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3. CONTEXT AND CASE

3.2.1 Ancient History (more than 8000 years ago – 1623)

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30 Figure 3 - Demographics of Taiwan

The fourth and smallest ethnic group in Taiwan covers the most land area of the island in low-density mountainous areas, and are referred to as Taiwan’s indigenous or aboriginal population (yuanzhuminzu 原住民族 – literally means original

inhabitants). These people make up only around 2% of the population at 520,000, are divided into 16 officially recognized tribes and have strong cultural and linguistic (and increasingly political) ties to other Austronesian groups throughout the Pacific and Indian oceans.

3.2 History of Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples

Although there were many examples of resistance to colonization, the indigenous peoples of Taiwan suffered vast but varying degrees of loss in terms of land,

language, culture and livelihood. Of the 26 known indigenous languages of Taiwan, at least ten are extinct, 5 are considered moribund and several are endangered. Despite these changes, many groups maintain a distinct identity and culture and continue to live separately from mainstream society.

3.2.1 Ancient History (more than 8000 years ago – 1623)

While there is evidence that there may have been modern human, hunter-gatherer populations on Taiwan from up to 30,000 years ago, the ancestors of Taiwan’s Indigenous People are thought to have first spread to Taiwan approximately 8,000

Peoples of Taiwan

Han Chinese 98%

"Taiwanese"

85%

Hoklo 70% Hakka 15%

"Mainlanders"

13%

Indigenous Austronesians

2%

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years ago (Blust, 1999). Writing about Taiwan’s indigenous peoples’ ancient history and origins, Stainton (2007) is careful to point out that while there are “landmarks” or physical evidence that can illuminate ancient or “pre-textual” history, it is always constructed and seen through the motivations and lenses of the present, thus embodying a type of myth. His case in point: the contested origins of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples as related to past and present political motivations in Taiwan.

Early Western explorers as well as Japanese scholars held forth the “Southern Origin” tradition which thought that Taiwan aboriginals had arrived from islands to the South such as what is now the Philippines or Indonesia due to cultural and physiological similarities with other indigenous Pacific Islanders, oral histories and Northward ocean currents (Stainton, 2007).

More recent linguistic and archaeological studies have proposed and supported a variation of the “Northern Origin Theory” and the “Austronesian Homeland Theory”

which contend an early Neolithic migration from what is now Southern China and Taiwan as the place of origin for the Austronesian language family (which stretches from Madagascar east to Easter Island and from Taiwan South to New Zealand). The mainstay of the increasingly well-supported theory is based on linguistic evidence:

that Taiwan’s indigenous languages contain 9 of the 10 Austronesian sub-families, thus indicating and outward dispersal from this point of origin.

There is Archaeological evidence of an abrupt cultural shift of ancient people on Taiwan to the Neolithic era around 6,000 years ago, marked by the advent of

agriculture, domesticated animals, pottery and polished stone adzes. Since recorded history of Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples began with the arrival of Europeans, much of it has been dominated by outside forces. Little is known about the culture of Taiwan pre-European contact. From a Dutch census in the 17th century, it is estimated that there were approximately 100,000 indigenous people on Taiwan. Though swidden agriculture of rice and millet and domestication of animals was present, there are indications that hunting, fishing and gathering made up the mainstay of local diets.

Their villages were semi-permanent and political organization above the village level took the form of temporary alliances. Some plains aboriginal tribes were said to be matrilocal and matrilineal. Many tribes engaged in inter-village warfare, facial-tattooing and headhunting.

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32 3.2.2 European period (1623–1662)

It was Portuguese sailors who, passing Taiwan in 1544, first referred to it as Ilha Formosa, or "Beautiful Island". Later, survivors of a Portuguese shipwreck in 1582, spent ten weeks battling malaria and aborigines before returning to Macau on a raft.

Dutch traders arrived on the island in 1623 to set up a base for Dutch commerce with Japan and the coastal areas of China, Shepherd (1993) argues that this was a deliberate policy of the Qing Dynasty to exclude European and Japanese traders from China by forcing them to use Taiwan’s ports. The Dutch East India Company (VOC - Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) built Fort Zeelandia near what is now Tainan ( 台南市). The Spanish established a settlement on the northwest coast of Taiwan near Keelung (基隆市) (1626 -1642) and Tamsui (淡水) (1628-1638) but were driven out by a joint Dutch–Aborigine invasion force.

