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Strengthening the Roots

• Auteur:PAT GAO
• Date de publication:1/8/2007

Aboriginal protesters demand that a new relationship, which the government has announced be put into practice. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

The indigenous rights movement is becoming a more political force.

In January this year, the Sakizaya, based in eastern Taiwan's Hualien area with an estimated population of 5,000 to 10,000, was officially recognized as Taiwan's 13th aboriginal tribe. For more than a century the Sakizaya had been viewed as a subgroup of the Amis people, Taiwan's largest aboriginal group of around 168,000, amongst whom they had hidden to avoid genocide by the forces of China's Qing dynasty, which ruled Taiwan between 1683 and 1895, as it extended its authority over the entire island. In 2002, the Kavalan people, previously classed as another subgroup of the Amis, restored their status as a separate tribe. In contrast to the other 12 tribes who live largely in mountainous regions, the Kavalan belong to the pingpu or plains-dwelling indigenous groups. They originally inhabited the modern-day northeastern county of Yilan and, because of increasing Han immigration, moved southward to Hualien in the 19th century.

For aboriginal dwellers both in plains and mountainous regions, the traditional nine-tribe model used through most of the last century is now considered an inadequate taxonomy of the richness of variety of Taiwan's aboriginal cultures and population. In January 2004, the Truku, mostly living in Hualien, also emerged as an independent tribe, having previously been considered a subgroup of the Atayal, the second largest aboriginal group in Taiwan. "This is a process of previous aboriginal totality giving way to the more natural state of separate ethnic existences," says Obay a Awi, an activist seeking autonomy for his Saisiyat tribe, who live in Hsinchu and Miaoli counties.

Obay says that he is acting as an intermediary between tribespeople who are frustrated in mainstream society and those who can take advantage of their aboriginal identity in their urban life. "We try to find a way somewhere between tribal traditions and the external society," says Obay, a teacher of English and aboriginal education in Chang Gung Institute of Technology's Center for General Education. Obay's efforts represent, among other things, the emergence of the tribal communities themselves in the decades of struggle for aboriginal rights in Taiwan. "Earlier activists, composed chiefly from the urban intelligentsia, might have had little connection to their own tribes," Obay says.

Gaining Focus

In its earlier stages, the indigenous movement was largely a part of broader calls for social justice and liberalization that led to the lifting of martial law in 1987. "Indigenous peoples were disadvantaged groups just like others such as laborers, women and those who suffered from environmental deterioration due to economic development," says Icyang Parod, an Amis and minister of the Cabinet-level Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP). From 1987 to 1991, he headed the Taiwan Indigenous People's Rights Development Association, one of the first major groups to organize the aboriginal movement. "While they are minority group," the minister says, "indigenous peoples usually form a substantial proportion of the victims in cases of occupational discrimination or accidents in work such as deep-sea fishing and coal mining."

After an initial concentration on individual social problems and personal difficulties, aboriginal activists began to look at issues involving the indigenous peoples as a whole. "By its nature, what we've been working on has an appeal different from those of social or political movements," Icyang says. "Ethnicity is our central value." In terms of human rights concerning the equality of citizens, the rights of indigenous peoples in a collective, ethnic category need to be addressed first. The increasing awareness of ethnic distinctiveness among Taiwan's earliest inhabitants has been reflected in the evolution of the standard Mandarin expression to describe them from shan bao (mountain compatriots) to yuan jhu min (original inhabitants) and again to yuan jhu min zu (original peoples) as a result of a constitutional amendments.

Recent years have seen efforts to build a confident aboriginal identity show fruit. The promulgation of the Status Act for Indigenous Peoples in 2001 enabled those who had lost their legitimate racial identity through marriage or adoption to reconstruct their lineage. On the new national identity cards issued by the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) last year, aborigines are allowed to place the romanized version of their real name instead of the made-up ones imposed on them by the household registration system in the time of Japanese rule (1895-1945) and the following ROC government.

