Taiwan, Can You Live With a Clear Conscience?

My name is Ita Thao

On 15 August 2001, the Executive Yuan (Council) of Taiwan officially recognized the Thao tribe Thao as the tenth ethic group among Taiwan's indigenous peoples. The Thao peoples, living around the Sun Moon Lake with a population of only a few hundreds, proved that they have been mistakenly regarded as the ‘Thou' tribe since the time of Japanese occupation. The error was caused by both a misunderstanding of the legend saying that "the ancestors of Thao were from Alishan (Mountain A Li)" and the similar pronunciation of ‘Thao' and ‘Thou'. Thus, the domicile of the Thaos had been registered as "Thous from the flatlands of the mountains" under the nine ethnic groups of Taiwan's indigenous peoples.

From the point of view of cultural anthropology and ethnography, the Thaos were very different from the Thous in their languages, ceremonies, rituals, practices, and also their diets, costumes and housing. In their annals from 1992 to 1996, the Asian Indigenous Peoples Pact had long recognized the Thao as an independent ethnic group of indigenous people in Taiwan. Therefore, the Thao cogently looked forward to the proclamation of the name of ‘Thao' along with the official recognition by the government, striving to sustain their ethnic self-recognition under various predominant external pressures. Indeed, in the land around the Sun Moon Lake, the Thao have for a long time been proudly practicing the way of living known as Ita Thao (‘We Ourselves').

Returning to the cradle of the souls (Ulalaluwan)

In the daily living of Ita Thao, rituals are the linking bridge between the Thao and their ancestors. From the collective work of farming, hunting and fishing to individual travel, home furnishing or dreams interpretation, the Thao are living among their ancestral spirits. In surviving rituals, the moral is to inform the ancestral spirits of the state of the spirit of the living or deceased Thao, the most important state of the spirit being the return of all human spirits, living and deceased, to the cradle of souls, Ulalaluwan (1). In rituals around the year, this is effected by the Sorceress chanting names repeatedly. Quoting the Chief Sorceress of the Thao, Shek Yuk Ying, a researcher, Dang Siang Young argues that "male or female, the Thao list their names inside the Ulalaluwan and pay respect to it at their own home. After the ritual of tooth pulling at about the age of ten, a child's name will be listed in the cradle.  Among the various rituals of the Thao, the ritual of fundamental importance is the chanting of the names inside the Ulalaluwan by the Sorceress responsible for the household. The names will include all the names of the ancestral spirits and the living of the family and also the names of the ‘living spirits' of the household. However, the names of the deceased or living spirits of the wives of those who has performed as Chief Sorcerer Pariqaz (similar to the master of temple of the Han Chinese) will not be chanted. The names of the married daughters and their living spirits shall remain at the Ulalaluwan of their fathers' household.

Promised land: Where are the ritual grounds and the sacred land of the ancestral spirits?

Just a few days after President Chen Shui Bin announced the tribe of Thao as the tenth ethic group among Taiwan's indigenous peoples, the Thao received their "first present from the government of the Republic of China". The present was a memorandum from the county government of Nantou demanding the Thao to demolish the buildings on the tribal ancestral ritual ground so as to return the land to a "third party", a developer who had procured the land through legal bidding process.

In fact since 1983, when the county government of Nantou started to predetermine the re-planning of the town planning of the Tak Fa Township, the ancestral ritual ground of the Thaos has been marked for demolition and auction. The Thao Cultural Development Association took up the sacred mission to reclaim the lost tribal ancestral ritual ground after the death of Chen Gin Fu Cheong, the person in charge of the ritual ground, whose industrious efforts for the cause went on for more then ten years. Since 2002, the Association has organized numerous briefings for the press, public hearings at the county council of Nantou, and ‘Return My Ancestral Ritual Land' struggles and lobbying.

The county government claims that its re-planning merely adheres to existing legislation. The Thao, however, believe that the re-planning has been twisted to benefit the capitalists, based on the observation that capitalists have ended up the most and the best land, while the Thao have been left with only scattered pieces of land or even none at all. Accounts delivered by both the county government and the Thaos require further investigations.

For the executives in the county government, will they ever admit that they might have erred in their re-planning of the land usage and distribution?

For the Thaos, how can they bear the sadness of being pushed around once again by the state, something which has happened again and again in their history? How can they resign themselves to losing their reserved land all together? How can they swallow the county government's claim that "everything is legal according to the prescribed procedures", how can they forfeit their own dignity and accept their "bad luck", how could they live with a clear conscience among their ancestral spirits if they surrendered their very last sacred land?

Eventually, the dispute between the Thao and the county government ground to a stalemate. The problem was raised in a civil action initiated by the "third party", a trial in which the disfunction of the state, the bigotry of the law and the powerlessness of the civil society were proclaimed.

During the first debate in front of the magistrate, the dialogue between the Thaos and the court and the civil society went as follows:

Magistrate: In the petition, the defendants are the ten family members of the household of Chen Gin Fu (Thao), does the plaintiff agree?

Lawyer representing the plaintiff (the third party): Agree.

Defendant (representative of Thao without professional legal knowledge): Not agreed, the 283 living Thaos and all the deceased ancestral spirits should all be listed as defendants, because the ritual ground is share by all these living and the dead!

