposition of Aborigines to alcoholism Alependava, Cedric, 199, 201 Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines, 56 American Medical Association, 80-81 Ami Aborigines. See Pangcah (Ami) Aborigines

Ananda Chakrabarty Patent (1980), 206 Anderson, Benedict, 5 Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, 199 anti-subjects: in Al Jazeera documentary, 132, 144; anomie or state of nature as anti-subject, 25, 46; definition, 25; in Excellent Adventure documentary, 140; state of nature as anti-subject, 25; in TVNZ documentary, 130 Archives of General Psychiatry (American Medical Association), 80-81 argumentation theory, 9 Arizona State University, 48-49, 119 Arnold, Kathleen R., 86 Asia New Zealand Foundation, 129-30 Atayal Aborigines: classification by “civility” by Japanese, 26, 77-78; egalitarian nomadic society, 21; genetic samples (see Coriell Cell Repositories [CCR] [Camden, New Jersey]; Ko Ying-chin; Stanford University); genetic samples provided to international projects, 11718, 172-74, 215; negative settler attitude toward, 78; resistance to camphor-related invasion of territories (mid-1880s), 16; stories re. origins in Taiwan, 11-12 Atkinson, Kent, 126 Australia: intervention in the Solomon Islands, 198; media coverage of warriorgene research, 150-51, 159, 218; Radio Australia interview re. Solomon Islands controversy, 204. See also entries beginning with Maori Australia Associated Press, 150, 159 Australia Broadcasting Corporation, 155-56 Australian Press Association, 157 Austronesia: conference featuring Austronesian-related research, 92-93; extent, 11(f); languages spoken by Taiwanese Aborigines, 11-12, 28-29, 9394, 136, 139; linkages to Taiwan (Austro­ nesian homeland concept), 11-12, 28-29, 90, 93-96. See also Melanesians and Taiwanese Aborigines; Polynesians and Taiwanese Aborigines; entries beginning with Maori Bauki Anao, 108 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), 126 Bedford, Stuart, 142 Bellwood, Peter, 28, 92

Index 259

biobanks, 7. See also cell repositories; Coriell Cell Repositories (CCR) (Camden, New Jersey); Taiwan Biobank biocolonialism: Aborigines’ challenge to genetic research, 3-4; Aborigines’ need for rescue, 26, 47, 88, 179, 196-97, 2045, 215-17; definition, 3; domination of Aboriginal peoples seen as the Other, 196; HGDP as, 43-44, 52; Indigenous peoples’ cell lines allow scientists to represent them, 40, 48, 66, 69, 96, 118, 123, 208; patents’ precedence over cell-line donors’ rights, 205-7; suitable to a subimperial worldview of Taiwan, 196 Biological Psychiatry, 61-62 biopolitics: genetics research as technology of sovereignty, 4, 33, 85-86, 209-11; poverty, marginalization, and racism ignored, 6, 26-27, 85, 217; racism as key mediator between sovereignty and, 8384; scientists’ obligation to help vulnerable, 81, 168, 211; shift to necropolitics with emphasis on death/morbidity in Aborigines’ genes, 210 biotechnology industrialization: argument against constraints of human and civil rights, 7; difference in a product is creator of value, 165, 166; failure to consult with Aborigines re. biobank, 8-9; integration of capital investment, health care system, and genetics research, 176; populations transformed into strategic economic resources, 52, 176, 208; push to make Taiwan global biotechnology hub, 8-9, 172, 174-76, 228n8; sectors highly neoliberal, 175-76. See also commodification of genetics research on Taiwan Aborigines; patents Birch, Kean, 178-79 Blackwell, Quentin R., 55 blood samples: equivalency with Aboriginal participants, 66, 69; resource, just like camphor, 74; seen as the living dead, 222; transformation of Indigenous peoples into research objects, 48, 119, 168-69, 207-8; translation of Aboriginal participants into blood samples, 49, 66, 69. See also genes; genes, Aboriginal Bowcock, A., 43-44, 167 Brazil, 169 Bunun Aborigines: classification as primitive by Japanese, 78; egalitarian nomadic

society, 21; during Japanese colonization, 18, 79, 137; part of genetics research into alcoholism, 77, 81; in TVNZ documentary, 130, 135, 137 Burke, Kenneth, 128, 214 Callon, Michel, 66, 69, 144 Cameron, Vicky, 157-58 camphor trade: agency and importance due to chemical properties, 16, 72-73, 170; Atayal resistance to invasion (mid1880s), 16; “Camphor War” (1868), 72; cause of invasion of Aboriginal territories, 16, 73; Chinese and British involvement, 72-73; comparison with genetics research, 72-76; demand due to Western industrialization, 73-74; organizing properties, 72; US patent, 170 Canada, 6, 21 Carr, L.G., 68 Castiglione, C.M., 169 Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., 43-44, 117, 167, 172 cell repositories, 7. See also Coriell Cell Repositories (CCR) (Camden, New Jersey) Central News Agency (CNA): article on Aborigines’ predisposition to alcoholism, 1-2, 53; article on genetic vulnerability to alcohol and governance implications, 81-82; article on news conference with Pingpu and Mackay Memorial Hospital, 105; article on Taiwan’s poor legal regulation of genetics research, 203; coverage of Maori linkage with Aborigines through ADH alleles, 126; on international coverage of story on Taiwanese Aborigines’ link with Polynesians and Melanesians, 99 Central Taiwan Science Park, 175 Chai Chen-kang, 55 Chambers, Geoffrey: abstract of warriorgene paper, rhetoric and narrative structure, 148-50; article on warrior-gene controversy in New Zealand Medical Journal, 156-57; cause of warrior-gene controversy in New Zealand, 119; effort to link Taiwan Aborigines and Maori, 149-50; recognition, reform, and redemption sub-narrative in warrior-gene controversy in NZMJ, 157; research on genetics of alcoholism, 161-62; research linking Taiwanese Aborigines to Maori through alcohol metabolization gene,

260 Index

119; rhetoric used to support Taiwan as Maori homeland, 137; translation of Maori genetics research disrupted by Maori resistance, 52, 83, 148; translation of warrior-gene research into transnational scientific circulation, 164; in TVNZ documentary on Maori homeland, 133, 139. See also Maori warrior-gene research CheckYourGenes (mail-order test for ALDH2 alleles), 54 Chen, Elison, 176 Chen, Mark, 103. See also Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) (Taiwan) Chen Chiao-chicy: article on alcoholism rates of “mountain Aborigines,” 54; article on Han Chinese inability to easily metabolize alcohol, 53-54, 75; authorization from review boards in articles, 64; epideictic rhetoric in manipulation phase of his paper, 60; on genetic vulnerability to alcohol and governance implications, 81-82; use of deductive practical syllogism in research paper, 63 Chen Chien-nien, 125 Chen Shu-juo: accusation of responsibility for causing the Kavalan saliva sampling dispute, 116; on collection of Kavalan saliva samples, 105-6; Kavalan resentment of Lin Ma-li, 105; on lack of informed consent when collecting Aboriginal samples, 104; Lin’s accusation of violating Basic Law in research with PRC scientists, 116-18; Lin’s response to his criticism of her statistics, 116; on Lin’s statistics re. percentage of Aboriginal blood in Taiwan settlers, 112-13, 123; Lin’s use of Pingpu Aborigines as signifiers of Taiwan-centred identity, 112; paper coauthored with PRC claims Taiwan a province of China, 118, 230n14 Chen Shui-bian : on Aborigines’ legacy of dysfunction and Taiwan’s duty to assist, 196-97, 216-17; agreement with Aborig­ ines and its influence on policies, 24; on concept of Taiwan in Austronesian zone, 90; on making Taiwan global biotechnology hub, 175; support for Aborigines in practice, 226n18 Chen W.J.: on Aborigines as genetic isolates, 65; on Austronesian language zone, 90; marginalization colonization issues in alcoholism studies, 62; research used

later to link Maori and Aborigines, 126; use of epideictic rhetoric in results section of scientific article, 67 Chen Ying, 219 Cheng Li Shu-chuan, 82, 180, 183-84, 186-90 Cheng Tai-an, 77, 83 Chiang Hung-Che, 193 Chiang Kai-shek, 19-20. See also Kuomin­ tang (KMT) China, Ching Dynasty: defeat in Second Opium War and Treaty of Tianjin, 15-16, 72; governing of Taiwan (after defeating Ming Dynasty), 15, 16-17; involvement in camphor trade, 72-73; reparations to Japan for Paiwan’s actions, 17-18; Taiwanese Aborigines seen as “barbarians,” 25; Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895) and loss of Taiwan, 18 China, Ming Dynasty, 13 China, People’s Republic of (PRC): assertion that Taiwan has always belonged to China, 12; colonization of Taiwan (1624-1895), 13, 15-17, 18; history of Chinese governance of Penghu Archi­ pelago, 12-13; international recognition as sole government of China, 11, 20-21; One-China principle, 10-11, 12, 87-89; Taiwanese Aborigines viewed as Chinese ethnic minorities, 15 China, Republic of (1912-29): claim to be legitimate government of China and Mongolia, 10; countries recognizing ROC as sole government of China, 11; PRC recognized as sole government of China, 11, 20-21. See also Taiwan China Times: article on National Science Council’s censuring of Lin, 108-9; article on National Science Council’s decision in Kavalan ethics dispute, 108; article supporting Kavalan in ethics dispute, 109-10; coverage of political intent of MOFA’s press conference, 103; coverage of TASP article on “drinking gene” of Aborigines, 82 China Times Express, 99-100 Chinese Human Genome Diversity Project, 117-18 Chinese Nationalist Party. See Kuomintang (KMT) Chinese nationalists. See Kuomintang (KMT) Chinese Psychiatry, 58 Chiou Wen-tsong, 30

