Indigenous Taiwan Self-determination Alliance was initiated in 2019 by both senior and seasoned activists as well as younger generation radicals in the deep valley of our movement. Collectively reflecting and reorienting the current crises that our communities are facing by being embedded in modern industrial societies and consumerist culture which is resulting in loss of our languages, cultures and institutions of self-governance and in turn territories of life. Thinking thoroughly about the common future of a sustainable self-determined Taiwan, we launched the visionary joint action of "liberating the colonial relationship between the colonized and the colonizer, and initiating an inclusive new nation-building by all ethnic groups and social classes".
| Author(s) | Sutej Hugu |
|---|---|
| Topics | Democracy, Environmental justice |
| Case Report | Radical Democracy: recovering the roots of self-governance & autonomy |
“no si mavey tao am, meyta.” (If we are still alive, then let’s go!) – a Tao old saying
This is a diaspora map about the Austronesian language family which originated from Taiwan five thousand years ago. It spans from the Indian Ocean the Madagascar to the Pacific the Rapa Nui, being one of the largest language families in the world, comprising more than 1,200 languages.
The Formosan languages in Taiwan have the highest language diversity in Austronesia with up to twenty ethnic language groups recognized by the linguists (see Map 4). They are Indigenous peoples of plains and wetlands, forests and mountains, coast and islands. There are still 43 Austronesian dialects spoken by the 16 officially recognized ethnic groups in Taiwan today representing a rich heritage of language and cultural diversity.
Historical context and current situation
Indigenous Peoples in the Island of Taiwan kept intact until the early 17th century when the Dutch East India Company arrived 1624 to occupy the southern part of it as a base for trading in East Asia four hundred years ago (see Map 3). Gone through the following four centuries of successive colonial regimes, we lost the integrity of our sovereignty, lands and rights. Colonial governance and modern infrastructure brought us the total collapse of tribal institutions along with our marginalized languages and cultures.
Map 2 shows how the Indigenous peoples lost their territories within three hundred more years. Indigenous Taiwan was intact in the beginning of the 17th Century before the Dutch arrived. In the mid-18th Century, one third of plain areas on the west coast were already occupied by the Chinese immigrant farmers. After the cession of Taiwan to Japan in 1895, Indigenous peoples still have de facto governance of more than half of Taiwan in the beginning of the 20th Century. In 1928, the Japanese colonial government launched the total grabbing of the Indigenous peoples’ territories along with the implementation of national forest and the fragmented Indigenous peoples’ reserves in the 1930s. This colonial ruling framework has continued with little change till today.
Map 5 was made for the IUCN guidelines on the “Governance of Protected Areas: from understanding to action” published 2013. It well depicts the total overlapping of the national protected areas system and national forest with the inherent conserved territories of life by Indigenous peoples in Taiwan. There exists the critical potential of an alternative conservation governance and management by the Indigenous knowledge and institutions.
Indigenous persistent resistance and colonial reluctant responses
Coming to the contemporary history of Taiwan post-World War II, from the ‘Free China’ propaganda during the Chiang Kai-shek dictatorship era, under martial law for 38 years till 1987, to the ‘Democratic Taiwan’ after Lee Teng-hui, the first Taiwan President by general election in 1996 and on the position to 2000, the settler colonial ruling oppression on the Indigenous peoples has never been lifted. Now, even following the formal apology to Indigenous peoples on behalf of the government in 2016 and setting up the Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Committee under the Presidential Office in 2017 by President Tsai Ying-Wen, the first woman to hold that position, it’s sharply ironical and sad to learn that real transformation and change are yet to happen.
Within this period, we observed the persistent resistance of Indigenous peoples in Taiwan and the hesitant responses from the colonial regimes. After lifting of the martial law in 1987, there are some milestones of Indigenous peoples’ movement in Taiwan:
- Recognition of Indigenous peoples in the constitution amendment in 1997.
