The Inconvenient Truth of Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples

The KMT, otherwise known as the Chinese Nationalist Party, told them they were on the front line because “we tribesmen were the strongest and the bravest.” He didn’t understand why the Chinese were fighting other Chinese—but “they told us we had to go and fight, so we went.” It was 1955, during what became known as the Strait Crisis. The brief armed conflict was fought between the Communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Kuomintang, which had retreated to Taiwan in 1949 following defeat in the civil war against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Today, at 87 years old, Titiyon is, to the best of his knowledge, the oldest living member of the Saisiyat, one of 16 Indigenous tribes recognized by the Taiwanese government.

Siyat Taro Titiyon, an 87-year-old military veteran who believes he is the oldest member of the Saisiyat tribe, poses for a portrait at his home in the mountains of Hsinchu, Taiwan, on Oct. 21.

He lives in a family compound in a house he built himself on the traditional lands of his tribe, high in the mountains of Hsinchu County in northwestern Taiwan. He brews his own rice wine, makes offerings to the ancestral spirits, and worships at the Christian church, seeing no conflict between the two beliefs.

He doesn’t pay much attention to politics these days, but he understands that, once again, the Indigenous tribes of Taiwan are being used in a conflict between one set of Han Chinese—the  overwhelmingly dominant ethnic group in Taiwan—and the PRC. This time, there are no artillery shells. Instead, for the first time in his life, people are visiting him and asking about his heritage. He knows that in the government’s assertion of a national identity, he and his people are useful.

At his elbow, translating his words, is a living example of what has become an Indigenous cultural renaissance: his 19-year-old great-niece, the daughter of a New Zealand father and a Saisiyat mother. She was not raised in the tribe or on the mountain but has come here to embrace her heritage.

Like many young tribespeople, she has two names. When she attends university down on the plains, where she studies Indigenous culture, she is Corayne Kaiteri, a name taken from her father. But up here, and with her great-uncle, she uses her tribal name, Away Maya Titiyon.

A view of the mountainous terrain from Titiyon’s kitchen window on Oct. 21.

“Before I began to explore my heritage, I was confused, because I am also half a New Zealander. So I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere,” she said. Her classmates called her a “hybrid.” At school in the capital of Taipei, she was teased when her class was taught that tribeswomen had served as “comfort women” for the Japanese. She battled stereotypes; her peers asked her if she rode a pig to school.

But under government policies dating to Taiwan’s democratization in the mid-1980s and amplified under the current Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, she was taught her language in school and, gradually, “I came to want to be part of my tribe and learn more about what that means.”

She is not eligible to vote for another year and so pays little attention to the differences between Taiwan’s two main political parties, the DPP, which is the more progressive and advocates for a distinct Taiwanese national identity, and the more mainland-China-friendly KMT. The KMT is the same party that sent her great-uncle to war and that, for nearly four decades from 1949, ruled Taiwan as a one-party state before democratization in 1987. The party has changed in many ways, but still claims that there is only “one China,” with its legitimate government being the Republic of China. Elements in the party still favor eventual reunification with mainland China, though not necessarily on the CCP’s terms.

But rather than following these disputes, Titiyon is engaged in the politics of being Indigenous. She has participated in international Indigenous youth forums, including visiting the First Nations people of Canada and making connections with Maori in New Zealand. She is taking continuing lessons in the Saisiyat language—made harder by the fact that there are few people with whom she can speak it. She hopes to make a career out of representing her people on the international stage.

Eighteen-year-old Corayne Kaiteri, who also uses her tribal name, Away Maya Titiyon, listens to her great-uncle at his home in Hsinchu on Oct. 21.

What do the old man and the young woman think of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s claim that Taiwan is a breakaway province of China and must be reabsorbed? The older Titiyon said his people did not previously have the concept of land ownership, but this place is where he and his family have always been. So how can others have a claim? It is a fair point. About half of Taiwan’s land mass—mostly the mountains that form the island’s central spine—is categorized as the traditional land of Indigenous peoples. It remains under their control at the local government level.

Further up the mountain, Lahling Yumin, a leading member of the Atayal tribe whose lands abut those of the Saisiyat, explained that the early Han Chinese colonists, who arrived in the 17th century, never occupied the mountains. The PRC’s claim to historical ownership can, at most, be to the plains of Taiwan, he said—those densely settled areas far below, covered with cities and warehouses and the factories of this high-tech manufacturing nation.