In setting Taiwan up as a Dutch colony, they worked to pacify the aboriginals by enlisting some groups and severely punishing the villages that had opposed them, uniting the aborigines in allegiance with the VOC (Blust et al., 1999). Although its control was mainly limited to the western plains of the island, the VOC administered the island until 1662, setting up systems of taxation, schools to teach Romanized script of aboriginal languages and missionizing which were adopted by succeeding occupiers.

It was during the Dutch period that the first influx of migrants from coastal Fujian province began. Most of the immigrants were young single men who were discouraged from staying on the island permanently. While the original Dutch intention was to use Fort Zeelandia as a trading base between Japan and China, they soon realized the potential of trading in deer pelts from the mountains of Taiwan.

Indigenous people sold deer pelts to the Dutch while Han migrants were employed to farm sugarcane and rice for export. Unfortunately, the deer indigenous people had previously relied upon for their livelihoods began to disappear forcing the aboriginal populations to focus more and more on agriculture.

Concurrently, on the Chinese mainland change was afoot as the Manchus brought an end to the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing. In 1662, one of the last remaining Ming loyalists, Koxinga (國姓爺 Guóxìngye; literally: “Lord of the Imperial Surname”) a.k.a Zheng Chenggong (鄭成功) wrestled Taiwan from the

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hands of the Dutch after a nine-month siege, setting up a strategic base through which he hoped to retake the mainland. Although Koxinga died shortly after taking control of Fort Zeelandia, his forces managed to hold until their surrender to Qing forces twenty years later.

3.2.3 Qing Dynasty (1683 - 1895)

Since the Qing government’s main goal in holding Taiwan was security of the mainland by preventing its further use as a rebel base, there were strong restrictions on immigration to and settlement of Taiwan by mainlanders. To the same end, trade in bamboo and iron was banned on the island. Most important to this research, in 1722 the aboriginal boundary policy was implemented, which prevented the movement of Han Chinese into Aboriginal territory as demarcated by the Qing officials (Chang, 2008).

The Qing government made little effort to study, trade with or pacify the indigenous people of Taiwan, classifying them in two categories based on their relationship to the Hans: “cooked barbarians” (熟番 shufan) or those who lived in the plains and had more or less assimilated, often by way of marriage and “raw

barbarians” (生番 shengfan) or those who lived in the mountains and were

unassimilated though sometimes traded with or fought the settlers. The boundary was used to prevent conflict between the different groups on Taiwan, mainly settlers and indigenous communities. In the late 18th century, the quarantine policy was a three-tiered territorialization system, categorizing Taiwan’s population into three groups:

Han settlers, cooked aboriginals, and raw aboriginals (Chang, 2008). Despite the official efforts to quarantine native land and maintain the status quo, there was a generally consistent push of Han settlers further inland and northward. Over time the plains (“cooked”) indigenous groups mixed and acculturated with the Han settlers (Chang, 2008).

This was the general situation until events in aboriginal territory became major causes of international controversy and concern for the Qing in regards to foreign territorial ambition. The most important of which was the “Mudan Incident” in 1871 whereby 54 survivors of a Ryukyuan shipwreck off the southern coast of Taiwan were killed at the hands of Paiwan aboriginals at Mudan Village (牡丹鄉). This incident

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gave the Japanese an opportunity to make a play for ownership of the Ryukyuan Islands North of Taiwan, claimed by the Qing, and explore taking ownership of Taiwan. For the Qing, admitting a lack of control of the area left it open to Japanese invasion whereas asserting ownership of the land would mean taking responsibility for the incident. The Japanese sent a few hundred soldiers to Mudan Village; most of who died of disease leaving the rest to retreat before Qing forces arrived. This event proved to be a significant turning point in the Qing administration of Taiwan: shifting their governance strategy from one of quarantine to one that emphasized their

territorial integrity and required, “opening the mountains and pacifying the

aborigines” (kaishan fufan). The aboriginal boundary policy was officially abolished in 1875 (Chang, 2008).

The implementation of Kaishan fufan involved military campaigns to pacify the indigenous populations, the construction of roads into the mountains, formation of new administrative units and modernization efforts of industry, communications and transportation (Chang, 2008). According to a veteran Qing official stationed on Taiwan, the kaishan fufan system was a failure; that without adequate funds,

equipment and personnel, “opening the mountains” consisted of building small paths and “pacifying the aboriginals” amounted to ineffective bribery (Chang, 2008).

Finally, in 1885, Taiwan was made a maritime province of China with three prefectures, eleven counties and four sub prefectures, with about 45 percent of Taiwan under standard Chinese administration and the remaining regions of the interior under aboriginal control (Chang, 2008).

