Taiwan has a unique opportunity to be a regional leader on Aboriginal issues and to serve as an ambassador for various Aboriginal communities throughout East and Southeast Asia.
When President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) at her inauguration last year apologized to Aborigines, there was hope that Tsai, whose grandmother was Paiwan, would address Aboriginal issues that have long been neglected. This was the stated purpose of the Presidential Office’s Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Commission formed by the new government.
However, one year on it appears there has been little real progress on the two main issues that most concern Aborigines: hunting and land rights. In May, a court in Kaohsiung found two Paiwan men not guilty of killing three protected animals, but that the case made it to court at all and that people protested the court ruling show that misunderstanding and discrimination toward Aborigines still exist.
The main problem is that Aboriginal rights are superseded by the Wildlife Conservation Act (野生動物保育法) and other national laws.
Most recently Amis and other communities have been fighting the government over encroachment on their lands by developers who take advantage of the way private and public land is demarcated.
“If someone wants to build a hotel on our land, it is the county government that has to approve it, not the indigenous inhabitants,” Taiwan Indigenous Peoples’ Policies Association president Oto Micyang has said.
Campaigners are calling on the government to amend regulations to allow Aboriginal communities to classify land without government intervention. They have the support of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and New Power Party (NPP) caucuses.
“It is not enough for Tsai to apologize to Aborigines. What is crucial is whether the massive government bureaucracy takes proactive measures to restore Aboriginal rights, land and dignity based on her apology,” NPP Legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal said.
The government has made progress on some Aboriginal issues, such as the Aboriginal Language Development Act (原住民族語言發展法) passed in May that recognizes local languages in communities that have at least 1,500 Aborigines, but the real task of the committee should be to secure Aboriginal land and hunting rights. Self-determination in land use and cultural practice are the concerns of Aborigines everywhere who face frustrations in securing self-determination.
Japan’s indigenous people, the Ainu, were forced off ancestral land in the 19th century and given land unsuitable for farming. They are protected by law, but still face discrimination and struggle for recognition of historical injustices.
The Philippines’ Aeta people, who live in the mountainous areas of Luzon, fight for land rights with the Tagalog majority, whose agricultural and urban development often encroaches on Aeta ancestral land.
In the Central Highlands of Vietnam, the Degar, also known as the Montagnard, have historically faced rape and genocide, and today regularly have their land stolen by the Kinh, or Vietnamese, majority. They are regularly arrested for practicing their religion, despite the protection of religious freedom guaranteed by the Vietnamese constitution.
The government has vowed to expand the economy through the New Southbound Policy that aims to bolster ties with Southeast Asian nations and India. This policy should also aim to promote the interests of the region’s Aborigines.
Taiwan is already a regional leader in terms of its democracy and is therefore best positioned to promote Aboriginal rights. The nation should establish an international forum to discuss Aboriginal issues, which would allow the nation to exhibit leadership and bolster its soft power. The nation could also explore economic development opportunities that empower Aboriginal communities.
We are used to hearing that whenever something happens, it means Taiwan is about to fall to China. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) cannot change the color of his socks without China experts claiming it means an invasion is imminent. So, it is no surprise that what happened in Venezuela over the weekend triggered the knee-jerk reaction of saying that Taiwan is next. That is not an opinion on whether US President Donald Trump was right to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro the way he did or if it is good for Venezuela and the world. There are other, more qualified
This should be the year in which the democracies, especially those in East Asia, lose their fear of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China principle” plus its nuclear “Cognitive Warfare” coercion strategies, all designed to achieve hegemony without fighting. For 2025, stoking regional and global fear was a major goal for the CCP and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), following on Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) Little Red Book admonition, “We must be ruthless to our enemies; we must overpower and annihilate them.” But on Dec. 17, 2025, the Trump Administration demonstrated direct defiance of CCP terror with its record US$11.1 billion arms
The immediate response in Taiwan to the extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by the US over the weekend was to say that it was an example of violence by a major power against a smaller nation and that, as such, it gave Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) carte blanche to invade Taiwan. That assessment is vastly oversimplistic and, on more sober reflection, likely incorrect. Generally speaking, there are three basic interpretations from commentators in Taiwan. The first is that the US is no longer interested in what is happening beyond its own backyard, and no longer preoccupied with regions in other
As technological change sweeps across the world, the focus of education has undergone an inevitable shift toward artificial intelligence (AI) and digital learning. However, the HundrED Global Collection 2026 report has a message that Taiwanese society and education policymakers would do well to reflect on. In the age of AI, the scarcest resource in education is not advanced computing power, but people; and the most urgent global educational crisis is not technological backwardness, but teacher well-being and retention. Covering 52 countries, the report from HundrED, a Finnish nonprofit that reviews and compiles innovative solutions in education from around the world, highlights a
RSS