GLOBAL RECONCILIATION
Taiwan has its own Indigenous issues
StarPhoenix reporter Betty Ann Adam recently travelled to Taiwan to learn about its Indigenous peoples and how their history has similarities to Indigenous people in Canada. WHO WERE SOME PEOPLE VISITING JOURNALISTS MET?
Lee Jin Lon returned from the city to his Indigenous Rukai homeland in southeast Taiwan in 2009 after flooding from disastrous Typhoon Morakot caused landslides that completely buried the age-old village of his people beside the Ailioa River.
As Lee and others returned to help their people build a new village on higher ground, he became a leader in helping to preserve their ancient traditions and values.
In the new village, the elderly Laucu Kanainelaine and his wife Aruai welcomed visitors in a traditional ceremony at their home. He is known as a dalaio lalai, or king. They wore long, richly coloured robes, embellished with embroidery, braid and dangling silver coins and colourful beads. Their headdresses bore eagle feathers and lilies.
Visitors received small cups of millet wine and were taught to make offerings by dipping a finger in the wine and flicking drops toward the sky to the gods, then over the shoulder to the ancestors and downward to the land.
At Lee’s home, a wall was covered with dried millet as a means of storage but importantly, also as a symbol of his family’s status as the foremost farmers in the community. Only they may make and wear headdresses incorporating the essential grain.
WHAT IS THE SITUATION WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN TAIWAN?
On Aug. 1, 2016 Taiwan’s newly elected President Tsai Ing-wen apologized to the island nation’s Indigenous peoples for four centuries of pain and mistreatment.
“They had their own languages, cultures, customs and domains," Tsai said. "But then, without their consent, another group of people arrived on these shores and in the course of history, took everything from the first inhabitants.” On the land they have known most intimately, they became displaced, foreign, non-mainstream and marginalized, Tsai said.
Reconciliation has been underway since the 1990s, when the country replaced the derogatory term “Mountain People” with “Indigenous peoples,” and passed the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, which provides fundamental rights comparable to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The country has recognized 16 distinct peoples who speak 46 dialects. It has enacted a language preservation law. And it has investigated the government’s storage of nuclear waste on nearby Orchid Island without the Yami people who lived there being informed.
The apology was deeply moving to Indigenous peoples and they’re glad the government has committed to supporting their self-determination. But they know the promises of change won’t solve all their problems overnight.
ARE THERE INDIGENOUS POLITICIANS IN GOVERNMENT?
Legislator Kolas Yotaka, a member of the Amis people, works to have details of the president’s 2016 promises written into law.
As a child, she was punished at school for speaking her Amis language. Later, as a journalist with the publicly funded Taiwan Indigenous Television, Yotaka told stories about Indigenous peoples from their perspectives — something that was new in Taiwan.
“People want our voice to be heard from our angle, not to be objects, told by other people,” she said.
Now, Yotaka and seven other Indigenous lawmakers comprise seven per cent of the legislature, working against racism that contributes to high unemployment and 60 per cent of Indigenous people living in poverty.
They push for stricter workplace safety laws and enforcement of limits on foreign workers who often accept lower wages.
Unfortunately, mandatory hiring quotas haven’t solved prejudice.
“Some private businesses would rather pay fines than hire Indigenous workers. This happens all the time,” said legislator Mei-nu Yu.
They are working to create an Indigenous peoples’ bank to serve those turned away from mainstream banks.
“There’s a very serious discrimination. Bankers assume they have bad credit and won’t lend to them,” said legislator Ying Chen.
“A lot of our people build a lot of beautiful houses, but they don’t have their own,” she said.
DO INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN TAIWAN HAVE LAND?
Austronesian peoples, related to those in the Philippines and New Zealand, have lived on the small island for 6,500 years.
Four hundred years ago, the Dutch, Spanish and then Chinese colonized the land known by settlers as Formosa. Indigenous peoples were left with the eastern half the island, including the lush mountain chain that stretches down most of its 400-kilometre length.
