A Study On The System Of Taiwan 's Aboriginal Reservation

Land is the place where human beings settle down. People will be homeless without land. For earlier aboriginals living somewhere, land stands for cultural and national identity. Therefore, losing land means losing homestead.Before the17th century, the aborigines were the only owner of Taiwan. The Dutch invaders treated Taiwan as their own territory after they invaded and took over Taiwan. Dutch colonists admitted and protected land-use right of the aboriginal tribes in their tranditional fields, regarding the mountain people as their vassal. The aboriginal tribes submitted themselves to the rule of Netherlands with territory, and turned over their allegiance. Zheng Chenggong carried out Caocao policy after the Netherlands were beated. Land private system was set up and the transfer and inheritation of land was allowed. In Qing Dynasty, the Qing government devided Taiwanese aborigines into "civilized" and "cannibal" and carried out "policy to protect banchi" which promoted the development of land private system and boosted the transformation of aborigines from tribal era to impergium. The Japanese invadors issued Forest plan and grant policy when they were in Taiwan as well as the crazy depredation of all kinds of resouces. They designated the "cannibal places" as special administrative region and forcibly occupied banchi where they could cope with the aborigines just as they please. After World War Two, the Taiwan authorities had formulated the measures for administration of Formosan mountain reservation to deal with the land problem of Taiwan indigenous peoples. Later on, with the rising of Formosan aboriginal land movement and the transformation of Taiwan political pattern, the Taiwan authorities revised the aboriginal reservation system in2007and introduced "the management on the development of aboriginal reservation". Now the system has prescribed the situation on the loss of the identity of aboriginal by the definition of the indigenous identity qualification of people and their children in order to provide a basis for the development and management of the aboriginal reservation. Referring to the content, the revised aboriginal reservation development management has designated "The executive yuan aboriginal committee" and "Council of Agriculture" as the competent authority, and the executive authority is the town hall and villages. The "approach" thinks that the aboriginal reservation ownership belongs to "Republic of China". Aborigines have "Right to cultivate, surface rights" and "lease, free access", among them, the "right to work" up to per individual1hectare. The superficies maximum of1.5hectares per household shall not be cumulative over20hectares, or else will the township offices deadline to reclaim it. At the same time, although with the succession of aboriginal reservation and transferred power, he can only donate it to someone owning the right of inheritance and donation, and can’t transfer, lease to the indigenous people. Otherwise, the township offices would recover the reservation and make the appropriate punishment, so this kind of "ownership" is some kind of limited ownership. Moreover, in order to promote the development of aboriginal economy and to encourage aboriginal reservation to launch " mining industry, fill dam, tourism personage, fillingstations, warehousing facilities of agricultural fair", set up "Aborigine Cultural Preservation or social utility" etc.Certainly, rules of landownership can’t improve benefit of the aborigines or solve the conflicts between aborigines and non-aboriginal peoples in the case of shortage of supporting measures, without all-sided consideration on changes in theaboriginal residential areas in modern times, which made the existing rules have many problems such as problems in delimitation of property rights, confusion of property rights, fail off reservation and so on. And the transfer of reservation property rights is limited by some reasons such as flaws of the system itself, low management level and so on. In addition, the current policy of the reservation conflicts with environmental protection. As for the reasons from historical perspective, the ascription of reservation property rights of the formosan aborigines has been being pendulous, the aborigines has no faith in foreign rule for a long time. What’more, the2.28Incident aggravated Ethnic opposition. Politically, in the negative influence of electoral politics, the Taiwan authorities has difficulties in ethnic fair which in turn lead them to lose land ownership appeal. In sociological sense, the Formosan society is ethnic broken. Unbalance of ethnic benefit and asymmetrical games between diffirent ethnic groups are factors of the Formosan aboriginal reservation problems.So, the aboriginal identities should be properly defined. Parents should permit offsprings to determine their family names and rights corresponded. Law of aboriginal adoption should be perfected. The comprehensive induction of loss of aboriginal identities should be finished. Aborigine culture should be deeply reflected in the delimitation of property rights. Culturally, the protection and development of the aboriginal reservation should be strengthened. At the same time, the aboriginal reservation should be added on the basis of the movement of aboriginal population so that the aborigines could keep their ownership. The aboriginal reservation transfer should be standered and the collective rights should be strengthened. In addition, coordinated reforms of the aboriginal reservation system should be pushed forward positively. Plans of the aboriginal reservation should be sound. Increasing capital input is necessary as well as strengthening human resources training among the aborigines.All in all, the reform and improvement in the Formosan aboriginal reservation system should conform to the legislation idea which is equal opportunity, respect the uniqueness and national differences, treat every people or tribe equally, and provide them appropriate rescources in order to support their development. The legislative practice should reflect the principle of "Priority to the Weak". Gone from the angle of the disadvantaged groups, go deep into them, get to know their ideas and wishes, and help them solve their most crucial problems. And making great effort in perfecting interest expression mechanism, profit distribution mechanism and conflict-treatment mechanism of the aborigines is nessary so long as romoting the coordinated development of resource development and environmental protection to provide assurance for the sustainable development of aboriginal reservation system.