Indigenous activist Lin Shu-ling spent decades fighting a tourism development on land near her home on Taiwan's southeast coast. Now she's battling to save her own house from demolition by the county government.
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00:00Indigenous activist Lin Shuling is living on borrowed time
00:06and, according to authorities, on borrowed land.
00:10They say she built parts of her home on Taiwan's east coast
00:13illegally on public property
00:15and have already tried to demolish it once this week.
00:18But Lin, who is indigenous Amis,
00:21has no plans to move from where her family have lived for generations.
00:31It's been a years-long legal nightmare for Lin.
00:35A court recently ruled that these buildings do not fall
00:38under indigenous protection laws and must go.
00:41So far, she's kept the bulldozers at bay
00:44by gathering environmentalists and activists
00:46who say this is a matter of indigenous people's fundamental rights.
00:54Many of Taiwan's 600,000 indigenous people are from here.
00:58The coastlines and mountains of Taiwan's rural southeast.
01:02They've lived here for millennia,
01:04predating the now-majority Han Chinese.
01:07And although Taiwan law protects indigenous people's rights,
01:10many communities here say they face an uphill battle
01:14to preserve their languages, their ways of life and even their land.
01:18Lin's home lies in the shadow
01:20of one of Taiwan's biggest land rights cases.
01:23An illegally built 100-room hotel
01:26handed over to the government after Lin and other indigenous activists
01:30took developers to court.
01:32The county government now says her home is obstructing redevelopment plans.
01:36The government of Taitung said
01:39this would affect the entire tribe to use the seawater.
01:44Originally, there was a public road to get in and out.
01:48The tribe used the seawater to get in and out.
01:52This rugged coastline is home to unique shoreline habitats
01:56and centuries-old coral reefs,
01:58natural resources crucial to traditional indigenous ways of life.
02:02But far from Taiwan's urban centres,
02:05economic opportunities are few.
02:07Tourism development often takes precedence.
02:30Lin feels targeted for her activism
02:33and says she is determined to fight this case.
02:51For centuries, the Amis people have lived at one with this coastline,
02:55foraging in the forests, growing crops along the shore
02:58and fishing in the sea.
03:00For Lin, it's this connection that's at stake,
03:03the reason she's willing to stand up to authorities
03:06and live in uncertainty as she defends her home from demolition.
03:11Clive Wong and Rick Lowatt in Taitung County for Taiwan Plus.