Index 261

Choi H.K., 177 Chou Chung-tei, 177 colonialism: civilizing project re. Indigen­ ous peoples, 25-26, 47; construction of Aboriginal peoples as the Other, 48-49; definition, 3; studies by colonizers on Aborigines’ drinking patterns, 55-56. See also Aborigines in Taiwan, under colonization; biocolonialism commodification of genetics research on Taiwan Aborigines: Aborigines seen as premodern, settlers as modern, 5-6, 29, 165; Aborigines’ position as the Other, 48-49, 52, 62, 166, 176; biovalue of trade involving the Other, 165, 210; difference in a product is creator of value, 165, 166; government encouragement of commercialization of research, 175-76; legislation strengthened re. research involving human subjects, 200, 218-20; Moore case (US, 1990) on patents superseding rights of donors, 206-7; push to make Taiwan global biotechnology hub, 8-9, 172, 174-76; transformation of Indigenous peoples into research objects, 48, 62, 63, 69, 119, 168-69, 207-8; US patents re. research on Indigenous peoples without their consent, 4. See also biotechnology industrialization; Coriell Cell Repositories (CCR) (Camden, New Jersey); gout; patents; Stanford University Cooren, François, 34-35, 135 Coriell Cell Repositories (CCR) (Camden, New Jersey): acquisition of Atayal and Ami cell-line samples, 168, 215; availability of Atayal and Ami cell-line samples, 167, 168-70; commodification of Atayal and Ami cell lines, 52, 166, 167, 168-70; donors denied any subsequent claims re. commodification, 52, 170, 215; Epstein-Barr virus to ensure indefinite reproduction of cells, 168; funded by US government, 52, 167; journal references to cell-line samples, 167-68; Karitiana protests against CCR’s sale of their genetic samples, 169, 206. See also commodification of genetics research on Taiwan Aborigines Council of Indigenous Peoples, 24, 27-28, 125, 131 Crampton, Peter, 158 Daily Post, 155

Daily Telegraph (New Zealand), 126 Dano, Neth, 192, 201 Davidson, James, 73, 74, 76 Dean, Mitchell, 108 Democratic Progressive Party (DPP, Taiwan), 22, 24 Diamond, Jared, 178 diplomatic relations of Taiwan: formal recognition (track-one diplomacy) limited by China, 11, 20-21, 41, 89, 195-96; Ko acting as diplomatic representative in applying patents on behalf of state, 197; One-China principle and, 10-11, 12; Solomon Islands’ forcing cancellation of Ko’s 2010 US patent application, 201-4; using Austronesian linkages to distinguish Taiwan from China (track-two diplomacy), 87, 89-90, 92, 100-1. See also sovereignty, Taiwanese The Dominion (New Zealand), 126, 162 Duan Hong-kuan, 109-10, 113 Duff, Alan, 149, 152-53 Dutch East India Company, 13, 15 Economist, 93, 98-100 ETC Group, 192-95, 201 Eurekalert (science news website), 97 Evening Post (New Zealand), 126 Excellent Adventure. See Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure (George Andrews Production) Factiva (database), 126 Fahnestock, J., 63 Fairhurst, Gail T., 135 Fanon, Frantz, 207 Far Eastern Group, 204 Farago, Edmond, 16 Fauconnier, Gilles, 127 Foucault, Michel, 83-84, 209 France, 17, 224n6 Fudan University, Shanghai, 117 genes: as actants in research, 36, 40-42; ALDH2 alleles and alcohol metabolization, 53-54, 58, 81-82; as “boundary objects,” 33, 40-42, 48, 54-55, 93, 120; indeterminate concept, 32, 33; metonymic, passing down generations, 128, 135, 164, 214; objects with organizing properties (see genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties); translation of Aborig­ inal peoples into objects, “Aboriginal

262 Index

genes,” 48, 62, 63, 69, 119, 168-69, 2078; translation by different agents according to their needs, 32, 34, 40. See also entries beginning with genes, Aboriginal genes, Aboriginal: ALDH2 alleles allowing easy metabolization of alcohol, 53-54, 58, 81-82; as “boundary objects,” 33, 40-42, 48, 54-55, 93, 120; constructed as inferior to settlers by researchers, 80-83; distinguishing Taiwan Aborigines from people in mainland Asia, 93-96; as facts, in closed black boxes, 1, 2, 3(f), 40; objects and de facto forms of property, 74, 118; portrayed as leaving a legacy of dysfunction, 196-97. See also genes, Aboriginal, as black boxes; genes, Aborig­ inal, organizing properties genes, Aboriginal, as black boxes: closed black boxes vs. open, 3(f); as contested networks of agents, or open boxes, 3(f); as facts or as closed boxes, 1, 2, 3(f), 40; moral claims as constraint on research, 76; narrative mapping in research papers, 59(f), 60 (see also narrative schema in genetics research); organizing properties (see genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties); representative of relations among Aborigines, settler states, and transnational science, 52; translation possible due to genes’ agency, 213-14 genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties: as boundary objects and actants, 33, 40, 48, 92, 120; translation allows for hierarchies, 34-35; translations the bridge from local to transnational science, 51. See also entries below for organizing properties genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties (constraints): in Al Jazeera documentary, 163(t); constraining properties, 42, 72, 76; genes compared with camphor, 76; preventing association of Taiwan Aborig­ ines with China, 96; in Trejaut article and Kavalan dispute, 121-22(t); in TVNZ documentary, 163(t); in warrior-gene research and its critiques, 163(t) genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties (inherent properties): in Al Jazeera documentary, 163(t); discovery after trans­ lation elsewhere, 42; dissociation of Taiwanese Aborigines from China and link with Pacific peoples, 96; in Excellent

Adventure, 163(t); genes compared with camphor, 75; in Trejaut article and Kavalan dispute, 121-22(t); in TVNZ documentary, 163(t); in warrior-gene research and its critiques, 163(t) genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties (instrumentality): acting as boundary objects, 41-42, 76, 118; in Al Jazeera documentary, 163(t); in Excellent Adven­ ture, 163(t); genes compared with camphor, 76; permitting explanation of origins, 96; permitting translation of research in different time-spaces, 51; in Trejaut article and Kavalan dispute, 12122(t); in TVNZ documentary, 163(t); in warrior-gene research and its critiques, 163(t) genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties (materiality): in Al Jazeera documentary, 163(t); in Excellent Adventure, 163(t); genes compared with camphor, 74-75; linking Taiwan Aborigines with Pacific peoples, 96, 214; permitting genes to stand in for original participants, 74-75; permitting translation of links (Taiwan­ ese Aborigines and Pacific peoples) into diplomatic relations, 41; permitting translation of research in different timespaces, 41, 51, 74-75; in Trejaut article and Kavalan dispute, 121-22(t); in TVNZ documentary, 163(t); in warrior-gene research and its critiques, 163(t) genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties (plasticity): carriers of traces of agency from past translations, 51, 75; genes compared with camphor, 75; mutations over time and space, 51, 96; permitting genetic linkage with predisposition to alcoholism, 41; in Trejaut article and Kavalan dispute, 121-22(t); in TVNZ documentary, 163(t); in warrior-gene research and its critiques, 163(t) genetic determinism of Aborigines: Aborigines in state of nature and threat to State, 25, 46, 83-84, 86, 209; apparent rejection by Taiwan’s President Ma, 2728; Austronesian zone-specific genetic disorders, 196-97; construction of Taiwan Aborigines as premodern, 5-6, 29, 165, 210; explanation for social differences with settlers, 76; media’s misinterpretation of papers not corrected by scientists,

Index 263

83; reducing political significance of Aborigines’ morbidity and mortality, 6-7, 26-27; scientists’ obligation to help vulnerable, 81, 168, 211; state of nature as justification for exclusion from polis, 46-47, 84, 209 “genetic founder effects,” 196-97 genetic predisposition of Aborigines to alcoholism: alcohol consumption/ alcoholism prior to colonization, 5556; alcoholism a factor in development of gout, 177; alcoholism as violation of neoliberal ascetic, 86; alcoholism-related ALDH alleles vs. those of Han Chinese, 53-55, 58, 81-82, 216; attributed to stress of rapid social change, 6, 26, 31, 56, 58; distinctions between Aborigines and Han Chinese (without ALDH2 gene), 53-54, 58, 81-82; DSM criteria used to diagnose alcoholism, 64-65, 168; genes’ plasticity and translation from speculation to genetic link, 41; governance implications of this predisposition, 81-82; negative stereotypes of Aborigines as dysfunctional, 2, 7, 23, 27-28, 42, 77-78, 8283; news articles on, 1-2, 6, 26, 53-54, 82-83; poverty, marginalization, and racism ignored, 6, 26-27, 85, 217; pre­ dispositions to other diseases, 6, 26; President Ma’s apparent rejection of genetic determinism, 27-28; reducing political significance of Aborigines’ morbidity and mortality, 6-7, 26-27, 58; social relief needed, 7; specialized hospitals needed to treat, 53; translation of alcoholism-related genes so to distinguish Han Chinese from Aborigines, 53-55; transnational science’s racially configured quest, 62, 85-86, 211. See also genetic predisposition of Aborigines to alcoholism, scientific articles on genetic predisposition of Aborigines to alcoholism, scientific articles on: Aborigines identified as alcoholismrelated, 69; acceptance of proposed research (commitment phase), 59(f), 60-63, 70(t); articles (pre-1980s) on Aborigines’ drinking, 55-56; blood samples equivalent to Aboriginal population, 66, 69; claim that Aborigines are genetic isolates, 63, 65, 67-68, 74, 213; defining the problem and its significance

