Lifestyle
In the battle over identity, a centuries-old issue looms in Taiwan: hunting
Teyra Yudaw (left) and his daughter, Ciwang Teyra, are members of Taiwan’s Indigenous Truku tribe.
An Rong Xu for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
An Rong Xu for NPR
Teyra Yudaw (left) and his daughter, Ciwang Teyra, are members of Taiwan’s Indigenous Truku tribe.
An Rong Xu for NPR
TAIWAN — Ciwang Teyra grew up in Hualien County, on the eastern edge of the island of Taiwan, where winding roads snake around the edge of mountains and the Pacific Ocean glistens down below.
She was raised in the Indigenous Truku tribe and can recall leaving Hualien County for the first time and encountering Han Chinese people who had never met an Indigenous person before. They would ask her ignorant questions like, “Did you ride a wild boar to get to school?” or refer to her by a derogatory term in Mandarin that roughly translates to “barbarian.”
When Ciwang looks back at those memories now, she can laugh. But it was this kind of discrimination that led to her work: She is a professor of social work at National Taiwan University, where she focuses on the historical trauma Indigenous people face in Taiwan.
Ciwang Teyra says her dream has always been for the island of Taiwan to be more inclusive.
An Rong Xu for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
An Rong Xu for NPR
Ciwang Teyra says her dream has always been for the island of Taiwan to be more inclusive.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Her research has found that because of centuries of colonial oppression, Truku people suffer immense mental health consequences. Her people, she says, did not historically have substance abuse problems, increasing suicide rates or increasing incidents of domestic violence. Now, they do.
Taiwan is an island that has passed through many colonial hands over the last 400 years ago, from the Dutch to the Qing dynasty, the Japanese and, in the 1940s, the Nationalists who fled from mainland China to Taiwan.
These days, the Indigenous people of Taiwan are continuing their fight for inclusion and acceptance, in part through their struggle to regain hunting rights.
The question of identity hangs over Taiwan
Waves of colonization have inflicted centuries of violence upon Taiwan’s Indigenous people, forcing them out of their homes from near the tops of the mountains to the foothills below, and diluting their languages.
Taiwan has 16 official tribes, and while the current government has invested in protecting Indigenous languages — in contrast to language suppression and assimilation policies in place during Taiwan’s martial law era — long-standing perceptions prevail on the island.
The mountains that are part of Taroko National Park.
An Rong Xu for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
An Rong Xu for NPR
The mountains that are part of Taroko National Park.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Ciwang’s father, Teyra Yudaw, is a prominent activist among the Truku tribe. He says, “A lot of average Taiwanese people would say to me, ‘You’re Indigenous — you’re not Taiwanese.’ I say, ‘Because I’m Indigenous, I am a real Taiwanese person.’”
Identity is on the minds of most people on this island, which is located within sight of mainland China’s eastern border. The Chinese government has been intensifying its military presence in the Taiwan Strait in recent years, threatening an invasion if it is provoked.
How a presidential candidate would handle cross-strait tensions was a top issue for many voters before the recent presidential election. Taiwanese voters made history on Jan. 13 by electing the incumbent party for a third term — a party that considers Taiwan separate from China.
Teyra Yudaw feels Taiwan’s Indigenous people have become second-class citizens.
An Rong Xu for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
An Rong Xu for NPR
Teyra Yudaw feels Taiwan’s Indigenous people have become second-class citizens.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Today, the political leaders of this island and much of the populace seek to carve out an identity separate from mainland China. A growing majority of Taiwan’s population identifies as solely “Taiwanese” today rather than “Chinese,” according to research by the Pew Research Center.
So the questions of whom Taiwan belongs to and what it means to be Taiwanese confront the people of this island frequently — particularly the Indigenous people, who make up about 2% of the island’s population.
Teyra, who wears a near-permanent smile on his face, makes his living running a bed-and-breakfast in Hualien County these days, but his life’s work is centered on advocating for Indigenous rights and broadening education about their culture and history.
The Pacific Ocean can be seen from the foot of Taroko National Park.
