Declaration of Indigenous Land Rights

Original Text written by Neqo Soqluman、Lahuy Icyeh (graduate students of Providence University, Taiwan)

Translated by Class of Contemporary Taiwanese Society

Department of Humanities and Social Science

National Chiao Tung University

People define the land, and the land defines the people. The Tayal inherent territory and natural sovereignty are the very foundation of Tayal culture. Therefore, the Tayal people declare that we have the full sovereignty, control and management over our ancestral lands.

To this day, the Tayal people—individuals and the village—have never by any means given up our ownership and use of our ancestral lands! That is to say we have never lost the rights to our traditional territory. This land has always been ours. For this reason, the Tayal people have the inherent rights to enjoy and manage our territory such as through agricultural cultivation, wild craft gathering, hunting, and current tourism development. This is our territorial heritage.

The state intervention is in fact an intrusion and offense to the Tayal subjectivity and sovereignty, which is an extreme example of the State’s brutality and oppression. How can the court prosecute the landowners as “thievery” when we simply use things from our own land? Therefore, in the premise of asserting our traditional territory and natural sovereignty, we demand that every form of state intervention be withdrawn from our land.

If the state claims that we do not have the land rights, please give concrete evidence to support such accusation. Or, please explain how the state acquired this land in the first place? And when did the Tayal people publicly announced that we give up our inherent traditional territory and natural rights?

Support from around the world: Dr. Teresa Tao's support for Smangus people

I would like to support Smangus people as a lecturer in the Department of Geography at University of Toronto, Canada by adding the following message. Please provide only my English name. Thanks

Teresa
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A letter to Taiwanese Authorities:

I am a lecturer in geography at University of Toronto, Canada and one of the authors of "Guidelines for Tourism in Parks and Protected Areas of East Asia", published by IUCN – The World Conservation Union. My specialization is sustainable tourism development and resource management in indigenous communities. I have worked with Smangus people in 2004 on ecotourism development.

I would like to join Dr. Jeanine Pfeiffer, Dr. William T. Hipwell, and Dr. Kelly Bannister to add my support to the villagers' request of dropping the adjudication of the first instance made by Taiwan Hsin-Chu District Court.

In order to effectively manage mountain forest o n an extensive scale, Forestry Bureau needs the aid and human resources of local indigenous communities who are born and brought up there and familiar with mountain forests and topography . It is the time to establish a mutually beneficial and respectful partnership with local indigenous communities .

The community began the planning and development of ecotourism more than ten years ago. Their interpretation program of local natural and cultural features and conservation concepts has changed knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour of tourists in pro-environmental way. The tourism related activities in the community have been sustainably managed in way of supporting conservation and providing quality tourism. Full local participation and money generated has been evenly distributed within the community under their traditional culture Gaga (communal mechanism). As a result, it was chosen as the model tribal community by the Council of Indigenous People, Execurive Yuan. If this event was not handled properly, it would jeopardize other tribes ' confidence to the committment made by Chen's government of establishing a new parternship with indigenous communities in Taiwan.

Sincerely,Dr. Teresa Tao
Department of Geography
University of Toronto
Canada

What do you charge us with?

April 24th, 2007

Narrated by Amin, an elder of Smangus
Translated by Hsin-Hsin Liu
Arranged by Nequo Soqluman

I am Amin, the director-general of The Association for the Development of Atayal Smangus na Kalan, and a presbrtery in church as well. I don’t have a diploma higher than elementary education. Since I was a child, I have spent all my lifetime in Smangus, running around the mountains every day. Smangus is my home, and my village, where my families, my friends live. Moreover, it is the place my children were born and brought up.

To my understanding, it is only the shared tribal conventions and values that I know and respect. I know very little about the state law. I will obey the court order if they provide credible reasons. But so far I still believe I did not do anything wrong. From the viewpoint of my community, this is a very weird situation. The event does not make any sense at all, and I really don’t understand where we went wrong. Why should I be put into jail and get fined just because I took things in my house? Our living space is compressed and we don’t have much freedom. Even the court is not on our side. I have a question, “Do we ever have a right to live?” Indeed I can not understand why it is a crime to take the wood on our own land, which has always practiced since our childhood. They (the Forestry Bureau) have chopped down all the trees in the mountains but they are not charged. Besides, we do everything with our clear conscience, and never break the natural laws, that is, in Han people’s words; we never violate the law of eco-protection. Moreover, in fact, the beech DID fall down by itself because of the typhoon. Who will have stolen it that way if they meant to? During those days, we suffered from the landslide and the blocked traffic. Our children could not make their way to school. Therefore, we had to use our excavator and clear the roads. God knows how long it would take us to wait till the Forestry Bureau comes to help! They should have paid us for all the above-mentioned work instead. So we dealt with it on our own, and put the beech, aside of the road and planned to use it for the purpose of our village image. Our community is a hot touring spot where many tourists will come. If we meant to commit a crime, we wouldn’t have bothered to lay the beech aside for more than a month, instead of taking it home while solving the road block. By the time when we decided to take it, we found nothing remained but branches. Other parts had already been taken away by the Forest Bureau. They are the thieves who showed not a tiny respect to our village. My people and I insist to defend Smangus. We are innocent. We will never admit the offence of larceny to the Forest Bureau. I believe this is our right as a human!


** Added by Amin on April 28th, 2007

God has given this land for years and many Smangus people have been born on this land. We shall not be stumbled by the sentence of the first instance this time, and shall continue to manage this traditional territory that our ancestors have left to us. I persevered with my belief and will fight for it. I will let all of our indigenous friends know hear the voice of Smangus, which is, “Defend our land, our traditional territory and the spirit of our conventions. If I admit the crime, I will lose the most essential dignity and have the spirit of my village’s conference trampled on my feet.” I give my many thanks to all the friends who care for this event. May God bless you! Please continue to keep us in your prayer. Peace to all of you!

