Long Night Over Hualien: The China Threat Through the Eyes of Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples

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“The current situation is not the fruit of our choosing, but of history itself.”

As the United States and China wrestle for control of Taiwan, the Taiwanese people want nothing more than to be free. But even as the specter of conflict looms large, the meaning of freedom differs wildly for different groups in Taiwan – particularly the Indigenous communities, historically the most vulnerable to all forms of oppression.

Bulaw Tumi is a Sakizaya activist. And like any Sakizaya he is wary by nature. He has good reason to be. His people “continue to suffer the effects of colonial oppression, which has sapped their spirit and instilled in them a sense of inferiority,” Tumi told me. “The current situation is not the fruit of our choosing, but of history itself.”

The Old Wound