(manipulation phase), 33, 36-37, 59(f), 60, 70(t); early speculation on Aborig­ inal genes and alcoholism, 56-58, 21516; gaining authorizations and funding (competence phase), 59(f), 63-64, 70(t); materials and methodology section (competence phase), 59(f), 63-64, 64-66, 70(t); negative perception of Aborigines as dysfunctional and, 2, 42, 65, 77-78; participants translated into transnational research objects, 62, 63, 65, 69; premise re. alcoholism having genetic and environmental factors, 60-62, 216; processing of samples and results (competence phase), 59(f), 63-64, 66-68, 70-71(t); transnational science’s racially configured quest, 62, 85-86, 211. See also narrative schema in genetics research; rhetoric; Taiwan Aboriginal Study Project (TASP) genetics research: determining those whose rights can be violated, 4; genetic purity a myth, 145; Human Subjects Research Act (Taiwan, 2011), 219-20; as technology of sovereignty, 4, 85-86, 209; undermining racist claims of group differences, 146, 214-15. See also genes; genes, Aboriginal; rhetoric; scientists and genetics research genetics research on Aborigines: ability to prove and approve Indigenous origin narratives and identities, 147; Aboriginal peoples as the Other, 48-49, 52, 62; Aborigines’ agency restricted to participation, 48; Aborigines’ discomfort with social effect of research, 29; Aborigines’ vs. scientists’ conception of genetic samples, 222; anti-colonial technology, 146; collective informed consent aim of Aboriginal activists, 29-30; concept of Austronesian zone and, 90; distinguishing Taiwan Aborigines from people in mainland Asia, 93-96; genes rendered as exceptional by international researchers, 92-93; inherent conflicts of interest of research institutions, 220; involvement in biopolitics and sovereignty, 2, 33, 52; mapping research disputes (scientists vs. Aborigines), 49-51, 50(f); power differentials between Taiwan Aborigines and Maori, 160-61; progress in Aboriginal rights (1990s and 2000s), 120; racialized hierarchical power relationship (scientists

264 Index

and subjects), 85, 211, 215, 217; racist nature of such research, 52, 83-86; rational approach to issue of human origins, 147; rights and obligations of scientists vs. those of Aboriginal research subjects, 4, 45-46, 52, 85-86, 209-11, 220; scientists as representatives for Aborigines, 40, 48, 66, 69, 96, 118, 123, 208; as technology of sovereignty, 85, 209-11; translation of Aboriginal peoples into objects, “Aboriginal genes,” 48, 62, 63, 69, 119, 168-69, 207-8; transnational science as “sender of the quest,” 36-37, 59(f), 6062, 70(t), 84, 213. See also genes, Aborig­ inal; scientists and genetics research; entries beginning with genetics research genetics research on Aborigines, resistance by Aborigines: deliberative rhetoric in resistance narratives, 222; epideictic rhetoric in resistance narratives, 49-51, 222; to Human Genome Diversity Project, 4, 33, 43-44; mapping research disputes with scientists, 49-51, 50(f); to National Geographic’s Genographic Project, 52, 119; protesting ethical and legal violations of rights and dignity, 2, 8-9, 29-30, 33, 49, 66; to Taiwan Biobank project, 30, 66. See also gout; Indigenous Peoples Basic Law (2005); Kavalan Aborigines; Maori warrior-gene research, destabilization of genetics research on Aborigines and Taiwanese sovereignty: Aboriginal people seen as premodern, 5-6; Aborigines linked with Polynesians and Melanesians, not mainland Asian populations, 97-99; Aborigines’ genes as signifier of distinct Taiwanese identity, 2, 7-8, 28-29, 94-96, 97-99; Lin’s assertion that Taiwan settlers linked with Yueh, not Han Chinese, 112; part of Taiwanese sovereignty debates, 2; scientists’ assumption of homogeneity due to isolation, 5, 63, 65, 67-68, 74; statistics re. percentage of Aboriginal blood in Taiwan settlers, 112-13, 123; translation failures by MOFA to emphasize non-linkage of Aborigines’ genes to those in mainland China, 101-4, 120 Genome Research, 172-73 Genomics, 166-67 Giddens, Anthony, 72 Gil, José, 5

gout: alcohol consumption and development of, 177; breakdown in ethics review process, 204; impact on Atayal Aborigines, 194; Ko’s claim of gout research being Taiwan’s “gift to the world,” 178-79, 193, 197; on modifiable risk factors for gout and hyperuricemia, 177; prevalence of gout and hyperuricemia, 177; research re. Aborigines’ genetic predisposition to gout and hyperuricemia, 177-78; US patent application (2005) re. gout in Atayal Aborigines, narrative structure, 180-86; US patent application (2005) rejection, 186-90; US patent application (2009), on association between gout and ALPK1 gene mutations, 190-91; US patent application (2009), ethics violations and conflicts of interest, 19192; US patent application (2009) withdrawn due to failure to obtain informed consent, 192-95; US patent application (2010), destabilization and withdrawal, 201-4; US patent application (2010), using Solomon Islanders’ samples, 200-1; US patent application (2010) made without Solomon Islanders’ consent, 200-1. See also patents Greimas, Algirdas Julius, 36-40, 212 Griesemer, James R., 33 Gross, Alan, 35-36 The Guardian, 98-99 Han Chinese: alcoholism rate, 53-54; ALDH allele, preventing easy metabolization of alcohol, 53-54, 58, 81-82; assertions that Taiwanese Aborigines descended from Yueh, not Han Chinese, 112; Lin Ma-li’s assertion that Taiwan settlers linked with Yueh, not Han Chinese, 112; mail-order genetic testing for ALDH2 gene, 54; racial discrimination against Taiwanese Aborigines, 20 Harawira, Hone, 153-54 Harrington, Chris, 129-30 Harry, Deborah, 43, 48-49, 119 Havasupai Indigenous people, 48-49, 119 Hawaiki: Lin’s confusing Maori and Aus­ tralian Aboriginals, 102; media reports on Taiwan as “Hawaiki,” 103; MOFA’s confusing Maori and Australian Aborig­ inals, 101-2; mythical Maori homeland, 97-98

Index 265

Helsinki Declaration, 29-30, 120, 217 Heyerdahl, Thor, 98 Hindustan Times, 102 Hobbes, Thomas, 209-10 Hsu, Douglas, 204 Hsu Mu-Tsu, 116-18, 120, 172-74 Hsu Shao-ping, 219 Huang, Jeanette Tung-hsiang, 55 Huang Sue-Ying, 218-19 Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP): as biocolonialism, 44; established and shut down by US National Institutes of Health, 167; Indigenous peoples’ destabilization of, 4, 33, 43-44, 52; mapping of “normal” genome plus that of Indigenous peoples, 166-67; “value bifurcation” of scientists and Aboriginal peoples, 44 Human Subjects Research Act (Taiwan, 2011), 219-20 Hwu Hai-gwo, 57-58, 65, 75 Hyatt, Isaiah, 170 Hyatt, John W. Jr., 170 Icyang Parod, 27-28. See also Council of Indigenous Peoples Illustrations of the Flora and Fauna of Taiwan (Li), 55-56 Imagined Communities (Anderson), 5 Indigenous Peoples Basic Law (2005): collective informed consent challenged as impediment to Aboriginal health, 114-16, 123; collective informed consent required for research, 8, 30, 104; ethics violations in Ko’s gout research, 191-92; ill-defined and a legal grey area for researchers, 206; Lin’s accusation of Chen S.J. of violating Basic Law in research with PRC scientists, 116-18; use by Kavalans to force return of samples, 50, 88, 105-8; used by Aborigines to challenge genetic assemblages, 88, 105-8, 120 Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism (IPCB), 3-4, 43 informed consent: collective consent required in Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, 8, 30, 104, 114-16; collective informed consent challenged as impediment to Aboriginal health, 114-16, 123; Helsinki Declaration, 29-30, 217; individual, not collective, consent in Ko’s collections of