Support from around the world: Dr. Geoffrey Wall's incoming letter!

Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 6:29 AM
Subject: Smangus

To Whom It May Concern

Various colleagues have expressed concern to me about the current situation in Smangus. Circumstances (I am currently in an airport awaiting a flight from North America to Europe to give a keynote address on sustainable development at an international conference) prevent me from accessing detailed information on the Smangus situation as well from preparing an articulate message. However, if what I have been told is correct - that individuals are to be punished severely for using a windfall resulting from typhoon damage on land within their territory - I would urge reconsideration of the severe sanctions that are being applied and a reopening of dialogue. Regardless of the rights of the case, I suggest that imposition of severe sanctions may do more damage than good, harming relationships between aboriginal peoples and mainstream society. As someone who has worked with aboriginal people in many parts of the world, including Taiwan, and have visited Smangus, I suggest a careful reconsideration of the case may be merited and that it may be that the "heavy hand of the law" is not always the best way to deal with such siruations.

Dr. Geoffrey Wall
Faculty of Envoronmental Studies
University of Waterloo Waterloo,
Ontario N2L 3G1
Canada

The Dialogue between Smangus and the Bureau of Forestry April 24th, 2007

Written by Smangus Action Alliance
Translated by Chien-Yi Chiang-Lin, Chun-Man Li, Hsiao-Wei Cheng, Ren-Pin Wu, and Ti-Yang Shih, students form National Sun Yat-Sen University


Today, Smangus presented a petition to the Bureau of Forestry, protesting its inappropriate handling of the wind-fall wood event and asked the Bureau to apologize for and correct their accusation of larceny. The Bureau of Forestry allowed only ten petition representatives to enter the venue (led by Omi Wilang of Tayal Presbytery) to talk with Hung-Chih Yang (楊泓志), head of Forest Administration Division as the deputy of the Director-General of the Bureau.. No media was there at that time.

(People of Smangus began their march from their village to the Bureau of Forestry in early morning to fight for tribal sovereignty. People were few but their spirit was high!)

In the first place, one of the two parties didn’t approve of the presence of media. On this account, we compromised to have whole-course sound-recording. Then, after it was confirmed that Division Head Yang could accept the plea statement from the representatives on behalf of the Director-General of the Bureau, the media took the photograph and left the venue.

The stands of the both parties are listed out from the five major petitions for The Bureau of Forestry as follows:

A.The Bureau of Forestry shall apologize for stigmatizing Smangus with charges of larceny.

The Bureau: The Forest Bureau did not stigmatize Smangus with charges of larceny. It was but the verdict made by the judge. The Bureau does not need to apologize.
Smangus: If the Bureau of Forestry did not offer the testimony against the three people of Smangus, how would they have been charged with larceny?


B.The Bureau of Forestry shall clarify the truth and bring the corrections to the court.

The Bureau of Forestry: We had been aware of Smangus people’s cleaning the wind-fall beech, but we could not provide any corrections voluntarily to the court. Smangus, however, can appeal to the higher court. If the court arraign for the crew of The Bureau of Forestry, we would offer supplementary corrections.
Smangus: If the Bureau did not explicitly admit that they would not treat the event as an offence of larceny, is it possible that you would further offer another testimony counting against Smangus?

※Obviously, the two sides could not reach any agreement on the above two petitions. Therefore,we moved on to discuss the latter three points as the second main issue. We would go back to previous part after that.

(Icyeh the wise chief cried out, “Why don’t you just put all of us behind the bars?”)

C. the Bureau of Forestry shall agree to observe the Aboriginal Basic Law and respect the local indigenous people’s rights in their territory.

D. With regard to everything concerning the indigenous traditional territory, the Forestry Bureau shall discuss with the indigenous communities and villages for the management regulations.

E. The Forestry Bureau shall amend the law where the Forestry Act contradicts the Aboriginal Basic Law.

The Bureau of Forestry explained the Section 4, Article 15 of The Forestry Act that “if the forest is located in the traditional territory of aboriginal people, the aboriginal people may take forest products for their traditional living needs. The harvesting area, variety, time, paid/unpaid, and other rules should be decided by the central government agency along with the Council of Indigenous peoples’ Affair. However, the details of the management regulations of the law, such as a clear content of traditional territory and customs, are not yet decided. They have to be decided by the central government departments including Council of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs.

Dr. Yih-Ren Lin suggested that it was the representatives’ agreement that the Bureau of Forestry should admit that the Bureau does not fully understand that complexities of the ways Forestry Act takes into account the spirit of indigenous traditional territory and custom. For that reason, the Forestry Bureau should not consider this case an offense of larceny before the court.

Meeting Adjourned.
After the meeting, the Bureau of Forestry issued a written statement as follows: “We realize that Smangus could consider this wind-fall beech case with the spirit of Article 15 of the Forestry Act. Therefore, when you appeal to a higher court, our staff could help clarify your thinking.” Dr. Yih-Ren Lin later explained that he had already conceded in his suggestion, but the statement from the Bureau of Forestry was just in a diametrical position.

A consensus has not been reached and the gap between both parties has been further increased. At last, Icyeh, the Smangus Chief expressed his gratitude and said “Thank you for the long and vehement discussions today. Since we can not get a bona fide response from the Bureau of Forestry, we will call an end to our meeting here.”

(The dialogue failed. The action team held another meeting to discuss the strategy for the next move. We pray to God to give us wisdom and power.)