During the 50-year Japanese era that began in 1895, the government seized 85 per cent of Indigenous land, according to the Indigenous Studies Centre at National Taiwan University.
Land seizures continued under the Republic of China (ROC) government that took over in 1945. (In 1949, mainland China became the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China became a separate country, also known as Taiwan, though it remains under the One-China policy.)
There are 55 Indigenous territories. The Basic Act calls for compensation for seized land and creation of laws on restoration of land, but Indigenous activists are dissatisfied with action so far.
A 2017 proposal by the government’s Council of Indigenous Peoples to return 800,000 hectares of traditional territory was criticized because it excluded another one million hectares of privately owned territory.
DO INDIGENOUS PEOPLE LIVE OFF THE LAND?
Many Indigenous peoples still count on wild pig and goat for their daily diets and many urban dwellers return often, keen to maintain ties with the mountains where their ancestors lived, Yotaka said.
While the president’s apology acknowledged attacks on traditional ways of life, collective rights and land seizures, the promises to change are only policy statements, which are trumped by the country’s laws.
Guns are illegal in Taiwan except for Indigenous peoples exercising traditional hunting practices.
Yet the law prohibits modern rifles, allowing hunters to use only dangerous, antiquated or handmade firearms.
“We have a lot of hunters without eyes or arms ( because of malfunctioning weapons) but if you try to make (the firearm) modern, workable, then you violate the laws,” Yotaka said.
Forest law that restricts access to traditional land, claimed by past rulers for national parks, is a source of tension between Indigenous peoples and government, she said.
But animal conservation law “is the worst,” because it ignores the needs of Indigenous people and their way of life, she said.
Yotaka has challenged the country ’s protected species lists as arbitrary and lacking current population studies.
Indigenous people have been unfairly vilified as poachers, she said.
“It stigmatizes what we have passed down from our ancestors,” she said.
WHAT IS MODERN-DAY TAIWAN LIKE?
Taiwan, which is about the size of Vancouver Island, has a population of 23 million.
The 550,000 Indigenous people make up about two per cent of the population, about the same percentage as in Canada.
With a democratic government, capitalist economy and freedom of the press, Taiwan is a prosperous, highly industrialized nation that emerged from a turbulent history.
It manufactures electronics, machinery and petrochemicals for export. At the Pingtung Agriculatural Biotechnology Park, companies create products like animal vaccines and natural cosmetics and breed ornamental fish for highend niche markets.
Taiwan’s economic success has made it possible for the country to address its obligations to the Indigenous peoples, Ambassador Henry Chen said in an interview.
The 2016 apology was the first time an Asian country had apologized to its people.
Chen said it is important for Taiwan to respect the rights of minorities who lived on the island long before the Han Chinese arrived 400 years ago.
It means respecting their desire to maintain traditional ways of life and not preventing them from doing so. “Before in Taiwan, we just focused on the economic issues. We might ignore that. But nowadays we are wealthy enough so we had to think about it,” Chen said.
What are younger Indigenous people doing to promote change?
Zi-zhu Wang, of the Bunun people, is the leader of the Indigenous student organization at National Taiwan University, where she studies forestry and resource conservation.
She is among 300 Indigenous students at NTU who inherited a tradition of activism from a handful of trail blazers in the mid1980s, when Taiwan was still under martial law.
As Wang learns to lead Indigenous communities in co-managing resources on the land, she leads the student group, which is making its presence known on campus. It hosts events like a spring ritual focused on returning home to the land and an Indigenous dress day each semester to show pride in their heritage.
“We represent Indigenous people here in the city and we’d like people to know we’re here,” Wang said through an interpreter.
Many students, raised without their languages, are now studying them on campus.
Meanwhile, associate professor Yuan-chao Tung says the university needs more Indigenous faculty and to distance itself from its colonial beginning in the Japanese era.
Talks are underway to repatriate the remains of 60 Indigenous people held by the medical college, which saw them as objects of study.
The Centre for Indigenous Studies now invites traditional knowledge keepers, artists and curators to present Indigenous points of view.