Atayal samples, 184-85, 191; Kavalan fight linked with violations re. Taiwan Biobank, 107; Kavalan fight over violations in collection of samples, 104-8, 221; in Nuremberg Code (1947), 29; problematic due to asymmetrical doctorpatient relationship, 65-66; US patent application (2009) by Ko withdrawn due to failure to obtain informed consent, 192-95; US patent application (2010) made by Ko without Solomon Islanders’ consent, 200-1 Ino Kanori, 26, 78 International Conference on Formosan Indigenous Peoples, 88 Isak Afo, 86 Ishii Shinji, 26, 78 Island of Formosa: Past and Present (Davidson), 74 Japan and Taiwan: Aboriginal “comfort women” during WWII, 19; on alcoholism of Aborigines, 55-56; anthropologists’ “civility” classification of Aborigines, 25-26, 77-78; camphor monopoly declared (1899), 80; early expeditions to Taiwan (early 1600s), 13; gaining Taiwan and Penghu Archipelago from Chinese (Meiji Restoration), 18; guard line and siege around Aboriginal territory, 78-80; Meiji Restoration (1868), 17; reparations from Chinese government for Mudan Paiwan’s actions, 17-18; sovereignty over Ryukyu Islands, 17-18; suppression of resistance, 17-19, 224n7; Tokugawa Shogunate ended (1868), 17; Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), 18; Wushe Uprising (1930), 6, 18, 19 Japanese Journal of Human Genetics, 55 Jin, Li, 116-18, 172 John Moore v. the Regents of UCLA (California, 1990), 206-7 Journal of Medical Ethics, 159 Kaiwai, Josh, 136, 138-39 Kaiwai, Robert, 136, 139-40 Kanehe, Le’a Malia, 48-49 Kaohsiung Medical University Institutional Review Board, 192, 199, 200 Kapushoc, Stephen, 186-90 Karitiana, Renato, 169

266 Index

Karitiana Indigenous peoples, 169, 206 Kavalan Aborigines: blood, importance culturally and politically, 105, 221, 222; epideictic rhetoric used in fight against informed consent violations, 105, 221; Kavalan’s desire for public hearings, 108; Lin labelled as “repeat offender” against Aboriginal rights, 109-10; Lin Ma-li’s statement re. Pingpu and Kavalan peoples being nearly extinct, 105, 120, 123; on Lin’s significant violations against Aboriginal rights, 110; National Science Council reaction to saliva samples’ collection, 108-9; networking for return of blood samples from TML, 50, 87-88, 105; organizing properties of Aborigines’ genes in saliva dispute, 121(t); resentment toward Lin, 105; TML’s framing of saliva collection as misunderstanding, not human rights violation, 107-8, 123; TML’s saliva samples’ collection and subsequent destruction, 105-7, 218; undermining racist articulation of sovereignty and biopolitics, 221 Kidd, Judith, 119 Kidd, Kenneth, 119 Kidd Labs, 168, 169 Kightley, Oscar, 131-32, 133-34, 145. See also Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure (George Andrews Production) King, M., 159 Kitchin, Phil: presenter in TVNZ documentary on Maori homeland, 130, 132-33; rhetorical techniques to describe Taiwan trip, 135-37, 138, 139-40 Ko Ying-chin: Aboriginal donors not informed re. patent application, 193; on Aborigines’ predisposition to alcoholism, 1-2, 53, 178; actions impetus for stricter legislation re. research, 200, 218-20; alcohol consumption and development of gout, 177; apologies to Solomon Islanders, 202; award despite violations of Aboriginal rights, 204; genetics research on gout and Taiwan Aborigines, 178-79; gout research as Taiwan’s “gift to the world,” 178-79, 193, 197, 217; individual, not collective, informed consent in collection of Atayal samples, 184-85; powerful position in health-policy development, 178; “protection” of Indigen­ ous peoples from “white people’s”

research, 200, 204-5; recourse by Aborig­ inal donors excluded in patent application process, 205; rejection of Aboriginal criticisms, 207; research on association between gout and longevity locus, 18384; research participants not informed of patent applications, 179; sovereign actions in applying for patents, 197, 202, 206; US patent application (2005) re. gout in Atayal Aborigines, narrative structure, 180-86; US patent application (2005) rejection, 186-90; US patent application (2009), defence by Ko, 19395; US patent application (2009), ethics violations and conflicts of interest, 19192; US patent application (2009) on association between gout and ALPK1 gene mutations, 190-91; US patent application (2009) withdrawn due to failure to obtain informed consent, 192-95; US patent application (2010), destabilization and withdrawal, 201-4; US patent application (2010), using Solomon Islanders’ samples, 200-1; US patent application (2010) made without Solomon Islanders’ consent, 200-1; US and Taiwan patent applications re. research on Atayal and Solomon Islanders, 165, 176, 179. See also Solomon Islands Kon-Tiki thesis, 98 Krishnan, E., 177 Kung Wen-chi, 83 Kunkel, L., 183 Kuomintang (KMT): Aborigines’ genes as signifiers of distinct Taiwanese identity, 6-8, 28-29; avoidance of Aboriginal sovereignty in speeches, 24; de facto One-China unification agenda, 28, 87; development of Taiwan and suppression of opposition, 19-20, 224n9; forced cultural assimilation measure toward Aborigines, 20, 26; martial law in Taiwan (1949-87), 20-21, 225n10; nationalization of Aboriginal territories, 20. 336m22; political support by Taiwanese Aborigines, 22; pro-China party, 22; unification agenda, 87 Lam, C.T., 117, 172 Latour, Bruno, 2, 171-72 Lea, Mariano, 156 Lea, Rod: abstract of warrior-gene paper, rhetoric and narrative structure, 148-50;

Index 267

article on warrior-gene controversy in New Zealand Medical Journal, 156-57; cause of warrior-gene controversy in New Zealand, 119, 216; effort to link Taiwan Aborigines and Maori, 149-50; recognition, reform, and redemption subnarrative in warrior-gene article in NZMJ, 157; translation of Maori genetics research disrupted by Maori resistance, 52, 83, 148; translation of warrior-gene research into transnational scientific circulation, 164. See also Maori warriorgene research; Maori warrior-gene research, destabilization of Lee Teng-hui, 88, 89-90. See also Taiwancentred identity project Li Shi-qi, 55-56 Liberty Times, 82, 112, 113-15 Lih Pao, 83 Lin, Jefferson, 219 Lin, T.Y., 56, 57, 77-78 Lin Ma-li: on ability to circulate samples to foreign researchers, 112; accusation against Chen S.J. of responsibility for Kavalan saliva sampling dispute, 116; accusation against Chen S.J. of violating Basic Law in research with PRC scientists, 116-18; article on, and defence of, percentage of Taiwan settlers with Aboriginal ancestry, 112-13, 116, 123; article labelling her as “repeat offender” against Aboriginal rights, 109-10; assertion that Taiwan settlers linked with Yueh, not Han Chinese, 112; collection and return of Kavalan saliva samples, 105-9; collective informed consent challenged as impediment to Aboriginal health, 114-16, 123, 221; confusion of Maori and Australian Aborigines, 102, 103; explanation of Kavalan ethics dispute as a misunderstanding, 107-8; interview in TVNZ documentary on Maori homeland, 138; lack of informed consent when collecting Aboriginal samples, 104; life and ideas central to articles re. Kavalan saliva samples, 107; media reports of her participation in press conference with MOFA, 102-3; on non-politicizing of genetics research on Aborigines, 100; participation in press conference with MOFA, 100; on Pingpu and Kavalan peoples being nearly extinct, 105, 120, 123; “pop star” of genetics research

scientists, 100; research into Taiwan Aborigines’ ancestral origins, 2; resented by Kavalan, 105; response to accusations of foreign use of genetic material, 111-12, 221; speaker at Austronesian-related conference, 92 Lu, Ru-band, 67, 68, 168, 215 Ludao, Mona, 6 Lyons, Scott Richard, 48 Ma Ying-jeou, 24, 27, 87, 227n21. See also Kuomintang (KMT) Mackay, George Leslie, 56, 90, 226n16 Mackay Memorial Hospital Transfusion Medicine Laboratory (TML): cultural identity genetic (suggested by hospital’s research), 94; epideictically defined values maintained after Kavalan ethics dispute, 114-15; genetics research distinguishing Taiwan Aborigines from people in mainland Asia, 93-96; genetics research involving Taiwan Aborigines, 91; highlevel international research assemblages with ethical implications, 119; Kavalan ethics dispute framed as a misunderstanding, not human rights violation, 107-8, 123; Kavalan saliva samples, informed consent violations in collecting, 105-7; Kavalan saliva samples returned and destroyed, 107, 218; news conference with Pingpu, 105; organizing properties of Aborigines’ genes response to Kavalan ethics dispute, 121(t); organizing properties attributed to Aborigines’ genes, 96; on percentage of settlers with Aboriginal genes, 112-13, 116, 123; on percentage of settlers with Aboriginal genes, organizing properties of genes, 122(t); Pingpu Aborigines with high levels of admixture with settlers, 94, 96; report re. Taiwan home of other Austronesian peoples, 87, 90, 95; revelation, reflection, and reform ritual in Kavalan ethics dispute, 108, 157; Taiwan Aborigines’ identities moulded to fit Taiwanese blood nationalist criteria, 124. See also Kavalan Aborigines Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure (George Andrews Production): China as anti-subject, 140; competence sub-narrative one, gaining authorizations and information, 133-34, 140-41; competence sub-narratives two to five (places visited on journey), 141-43; description,

