New rules to allow for Aboriginal harvesting of traditional materials in national forests are too restrictive and fail to respect Aboriginal sovereignty, Aboriginal rights campaigners said yesterday at a legislative meeting convened by New Power Party Legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal.
The regulations promulgated by the Forestry Bureau — which would allow Aboriginal applications for the first time — have attracted attention as the first concrete step in government promises to push forward implementation of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law (原住民族基本法) following President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) official apology to the nation’s Aborigines earlier this month.
Both the Basic Law and the Forestry Act (森林法) contain provisions guaranteeing Aboriginal rights to harvest materials from national forests for traditional uses, but failure to promulgate relevant regulations has prevented implementation for more than a decade.
Association for Taiwan Indigenous People’s Policy president Yapasuyongu’e Akuyana said the proposed rules were overly conservative.
“These rules do not include anything new other than codifying something that is already legal,” he said, calling for broader reforms such as only requiring Aborigines to file reports on what they harvest or implementing joint management of traditional lands.
“Why do we have to accept whatever you say and apply for you to have pity on our groups because we absolutely have to use these materials?” he asked.
Daya Dakasi, an assistant professor at National Chengchi University’s Department of Ethnology, said the rules would limit harvesting rights to publicly owned land through its definition of the “traditional areas” to which harvesting rights would apply.
“‘Traditional areas’ existed prior to the division of land into publicly and privately owned, so to state that only publicly owned land can be defined as a traditional area is a big logical mistake,” he said.
“Because the land is ours, the Republic of China should have to notify us before its does anything,” said Kavas, a Bunun member of the Taiwan Indigenous Conserved Territories Union. “It is like the hair on my head — regardless of what it looks like, it is mine and I have the right to manage it myself.”
“This is a step forward because we are serious about becoming true partners with Aboriginal peoples,” Forestry Bureau Director-General Frank Lin (林華慶) said, adding that the environmental concerns in wider society warrant the existence of an application mechanism.
The ministry could adjust wording of “permits,” “approval” and other concepts as long as it stayed within the bounds set by related Forestry Act provisions, he said, adding that decisions on the definition of what constituted “traditional usage” would be made by committees composed of village representatives and government officials.
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