Yumin’s great-grandfather died fighting the Japanese, who were the first to attempt to control the entire island. Today, he supports the DPP and has run under that party’s banner in local village elections. The Han Chinese who dominate the DPP, he said, are “a bit better” than the Han Chinese who dominate mainland China. Following his narrow defeat in the local election, Yumin’s life is dedicated to making sure his children learn the three pillars of his culture: language, history, and the intimate knowledge of how to live, hunt, and gather in the mountain forests.

Meanwhile, Taiwan exists in strategic and diplomatic ambiguity. It considers itself a nation, yet doesn’t dare declare independence from the PRC for fear of provoking invasion. In this ambivalent space, the Indigenous peoples hold a particular place. Their continuous occupation undercuts the PRC’s claims, and their cultural renaissance underscores both Taiwan’s position as the region’s newest liberal democracy and its unique relationships with other countries in the region—relationships that do not rely on its tenuous nation status.

Mona, a 10-year-old altar boy, wears a garment inspired by the Atayal mountain tribe’s traditional dress at the Holy Cross Catholic Church in Taiwan’s Wufeng township on Oct. 22.

Altar boys Mona, left, and 9-year-old Yashin stand beside Father Barry Martinson at a Sunday Mass at the church in Wufeng township on Oct. 22. Catholic iconography, above, and Indigenous tribal scenes on paneling below mix in the church.

Indigenous-inspired altar boy clothing hangs alongside Catholic robes in the church on Oct. 22.

In the Chinese nomenclature, the Indigenous peoples were crudely divided into two categories—shengfan (literally wild or uncivilized) and “shufan,” or “tamed.” The Saisiyat and Atayal were in the first category. China ceded Taiwan to the Japanese at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese rigorously categorized each household, making records that are still used by the current government in ascertaining who can claim to be Indigenous. Half a century later, after Japan’s defeat in World War II, the KMT, then running Taiwan as a single-party authoritarian state, judged that the plains people—“pingpu,” as they were known—were now assimilated into mainstream Chinese culture and no longer merited recognition as Indigenous.

Under Xi, the PRC has adopted an assimilationist approach to ethnic minorities. The repression of the Uyghurs and Tibetan Buddhists are the highest-profile examples, and the Taiwanese Indigenous people interviewed for this article are well aware of that record. The PRC recognizes the Taiwanese Indigenous peoples as one of China’s 56 ethnic groups under a single heading: “gaoshan,” or high mountain people. It avoids using words such as “Indigenous” or “aboriginal” to describe them, probably because that would undermine the CCP’s insistence that Taiwan is merely a renegade province with the same racial and cultural identity as the mainland.

Since democratization in the mid-1980s, Taiwan has gone in the opposite direction—encouraging recognition of distinct Indigenous identities. Successive governments have gradually added to the number of officially recognized tribes, legislated land rights, and reformed the constitution to set aside six seats in the legislature for Indigenous representatives. Tribal languages have been given the status of national languages and must now be taught in schools where there are Indigenous children.

Three images show Siraya textbooks (center) and Bible translations into Siraya with English footnotes (right) made by Dutch missionaries in the 17th century in Tainan, Taiwan, on Oct. 18.

In 1996 a Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) was established to preside over welfare measures, including educational subsidies, and land and hunting rights for Indigenous peoples in an attempt to overcome the legacies of prejudice and disadvantage, as well as strengthen tribal relations with Indigenous peoples in other countries. This effort bolsters Taiwanese identity internationally, whether or not its nationhood is formally recognized. And, in 2016, on coming to power, the current president, Tsai Ing-wen—whose paternal grandmother was from the Paiwan tribe—issued a comprehensive apology to the tribes for past injustices.

Today, Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples—or those recognized by the government—make up about 2.5 percent of the island’s 23 million inhabitants, similar in proportion to First Nations people in Canada and aboriginals in Australia. But unlike in those countries, Taiwanese Indigenous are at the center of international diplomacy.

The Indigenous peoples of Taiwan are Austronesians. Most anthropologists agree that the island was the point of origin for this, one of the most widely dispersed ethnic groups in the world. Starting 5,000 years ago, Austronesians migrated from Taiwan to the Philippines, then spread over a vast area—across the islands of the Pacific, as far west as Madagascar, as far east as Hawaii, and south to New Zealand. Today, all these cultures have common traits in language and culture.