The fake names were just one of the many stigma on aboriginal life needing to be addressed. Another symbol of racial prejudice has been the propagation of the myth of Wu Fong in history books. The legend, invented during the Japanese era, presented Wu as a respected Chinese imperial official who could not dissuade aborigines from headhunting. Eventually he decided to do the job by sacrificing his own life, telling his subjects that they could wait for and kill a man wearing red clothes, who turned out to be himself. The story's denouement is that, ashamed of their wrongdoing, the aboriginals thereafter dropped the practice of headhunting. The motif of official sacrifice for the sake of "improving" aboriginal customs made the myth a popular subject for official representation by means of place names and statuary. In 1989, after continual protests from the local Tsou people, a township in Chiayi County named after Wu Fong changed its name to Alishan (Mt. Ali) Township. Now statues of Wu Fong have been removed from public spaces such as parks and schools and his story is no longer in elementary school textbooks. "The more we learned in the regular educational system," Icyang recalls his schooling experience, "the more we forgot about our tribal traditions."

Free to be Yourself

For Icyang, the rectification of Wu's misrepresented image as a "great man" was a part of aboriginal efforts to break free from the process of assimilation into Han society and develop a proper, undistorted way to look at or deal with the concerns of indigenous peoples. In 1996, the Taipei City Government became the first to establish a bureau for aboriginal affairs, which now has been replicated in many other local governments, to address the specific needs of local tribes. The Cabinet followed later that year with the formation of the CIP. While the CIP works largely as the coordinator of aboriginal affairs among different ministries, its purview is increasing. In April this year, among other things, the council began to take charge of the management of some 250,000 hectares of land reserved for habitation and cultivation by indigenous peoples. The land was previously under the auspices of the MOI.

Atayal people protest against the verdict of a lawsuit that branded the removal of naturally fallen trees within their traditional tribal land as theft. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

The current indigenous reservations are largely a continuation of the Japanese system, which was designed mainly for convenient management of "savages" in addition to protecting their land resources from aggressive exploitation by potential settlers. Now this system is moving from reservations in relatively fragmented areas toward the resumed integrity of indigenous people's ancestral lands. The CIP is working on a thorough survey of traditional tribal territories, to be conducted by a committee currently being planned. This job of reclaiming tribal lands might lead to a form of autonomy for indigenous peoples. President Chen Shui-bian wants to see a new partnership clearly defined in future constitutional revisions, with an entire chapter devoted to indigenous peoples, a significant step forward from the 1997 constitutional amendment that requires the state to safeguard the status of indigenous peoples in accordance with their will.

Icyang points out that ultimate autonomy, a natural right specified in the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act promulgated in 2005, can be built on the present demarcation of national administrative regions, in which 30 townships in the mountainous areas and another 25 townships on the plains are inhabited mostly by indigenous peoples. The future autonomous body might be equivalent to a county government, to be established in areas where the elected chief and not less than half or an even higher percentage of popular representatives are from indigenous peoples. There are worries, however, that this will create something more like patchy local self-government rather than a unitary system.

Institutionalization

For the time being, the formation of a tribal assembly is the principal approach adopted by activists like Obay and Voyu, a Tsou and former director of the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Policy Association, for more effective interaction with the current local or national administrative systems. Obay is helping his Saisiyat tribe organize a higher assembly composed of elders and a lower one that will function primarily as a platform for exchanges among existing local development associations. One of the results of crafting this tribal representative system was a 2006 agreement of partnership signed between the Saisiyat and the Shei-pa National Park administration, established in 1992 in north-central Taiwan.

Voyu, who hosts programs on aboriginal policies for Taiwan Indigenous TV's news department, points out that the main value of this kind of agreement is the joint administration of a traditional aboriginal territory by the existing bureaucracy and local tribes. Certainly clearer demarcation of rights and responsibilities is needed to avoid the recurrence of issues like a recent legal case in Hsinchu, filed by the government's Forestry Bureau against several Atayal who salvaged wood from naturally fallen trees in a traditional tribal area which the bureau, as the official landholder, claimed as national property.

