Sun, Jul 13, 2025 page8

• Learning from the Bunun people

  • By Mohammad Sibtain Kadri 陳達仁
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  On April 13, I stood in Nanan (南安), a Bunun village in southern Hualien County’s Jhuosi Township (卓溪), absorbing lessons from elders who spoke of the forest not as backdrop, but as living presence — relational, sacred and full of spirit.

  I was there with fellow international students from National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) participating in a field trip that would become one of the most powerful educational experiences of my life.

  Ten days later, a news report in the Taipei Times shattered the spell: “Formosan black bear shot and euthanized in Hualien” (April 23, page 2). A tagged bear, previously released by conservationists, had entered the very village I had visited. In fear, the residents killed the bear after it reportedly attacked livestock and pets.

  For the Bunun, who regard bears as a spiritual relative, the act demanded purification rituals. It was not just a loss — it was rupture.

  That contrast haunted me. In the same forest that taught lessons of cohabitation and respect, violence unfolded. What began as ecological celebration ended in tragedy. It raised a pressing question: What does it truly mean to live with other species — not as threats, but as companions in a shared world?

  As an international student from India studying science, technology and society education at NDHU, I believe the bear’s death was not an isolated event. It exposed deeper challenges in our conservation frameworks. In our course on environment and education, we explored thinkers such as US academic Donna Haraway and Chinese-American anthropologist Anna Tsing.

  Haraway reminds us to “stay with the trouble,” to engage with ecological complexity, rather than escape it through easy solutions. Tsing writes about life that persists amid capitalist ruins — mushrooms thriving where others collapse.

  These perspectives echo in Taiwan, a nation proud of its biodiversity and conservation success stories. Yet, conservation often operates through separation: bears in forests, humans in valleys.

  However, climate change and habitat fragmentation blur these boundaries. Wildlife enters human spaces not out of defiance, but necessity.

  So instead of asking “how do we keep bears out?” perhaps we should ask: “What does coexistence require?”

  The real issue is not the bear — it is how we frame the bear: as trespasser, threat or target. For the Bunun elders, the bear is kin, not menace. This is more than cultural reverence — it is pedagogy. It invites us to rethink environmental education. Not through lecture slides, but through dialogue with those who have lived in harmony with wildness for generations.

  Imagine if Taiwan’s environmental curriculum began in conversation with the Bunun, Amis and Truku — not as anthropological subjects, but as co-teachers. Students would learn not just ecological facts, but the ethics of dwelling within ecosystems.

  I call this “reworlding” environmental education — an approach rooted in cultural wisdom, interspecies respect and storytelling. Reworlding is praxis. It might look like community patrol teams that guide rather than remove wild animals. It could mean weaving oral traditions, ritual practices and indigenous cosmologies into formal syllabi. It demands recognition that colonial histories and capitalist economies have reshaped not only land, but how we think about land.

  We need education that is decolonial, interdisciplinary and multispecies in scope. Research partnerships with indigenous communities must be reciprocal, not extractive. Taiwan has promising models — such as youth forest camps, indigenous language initiatives and eco-cultural tourism. However, these must move from the margins to the heart of national education policies.

  We must also critique our institutions. Are they cultivating ecological imagination, or reinforcing systems of control and commodification? Is sustainability framed as a lifestyle — or reduced to a checklist?

  Indian eco-feminist Vandana Shiva teaches that ecological resistance is inseparable from cultural resistance. In Sikkim, India’s first fully organic state, farmers and the government banned genetically modified seeds and restored biodiversity through education, policy and activism.

  Taiwan, too, could lead not just in conservation science, but in conservation imagination: A nation where the Formosan black bear is not merely a tourist emblem, but an ecological citizen; a place where indigenous voices are not just heard, but honored; a society where forests are not outside the classroom — the forest is the classroom.

  This is not a call for utopia. Bears would continue to descend from mountains. Encounters would occur. However, instead of panic or punishment, let our responses be guided by reworlded environmental pedagogy and partnership.

  Mohammad Sibtain Kadri is an international student from India studying for a master’s degree in science, technology and society education at National Dong Hwa University. He is also an academic at the Chung Hwa Rotary Educational Foundation in Taichung.
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