An Rong Xu for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
An Rong Xu for NPR
The Pacific Ocean can be seen from the foot of Taroko National Park.
An Rong Xu for NPR
He meets regularly with Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, as part of an Indigenous advisory council, and while he acknowledges that she is the first president to have formally apologized to the Indigenous people for centuries of “pain and mistreatment,” he thinks gestures can go only so far.
“We have become second-class citizens,” he says. “Even though our feet are planted on this land, we are not allowed to manage our own affairs. We are wanderers on our own land.”
Among the affairs Teyra would like for Truku people to manage on their own: hunting. The practice is central to the traditional Truku way of life. Yet, like so many other rights the Truku hold dear, hunting has been restricted by the Taiwanese government in recent years.
How hunting rights became a flashpoint
When Teyra was a child, he went into the depths of the mountains for 42 days with Truku elders. They taught him to maintain the trails and tend to the wild bees, and they told him stories of their ancestors.
Young Teyra learned how he could help maintain the equilibrium of the ecosystem. And at the end of the journey, his elders taught him to hunt a goat. Teyra, now 70 years old, looks back on that experience and explains that for the Truku, “Hunting is not just about killing animals — it’s about protecting the land, about protecting the mountains.”
Slin Yuki (left) and Masaw Busin demonstrate their hunting routine in the Taroko area of Hualien County.
An Rong Xu for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
An Rong Xu for NPR
Slin Yuki (left) and Masaw Busin demonstrate their hunting routine in the Taroko area of Hualien County.
An Rong Xu for NPR
For thousands of years, the Indigenous people of Taiwan hunted without interference. Then, when colonization began in the 1600s, the rights of Indigenous people to live and hunt on their ancestral land began to be stripped away, bit by bit.
Today, Teyra considers the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan) yet another colonizer taking away their rights to hunt and, ultimately, to function as an autonomous, self-governing community.
“Every colonizer is the same to us. They all came to subjugate us,” he says.
Indigenous hunters are barred from killing protected species, are required to use certain kinds of traps and guns and, until recently, were required to ask the authorities for special permission that involved reporting which kinds of animals a hunter planned to target and how many.
Truku people can now apply to undergo training that grants them licenses to hunt in certain areas, but their ancestral territory is still restricted to them because it is now a national park. Truku hunters like elder Low Shi consider such restrictions offensive.
Truku hunter Low Shi says Indigenous people have long been the caretakers of Taiwan’s land.
An Rong Xu for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
An Rong Xu for NPR
Truku hunter Low Shi says Indigenous people have long been the caretakers of Taiwan’s land.
An Rong Xu for NPR
“We don’t need the government to regulate the way we hunt because we already regulate ourselves,” he says. “For example, we don’t hunt during mating season. We hunt in a way that preserves the balance of nature.”
Environmental activists have argued against loosening hunting restrictions, saying wildlife must be protected, but people like Low Shi point out that Indigenous people have been caretakers of Taiwan’s land for thousands of years and that their ancestral knowledge must be trusted and respected.
The road to healing
Ciwang Teyra has applied academic research to uphold what her father has been fighting for, saying that restoring hunting rights is one step toward healing.
“If we are able to practice hunting, we are allowed to follow our elders, we can see intergenerational relationship building,” she says. “If we are able to practice hunting culture without any worry about legal impact, then we can heal.”
The mountains that are part of Taroko National Park.
An Rong Xu for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
An Rong Xu for NPR
The mountains that are part of Taroko National Park.
An Rong Xu for NPR
The road to healing from centuries of abuse is likely to be complex and long. Ciwang and her father, Teyra, are both glad to see Indigenous languages and culture being taught in some schools across Taiwan now. And they see hope in future administrations continuing to work with Indigenous people to give them back their land and the autonomy they seek.
Ciwang says her dream has always been for the island to be more inclusive. It is a great irony to her father that the people who were in Taiwan first even have to seek inclusion. But he adds: “This land belongs to people who understand its history begins with Indigenous people. As long as you love this land and you recognize that history, then you are a friend of the Indigenous people of Taiwan.”
