|
Aborigines deserve a better effort
By Along Chen 陳永龍
Sunday, Aug 29, 2010, Page 8
No matter how hard the rain, or how dark the night, the will
of the Aboriginal people sitting on Ketagalan Boulevard remained undaunted. They
had sworn to rise to the challenge of reconstructing their devastated homeland
and keeping it safe. Their plight brings to mind a passage from Frantz Omar
Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, their actions a practical lesson in civic
education that Taiwanese society would do well to embrace.
It is more than a year since the ravages wrought by Typhoon Morakot. While one
cannot say the government’s reconstruction efforts have been entirely hopeless,
we do need to ask, given the degree of protests from Aboriginal tribes, why so
many people are unhappy with the work that has been done.
The fact is that every single policy adopted by the government has had the
effect of stifling the Aboriginal tribes’ autonomy. Some want their entire
village moved as a single unit, but are told it is impossible. There are stories
of whole networks of family and friends broken up. People have levied
accusations of the abandonment of people who choose to stay on their land, of
destroying forests and of the disregard for human life.
Da-ai Village (大愛) is being seen as a model for the post-disaster reconstruction
efforts, albeit not without its critics. Christian Aborigines now have to
observe Buddhist conventions, since the village was built by a Buddhist
foundation, and only few of the Morakot victims have been able to make a living
from the hand-made souvenirs for sale to tourists. Most of them do not have a
job and some do not even have land to cultivate.
Although the village is being billed as permanent housing, it is a far cry from
being a home. The government vowed to respect the will of the victims, but has
failed to honor this commitment.
Other tribes encountered difficulties. First, members of the Haocha and Dashe
tribes temporarily relocated to Pingtung County’s Ailiao and Longquan military
camps were registered as applicants for “permanent housing” on those sites.
Second, the resettlement program for victims in Kaohsiung County’s Namasiya
Township (那瑪夏) and Taoyuan Township (桃源) was disrupted, meaning that victims
were forced to return to the mountains or to take up rented accommodation,
albeit with housing benefits. During the flooding period, transport and
communication facilities were severed, but no emergency facilities were
provided.
A third problem was that some residents of the disaster-hit areas had previously
changed their household registration details because they had found work or sent
children to school in the towns and cities at lower elevations. This lead to
confusion resulting in the failure to officially register them as disaster area
residents and they were subsequently refused the ability to relocate or return
their original homes.
In the interests of setting right the wrongs of Taiwan’s colonial history, the
UN Convention on Human Rights, the Constitution of the Republic of China and the
Indigenous Peoples Basic Act (原住民族基本法) say the state is obliged to respect the
identity of Aboriginal tribes and to protect their autonomy. Post-disaster
reconstruction efforts should take into account their right to choose their
place of residence and way of life, allowing for their land rights, access to
temporary shelter in times of natural disaster, as well as access to permanent
housing and protection from further dangers.
The very survival of the tribe is bound to the land on which it lives: Without
this land there would be no tribe and no tribal culture. The government is
therefore duty bound to respect the identity of the tribe and ensure it can
return to its original land, including state-owned forest around mountainous
areas and public lands, so that tribes can live, cultivate crops and hunt in
order to sustain their way of life and keep their culture alive.
Additionally, reconstruction and relocation efforts should also allow for
temporary provisions in the event of disasters. Tribes should be allowed to
remain self-sufficient and maintain their lifestyles and respective cultures in
their own homes and villages in the mountainous regions, while also having a
base further down the mountain where they can shelter in times of disasters.
Irrespective of the type of housing built by charities for the disaster victims,
it is important that these are considered temporary housing only. The
government should do its best to keep mountain roads open so that people can
move up and down the mountains and seek shelter when floods arrive.
The government also needs to recognize the sociocultural organizational
differences between these Aboriginal tribes and other social groups. This
includes the natural environment in which the Aboriginal villages are located,
seen as the homeland of tribal spirit. The appropriate way to decide things like
the number of households in the village and the size of the houses is through
consultation with the tribes, not by household registration, house address or
tax address information as it stood on Aug. 8 last year.
Finally, the government should repair damaged transportation infrastructure that
has a low impact on the environment, including suspension bridges and cable
cars. In addition, it should also help tribes build bases self-sufficient in
energy, communications, food and emergency medical care. The government should
also provide generators (or solar-energy batteries), wireless communication
facilities, fridges and granaries, excavators, off-road motorcycles (including
spare fuel) and first aid kits, and maintain its rescue operations so that
people and communities are prepared and self-sufficient when the next natural
disaster hits.
Along Chen is assistant professor at Kainan University’s
Department of Tourism and Hospitality and convener of the Workshop for
Bio-Cultural Diversity.
|
