Indigenous Media & Sovereignty in Taiwan
Founded in 2005, Taiwan Indigenous Television is the first Indigenous television station in Asia, a ground-breaking national media network created by, for, and about Taiwan’s diverse Austronesian Indigenous groups. My talk will offer an overview of Indigenous media production in Taiwan, focusing on the relationship between political and visual sovereignty. In a contested media environment where multiple stakeholders seek to utilize narratives of Indigeneity, I look at how TITV producers develop an alternative counter-public space to Taiwan’s mainstream media world, representing Indigenous lives on and off-screen. I will also share some of my experiences in fieldwork and collaborative writing, thinking through questions of accountability and decolonization in practice. Throughout the talk I will screen content from Indigenous Taiwanese media producers, including television and film excerpts, music videos, performance art, and drag shows.
Biography
Eliana Ritts is an anthropology PhD Candidate at NYU, working at the intersection of media, sovereignty, and politics of representation. She is currently writing her dissertation on Indigenous media production in Taiwan, drawing on two years of fieldwork with Taiwan Indigenous Television. Alongside her dissertation research she is involved in media production and curation, and served on the selection committee for the 2021 Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival. In 2019 she produced and directed Tea for Taiwan, a documentary short that follows three generations of Taiwanese-American activists in New York City.
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