Indigenous Autonomy: Constructing a Place for Ethnic Minorities in Taiwan’s Emerging Civic Society

For more than two decades, indigenous autonomy has been one of the main demands of Taiwan’s indigenous rights movement. Indigenous autonomy was incorporated into Chen Shui-bian’s campaign promises in 1999, and subsequently adopted as a policy goal in the 2000 DPP White Paper on Indigenous Policy. In 2005, the passage of the Basic Law on Indigenous Peoples made it seem as if this goal could soon be fulfilled. The Taroko Nation, recognized by the ROC in 2004, initially seemed poised to create Taiwan’s first indigenous autonomous region. Those goals, however, have been slowed down by the emergence of communities and individuals in their defined territory who refuse Taroko identity and have launched a competing drive for recognition as the Sediq Nation. Some Taroko people also resist the project of autonomy on the grounds that it merely empowers a small elite and does nothing to address their more immediate economic problems. These counter movements suggest that more is at stake in “autonomy ” than indigenous rights. This paper thus looks at the creation of indigenous autonomy as part of an emerging civic society for an independent Taiwan. How do name rectification and autonomy campaigns contribute to the incorporation of indigenous individuals and communities into Taiwanese civic society? What does the reconfiguration of power implied by such changes mean for ordinary people in indigenous communities? Do these struggles mean that indigenous people are taking a place in broader Taiwanese civic society? Or are they merely being used by others in struggles beyond their own control