Snkreygan members of the Truku community on Wednesday fired muskets and sent up smoke signals in Tongmen Village (銅門) in Hualien County’s Sioulin Township (秀林) in a traditional territory-marking ritual that declared their self-rule area, without waiting for the government’s expansion of Aboriginal lands on Wednesday next week.
The ritual was performed in response to President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) public apology to the nation’s Aborigines in August, when Tsai pledged to increase lands held by Aboriginal communities, Snkreygan leaders said.
“Aboriginal culture exists in the land, and our people know how best to manage and use it,” community council chairman Ma Shao (馬少) said.
Photo: Wang Chin-yi, Taipei Times
The villagers are entitled to their traditional lands under the law and they share collective control of the lands as a historically sovereign community, not as private landowners in a capitalist society, Snkreygan community spokesman Rakaw Didi said.
“We hope the Council of Indigenous Peoples will approach the issue with an attitude respectful of Aboriginal autonomy, and move forward by verifying the territorial claims of Aboriginal communities, rather than imposing the framework of state regulations on Aborigines,” he said, adding that the government should let Aboriginal communities settle conflicting land claims and refrain from unnecessary intervention.
Lowsi Rakaw, a researcher into Snkreygan history, said that his reconstruction of Snkreygan territory shows that it encompasses an area of 1,000km2, with the Nanhu Mountain Range (南湖大山) in the north, the central mountain range in the west and Siouguluan Range in the south.
The calculation does not include the community’s historic settlements, he said.
The reconstruction of Snkreygan boundaries is based on interviews with village elders and hunters, research on the origins of place names and GPS data, he added.
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