268 Index

131; dissociation (spatial) from Taipei to Taiwan Aborigines territories, 142-43; DNA tests, revelation of results, 140, 14142; epideictic rhetoric used, 141-43; forensic rhetoric used, 140; manipulation/ commitment phases, and rhetoric/ syllogisms used, 131-32; metonymic relationship genetically, culturally, and in appearance, 141, 142-43; metonymic use of Taiwan Aborigines as ancestor figures, 143; performance phase, 143; “road movie” involving Maori and Samoan journey of discovery, 129, 164, 214; sanction phase, 143-44; Taiwan Aborigines seen as “cousins” to Maori and Samoans, 143, 214; used in Al Jazeera program, 132 “Made in Taiwan” (MIT) rhetorical figure, 126-38, 135 Mann, J.A., 85, 115 Maori: alcoholism genetic thesis, 161-62, 164; blood as sacred, 221, 222; Hawaiki, mythical Maori homeland, 97-98, 137; Lin Ma-li’s confusion of Maori and Australian Aboriginals, 102, 103; Maori system of schools developed, 45; percentage of New Zealand population, 161; progress under neoliberalism, 45; research on genetics of alcoholism, 16061; stories of ancestors arriving in seven waka, 139; strong position in society compared with Taiwan Aborigines, 160-61; Treaty of Waitangi with British Crown (1840), 21, 161 Maori homeland, Taiwan as: genetic links as basis for MOU between Taiwan and New Zealand, 125; “Made in Taiwan” rhetorical figure, 126-28, 135; Maori linkage with Aborigines through ADH alleles, 126; portrayal through translations of genetics research, 31, 126-27. See also Al Jazeera Witness special, “Made in Taiwan”; Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure (George Andrews Production); TVNZ Sunday program on Maori homeland Maori Party, 153-54, 160 Maori warrior-gene research: abstract of paper, rhetoric and narrative structure, 148-50; attribution of violence to Maori warrior gene, 31, 216; criticism re. invalid scientific question (manipulation phase), 151, 152(f); effort as well to link Taiwan

Aborigines and Maori, 149-50; efforts to restabilize research after criticisms, 155; gene’s relationship with risky behaviours of Maori, 150-51; MAO-A gene as risktaker gene, 149, 216; media coverage initially, 150-51; negative stereotypes in Once Were Warriors, 149, 153; racial differentiation between Maori and Caucasians, 149 Maori warrior-gene research, destabilization of: criticism of lack of Maori consent (competence phase), 152(f), 155, 159; criticism of lack of researchers’ fiduciary contract (commitment phase), 15255, 152(f), 158; criticism of warrior-gene research as possible legal defence (competence phase), 152(f), 155; criticism re. invalid scientific question (manipulation phase), 151, 152(f), 157-58; criticisms of contributing to racism, 152(f), 158; criticisms of lack of peer review, 152(f), 158; criticisms in representativeness of sample, 152(f), 157-58; criticisms in scientific journals, 156-60; media coverage initially, 150-51; media criticism, 151, 152-53, 154-55; parliamentarians’ and Maori Party criticism, 153-54; prevented remoulding MAO-A gene as MaoriTaiwan Aborigines link, 150; translation of genetic research disrupted, 52, 83, 148-49; undermining racist articulation of sovereignty and biopolitics, 221 McLean, Tamara, 150 Mead, Aroha, 154, 155, 221 media coverage/translation: Aborigines’ genetic predisposition to alcoholism and other diseases, 1-2, 26, 53-54, 75; alcoholism rates of “mountain Aborigines,” 54; Austronesian-related genetics research, 93-96; comparison of Han Chinese and Aborigines’ ability to metabolize alcohol, 53-54, 82-83; destabilization of Ko’s 2010 US patent application involving Solomon Islanders, 201-4; destabilization of Maori warrior-gene research (see Maori warrior-gene research, destabilization of); Han Chinese inability to easily metabolize alcohol, 53-54, 58, 81-82; KavalanTML-Lin ethics dispute over human rights violations, 106-7, 108-11; Lin’s assertion that Taiwan settlers linked with Yueh, not Han Chinese, 112; linkage of Maori and Taiwan Aborigines through

Index 269

alcohol metabolization genes, 126-27; MOFA’s attempt to politicize Taiwanese Aborigines’ link with Polynesians and Melanesians, 100-4, 120; on percentage of Aboriginal blood in Taiwan settlers, 112-13, 123; Taiwan as Maori homeland (see Al Jazeera Witness special, “Made in Taiwan”; Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure [George Andrews Production]; TVNZ Sunday program on Maori homeland); Taiwanese coverage of research into Taiwanese Aborigines’ link with Polynesians and Melanesians, 99-100; translation of science news releases, 97; translation of warrior-gene research, 164; Western translation of Taiwanese Aborigines’ link with Polynesians and Melanesians, 97-99, 120, 124 Medical Association of Indigenous Peoples Taiwan, 192, 233n16 Melanesians and Taiwanese Aborigines: MOFA’s attempt to politicize the link, 100-4, 120; Taiwanese Aborigines linked with Melanesians, not mainland Asian populations, 97-99; Taiwanese coverage of research into link, 99-100; Western translation of link, 97-99, 120, 124 Merriman, Tony, 157-58 metonymy: of Aborigines/Maori cultural practices, 135-36, 141, 143; Aborigines as corporeal links to incorporeal dead, 173, 214; Aborigines as corporeal manifestation of state of nature, 165; of appear­ance (Aborigines/Maori), 13739, 140, 142-43, 214; genes metonymic, passing down generations, 128, 135, 164, 214 Mill, C., 84 Mill, J.S., 47 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) (Taiwan): confusion of Maori and Australian Aborigines, 101-2; organizing properties of Aborigines’ genes in Trejaut paper, 121(t); political intent of press conference reported by media, 102-4; press conference to strengthen diplomatic status of Taiwan, using research re. distinct Aborigines’ genes, 100-1; press conference’s narrative structure and rhetoric, 100-1; translation failures to emphasize non-linkage of Aborigines’ genes to those in mainland China, 101-4, 120

Ministry of Maori Development (New Zealand), 125 Minsheng Daily, 54, 99 Moore v. the Regents of UCLA (California, 1990), 206-7 Munsterhjelm, Mark, 191-95, 201-4 Mutu, Margaret, 154 Nakajima, H., 55 Nanyang Siang Pau, 99 narrative schema, commitment phase: in 2005 US patent application re. gout in Atayal Aborigines, 180, 181; acceptance of proposed research, 59(f), 60-63, 70(t); in Al Jazeera documentary, 132; deductive and inductive practical syllogisms used, 38, 61, 70(t); deliberative rhetoric, 37-38, 59(f), 61, 62, 70(t), 212; epideictic rhetoric, 61, 62, 70(t); in Excellent Adventure documentary on Taiwan as Maori homeland, 131-32; as fiduciary contract, 152-55, 152(f), 158, 212; in press conference by MOFA, 101; project situated in transnational science and then local context, 38, 62-63; receiversubjects if project accepted, 37, 70(t); in TVNZ Sunday program on Taiwan as Maori homeland, 130 narrative schema, competence phase: in 2005 US patent application re. gout in Atayal Aborigines, 180, 181-86; classification of participants, 64-65, 70(t); deliberative rhetoric, 222; embedded sub-narratives, 38-39; epideictic rhetoric in results section, 67-68; forensic rhetoric used, 39, 59(f), 63-64, 212-13; gaining authorizations and funding, 59(f), 64, 70(t); inductive practical syllogism used in results section, 67-68, 70-71(t); materials and methodology section, 59(f), 63-64, 64-66, 70(t); obtaining informed consent of participants, 65-66, 70(t); in press conference by MOFA, 101; processing samples and results, 59(f), 63-64, 66-68, 71(t); sub-narrative one, gaining authorizations and information, in Al Jazeera documentary, 134-35; subnarrative one, gaining authorizations and information, in Excellent Adventure documentary, 133-34, 140; sub-narrative one, gaining authorizations and information, in TVNZ report, 132-33; subnarrative two, journey to Taiwan, in

270 Index

TVNZ report, 135-40; sub-narratives two to five, in Excellent Adventure documentary, 140-43 narrative schema, manipulation phase: in 2005 US patent application re. gout in Atayal Aborigines, 180, 181; in Al Jazeera documentary, 132; definition of problem and its significance, 33, 36-37, 59(f), 60, 70(t); epideictic rhetoric used, 33, 36-37, 59(f), 60, 70(t), 212, 222; in Excellent Adventure documentary on Taiwan as Maori homeland, 131; transnational science’s epideictic construction of problem as significant, 36-37, 49, 50(f), 59(f), 60-62, 70(t); in TVNZ Sunday program on Taiwan as Maori homeland, 130, 140 narrative schema, performance phase: in 2005 US patent application re. gout in Atayal Aborigines, 180, 186; in Al Jazeera documentary, 146; claim of having completed assignment, 39, 59(f), 68-69, 71(t); epideictic rhetoric, 68-69, 71(t), 213; in Excellent Adventure documentary, 143; inductive practical syllogisms used, 69, 71(t); in TVNZ Sunday program on Taiwan as Maori homeland, 139-40 narrative schema, sanction phase: in Al Jazeera documentary, 146; evaluation of scientific work, 40, 69, 71(t), 213; in Excellent Adventure documentary, 143-44; in TVNZ Sunday program on Taiwan as Maori homeland, 140 narrative schema in genetics research: actants, 36; criticism as threat to narrative, 42-43; functioning of scientific narratives, 42-43; genes’ organizing properties, 40-42; in Lin’s article on collective informed consent in Basic Law, 113-15; in Lin’s response to accusations of foreign use of genetic material, 111; for “Made in Taiwan” rhetorical figure, 12728; of “Made in Taiwan” rhetorical figure (see “Made in Taiwan” [MIT] rhetorical figure); mapping research disputes (scientists vs. Aborigines), 49-51, 50(f); in media coverage of MOFA’S press conference, 102-4; in MOFA’S press conference, 100-1; narratives rooted in transnational science, 50-51, 212, 213; in National Science Council’s framing of Kavalan ethics dispute as misunderstanding, 109; phases (see entries below beginning with

