Indigenous peoples of Taiwan and their ancient export to the world

The government of Taiwan currently recognizes 16 indigenous tribes. Apart from the Yami or Tao people inhabiting Orchid Island off the southeast coast, all the tribes are on the main island. In 2020 those tribes had 559,036 members, equating to 2.37 percent of Taiwan’s total population. Approximately 400,000 others belong to 10 groups denied official recognition, collectively known as the Pingpu, whose traditional languages are no longer spoken.

Language vitality varies among the recognized tribes, from moribund (only used by a few elders) to strong, but all have undergone significant recent language shift to Chinese. Thriving or silenced, all the languages belong to the Austronesian linguistic family, but in divergent branches.

Around 4,000-5,000 years ago, some of those inhabitants sailed south. Their descendants mixed with pre-existing inhabitants in the Philippine and Indonesian archipelagos, Malay peninsula, coastal New Guinea and nearby islands, and journeyed across the Indian and Pacific Oceans to unpeopled lands.

The linguistic legacy of these voyages comprises over 1,200 Austronesian languages spread across a vast realm: not just Southeast Asia, but also Madagascar, Micronesia, Melanesia and the Polynesian triangle bounded by Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand.

Colonial regimes and colonial wrongs in Taiwan: brief historical context

Tsai’s speech referred to wrongdoings by “every regime that has come to Taiwan” over “400 years” and explicitly named, in addition to invaders from distant Europe, arrivals from nearer Asian shores: Japan and, in three separate impositions, China.

Colonization began when the Dutch East India Company established a base on the southwest coast in 1624. Spain had a small colony in the north from 1626 but yielded to the Dutch in 1642. The Dutch subjugated indigenous communities and usurped their lands, encouraging immigration by Han Chinese settlers from Fujian and Guangdong provinces, immediately across the Taiwan Strait.

The Dutch were ousted in 1661 by Koxinga, a leader of Ming dynasty remnants holding out in southern China against the Qing dynasty imposed by Manchu invaders. Koxinga’s kingdom marked the first installation of political institutions from mainland China to accompany the growing Han demographic presence on Taiwan’s western plain. The Qing took over in 1683, gradually expanding the area of Han settlement without gaining full control of the mountains.

Japanese occupation from 1895 to 1945 brought dramatic changes to all aspects of life in Taiwan. Mountain tribes were incorporated into the empire’s extractive labor force and administrative structures after military “pacification” campaigns in the face of formidable indigenous resistance. Cultural patterns were undermined as hundreds of communities were forcibly relocated to facilitate control. The outbreak of war between China and Japan in 1937 intensified efforts to impose linguistic and cultural Japanization, and by 1945 a high proportion of indigenous children had been schooled in Japanese.

After Japan’s defeat, Taiwan regained its pre-1895 status as a province of China, now configured as the Republic of China and governed by the Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalists. When Mao’s Communists won the Civil War and declared the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan with segments of the mainland elite. Their authoritarian regime imposed Mandarin schooling and governance on the pre-1949 Chinese, most of whom spoke Minnan with a minority using Hakka, and on the indigenous tribes.

Democratic transition and the call for indigenous rights

In the 1980s there were reformist steps and society became freer, with burgeoning social movements making their voices heard. Martial law ended in 1987 and the death of Chiang Kai-shek’s son the following year ushered in a democratization process. His locally born successor Lee Teng-hui steered Taiwan through the transition and became its first elected president in 1996. Uninterrupted KMT control ended in 2000 when voters chose the first non-KMT president, Chen Shui-bian, of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that Tsai Ing-wen now leads. The DPP grew out of movements emphasizing Minnan language and a distinct Taiwanese identity. The KMT tended to attract votes from mainlanders and Hakka, and from those indigenous communities where it had constructed patronage networks.

The indigenous rights cause gained public attention during this transformative time. The first activist organization formed in 1984 and “Give Back Our Land” protests were prominent in the late 1980s. Indigenous campaigning achieved constitutional amendments that changed their official designation from an outdated term meaning “mountain compatriots” to wording equivalent to “indigenous people” in 1994, and to “peoples” in 1997. That 1994 amendment took effect on Aug. 1, 1994, later adopted as Indigenous Peoples Day— and therefore as the date for Tsai Ing-wen’s 2016 apology.

