On paper, Indigenous Taiwanese have their rights protected by law, but this is not always the case in practice. TaiwanPlus speaks to Awi Mona, professor of Indigenous law at National Dong Hwa University to find out why.
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00:00How common are cases of indigenous land rights disputes in Taiwan's southeast?
00:06It's not a new issue, but it's a very, like, continuing conflict between the, maybe the idea of development and then idea of the preservation and the continuance of indigenous cultures.
00:23Taitung is economically less developed than other parts of Taiwan, which means the country government, even the central government, would make some of the project to help to support the local economic development.
00:38But usually, in the past, the country government usually will expel or leave out of indigenous voices or indigenous participations.
00:50How hard is it for local governments to balance both economic development and protecting indigenous rights and cultures?
00:58I would say there's always a way to balance the different interests.
01:03But the first thing is we must acknowledge the core stakeholder, which refers to the local indigenous peoples, especially when we have achieved to get a recognition of indigenous traditional territories in the Indigenous Peoples Basketball.
01:20Not every government are on the same page. If you have been hostile to the country government, then they might take another approach, trying to expel the indigenous claims.
01:37Our reporting shows that although Taiwan law protects indigenous peoples' rights, communities still come across problems in reality. So are these laws working?
01:47It is not indigenous peoples' law not working. It is the other system is not working, or the country government trying to make the other legislation not working.
02:03Because in the existing legislation, if any indigenous people have any land claims, we can trace back to the ancestral occupation. And then there is a law to make the existing indigenous people to make a lawful application to make the land become the indigenous reserve land.
02:25But there's one requirement, which means the managing parties, which means the managing government official agencies, they have to agree to demarcate the specific land to be designated as the indigenous peoples' reserve land.