narrative schema); recognition, reform, and redemption sub-narrative in warriorgene controversy, 157; revelation, reflection, and reform sub-narrative in Kavalan ethics dispute, 108; rhetoric used (see rhetoric) National Genographic Project, 52, 118, 119, 228n7 National Geographic, 119 National Health Research Institute, 190, 192, 193, 197 National Science Council (NSC): article on need to protect genetics resources, 110-11; funding for gout research to Ko, 190; narrative schema framing Kavalan ethics dispute as misunderstanding, 109, 123; organizing properties of Aborigines’ genes response to Kavalan ethics dispute, 121(t) Nature, 178 necropolitics (thanatopolitics), 7, 210 neoliberalism: Aboriginal peoples’ contesting through “international Indigen­ ism,” 45-46; alcoholism as violation of neoliberal ascetic, 86; allocation of rights and obligations under, 45; application to human territoriality, 47; biotechnology rather than pure scientific research, 4748, 85-86; biotechnology sectors highly neoliberal, 175-76; emphasis on returns on investment in research, 208; Maori’s progress under, 45; media’s neoliberal translations of scientific research, 96-97; New Zealand’s neoliberalization since 1980s and TVNZ, 129; patent evaluation a reflection of neoliberal structure, 205; reorientation of scientific research toward marketplace, 97; social struggles in Taiwan, 174-76 Network of Indigenous Peoples Solomons (NIPS), 201-3 New York Times, 80, 169-70 New Zealand, 21, 129. See also entries beginning with Maori New Zealand on Air funding agency, 131 New Zealand Herald, 154-55, 156, 158-59 New Zealand Medical Journal, 151, 152(f), 156-58 New Zealand Press Association, 126 Ngele, Victor, 202, 203 Niezen, Ronald, 45 Niwa Maibut, 137, 143, 146 Novas, Carlos, 179, 215

Index 271

Nuremberg Code, 29 Nurse, Paul, 151, 152i O Le Siosiomaga Society, 201 Oefner, Peter, 172, 173 Olbrechts-Tyteca, L., 127, 147 Omaar, Rageh, 132, 134, 144-46 Once Were Warriors (novel and movie), 149, 153, 231n10 One-China principle: KMT’s de facto OneChina unification agenda, 28, 87; PRC’s sovereignty claim over Taiwan, 10-11, 12, 87-89; use of Austronesian homeland concept by Taiwanese Aborigines to contest, 28 Ong, Aihwa: concept of graduated sovereignty, 44, 223; on genetics research and technology of sovereignty, 4; on states’ logic of the exception in human territoriality, 47-48; on unpredictability of interactions between states and extended assemblages, 30-31 opium, 15-16, 224n5, 229n7; Second Opium War, 15, 72, 226n15 Osier, M., 60 Oxford Ancestors genetic testing service, 133-34 Paiwan Aborigines, 17-18, 21, 77, 117-18, 172 Pan, Jason, 119 Pan A-Yu, 106 Pandya B.J., 177 Pangcah (Ami) Aborigines: classification by “civility” by Japanese, 77; commercialization of genetic samples (see Coriell Cell Repositories [CCR] [Camden, New Jersey]; Stanford University); genetic linkages to Maori, 138; genetic samples provided to international projects, 11718, 119, 172-74, 215; stories re. origins in Taiwan, 11 Parkin, Chris, 158 Past Human Migrations in East Asia: Matching Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics, 92-93 patents: Ananda Chakrabarty Patent (1980), 206; breakdown in ethics review process, 204; for commercializing scientific research, 170; definition, 170-71; exclusionary powers and differentiated sovereignty zones, 171; for gout research (see gout); Moore case (US, 1990) on patents super-

seding rights of donors, 206-7; neoliberal structure examining applications, 205; Patent Act (US), 186; precedence over cellline donors’ rights, 205-7; racialization of patents, 171, 189; recourse by donors excluded in patent application process, 205; US Patent and Trademark Office’s constitutional mandate, 170; US Patent and Trademark Office’s non-concern with ethical status of samples, 205 People’s Daily, 112 Peopling of East Asia: Putting Together Archae­ology, Linguistics and Genetics, 92 Perelman, C., 127, 147 Perls, T.T., 183 Pharmacogenomics in Admixed Populations (Lea and Chambers), 164 Pingpu Aborigines: drinking and alcoholism under colonization, 55-56; Lin’s statement re. Pingpu being nearly extinct, 105, 120, 123; portrayal as having high levels of admixture with settlers, 94, 96; rallies for recognition during 2011 presidential election, 123-24; rejection of Lin’s 85 percent assertion re. Aboriginal genes in settlers, 122(t); Taiwanese refusal to recognize officially, 21 Pitama, Suzanne, 154 Poa, Nicola, 151, 152i Polynesians and Taiwanese Aborigines: MOFA’s attempt to politicize link, 100-4, 120; Taiwanese Aborigines linked with Polynesians, not mainland Asian populations, 97-99; Taiwanese coverage of research into link, 99-100; Trejaut’s research linking Taiwan Aborigines with Polynesians, not mainland peoples, 9496; Western translation of Taiwanese Aborigines’ link with Polynesians and Melanesians, 97-99, 120, 124 Presbyterian Church: Aboriginal translations of the Bible, 23; “liberation theology” re. Aborigines, 21, 23; missionary activities in Taiwan, 22-23, 90-91; possessor of type of graduated sovereignty in Aboriginal communities, 91; success at converting Aborigines, 23, 91 Press: criticism of lack of fiduciary contract in warrior-gene research, 152(f), 153; criticism of scientific question in warriorgene research, 151, 152(f); Maori Party’s leader’s comment on alcoholism genetic thesis, 162, 164

272 Index

Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 117 Public Library of Biology, 93, 124 Public Library of Science, 97-98 Puca, A.A., 183 Puyuma Aborigines, 21, 77 racism: anti-subject in Al Jazeera Witness special, “Made in Taiwan,” 132, 144-45, 163(t), 164; articles on racial differences in alcohol metabolization genes, 57-58, 61-62; criticisms of Ma’s comments re. opportunities, 27-28; criticisms of Maori warrior-gene research as contributing to racism, 152(f), 158; genetics research on Aborigines racist, 41, 52, 76, 83-86, 163(t); genetics research on Aborigines undermining claims re. group differences, 146, 214-15; from Han Chinese toward Aborigines, 20; ignored as factor in Aborigines’ alcoholism, 6, 26-27; marginalization of Aborigines as “living dead,” 84, 209; means for state to exercise sovereignty power, 84; as mediator between sovereignty and biopolitics, 44, 83-84; poverty, marginalization, and racism ignored, 6, 26-27, 85, 217; racialization of patents, 171, 189; racialized distinctions between Aborigines’ and settlers’ genes as creator of value, 165, 166; racialized hierarchical power relationship in genetics research, 51, 85, 123, 211, 215, 217; racist translation of Aborig­ inal peoples into living dead, 94; transnational science’s racially configured quest, 62, 85-86, 211; white population as racial norm in evaluative criteria, 189. See also genetic predisposition of Aborigines to alcoholism; gout; Maori warrior-gene research Radio Australia, 204 Rarere, Nathan, 131-32, 133-34. See also Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure (George Andrews Production) Rarotonga, 129, 134, 139, 141-42. See also Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure (George Andrews Production) receiver-subjects: in commitment phase (if project accepted), 37-38, 60-70(t); in competence phase, 38-39, 70(t); deliberative rhetoric in commitment phase,

37-38, 70(t); epideictic rhetoric in manipulation phase, 60, 70(t); epideictic rhetoric in performance phase, 39, 71(t); epideictic rhetoric in sanction phase, 40, 71(t); forensic rhetoric in competence phase, 39, 70(t); in manipulation phase with transnational science being the sender, 60, 70(t); in performance phase, 39, 68-69, 71(t); protagonists in Made in Taiwan documentary, 131; in sanction phase, 40, 69, 71(t); transnational science the sender of the quest, 36-37, 59(f), 60-62, 70(t), 84, 86, 213 Report on the Control of the Aborigines in Formosa (Japanese government), 79-80 Return Our Lands Movement, 21 Reuters’ news agency, 98-99 rhetoric: amplification technique, 130, 131, 132; anaphora amplification technique, 131, 136, 137; for articulation and stabilization of scientific research, 35-36; continuous-tense verb usage, 130, 134; “Made in Taiwan” rhetorical figure re. Maori/Aborigines link, 126-28, 135; in media translation of research re. Aborigines’ link with Polynesians and Melanesians, 97-99; part of framework analyzing research, 9; in press conference by MOFA, 100-1; projects described in different ways to appeal to diverse agents, 33-35; for translating organizing narratives, 32-33. See also Maori homeland, Taiwan as; syllogisms; entries beginning below with rhetoric rhetoric, deliberative: in 2005 US patent application re. gout in Atayal Aborigines, 181; in Aborigines’ resistance narratives, 222; advocating future courses of action and indicating potential significance, 9; in Al Jazeera Witness documentary, 132; in commitment phase of Excellent Adven­ ture documentary, 131-32; in commitment phase of research, 37-38, 61, 62, 70(t), 212; involvement of expediency and honour, 35; in TVNZ Sunday program on Taiwan as Maori homeland, 136, 137 rhetoric, epideictic: in 2005 US patent application re. gout in Atayal Aborigines, 181, 182; in Aborigines’ resistance nar­ ratives, 222; in Al Jazeera Witness documentary, 132, 135, 146; in commitment phase of research, 61, 62, 70(t); in

