Taiwan Church News

3287 Edition

February 23 - March 1, 2015

Church Ministry

Five Years After Typhoon Morakot, Permanent House of Toe'uana Is Opened

Reported by Simon Lin

After fives years of negotiation between the government and the Tsou aboriginal inhabitants, a long struggle to re-build hometown from the bricks and pebbles left by Morakot Typhoon, the last permanent housing project of Toe'uana at Alishan township is officially finished and opened on February 10. "Toe'uana" means a flat and safe land far away from the flood river. With an emotion of celebration and joy, 42 families of Tsou aboriginal tribe move into this new village.

This is the second housing project, successfully supported by PCT and other citizen groups to persuade the government changing her inappropriate land policy, after fighting for the Bunun aboriginal to establish the temporary housing at Chin-ho bloc and Nan-sa-ru village. It is also a significant case for the aboriginals in Taiwan and for PCT's aboriginal mission as well, because it symbolizes the government's recognition of the legitimacy of the aboriginal's natural rights to the land, allowing the so-called national forestry changing into the land for tribal inhabitants.

Rev. Omi Wilan, Secretary of Indigenous Peoples Action Coalition of Taiwan( IPACT), criticizes that government's executive law, entitled as "Re-establishment Law After Morakot Typhoon", was passed too hastily to be thoughtful in 2009. Thereafter, this law did a great damage to the collective rights and welfare of the indigenous tribes, inhabited in the mountain areas of Kaohsiung, Ping-ton, Cha-yi and Tai-tung, as the designated typhoon-inflicted areas was determined only through a rough aerial photograph or an imprecise visual measure without a detailed investigation.

Thus, said Rev. Omi Wilan, many aboriginal people were forced to leave their hometown and move into the so-called permanent houses. As this is an unfair law and policy to the Tsou aboriginal tribe long inhabited at the Lai-chi village of Alishan township, PCT worked with local citizen groups in 4 years' time negotiating with government to release the national forestry for local government's management in 2012 and then to change this land for the use of permanent housing. This is a successful story, said Omi Wilan, and it could encourage more indigenous people, be it they are fisherman by the sea hunter on the mountain, to stand out bravely for their own rights!

Translated by Peter Wolfe