However, it was not long before Japan and China fought the First Sino-Japanese War, the conclusion of which left Taiwan fully in the hands of Japan.

3.2.4 Japanese Period (1985-1945)

The period of Taiwan’s history in which it was under the administration of Japan is sometimes referred to as its “colonial period” because it was ceded by the Qing via treaty, or as the “occupation period” in reference to the situation being a result of war.

Japan had expressed interest in claiming Taiwan as its own since at least 1592.

The first Sino-Japanese War between the Qing Dynasty and Japan, resulting from a dispute over Korea, ended with the defeated Qing signing the Islands of Taiwan and Penghu over to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, April 17th 1895. Arriving in Taiwan, the new Japanese colonial government gave inhabitants two years to choose

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whether to accept their new status as Japanese subjects or leave Taiwan, according to the ROC government website.

Its colonial management of Taiwan is revealing of Japan’s position in the larger geopolitics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Ching, 2001). Humiliated by the European powers’ Tripartite Intervention in the close of the First Sino-Japanese War and determined to prove itself as the only Western (read: non-white) colonial power, Japan sought to make Taiwan its model colony. It was during this Japanese rule that the indigenous people of Taiwan living in the mountain areas were first truly brought under external government administration. Intent on creating an exemplary colonial state, the government conducted extensive anthropological, botanical and other studies that are still significant in the existing nomenclature of Taiwan. They pushed forth on a modernizing campaign including infrastructure, sanitation, education, rule of law and the prohibition of certain cultural practices such as facial tattooing, hunting, fishing and swidden agriculture (to name those most relevant to Taiwan’s indigenous peoples).

Japan's sentiment regarding indigenous peoples was greatly influenced by the memory of the “Mudan Incident,” and can be described as rather ambivalent: on the one hand depicting them as "vicious, violent and cruel" concluding "this is a pitfall of the world; we must get rid of them all" according to Kleeman (2003, p. 20) and later with “noble-savage” imagery as having great potential requiring them to be sheltered from the Chinese settlers (Shepherd, 1993). Japanese campaigns for aboriginal pacification were often brutal, as evidenced by the infamous Wushe Incident of 1930 (Simon, 2006).

From the beginning of their time on the island, the Japanese embarked on a mission to study the aborigines so they could be classified, mapped and “civilized.”

As in other colonial states, this was partly fueled by domestic demand for knowledge of the empire but would also prove to be useful to the Imperial government’s

administrative control, opening up vast tracts of land for exploitation. Japanese ethnographer Ino Kanari surveyed the entire population of Taiwanese aborigines, conducting the first systematic study of aborigines on Taiwan. It was Ino who formalized the categorization of the eight tribes of Taiwanese aborigines: Atayal, Bunun, Saisiat, Tsou, Paiwan, Puyuma, Ami and Pepo (Pingpu) (Blundell, 2000).

This taxonomy is still greatly influential in official recognition of tribes still used in Taiwan today (in contrast, the PRC lumps all of Taiwan’s indigenous groups together

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as the Gaoshan Minority Nationality (高山小民族 gaoshanxiaominzu: high-mountain minority nationality).

Tribal life changed rapidly under the Japanese as many traditional customs were outlawed alongside positive incentives for cooperation in a classiccarrot/stick approach. Traditional structures governing status such as headhunting and facial tattooing were replaced by a military and educational status. Traditional costumes and customs that were deemed benign were encouraged whereas cultural practices considered unsavory by Japanese culture, including facial tattooing, were harshly punished (Simon, 2006). In the 1930s with the height of its empire, the colonial government began a political socialization program more ambitiously promoting Japanese customs, rituals and a loyal Japanese identity upon the aborigines.

According to Ching (2001) by the end of the Japanese period, aboriginals whose fathers had been killed in pacification campaigns were volunteering to die for the Emperor of Japan in WWII (p. 153–173). The experience of Japanese colonialism left a deep and ambivalent impression on Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, especially when contrasted with the ROC administration that was to follow, with many elders recalling both the opportunities afforded by that period and the brutality (Mendel, 1970, p. 54;

Simon 2006).

The Japanese period in Taiwan came to an end with the defeat of Japan and other Axis powers by Allied Forces in the culmination of the Second World War, forcing the relinquishment of all of its acquired overseas territories in the autumn of 1945. Taiwan was returned to the recognized government of China, the ROC.