- “A New Partnership Between the Indigenous Peoples and the Government of Taiwan” was signed by representatives of Indigenous Peoples in 1999 with the DPP candidate for President Mr. Chen Sui-bian, and reconfirmed in 2002 after he won the position. This document is a real breakthrough of our movement on claiming the following critical key points:
1. Recognizing the inherent sovereignty of Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples
2. Promoting autonomy for Indigenous Peoples
3. Concluding a land treaty with Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples
4. Reinstating traditional names of Indigenous communities and natural landmarks
5. Recovering traditional territories of Indigenous communities and Peoples
6. Recovering use of traditional natural resources and furthering the development of self-determination
7. Providing legislative (parliamentary) representation for each Indigenous People
In President Chen’s second term, the Legislation Yuan approved the “Basic law for Indigenous peoples” in 2005, which was basically following the earlier draft version of UNDRIP in advance of its approval and announcement by the UN General Assembly in 2007. To implement it, we know that dozens of earlier laws in conflict must be revised and new laws need to be devised. Little progress in the last two decades about this barrier of legislation.
An Act to Implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was announced in 2009 under the KMT President Ma Ying-jiu. Despite article 1 on the right to self-determination for all peoples in both covenants, the status of Indigenous peoples as ‘peoples’ is yet to be recognized and respected.
When DPP won the Presidential election again in 2016, we got a formal apology to Indigenous peoples from the new President Ms. Tsai Ing-wen, and an Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Committee, comprising of five thematic commissions on land, history, language, culture and conciliation issues, under the presidential office in 2017. That's such a pity that it dissolved after the end of her second term in May 2024 without releasing the truth report or any further arrangement for implementing the transitional justice.
Critical challenge and flexible Strategy
From the experience of the last forty years, we observed a rough rule of activists’ power dynamics that almost every immaterial response and deceptive promise from the colonial regime caused the loss of more than half of our strength at the time, being dissolved capacities.
However, we’ve tried to renegotiate for dismantling the settler colonialism over the Indigenous peoples, through recognizing inherent sovereignty, returning traditional territories, compensating for persecution and collaborating in restoration (showed in the slogans on the picture below by the Taromak self-declaration).
That would be the only way to release this country from the long entangled oppressive tensions and seriously distorted humanity among the colonizers and the colonized. Guided by the Taiwan Indigenous Conserved Territories Union (TICTU), it is starting from the self-declaration of traditional territories by the Taromak tribal community (Drekay people) in 2016, including mutual recognition and negotiation on overlapping and shared governance among neighboring tribal communities: Katratripulr, Kasavakan (Pinuyumayan people) and Valangaw (Amis people). In total, about eight tribal communities have successfully done it, followed by a full declaration of the traditional territories of 96 thousand hectares by the Drekay people and the establishment of the Drekay people’s Confederacy Council (Kadaenganeta ka Ngungadrekai) in 2017. It’s a great achievement gone through three preparatory meetings by traditional leaders, contemporary elites and youth groups along with a thorough consensus building process in each of the sixteen tribal communities.
Indigenous Taiwan Self-determination Alliance was initiated in 2019 by both senior and seasoned activists as well as younger generation radicals in the deep valley of our movement. Collectively reflecting and reorienting the current crises that our communities are facing by being embedded in modern industrial societies and consumerist culture which is resulting in loss of our languages, cultures and institutions of self-governance and in turn territories of life. Thinking thoroughly about the common future of a sustainable self-determined Taiwan, we launched the visionary joint action of "liberating the colonial relationship between the colonized and the colonizer, and initiating an inclusive new nation-building by all ethnic groups and social classes". This is based on the Indigenous ecological wisdom of embeddedness and connectedness that’s cross-generations, inter-species and trans-boundaries, to heal the world trauma of colonization and exploitation that have caused pervasive insanity, malfunction and anomaly besides corruption and destruction on the Earth everywhere. Let’s strive to conserve the animistic territories of life for all beings, adhere to the ultimate value of the trinity of language, cultural and biological diversity, and create a new model of planet governance together.
Through the important recent evolution by the implementation of mutual recognition among those independent ethnic group confederacy councils, the Taiwan Indigenous Sovereignty Confederacy Alliance (TISCA) is emerging. There is now the Kavulungan Treaty Alliance (Pinuyumayan, Drekay, and Paiwan); the Usaviah/Tongku Saveq Treaty Alliance (Bunun, Cou, Thao, Kanakanavu, and Hla'alua); the Papa-Waqa Treaty Alliance (Atayal, Saisiyat); the Klbiyun Treaty Alliance (Seediq, Truku), the Pacific Coast Treaty Alliance (Amis/Pangcah, Kebalan, Sakizaya); and the Pongso no Tao & Batanes Islanders Alliance (transboundary between Taiwan and Philippine).