A screenshot from George Mélière’s Gugusse et l’Automate. The pioneering French filmmaker’s 1897 short, which likely features the first known depiction of a robot on film, was thought lost until it was found among a box of old reels that had belonged to a family in Michigan and restored by the Library of Congress.
The Frisbee Collection/Library of Congress
hide caption
toggle caption
The Frisbee Collection/Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has found and restored a long-lost silent film by Georges Méliès.
The famed 19th century French filmmaker is best known for his groundbreaking 1902 science fiction adventure masterpiece Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon).
The 45-second-long, one-reel short Gugusse et l’Automate – Gugusse and the Automaton – was made nearly 130 years ago. But the subject matter still feels timely. The film, which can be viewed on the Library of Congress’ website, depicts a child-sized robot clown who grows to the size of an adult and then attacks a human clown with a stick. The human then decimates the machine with a hammer.
In an Instagram post, Library of Congress moving image curator Jason Evans Groth said the film represents, “probably the first instance of a robot ever captured in a moving image.” (The word “robot” didn’t appear until 1921, when Czech dramatist Karel Čapek coined it in his science fiction play R.U.R..)
“Today, many of us are worried about AI and robots,” said archivist and filmmaker Rick Prelinger, in an email to NPR. “Well, people were thinking about robots in 1897. Very little is new.”
A long journey
Groth said the film arrived in a box last September from a donor in Michigan, Bill McFarland. “Bill’s great grandfather, William Frisbee, was a person who loved technology,” Groth said. “And in the late 19th century, must have bought a projector and a bunch of films and decided to drive them around in his buggy to share them with folks in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York.”
McFarland didn’t know what was on the 10 rusty reels he dropped off at the Library of Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va. A Library article about the discovery describes the battered, pre-World War I artifacts as having been, “shuttled around from basements to barns to garages,” and that they, “could no longer be safely run through a projector,” owing to their delicate condition. “The nitrate film stock had crumbled to bits on some; other strips were stuck together,” the article said. It was a lab technician in Michigan who suggested McFarland contact the Library of Congress.
“The moment we set our eyes on this box of film, we knew it was something special,” said George Willeman, who heads up the Library’s nitrate film vault, in the article.
Willeman’s team carefully inspected the trove of footage, which also contained another well-known Méliès film, Nouvelles Luttes extravagantes (The Fat and Lean Wrestling Match) and parts of The Burning Stable, an early Thomas Edison work. With the help of an external expert, they identified the reel as having been created by Méliès because it features a star painted on a pedestal in the center of the screen – the logo for Méliès Star Film Company.
A pioneering filmmaker
Méliès was one of the great pioneers of cinema. The scene in which a rocket lands playfully in the eye of Méliès’ anthropomorphic moon in Le Voyage dans la Lune is one of the most famous moments in cinematic history. And he helped to popularize such special effects as multiple exposures and time-lapse photography.
This moment from George Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) is considered to be one of the most famous in cinematic history.
George Méliès/Public Domain
hide caption
toggle caption
George Méliès/Public Domain
Presumed lost until the Library of Congress’s discovery, Gugusse et L’Automate loomed large in the imaginations of science fiction and early cinema buffs for more than a century. In their 1977 book Things to Come: An Illustrated History of the Science Fiction Film, authors Douglas Menville and R. Reginald described Gugusse as possibly being, “the first true SF [science fiction] film.”
“While it may seem that no more discoveries remain to be made, that’s not the case,” said Prelinger of the work’s reappearance. “Here’s a genuine discovery from the early days of film that no one anticipated.”
Joshua Jackson
I Got the Eye of the Tiger!!!
Published
BACKGRID
Joshua Jackson may have picked up a thing or two from “Karate Kid: Legends” … we got video of him going H.A.M. in a boxing gym with a trainer.
Watch the video … the 47-year-old actor ditched his shirt for the workout, really working up a sweat as he bobbed and weaved in the ring while throwing in some pretty impressive jabs!