Index 273

competence phase of Excellent Adventure documentary on Maori homeland, 14142; in competence phase of research (results section), 67-68; in conference proceedings, 92; in finding cures for disease superseding rights of donors, 206; in Kavalan fight against informed consent violations, 105, 221; in manipulation phase of Excellent Adventure documentary on Maori homeland, 131; in manipulation phase of research, 33, 36-37, 59(f), 60, 70(t), 212; in MOFA’s press conference, 101; in news releases re. genetics research, 97; in performance phase, 6869, 71(t), 213; praise and blame, 35; in presenting gout research as Taiwan’s “gift to the world,” 178-79, 193, 197; revealing importance of research that deals with praise and blame, 9; in sanction phase of Excellent Adventure documentary on Maori homeland, 143-44; in sanction phase of research, 40, 69, 71(t); in TVNZ Sunday program on Taiwan as Maori home­land, 130, 132, 135-36, 140 rhetoric, forensic: in competence phase of research, 39, 59(f), 63-64, 70-71(t), 21213; in competence phases of Excellent Adventure documentary on Maori homeland, 140-43; dealing with how research was conducted, 9, 64-65; presenting justness of past events, 35, 63-64; in TVNZ Sunday program on Taiwan as Maori homeland, 139 Rin, H., 56, 57, 77-78 Road to Democracy: Taiwan’s Pursuit of Identity (Lee), 88 Rose, Nikolas, 168, 179, 215, 232n8 Rudman, Brian, 154-55 Rukai Aborigines, 11 Said, Edward, 86 Samoa, 129, 132, 134. See also Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure (George Andrews Production) Schmitt, Carl, 46 Science, 148 Scientific American, 28 scientists and genetics research: Aboriginal peoples seen as premodern, 5-6, 29, 165, 210; Aborigines’ criticism of research framed as irrational/unfounded, 48; on Aborigines’ inability to take responsibility and their need of rescue, 26, 47, 88,

179, 196-97, 204-5, 215-17; Aborigines’ rejection as violation of sovereignty and dignity, 33; assumption of Indigenous peoples’ homogeneity due to isolation, 5-6, 63, 65, 67-68, 74; DSM criteria used to diagnose alcoholism, 64-65, 168; ethical and legal violations of Aborigines’ rights and dignity, 2, 8-9, 33, 66; no assumption of responsibility for negative effects, 83; prerogative powers and arrogation of sovereignty, 46, 85-86, 115, 120, 193-94, 200-1, 205-6, 219-20; racialized hierarchical power relationship with subjects, 85, 211, 215, 217; rhetoric used to articulate and stabilize, 35-36; scientists as representatives for Aborigines, 40, 48, 66, 69, 96, 118, 123, 208; transnational science as “sender of the quest,” 36-37, 59(f), 60-62, 70(t), 84, 213. See also genetic predisposition of Aborigines to alcoholism, scientific articles on; genetics research; genetics research on Aborigines The Scotsman, 98-99 Sediq Aborigines, 18 settler states: concept of Aboriginal sovereignty and, 21, 24; funding and authorization of scientists in competence phase, 64, 70(t); importance in global networks, 4; incorporating Indigenous peoples to eternalize the state, 5-6; institutions determining those whose rights can be violated, 4; rights of genetics researchers vs. those of Aboriginal peoples, 52; as time-spaces wherein advances in transnational science can be realized, 61; trans­formation of sovereignty due to transnational capitalism, 4. See also Mackay Memorial Hospital Transfusion Medicine Laboratory (TML); Maori warrior-gene research; sovereignty, Taiwanese; Taiwan-centred identity project The Seven Daughters of Eve (Sykes), 144, 231n8 Shea, Elizabeth, 128 Sheard, Cynthia M., 36, 61 Shepherd, John Robert, 56 Shih Cheng-Feng, 209 Sinorama Magazine, 53-54 Siraya Aborigines, 13, 55 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, 64, 165 Solomon Islands: Australian criticism of Taiwanese involvement in islands’ politics, 198-99; economic and political

274 Index

history of islands, 197-99; informed consent for Ko’s research on Solomon Islanders’ samples, 199; Ko’s apologies to Solomon Islanders, 202; Ko’s collection of samples in 2006, 199; Ko’s “protection” of Indigenous peoples from “white people’s” research, 200; medical training and facilities provided by Taiwan, 199; repatriation of Solomon Islanders samples, 203; Taiwan’s diplomatic position and cancelling of 2010 US patent application (2010), 201-4; US patent application (2010), destabilization and withdrawal, 201-4; US patent application (2010), using Solomon Islanders’ samples, 200-1; US patent application (2010) made without Solomon Islanders’ consent, 200-1 Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corpora­ tion, 201 Solomon Islands Health and Medical Services’ Ethics and Research Committee, 199 Solomon Times, 201 Sommer, M., 147 South China Morning Post, 102 sovereignty: biopolitics and (see biopolitics); graduated sovereignty of Presbyterian Church, 91; graduated sovereignty and scientific networks, 44-45, 211, 223; racism and (see racism); treaties between settler states and Indigenous peoples, 21 sovereignty, Aboriginal: 228 Rebellion (1947) for autonomy, 22; 1999 agreement with government, 24; Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines, 23-24; concept of Aborigines as original peoples, 23-24; fear of settlers becoming living dead, 221; fight for democracy, 21; increasing acceptance of, 2-3, 24; neoliberalism contested, 45-46; political parties, support for, 22; Presbyterian missionaries and “liberation theology,” 22-23; Return Our Lands Movement, 21; rhetorical sovereignty as component of Aboriginal resistance, 48; right of self-representation key element, 44-45, 48; translation of concepts to gain agency in political relationships, 23-25; used to reject PRC claims over Taiwan, 24 sovereignty, Taiwanese: Aboriginal sovereignty used to reject PRC claims over Taiwan, 24; Aborigines’ genes as signifiers

of distinct Taiwanese identity, 2, 7-8, 2829, 88-89, 93-95; “Go South” policy of Lee administration, 89-90; international recognition of PRC as sole government of China, 11, 20-21, 88-89; nationalists’ assertion of direct connections to ancient peoples, 11-12, 93-96; nationalists’ claim of Taiwanese distinctness from China, 1011, 88-90; “New Taiwanese” concept, 88; One-China principle of PRC and KMT, 10, 11-12, 87-89; prerogative powers extended outside Taiwan in Austronesian zone, 200; shift from One-China principle to Taiwan-centred identity under Lee (1990s), 28; “sub-imperial” region of influence (Austronesia), 195-96, 200; Taiwan-centred identity project, 28, 87, 88-90, 172; use of Austronesian homeland concept, 28. See also diplomatic relations of Taiwan; genetics research on Aborigines and Taiwanese sovereignty sovereignty, technology of: creation of “new political spaces,” 4, 209; definition, 209; determining those whose rights can be violated, 4, 209; differential allocation of rights and obligations, 4, 45-46, 52, 8586, 209-11, 220; genetics research as, 85, 209-11, 212; genetics research imposing order on state of nature, 210-11; racialization of patents and, 171 Stanford University: Atayal and Ami Aborig­ ines as corporeal links to incorporeal dead, 174; Atayal and Ami Aborigines’ significant role in 2005 patent, 173-74; centre of accumulation, 171-72; holder of patents (2002, 2005) involving Atayal and Ami genetic samples, 166, 172-74; international (US, China, and Taiwan) assemblages of genes for research, 117, 119; Stanford-Taiwan Aboriginal con­ nection, 172 Star, Susan Leigh, 33 State-Owned Enterprises Act (New Zealand, 1986), 129 Statement of Principles of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples, 23 Straits Times, 112 Sun, B., 117, 172 Surui Indigenous peoples, 169 Sydney Morning Herald, 150-51 Sykes, Bryan: on Al Jazeera Witness documentary, 132, 134, 214-15; appearance on Al Jazeera Witness documentary, 132,