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In 2004, New Zealand signed an agreement with Taiwan to promote cultural exchanges between the Indigenous peoples. In 2013 this developed into a trade agreement, including a chapter committing the two governments to supporting cultural exchanges. All this, despite New Zealand not officially recognizing Taiwan as a country, and largely because of the Austronesian connection. As a result of the cultural exchanges, members of the Taiwanese Amis tribe—one of the largest—discovered that counting from one to 10 in their language was almost identical to Maori. The subsequent cultural exchanges have become a way of recovering lost words.

As fewer and fewer nations formally recognize Taiwan, Austronesian diplomacy has been stepped up, chiefly by Taiwan. It has initiated the establishment of the Austronesian Forum, which initially included Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, the Philippines, New Zealand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Hawaii, and Guam. Only four of the member nations involved formally recognize Taiwan—but the meetings, presided over by Taiwan, have gradually grown bigger. Its most recent meeting in August, held in the Marshall Islands, included 110 people from 15 countries. Discussion focused on the development of Austronesian ethnic tourism.

Tsai has expressed the hope that, thanks to the state of Hawaii’s membership, the United States might soon join as an observer. Government ministers have also cited the Austronesian forum, and the resulting close links with Pacific island nations, to argue for Taiwan to be allowed to attend the U.N. climate change conference. More recently, thanks to New Zealand’s recommendation, Taiwan has secured the hosting rights for a World Indigenous tourism summit, to be held next year.

Representatives of Taiwan’s tribes have, meanwhile, repudiated Xi’s calls for Taiwan to be absorbed into the PRC—by force, if necessary. In response to a 2019 speech by Xi in which he reasserted that the only possible “historical conclusion” was that Taiwan rejoined China, Indigenous leaders issued a statement saying that they, not the Han Chinese, were “the original owners of Taiwan. … We have never given up our rightful claim to the sovereignty of Taiwan.” That statement, commentators pointed out at the time, could equally be read as a repudiation of the current Han Chinese-dominated government of Taiwan.

It was a florid and self-conscious assertion of identity. Siraya’s village chief, Alak Akatuang, secretary of the Pingpu Indigenous Peoples Cultural Association, kept up a running commentary. His son modeled traditional dress as Akatuang explained their beliefs and celebrated the fact that for the first time in 150 years, Siraya was now a living language.

The Siraya are pingpu—one of the tribes judged by the KMT to have lost its culture. But in recent years, the language has been reconstructed using translations of the Gospels made by early Dutch missionaries, who put the language into written form. Last year, after a decade of litigation, the nation’s Constitutional Court made a landmark decision that the Siraya and the other pingpu tribes could not be denied recognition. The government now has three years to rewrite laws to allow the pingpu peoples to register as Indigenous.

Vare Akatuang (center), a young member of the Siraya tribe, makes an offering to Ali Zu, a local fertility god, at the harvest festival in Donghua village on Oct. 18.

In an interview with Foreign Policy, Yapasuyongu Poiconu , director of the general planning department of the CIP, said government modeling suggested up to 980,000 additional people might now be eligible for recognition. Many would not bother to register, he said, having lost their sense of Indigenous identity. Even so, he expected that the numbers of Indigenous people would swell by “hundreds of thousands”—potentially more than doubling the current number of Indigenous and bringing them up to at least 5 percent of the population.

The decision presents multiple challenges for Taiwan. What happens to the six seats in the Legislative Yuan, which are presently equally split between mountain and plains tribes? What about land rights, when the pingpu peoples’ traditional lands are today densely settled? The Siraya’s traditional home, for example, is the city of Tainan.

Poiconu is not worried that people will falsely claim ancestry to access the benefits. Records from the Japanese era can be used to reliably establish ancestry, he said. To claim government recognition, people will also have to prove continuity of culture and tradition, and the importance of that continuity is the context for the Siraya harvest festival.

Nick Wright, a British citizen studying for a Ph.D. in Pacific regional studies at Dong Hwa University, is a specialist in pingpu culture and has published vocabularies of some of the Indigenous languages, including Siraya. He is a regular attendee at the harvest festival. It is, he said, a tradition that had been driven underground during the often brutal assimilationist policies of the Japanese and the KMT. Gesturing to the pigs, the shaman spitting, and the dancing, he said: “How is that not culture? How can they be denied recognition?”

Pigs are laid out as offerings during a Siraya harvest festival in Donghua village on Oct. 18.

