CHAPTER 4- THE PROLONGED COLONIZATION
5.1 THE FIRST CONTACT OF THE MINING INDUSTRY
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CHAPTER 5- UNDERSTANDING ATAYAL
RESISTANCE TO EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES:
THE MEMORIES OF THE ATAYAL PEOPLE
5.1 THE FIRST CONTACT OF THE MINING INDUSTRY
“At first, it was only mined at the top. Miner came down to Silang (Name of the place), and then to the upper river. The location of the Silang is at the back of the Gong Gamin (Name of the river). That's the mining area I mentioned.
After they finished mining in that region, they went in the opposite direction and continued towards the upper river. Before this river had a lot of fish, now there are no fish at all. It is really bad!” 15
I present an analysis from the case study of Nan’ao Atayal people.The aim of this analysis is to emphasize the permanence of colonial patterns of domination in laws, policies and discourses over indigenous peoples and the national conservation land as an important reason of political-environmental conflicts. The governance approach suggests that the emergence of political-environmental conflicts is a response to ill-designed policies, and that the solution, therefore, would be policy reform without revising the rationale on which those policies are based. ‘Good governance’ disguises the fact that in many conflicts there are issues of indigeneity and different political ontologies. Thus, when scholars and ICMM emphasize the role of the formal political system and redistributive policies to solve conflicts, they are proposing a very limited view of politics: they are converging politics into laws and policies. A more profound view on politics would suggest that in some cases, the
15 Interview conducted by the author with HW on February 12, 2017.
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extractive industries governance is not the solution. The fact that the Atayal in Nan’ao has been involving in continuous protest either individually or collectively against pro-extractive laws and policies and not over a move to gain extractive revenues or to increase political participation, suggests that the problem transcends the governance approach.
Businesses frequently stumble unwittingly into land conflicts, or are driven to take risks by impatient investors. Even giant projects on land occupied by tens of thousands of people may be approved by executives without the locals knowing about it until the bulldozers appear! The mining corporations came into being during the import substitution policies of the 1950s to provide plastics, building materials, cement, pharmaceuticals and other upstream materials for Taiwan’s new industrial producers. The Su’ao plants, located on the upstream of the Nan’ao North river in Su’ao Township, has been one of its largest manufacturing centers. This was the testimony when the local hunter first witnessed the mining development:
“On one journey, my father went to hunting near the Rongan area. However, there was a typhoon which blocked our original way back to community. My father and his friend had to climb the mountain in order to bypass the rapid river.
They therefore walked to the Dongshan direction. It was the first time my father saw the mining development. Near the mining field, there were my father’s hunting cabin. That area is our hunting ground. We went there for chasing Formosan Sambar deer. That was around 50 years ago.”16
16 Interview conducted by the author with YK on August 22, 2017.
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Figure 12- The Nan’ao North River and the Mine Occupied Area (light green mark) (Source of Map: Google Earth)
From the Figure 12, we can clearly see how Henri Lefebvre had been argued. He mentioned the notion of space has been ‘appropriated by mathematics’ which has claimed an ideological position of dominance over what space means. (Lefebvre, 1991) “Mathematics has constructed a language which attempts to define with absolute exactness the parameters, dimensions, qualities and possibilities of space”
(Bodley, 1975). For the indigenous world, scientific conceptions of space, of arrangements and display, of the relationship between people and the landscape, of culture as an object of study, have meant that not only has the indigenous world has been represented in particular ways back to the the colonial state, but the indigenous world view, the land and the people, have been radically transformed in the spatial
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image of the state. In the other words, indigenous space has been colonized. (Bodley, 1975)
Space is often viewed in the modern states thinking as being static or detached from time. This view generates ways of making sense of the world as ‘realm of stasis’, well-defined, fixed and without politics. This is particularly relevant in relation to colonialism. As this research mentioned above: the establishment of
military, missionary or trading stations, the building of roads, the clearing of bush and the mining of minerals all encompassed process of marking, defining and governing space. It was based on a lineal view of time and was linked closely to notions of progress. Progress could be ‘measured’ in terms of technological advancement.
Throughout the world, much of the land ceded by governments is in remote or extreme environments – such as deserts or steep mountainous areas. Most
importantly, in the Nan’ao case, even in the extreme environment, the land can still be allocated to the corporate sectors through long-term concessions, including 20-year concessions to companies. This has been done without consultation because
communities were unable to produce certificates of customary ownership to the space.
Table 2- The Resources Mined in the Nan’ao North River Region (Source: The Annals of Su’ao Twonship)
Name of the Mine
Distribution Utility Notes
Limestone Mainly distributed in Dabai
In addition to making raw
In addition to Nan’ao, Dong’ao and Wulaukeng upstream and other areas
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nearby produce pure white
crystalline grains for Taiwan. The marble has high economic value.
Talc The deposit is on
The annual output of Su’ao quarry is over 5,000 metric tons, and the reserves have the great amount of the mineral.
The north side of Nan’ao mountain ridge has great amount of deposit, but even though in recent years, the chemical synthesis mica has good quality but low market price. Hence, mining activities are mostly stopped
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