Although Western nations (and Japan) had a significant colonial impact upon China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a second (less noticed but still important) colonial relationality is found between ethnic minorities and the Han majority within the Chinese state, both historically and today. Due to the Chinese state’s unwil-lingness to acknowledge its own colonisation of the non-Han regions, decolonial action from ethnic minority groups in Yunnan, the region with the highest ethnic diversity in China, may thus be veiled in local discourse. Decolonial actions, in this context, include any practices which bring about the result of “self-determination” and the keeping of an “indigenous point of view” (Hopkins 2017:729). In this article, I focus on three non-governmental programmes that interact with ethnic minority communities in Yunnan where I conducted fieldworks from 2017 to date.[i] I examine how far these NGOs’ members advance the interests of their ethnic minority partners in sustaining their Indigenous musical culture and ecological knowledge. This article seeks the answers to two questions. First, what can local practices and experiences like those arising in these programmes teach us about approaches to decolonisation in settings characterized by a multi-layered colonial past and present? And second, how far can the decolonial action of sustaining an “Indigenous point of view” in the field of music and the performing arts lead community members to reconnect with their traditional wisdom, oral knowledge, and ways of life?
[i] This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 101039864). The views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. The project is also based on the research carried out under CAROLINE project which has received funding from The Irish Research Council Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) COFUND Fellowship [Funding ID: CLNE/2017/351].