"Although the fundamental rights of autonomy or a proper legal system are only roughly outlined in the Indigenous Peoples Basic Act and need further clarification in other supporting laws yet to be implemented, the government agencies could have taken the core intent of the act into serious consideration when dealing with relevant matters," says Voyu, referring to the case.
The final verdict viewed the removal of the timber from the fell-site as theft, a judgment that has aroused strong protests from aboriginal communities who considered such action to be habitual practice on their traditional territory. "The government organizations must drop their self-proclaimed authority," Obay says.

Voyu says that, in addition to their call for a more tolerant legal order and value system, indigenous peoples have to show their determination to maintain their ethnic integrity while contributing to a pluralistic society. Such determination is even more important for the plains-dwelling tribes, which are widely believed to have lost their ethnic distinctiveness through earlier contact and greater assimilation with the island's Han immigrants. "However, even though most of our languages have become obsolete, we can rebuild our cultural uniqueness if we show the will to do so," says Chen Kim-man, secretary- general of the Taiwan Pingpu Indigenous Peoples Association, who traces his ancestry to the Ketagalan tribe in the Beitou area of modern Taipei City. While his group's call for a pingpu division in the CIP is being considered by the government, Icyang says that an independent budget will be allocated for pingpu aboriginal cultural revitalization. Hopefully, such efforts would lead to a renaissance of local cultures. "This way we can shape a clearer Taiwanese identity even in terms of political legitimacy," Chen says.

Voyu points out that what they are doing is not demanding something like welfare or special treatment, but rather trying to give Taiwan a brighter future through reviving the traditional wisdom of indigenous peoples, which can contribute a great deal to the promotion of many highly promising ventures such as ecotourism and leisure culture. Some worry that the indigenous movement will lose its edge once its energy is absorbed in the political arena and it becomes institutionalized. Voyu thinks otherwise. "The ultimate goal of the indigenous movement is to make both indigenous peoples and Taiwan as a whole more competitive," he says. "The movement will not decline, although its form will change."

1984: December 29
The Taiwan Indigenous People's Rights Development Association is established. It announces that Taiwan's indigenous inhabitants are not descendants of ancient Chinese ancestors but rather share a common Austronesian origin.

1988: July 11
An aboriginal alliance is established to reclaim aboriginal ancestral lands.

1991: May 1
The Additional Articles of the ROC Constitution are promulgated to include the first constitutional provision on shan bao (mountain compatriots), for whom representative seats are reserved in the Legislative Yuan and the now abolished National Assembly.

1994: August 1
An amended version of the Additional Articles of the ROC Constitution is promulgated. The term shan bao is replaced by yuan jhu min (original inhabitants).

1996: December 10
The Cabinet-level Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) is established.

1997: July 21
Another amended version of the Additional Articles of the ROC Constitution is promulgated to require the state to safeguard the status and political participation of aboriginals in accordance with their will.

1998: June 17
The Education Act for Indigenous Peoples is promulgated. It obliges the government to provide aboriginals with opportunities to study their native languages, history and culture at schools of all levels.

2000: April 25
Yet another amended version of the Additional Articles of the ROC Constitution is promulgated. The term yuan jhu min is replaced by yuan jhu min zu (original peoples).

2001: January 17
The Status Act for Indigenous Peoples is promulgated for recognition and reconstruction of aboriginal identity.

2001: August 8
The Thao is officially recognized as Taiwan's 10th aboriginal group, indicating a move away from the long-established nine-tribe model.

2002: October 19
President Chen Shui-bian signs an agreement on a new partnership with indigenous peoples to recognize their natural rights to landownership, autonomy and ethnic representation in the Legislative Yuan, among other things.

2005: February 5
The Indigenous Peoples Basic Act is promulgated to protect their rights to autonomous development.

2005: July 1
Taiwan Indigenous TV begins broadcasting.

2007: April 25
The CIP begins to take charge of the management of lands reserved for use by aboriginals.

Write to Pat Gao at pat@mail.gio.gov.tw