However, Taiwan’s reunification with China was not to last, as the Chinese Civil War resulted in the retreat of the ROC government and military led by General Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正) to Taiwan. Leaving the Mainland in the hands of the victorious Chinese Communist Party (CCP 共產黨 gongchandang) and Taiwan run by the KMT (國民黨 guomindang).

3.2.5 Marshal Law Period (1949- 1987)

The KMT installed an authoritarian form of government, and started a number of political socialization programs aimed at nationalizing Taiwanese people and

eradicating Japanese influence. Following the 228 incident (also referred to as the 228

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massacre) in which a Taiwanese anti-government uprising was violently suppressed, on May 19, 1949, Martial Law was imposed in Taiwan (臺灣省戒嚴令; Táiwān Shěng Jièyán Lìng) by Chen Cheng (陳誠), Governor of Taiwan Province and the

Ministry of National Defense. Martial Law, known as the “White Terror Period,”

lasted more than 38 years, until President Chiang Ching-Kuo lifted the order on July 15, 1987.

Under authoritarian rule, Indigenous people continued to be marginalized and suffer from assimilation attempts and loss of land. Their first encounter with the Nationalist government was in 1946 with the replacement of Japanese village schools with the schools of the KMT. These schools emphasized Chinese language, history, citizenship and pro-KMT ideology. In 1951 a major socialization campaign was launched with the goal of pushing indigenous peoples to adopt Han Chinese customs.

This was included in the policy of “make the mountains like the plains” (山地平地化:

Shandi Pingdi Hua) (Harrison, 2003, p. 351). The KMT’s assimilation policy included outlawing the use of languages other than Mandarin Chinese in public places. Critics of the KMT's program for a centralized national culture regard it as institutionalized ethnic discrimination, and point to the loss of several indigenous languages and a perpetuation of shame for being an aborigine as the direct result of what has been referred to as Han chauvinism (Harrison, 2003; Shih, 1999). As Shih (1999) puts it,

While exploration, conquest, pacification, and at times segregation, containment, or relocation had formerly alternated with one another, now subjugation, patronization, and intolerance have been clothed in the forms of political co-optation, economic domination, forced or induced cultural assimilation, social prejudice, and welfare tokenism under the prevailing standards of integrationist orientation.

For much of the KMT era, to obtain official recognition of aboriginal identity one had to have had 100% aboriginal parentage, leaving children of intermarriage without aboriginal status regardless of location, affiliation or language. Later the policy was adjusted to patrilineal ethnic status (Shih, 1999).

The KMT designated many forested mountain areas for resource extraction to benefit civil war veterans or for administration by the commercially oriented Forestry Bureau (Lin, Y., 2011). Many mountain areas that were previously indigenous

hunting grounds, seasonal settlements or ritual sites were nationalized as conservation areas or turned over to Chinese capitalists for exploitation. Moreover, the KMT

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government also enacted the Hunting Ban in 1948 (later repealed and replaced by the Wildlife Protection Law in 1989), and the National Park Law of 1972, which

restricted indigenous peoples from using natural resources. Indigenous people were forbidden from practicing their traditional forms of hunting and gathering due to these laws. Further, from 1968 reserve lands were set aside (保留地 bao3liu4di4), at which point indigenous people were forced to either cultivate their lands or cede them to the township. Once ceded, these lands could then be registered to non-indigenous people.

Simon refers to this as the “proletarianization” of the area (Simon, 2007) because of the disenfranchisement of many indigenous people.

It is important to note that for many indigenous peoples in Taiwan, hunting was more than just a form of subsistence. Not only are identity and pride tied up in hunting, but also there are many ceremonies surrounding it. Without it, indigenous people have felt that they have lost their connection to the spiritual world (Teyra, 2014). Indigenous people were forced to adapt and assimilate, often changing their livelihoods from subsistence-based swidden, shifting agriculture to settled

commercial agriculture (Simon 2005).

3.2.6 Democratic Period (1989 – present)

Starting in the 1980s, Taiwan’s indigenous peoples have seen new opportunities for political mobilization, participation in global pan-indigenous movements, and

economic development in the way of eco-tourism and specialty farming. With the end to martial law, Austronesian peoples in Taiwan saw increased attention being paid to their land rights, autonomy, cultural preservation and self-interpretation.

economic development in the way of eco-tourism and specialty farming. With the end to martial law, Austronesian peoples in Taiwan saw increased attention being paid to their land rights, autonomy, cultural preservation and self-interpretation.