He later goes to work solo on a speed bag like an old pro.
Joshua has publicly said that starring in “Karate Kid: Legends” in the role of a former boxer was a dream for him, but there’s no word on whether he’s training for another role or just really fell in love with boxing.
Either way … you’re looking great, Joshua!
Tracy Morgan, left, and Daniel Radcliffe star in The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins.
Scott Gries/NBC
hide caption
toggle caption
Scott Gries/NBC
Tracy Morgan, as a presence, as a persona, bends the rules of comedy spacetime around him.
Consider: He’s constitutionally incapable of tossing off a joke or an aside, because he never simply delivers a line when he can declaim it instead. He can’t help but occupy the center of any given scene he’s in — his abiding, essential weirdness inevitably pulls focus. Perhaps most mystifying to comedy nerds is the way he can take a breath in the middle of a punchline and still, somehow, land it.
That? Should be impossible. Comedy depends on, is entirely a function of, timing; jokes are delicate constructs of rhythms that take time and practice to beat into shape for maximum efficiency. But never mind that. Give this guy a non-sequitur, the nonner the better, and he’ll shout that sucker at the top of his fool lungs, and absolutely kill, every time.
Well. Not every time, and not everywhere. Because Tracy Morgan is a puzzle piece so oddly shaped he won’t fit into just any world. In fact, the only way he works is if you take the time and effort to assiduously build the entire puzzle around him.
Thankfully, the makers of his new series, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, understand that very specific assignment. They’ve built the show around Morgan’s signature profile and paired him with an hugely unlikely comedy partner (Daniel Radcliffe).
The co-creators/co-showrunners are Robert Carlock, who was one of the showrunners on 30 Rock and co-created The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Sam Means, who also worked on Girls5eva with Carlock and has written for 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt.
These guys know exactly what Morgan can do, even if 30 Rock relegated him to function as a kind of comedy bomb-thrower. He’d enter a scene, lob a few loud, puzzling, hilarious references that would blow up the situation onscreen, and promptly peace out through the smoke and ash left in his wake.
That can’t happen on Reggie Dinkins, as Tracy is the center of both the show, and the show-within-the-show. He plays a former NFL star disgraced by a gambling scandal who’s determined to redeem himself in the public eye. He brings in an Oscar-winning documentarian Arthur Tobin (Radcliffe) to make a movie about him and his current life.
Tobin, however, is determined to create an authentic portrait of a fallen hero, and keeps goading Dinkins to express remorse — or anything at all besides canned, feel-good platitudes. He embeds himself in Dinkins’ palatial New Jersey mansion, alongside Dinkins’ fiancée Brina (Precious Way), teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall) and his former teammate Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), who lives in the basement.
If you’re thinking this means Reggie Dinkins is a show satirizing the recent rise of toothless, self-flattering documentaries about athletes and performers produced in collaboration with their subjects, you’re half-right. The show feints at that tension with some clever bits over the course of the season, but it’s never allowed to develop into a central, overarching conflict, because the show’s more interested in the affinity between Dinkins and Tobin.
Tobin, it turns out, is dealing with his own public disgrace — his emotional breakdown on the set of a blockbuster movie he was directing has gone viral — and the show becomes about exploring what these two damaged men can learn from each other.
On paper, sure: It’s an oil-and-water mixture: Dinkins (loud, rich, American, Black) and Tobin (uptight, pretentious, British, practically translucent). Morgan’s in his element, and if you’re not already aware of what a funny performer Radcliffe can be, check him out on the late lamented Miracle Workers.
Whenever these two characters are firing fusillades of jokes at each other, the series sings. But, especially in the early going, the showrunners seem determined to put Morgan and Radcliffe together in quieter, more heartfelt scenes that don’t quite work. It’s too reductive to presume this is because Morgan is a comedian and Radcliffe is an actor, but it’s hard to deny that they’re coming at those moments from radically different places, and seem to be directing their energies past each other in ways that never quite manage to connect.
Precious Way as Brina.