Index 275

134, 144-46; author of The Seven Daughters of Eve, 144; genetic purity a myth, 145; genetic testing for Excellent Adventure documentary, 131, 134-35; metonymic ascribing of materiality to genes, 145; ridiculing racism, 145 syllogisms: in commitment phase of nar­ rative schema, 38, 61, 63, 70(t), 212; in competence phase of MOFA’S press conference, 101; in competence phase of narrative schema, 67-68, 70-71(t), 212-13; deductive practical syllogisms, 38, 61, 63, 212-13; importance in narrative schema reporting genetics research, 212; inductive practical syllogisms, 38, 39, 67-68, 69, 212-13; in manipulation and commitment phases of Excellent Adventure documentary on Maori homeland, 131; in manipulation and commitment phases of TVNZ Sunday program on Maori home­ land, 130; in manipulation phase of narrative schema, 70(t), 212; in performance phase of narrative schema, 39, 69, 71(t); in sanction phase of narrative schema, 40, 71(t); in US patent application (2005) re. gout in Atayal Aborigines, narrative structure, 182; use in forensic rhetoric, 35; use in narrative schema of scientific papers, 36, 42-43 Tai, Terence Hua, 30 Taipei, Taiwan, 136-37 Taipei Times, 101, 104, 112 Taiwan: Chinese colonial period (16241895), 13, 15-17, 18, 25; Chinese immigration (Hoklo, Hakkanese, Han), 15; Dutch colonization (1624-1895), 13, 15, 55; geography and geographic location, 10, 11(f); Japanese colonial period, 17-19, 25-26; Kuomintang colonial period, 19-20; legislation on human research subjects, 8, 200, 218-20; as Maori homeland (see Maori homeland, Taiwan as); modern infrastructure during Japanese colonial regime, 18-19; opium trade, 16, 73n229; possibility of being a Pacific island, 12; Treaty of Tianjin and trade with Westerners, 15-16, 72, 226n15. See also camphor trade Taiwan Aboriginal Study Project (TASP): article on genetic vulnerability to alcohol and governance implications, 80-81; article on racial differences in alcohol

metabolization genes, 61-62; description, 64-65, 77; paper on suicide among Atayal and Ami, 78; research mandate, 77; role in casting Aborigines as dysfunctional, 77-78 Taiwan Aborigines: A Genetic Study of Tribal Variations (Chai), 55 Taiwan Association for Human Rights, 195, 202, 203 Taiwan Biobank: Aboriginal resistance to, 30, 66; cornerstone of biotech development plans, 8, 30; government’s failure to consult with Aborigines, 8-9; Kavalan fight re. saliva samples linked with violations re. Biobank, 107 Taiwan Genome Sciences CheckYourGenes (mail-order test), 54 Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV), 19394, 195. See also Aboriginal News Weekly Magazine Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO), 207 Taiwan-centred identity project: discontinued under President Ma, 87; Lee’s call for academic assistance re. Aborigines/ Indigenous peoples links, 172; state ideology under President Lee, 28, 88-90. See also diplomatic relations of Taiwan; sovereignty, Taiwanese Taiwanese nationalists. See sovereignty, Taiwanese Takekoshi Yosaburo, 18-19 Taroko Aborigines, 119 Thomasson, H.R.: authorization from review boards in articles, 64; classification for diagnosis of alcoholism, 65; epideictic rhetoric in competence phase of his paper, 67; epideictic rhetoric in manipulation phase of his paper, 60; on genetic predispositions of Aborigines, 75; identification of Aborigines as genetic isolates, 63, 65; research used later to link Maori and Aborigines, 126 Time, 126 Tissue Antigens, 112 Tokugawa Shogunate, 13 Tovosia, Silent, 201 Transfusion Medicine Laboratory (TML). See Mackay Memorial Hospital Trans­ fusion Medicine Laboratory (TML) translation of genetics research: Aboriginal genes translated into Taiwanese nationalist discourses, 2, 7-8, 28-29, 88-89, 93-95;

276 Index

Aboriginal peoples into objects, “Aborig­ inal genes,” 48, 62, 63, 69, 119, 168-69, 207-8; Aborigines’ translation of concepts to gain agency in political relationships, 23-25; alcoholism-related genes as to distinguish Han Chinese from Aborigines, 53-55; allowing for hierarchies, 34-35; equivalencies established between projects, 34; of genes (see genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties); genetics research as technology of sovereignty, translated to fit local context, 85, 209-10; by media (see media coverage/translation); racism’s translation of Aboriginal peoples into living dead, 94; same event taking on different meanings for different agents, 34; translation failures by MOFA to emphasize non-linkage of Aborigines’ genes to those in mainland China, 101-4, 120; transnational scientific quest into local context, 38, 62-63; use of rhetoric to translate organizing narratives about genes, 32-35. See also genes, Aboriginal, organizing properties; narrative schema in genetics research transnational networks: Aboriginal sovereignty mobilized in Aborigines’ relations with, 21; graduated sovereignty and organization of networks, 44-45; importance of settler states, 4; narrative schema (see narrative schema in genetics research); sovereign decisions re. rights attributions the outcome of interactions among, 30-31. See also transnational science transnational networks, Aboriginal: destabilization of HGDP, 4, 33, 43-44, 52; destabilization of Maori warrior-gene research, 151-60, 218; forcing withdrawal of US patent applications (see Ko Yingchin); Helsinki Declaration, 29-30, 120, 217; Human Subjects Research Act (Taiwan, 2011), 219-20; importance in contesting violations of sovereignty and rights, 4, 49; in international forums and legal instruments to strengthen Aborig­ inal rights, 45-46; political networks, 217-20; TML returning Kavalan saliva samples, 107, 218; UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 217; UN Working Group on Indigenous Popula­ tions, 4, 21, 29. See also Kavalan Aborigines transnational science: Aboriginal genes as organizing concepts the bridge from

local to transnational science, 51; Aboriginal participants translated into standardized subject with DSM diagnoses, 65; assessment of quest’s fulfillment (sanction phase), 69, 71(t), 84; carrying out of the quest (competence phase), 6465, 70(t); contract with sender-receivers (commitment phase), 37-38, 59(f), 6063, 70(t), 152-55; genes’ organizing abilities in research, 40-42, 51; graduated sovereignty concept and, 44-45; narrative schema (see narrative schema in genetics research); premise re. alcoholism having genetic and environmental factors, 60-62, 84-85; project situated in transnational science and then local context, 38, 62-63; racially configured quest for scientists, 62, 85-86, 211; rights of genetics researchers vs. those of Aboriginal peoples, 52; scientists’ power to determine the research question, 85-86; scientists’ prerogative powers, 46, 85-86, 115, 120, 193-94, 200-1, 205-6, 219-20; “sender of the quest” to scientists (manipulation phase), 36-38, 59(f), 60-62, 70(t), 84, 86, 15253; sovereignty and genetics research, 46-48; universal norms articulated in manipulation phase, 38, 182. See also receiver-subjects Treaty of Tianjin (1858), 15-16, 72, 226n15 Trejaut, J.A.: on Ami Aborigines’ genetic linkages to Maori, 138; news release using epideictic rhetoric re. research, 97; organizing properties attributed to Aborigines’ genes, 96, 121(t); on origin of Austronesian migration in Taiwan, 95; research linking Taiwan Aborigines with Polynesians, not mainland peoples, 9496; Taiwanese media coverage of research, 99-100; Western media translations of research, 97-99, 124 Truku Aborigines, 18 Tsai Shih-feng, 190-92, 192-95 Tsou Aborigines, 22 Turia, Tariana, 153, 162, 164 Turner, Mark, 127 TV New Zealand, 93, 156 TVNZ Sunday program on Maori homeland: Aborigines in Taiwan associated with nature (purity), 136, 214; China as the anti-subject, 130; Chinese in Taiwan associated with modernity (pollution), 136, 214; commitment phase and

Index 277

rhetoric used, 130; competence subnarrative one, gaining scientists’ authorizations and information, 132-33; competence sub-narrative two, journey to Taiwan, 135-40; description, 129; dissociation (genetic or appearance) of Chinese in Taiwan from Aborigines, 137-38, 214; dissociation (spatial and temporal) of Chinese in Taiwan from Aborigines, 136-37, 138, 164, 214; Kaiwais’ verification of Aborigines/Maori similarities, 136, 138-39, 139-40; “Made in Taiwan” report on genetic findings re. Maori and Aborigines, 128-29; manipulation phase and rhetoric/syllogisms used, 130; metonymy of appearance and culture (Aborigines/Maori), 135-36, 13739, 140; performance phase and rhetoric used, 139-40; rhetoric used in program, 130, 132, 135-36, 137, 139; sanction phase and rhetoric used, 140; Taiwan Aborigines functioning as ancestral living dead, 135, 164, 214; transnational science space with return to NZ, 139; transnational science space with visit to TML, 138; trip to Taiwan described using epideictic rhetoric, 135-36; trip to Taiwan to find Maori homeland, 135-40 UN Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 217 Underhill, Peter, 92, 117, 172-73 United Daily News, 106-7, 193-95, 203 United Nations and statement by Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines on alcoholism, 56 United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations, 4, 21, 29 United States: government patent re. research on Indigenous peoples without their consent, 4; Moore case (US, 1990) on patents superseding rights of donors, 206-7. See also Coriell Cell Repositories (CCR) (Camden, New Jersey); Stanford University Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 45

University of Arizona, 48-49 US National Institutes of Health, 167, 194 US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO): constitutional mandate, 170; definition of patent, 170-71; ethical status of genetics research samples not the USPTO’s concern, 205; recourse by donors their burden, 205; Stanford University patents (2002, 2005), 172-74; white population as racial norm in evaluative criteria, 189 Vahia, Grammie, 201-3, 204 Vanuatu, 129, 134, 142, 145-46. See also Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure (George Andrews Production) Victorious, 161 Vita Genomics, 176 Volosinov, V.N., 38 Wang Hsiao-wen, 184 warrior-gene research. See Maori warriorgene research; Maori warrior-gene research, destabilization of Watan Baser, 192-93 Wells, Spencer, 5, 41 Wensley, D., 159 Whitt, L.A., 44 Whyte, Adele, 131, 132-33, 139 Williams, Martin, 103 Wong Chi-huey, 204 World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, 29-30 Wushe Uprising (1930), 6, 18, 19 Yami Aborigines, 118, 172 Yatauyungana, Uyongu (Kao Yi-sheng), 22 Yu-Shan Presbyterian Seminary, 23 Zapatistas (Mexico), 45 Zhu Y., 177 Zhuo Ya-xiong, 110-11

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