In 1995, Lee’s government permitted registration of personal names in indigenous languages. The following year it acceded to insistence by legislators from the reserved indigenous seats that it establish the body now called the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP). The chairman of the CIP has a ministerial level position—in effect, the Cabinet automatically includes an indigenous person, and she/he has responsibility for indigenous affairs. The CIP functions include recognition of indigenous peoples, a gatekeeping role that often attracts controversy, particularly its reluctance to give formal recognition to most Pingpu groups.

What the Indigenous Languages Development Act means for Taiwan and its indigenous languages

Tsai’s summary of historic wrongs included language prohibitions, assimilation measures and neglect that resulted in “great losses” in relation to native languages, and complete disappearance in the case of the Pingpu. In turn, among her undertakings was one directed at that cultural harm: a pledge to submit a draft indigenous languages law in Taiwan’s parliament.

Since that day, Tsai’s government has been criticized for a failure to deliver on some of the promises contained in the apology, notably regarding return of indigenous lands.

However, the commitment to advance enactment of indigenous language legislation was honored, and the Indigenous Languages Development Act (ILDA) became law in mid-2017. The ILDA confers official status on Taiwan’s indigenous languages, recognizes a right to use those languages in dealings with administrative agencies, and assigns a range of responsibilities to public authorities.

The ILDA was not a completely new creation, as drafts were devised by the CIP in the early 2000s but not advanced further. Its absence did not impede work to protect and promote indigenous languages, because efforts were already initiated by indigenous organizations and educators, accompanied by non-indigenous scholars and other allies. A Center of indigenous Education and Research was set up in 1994, and the 1998 Education Act for Indigenous Peoples encouraged educational authorities to provide indigenous students opportunities to learn their languages or be taught through them. The 2005 Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, while anticipating future language legislation, itself provided authorization for certain measures.

Nor was the ILDA’s existence a prerequisite for governments and public institutions to support community endeavors outside the classroom. The CIP had been doing that since the early days of its existence, including involvement in the 2005 launch of Taiwan Indigenous Television, which provides airtime for the 16 languages still spoken—albeit with most programming in Mandarin, now the lingua franca for communication between members of different tribes, and first language for most indigenous persons of middle age or younger.

Before the ILDA the CIP had elaborated two consecutive six-year plans for indigenous language revitalization, detailing the spectrum of activities it initiated or supported. Those actions are all consonant with language maintenance and reclamation efforts occurring in other parts of the world. Some are innovative, such as subsidizing childcare provided in indigenous languages and a plan to sustain indigenous language use in community churches. Activities funded or supported by the CIP include: sociolinguistic surveys to gauge language attitudes and usage patterns; language nests, where pre-school children acquire the language from staff and elders in an immersion environment; language camps for indigenous children in urban areas; proficiency testing; production of teaching materials; linguistics research; adult education; master-apprentice programs; a range of other training programs; and development of digital resources.

Since 2019, the official status the ILDA confers upon Taiwan’s indigenous languages has an alternative source: the Development of National Languages Act (DNLA). Drafted almost two decades ago but derailed by debates around language and identity politics, the DNLA gives national language status to the “natural languages and sign languages used by the different ethnic groups”, thereby covering all locally spoken Chinese varieties as well as indigenous languages.

What the ILDA says to the rest of the world

The ILDA may have an additional function, likely to appeal to those seeking to cultivate a positive image for Taiwan in the international arena: another means to signal Taiwan’s conformity with human rights standards, such as those enunciated in the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Taiwan cannot participate in the forums that produce international law instruments, but its governments like to emphasize their respect for principles codified in human rights treaties.

Taiwan has long instrumentalized shared Austronesian language heritage to build connections with Southeast Asia and Pacific Island states, perhaps helping sustain the diplomatic recognition it still receives from some Pacific countries. Taiwanese indigenous organizations already have strong international networks, particularly with their fellow Austronesian-speaking Maori and Hawaiians. The ILDA may create more opportunities for those organizations, and for Taiwan’s human rights groups, universities, and research centers, to build relationships with counterparts in countries with indigenous populations, including the South and Southeast Asian states that are the focus of the New Southbound Policy that is now crucial to Taiwan’s international orientations.

A longer version of this article has been published by the Asia Institute’s Melbourne Asia Review. This article is a collaboration between The Jakarta Post and the Asia Institute, the University  of Melbourne.

Brett Todd is a visiting fellow at the National Taiwan Normal University, funded by a Taiwan Foreign Affairs Ministry fellowship. He wishes to thank Joe Lo Bianco for his support and make a special acknowledgement to his hosts in Ren'ai Township: Austin Lin (林宏信), Rachel Lu (盧鈺心), and her family.