Scott Gries/NBC
hide caption
toggle caption
Scott Gries/NBC
It’s one reason the show flounders out of the gate, as typical pilot problems pile up — every secondary character gets introduced in a hurry and assigned a defining characteristic: Brina (the influencer), Rusty (the loser), Carmelo (the TV teen). It takes a bit too long for even the great Erika Alexander, who plays Dinkins’ ex-wife and current manager Monica, to get something to play besides the uber-competent, work-addicted businesswoman.
But then, there are the jokes. My god, these jokes.
Reggie Dinkins, like 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt before it, is a joke machine, firing off bit after bit after bit. But where those shows were only too happy to exist as high-key joke-engines first, and character comedies second, Dinkins is operating in a slightly lower register. It’s deliberately pitched to feel a bit more grounded, a bit less frenetic. (To be fair: Every show in the history of the medium can be categorized as more grounded and less frenetic than 30 Rock and Kimmy Schmidt — but Reggie Dinkins expressly shares those series’ comedic approach, if not their specific joke density.)
While the hit rate of Reggie Dinkins‘ jokes never achieves 30 Rock status, rest assured that in episodes coming later in the season it comfortably hovers at Kimmy Schmidt level. Which is to say: Two or three times an episode, you will encounter a joke that is so perfect, so pure, so diamond-hard that you will wonder how it has taken human civilization until 2026 Common Era to discover it.
And that’s the key — they feel discovered. The jokes I’m talking about don’t seem painstakingly wrought, though of course they were. No, they feel like they have always been there, beneath the earth, biding their time, just waiting to be found. (Here, you no doubt will be expecting me to provide some examples. Well, I’m not gonna. It’s not a critic’s job to spoil jokes this good by busting them out in some lousy review. Just watch the damn show to experience them as you’re meant to; you’ll know which ones I’m talking about.)
Now, let’s you and I talk about Bobby Moynihan.
As Rusty, Dinkins’ devoted ex-teammate who lives in the basement, Moynihan could have easily contented himself to play Pathetic Guy™ and leave it at that. Instead, he invests Rusty with such depths of earnest, deeply felt, improbably sunny emotions that he solidifies his position as show MVP with every word, every gesture, every expression. The guy can shuffle into the far background of a shot eating cereal and get a laugh, which is to say: He can be literally out-of-focus and still steal focus.
Which is why it doesn’t matter, in the end, that the locus of Reggie Dinkins‘ comedic energy isn’t found precisely where the show’s premise (Tracy Morgan! Daniel Radcliffe! Imagine the chemistry!) would have you believe it to be. This is a very, very funny — frequently hilarious — series that prizes well-written, well-timed, well-delivered jokes, and that knows how to use its actors to serve them up in the best way possible. And once it shakes off a few early stumbles and gets out of its own way, it does that better than any show on television.
This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.
Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
RECAP: Detroit’s lack of execution results in 5-2 loss at Carolina | Detroit Red Wings
Sam Smith’s San Francisco Residency Charts New Course for the Castro
Abbott is ramping up protection across Texas after Iran airstrikes
Miami youth trace Bahamian roots in powerful Black History Month journey
MLB notes: New Red Sox pitching directors looking to keep pipeline flowing
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Mamdani’s response to Trump’s Iran strike sparks conservative backlash: ‘Rooting for the ayatollah’
Activists hail ‘historic’ EU’s decision on accessible abortion
A long-buried recording and the Supreme Court of old (CT+) : Consider This from NPR
2 Survivors Describe the Terror and Tragedy of the Tahoe Avalanche
Iran fires missiles at US bases across Middle East after American strikes on nuclear, IRGC sites
-
World3 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts4 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Montana1 week ago2026 MHSA Montana Wrestling State Championship Brackets And Results – FloWrestling
-
Denver, CO4 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Louisiana6 days agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Technology1 week agoYouTube TV billing scam emails are hitting inboxes
-
Technology1 week agoStellantis is in a crisis of its own making
-
Politics1 week agoOpenAI didn’t contact police despite employees flagging mass shooter’s concerning chatbot interactions: REPORT