As for the reconstructed language, “if you go into the mountain villages of the recognized tribes, most of the time they speak Mandarin Chinese. The Siraya are essentially no different. Any differences are a matter of degree.”

But that’s not the way it looks from the mountains.

Lahling Yumin said he will support the Sirayas’ battle for recognition, because Indigenous peoples should not fight each other. But it is “complicated.” Yumin was raised on traditional lands, speaking the tribal language, and the traditions he is passing to his children came to him in a direct line from his ancestors. That is different from the Siraya. “How can the recognized Indigenous tribes fight for their rights when too many people born in Taiwan now want to use the word ‘indigenous’ just to say they are not Chinese?” he asked.

Some academics have suggested that many more Taiwanese might have Indigenous ancestry, because the early Chinese colonists did not bring women with them, leading to widespread intermarriage. One study by a molecular anthropologist suggested that up to 85 percent of present-day Taiwanese might have some Indigenous background. That figure, and the methodology she used to arrive at it, has been widely called into question, but there is little doubt that the number of people identifying as Indigenous will continue to grow.

Uma Talavan, a member of the Siraya tribe and campaigner for Indigenous rights, poses for a photo wearing a shirt with song lyrics in Siraya in Tainan on Oct. 18.

Siraya woman Uma Talavan was the lead litigant in the Constitutional Court case. She and her Filipino husband, Edgar Macapili, are the ones mainly responsible for the revival of the language, using the translated Gospels to construct a series of textbooks now used in schools. Yet, in another example of the complications of identity in Taiwan, Talavan was not at the Siraya harvest festival. She is a Christian, and the Siraya are divided between those who keep the Presbyterian faith brought by the missionaries and those who are reviving the worship of traditional gods. For her, the festival was pagan.

Talavan has been campaigning for recognition for years, inspired by childhood conversations with her grandfather about how the land was taken from his people. She has been frustrated by the CIP’s resistance, which she attributes to its domination by the mountain tribes. She watches the government using the Indigenous for its own purposes. “We feel used, but we don’t mind being used, so long as we are recognized,” she said. And, once the court’s decision is implemented, she intends “very carefully, because the Han Chinese are very sensitive on this point,” to explore land rights in the city of Tainan. She believes China has no more claim to Taiwan than Britain has to the United States. In both cases, the Indigenous were there first.

Savungaz Valincinan, a member of the Bunun tribe, poses outside Lumaq cafe in Taipei. She owns and operates the spot as a community center for visiting Indigenous activists.

As a child, she was known by her father’s Chinese name. The Bunun are matrilineal, but it wasn’t until high school that she began to use the tribal name that came from her mother’s line. This was partly because there were educational welfare benefits at a time when the family was short of cash. They discussed doing the same thing for her brothers—but her Han Chinese grandparents threatened to disown the family if they allowed male children to be identified as tribesmen, rather than Han Chinese.

Now, Valincinan is running as an independent candidate for one of the six seats in the legislature reserved for Indigenous representatives, with the election due in January. She is frustrated with the DPP government and the CIP. The latter acts as a conduit for the government, rather than as an advocate for Indigenous people, she said. She wants better hunting and land rights, as well as an anti-discrimination law that would prohibit racist language on social media—she has recently been the target of such attacks.

She supports the Siraya people’s campaign for recognition. She sees no difference between them and her own position. “They have their traditions. Who could say they don’t? Meanwhile, I don’t speak my mother’s language and I don’t know enough about her culture, but I am still Bunun.”

Indigenous Taiwanese performers are seen through a stage backdrop at the Siraya harvest festival in Donghua village on Oct. 18.

She does not expect to be elected. The vote is nationwide, meaning it favors the larger tribes. At 36, she is much younger than her opponents, all of whom are over 50, but she hopes for a big turnout from young Indigenous people “who are discovering and valuing who they are.”

How important is democracy?

“That is one of the complications of being both Taiwanese and Bunun,” she said. “As a Taiwanese person, I think democracy is so important. So that means we have to fight China if necessary to preserve our democracy.

“But as an Indigenous youth, a member of a minority, I wonder why we talk in such glowing terms about democracy, when for people like us it is so hard to have our voice heard and to get our issues discussed.”

She feels more connection to the other Austronesian nations—the Philippines, New Zealand, and the islands of the Pacific—than she does to mainland China. As for Xi’s claims, she is in agreement with all the other Indigenous people interviewed for this article—if more bluntly spoken. “Fuck him. He knows nothing about who I am or how I live in Taiwan.”