Magistrate: According the law of the Republic of China, the deceased cannot be listed as a defendant, do you understand?

Defendant [a Thao representative without professional legal knowledge]: According to the Thao law, those who violently acquire land will have to be expelled from the tribe. Also, with all the changes from the Qing Dynasty to the Japanese to the Republic of China, the Thao really cannot understand why our own laws are never honored! We have no idea what should we follow, and which law will not be changed!

Magistrate: Then, what can we do?

‘This is our beautiful Promised Land'

Whenever the Thaos speak of the past and present lives of the Ita Thao, they say:

In the beginning, the ancestors chased after a white deer for six days and seven nights. Finally when they came to Puzi (where is now Puzi [Tu-ting] Peninsula in Sun Moon Lake), the white deer jumped into the lake. The Thao hunters could only wait. Among the hunters, an elder dreamed of a fairy in a white cloak who told him, "I am the white deer who led you here, and I want you, the Thao, to move here. This is a beautiful place, this is the land promised to you, and you should never leave, for generations to come."

This is the "Legend of the White Deer" that has passed down to generations of Thaos.  They always stress that the Thaos should never leave their promised land. Return to the ancestral land of Puzi is the national mission of the Thao. However, in the national history of the Thao for the last few hundreds of years, they have been retreating again and again. 

In 1684, the Thao entered the era of so-called "Han Chinese history". During the period when the Qing Dynasty imposed itself on Taiwan, the Thao struggled and retreated, but even though they felt powerless, the struggle also raised their sense of national solidarity. In 1721, trying to stop the loss of land and to secure their boundaries, the Thao rose up and killed a translator of the Qing government in the ‘Chu Yat Kwai' Incident. In 1726, the Thao came together under the flag of Gu Zhong to resist the Qing government. Even though the Thao were outnumbered and out-equipped, they rose up again and again after every defeat. But along with the imposition of the state power of the Han Chinese, came infectious diseases that threatened population growth, and the practice of tenant farming which caused the draining of farmlands. The Thao became grassland owners rather than the masters of sandy wetlands which they used to be.

After the ‘Kwok Pak Nin' Incident in 1814, it became difficult for the Thaos to resist the pressure of land acquisition from the outside. In the era of Japanese rule, the building of a hydro-electric power plant at Sun Moon Lake flooded what remained of the Thao's ‘beautiful homeland' and forced them to leave their villages. Two portions of land at Barawbaw (Sun Moon Village) were promised to every Thao by the Japanese, in order to pacify those who had to leave their villages due to the flooding. As time passed, more and more Han Chinese moved into the Barawbaw area. From 1983, under the rule of the Republic of China, through the re-planning of land by the county government, the Thao have been left with no fields to farm, no roof to live under, and no ritual ground to pay respects to their ancestors.

How can civil society live with a clear conscience if the rebuilt community of Ita Thao is demolished?

The earthquake in Taiwan in 1999 broke open the problem of the rebuilding of the Thao's living area and the revival of the Thao culture. With the problems at hand, the Thao would keep passing down the sayings of the ancestral spirits, remembering the sayings of the white deer. They adhered to the unchanging beliefs of their ancestral spirits on the one hand and mobilized efforts for their cultural revival after the earthquake, and also for the future on the other hand. 

Recently, the Thao have been working hard to rebuild their community and their culture: the Thao name ‘Lalu Island' has been resurrected for what used to be known as Kwong Hua Island, a Thao Cultural Development Association has been established, the rebuilding of temporary housing -made independently and without any support from the government-- has been taking place after the earthquake, there have been industrious efforts to run the Thao Cultural Properties Collective, as well as planning for a Thao Autonomous Region. In all these aspects, the Thao have been working hard to maintain the survival and continuation of their nation through many difficulties and obstacles.

Throughout these struggles, the Thao have had to face numerous setbacks. Their ancestral ritual ground has been redeveloped into commercial building by the "third party" investor, and the re-itemization of land for the Thao Autonomy Region is still trapped within the official procedures of the county government. In the mindset of the county government, which claims that the building of a leisure hotel will revive the Sun Moon Lake as a tourist attraction, even the temporary houses rebuilt by the Thao after the devastating earthquake will have to be demolished. The government has announced that the Thao have to demolish their houses and "return" the land before the Lunar New Year.

This has become a test of the conscience and wisdom of civil society in Taiwan. If the problem of the Ita Thao community is allowed to interpreted solely from the point of view of ‘legality' or the commercial needs of the tourist industry, it will be obvious that society as a whole thinks little of the rights of indigenous peoples and the rights to cultural heritage.

Loh Yung Ching is a doctoral student at the University of Taiwan, a Han Chinese, an Ex-Chief Secretary of the Thao Cultural Development Association, and Secretariat of the Cultural Taiwan Development Association

(1) Ulalaluwan: Academics used to understand Ulalaluwan (cradle of the souls) with the concept of the ancestral plaque of the Han Chinese.  Recently, a researcher of the Thao's culture, Mr. Tang Suen Yeung, suggested that this understanding included only the deceased spirits and neglected the fact that the cradle also embraced the spirits of the living.