While the ITWSDA is working through an Inclusive New Nation-Building Liaison Office to promote the solidarity exchange & coordination among Indigenous peoples and tribal communities; consensus communication channels between the marginal Indigenous communities and the dominant settler society; Integrating the urban Indigenous population, younger educated elites and their original tribal communities; connecting up with the foreign laborers and new immigrants from Southeast Asia; and dialogue and mutual learning with the Indigenous peoples’ movement as well as the radical alternative initiatives around the world.
Be visionary and realistic at the same time
There are currently three major sites and bases of ongoing resistance and restoration from the Indigenous Taiwan custodian communities of territories of life in their ancestral domains. Namasia Tribal Hunters’ Association of Bunun and Kanakanavu peoples, in Namasia district Kaohsiung, works on self-management of traditional hunting ground and non-timber forest products cooperative. With steady and persistent strategic campaign and negotiation, we are reviving the land ethic of Indigenous hunters and restoring the permanent sovereignty over natural resources on rivers and forests in our traditional territories, step-by-step implementing our autonomy arrangement. Now a community Cooperative is set up along with the Association for eco-tourism with long-term ecological monitoring of the inter-species habitats, for an agroforestry project on cultivating the endemic wild tea trees, and for local forest management works supporting by Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency.
Katratripulr Tribal Council, of Pinuyumayan people, supporting the traditional leadership of three joint family Rahans who are the chosen channeling persons to their ancestral spirits, works on building the modern self-government institution from the traditional age groups of boys and men as well as women’s association and community development association, and continuing the eco-occupation of the Kanaluvang wetland, an important bird area, where they have struggled to save it from a big development project of a 161 hectares 202 MW solar power farm invested by a transnational corporation and won a High Administrative Court lawsuit against the Ministry of Economic Affairs in 2022. Now it is uses as a common land for traditional millet planting and a trial site for Indigenous ecological natural farming. The tribal council also got administrative contract from the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency to co-managing the traditional community hunting grounds, and negotiating for a shared governance of the Katratripulr National Forest Recreation Area in their traditional territories.
Tao Foundation, for the Tao people on the Pongso no Tao, works on gaining the control of the trust fund set up in 2021 from a huge retrospective compensation of 2.55 billion Taiwan dollar (about 78.5 million US dollar) for nuclear waste dumping since 1982. The trust fund, currently dominated by the colonial restriction and administration, should be wisely used by the Tao people themself to make an alternative future of this Indigenous Island with an autonomy arrangement with the Taiwan government. Current situation is that even the government have given this big money as a reparation to implement the historical and transitional justice, they keep a strong control on both the governance and management of the fund and restricted its usages. Until now all the visionary transformation programs and projects are done or doing or planning spontaneously without any support from this common fund. There are the Tao cultural knowledge-base and Heritage keepers’ group for Indigenous education, the Meyyowyo eco-cultural tourism associates for promoting an Indigenous interpretation system based on original place names and storytelling tradition, the Ahehep no Tao initiative for compiling and publishing the original Austronesian eco-calendar as the backbone of Tao seasonal livelihood, the Yabosokanen Homecare Center for the aging population. There are also proposals for public e-bike system for residents and tourists, daily necessities and foods supply cooperative for the community households, high-speed and safe ferries business for and by Tao people, integrated sustainable energy facilities for the islanders, etc.
In relation to the above, what’s most essential and critical for us is the Self-strengthening process of communities to keep our vitality and diversity alive. We keep nurturing the strength and resilience as change makers of our activist group through the tribal activist study circle and cadre leadership camp. There is training and development to become dignified Indigenous, and living capacity building to create community-based collective livelihood. Linking to our spiritual matrix, our work on autonomy is closely tied with promoting and restoring our original labors and ceremonies following the seasons, traditional song-singing in community gathering and storytelling in each extended family. Ultimately, for our people's survival and revival, Indigenous activists' strength and resilience can only come from embodying the embeddedness in the inter-species habitats and the connectedness with all beings around us in our territories of life networks.