Indigenous hunting traditions on the upper court of Taiwan Indigenous Rights News

Taipei, Taiwan – Indigenous Taiwanese are awaiting a major ruling by the island’s high court on Friday that will determine the scope of traditional hunting rights and pave the way for a limited return of civilian firearms to the island after legal restrictions on use. In the early 1980s.

The case began eight years ago in 2013 when Bunun native hunter Talum Suqluman (Wang Kuang-lu) was prosecuted under the island’s wildlife conservation laws.

He was initially sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison after being found guilty of using a “transformed rifle” to kill two protected animals, although that period was suspended in 2017 after international protest.

But the hunter continued to resist his conviction – represented by the Taiwan Legal Aid Foundation.

Earlier this year, the Taiwan Constitutional Court heard several plaintiffs claim that the island’s wildlife conservation laws were properly restricted as an important hunting culture practice and allowed the rights of indigenous people to conduct small-scale hunting.

On Friday evening, the high court will decide whether or not indigenous hunters should be restricted to using domestic guns and traps to kill animals, and whether they should seek government permission before hunting.

The Taiwan Legal Aid Foundation told Al Jazeera that the laws are impractical and conflict with traditional customs protected under the island’s Basic Indigenous Law.

“The Wildlife Conservation Act regulates how many animals and what kind of animals they would hunt before submitting the application, which violates traditional laws that are the blessing of ancestral spirits, so it cannot be boasted and shown otherwise, God will punish,” he said. Legal Centers.

“Furthermore, in an unpredictable environment like forests, we can’t ask how the prey can be hunted.”

Taiwan recognizes 16 indigenous groups whose ancestors have been on the island for thousands of years before the first ethnic Han began arriving from the Chinese mainland in the 17th century. In the twentieth century the government of the Republic of China was formed on the island.

“Hunting is a part of our indigenous culture,” said hunter Baubu Caljas Paiwan, who runs indigenous youth organizations in southern Taiwan. “The offering of animals is often the most important process in our traditional religious rituals, which includes funerals, harvest festivals and prayers.

“I think it’s unfair to have to ask the government for a ‘legal right’ to hunt.” [Republic of China] the government took over our homeland a few decades ago. The indigenous people of Taiwan have been living with our lives on this island for thousands of years. Did the government demand the “right” to form a government when they took power? “

Traditional hunting

The Taiwanese Ministry of Agriculture has expressed concern that easing the law will lead to a return to over-hunting in Taiwan, where native species were once hunted on the verge of extinction.

For 300 years animals, including muntjac hunted small deer and monkeys in search of their skin, which were the most exported.

Most hunting ended with a moratorium in the early 1970s during the island’s fighting law, but it continued on a smaller scale to supply the demand for game meat, especially among Han ethnic Taiwanese, according to Kurtis Pei, an expert on wildlife conservation.

Commercial hunting was banned until the 1989 Wildlife Conservation Act. Since then, monkeys, muntjacas and sambar deer have begun to recover, according to Pei.

Baubu Caljas Paiwan prepares the mute deer that the hunter killed in the first forest. Indigenous people are the only Taiwanese allowed to hunt, but they are limited to using traps and household guns [Courtesy of Joshua Wang]

Indigenous hunting, unlike commercial hunting, is done only at the level of survival or to prevent animals from eating crops and has not prevented the recovery of the species.

“It’s misunderstood by outsiders who believe we die indiscriminately from what we see,” said Silan Oyon, an Amis-Atayal hunter who teaches hunting classes in Wulai, a district of New Taipei City, due to hot springs and mountain scenery.

“Hunting is not what we do on a whim. We continue the seasons, interspersed with mountains and riverbanks. There (the Chinese) people think that we spend all day, every day, hunting. ”

As animal populations have been on the rise for the past 20 years, Baubu says a limited number of hunts are needed to maintain ecological balance.

“For those of us who live so close to the mountains, it’s clear that wildlife numbers are getting out of control a bit. In today’s predatory ecosystem, these animals are proliferating rapidly and plant density is declining overall,” he said.

“Now the muntjacs are coming down to the plains, barking at night in the community. As the vegetation is gradually disappearing, we are also seeing a higher frequency of landslides in recent years. On the other hand, you have a decline in hunting activities due to the loss of cultural generations. I don’t think it’s difficult to see that indigenous hunting affects only a small part of the growing wildlife population. “

Natural revival

Unlike systems based on current Taiwanese applications, indigenous hunters and experts say they would prefer a hunting management system that would give local communities greater control over the management and control of hunting activities.

“The key is to create some kind of organization for the hunters in each town to manage the hunting ground themselves. They’re already doing it, but it would be good to have some incentives to make it more formal,” said Scott Simon, a professor of Taiwan Studies at the University of Ottawa in Canada. and with indigenous communities in the east.

Some semi-official partnerships have already seen results.

Pei, also a professor at Pingtung University of Science and Technology in Taiwan, has worked closely with hunting associations as part of conservation research. Indigenous communities in the mountainous Alishan Township in central Taiwan, meanwhile, have been successful in working with the Forestry Office, Babua said he hopes to manage hunting through more partnership associations.

Under current rules, Taiwanese indigenous people use domestic weapons and sometimes leave animals in the face of a long and painful death. [File: Sam Yeh/AFP]

One point of the sea, however, are the weapons.

At the moment, hunters use homemade guns, usually formed with devices such as modified nail guns or loudspeaker guns, that require hunters to add gunpowder to each shot, according to Taiwanese media.

However, they say that these weapons are dangerous and cruel, that they can easily shoot or leave an animal in the face of a painful death.

“[Ethnic] There people will encounter a dead animal in the mountains left for the dead and share a photo [Indigenous] people are dying unintentionally, ”Silan said. It can take several shots to kill, it’s more cruel. “

Due to security concerns, the Interior Ministry said it could consider allowing indigenous hunters to purchase registered firearms, according to Taiwanese media.

If the amendment were approved, the Taiwanese government would have a unique position to expand gun gun rights, albeit on a small scale, which they have sought to limit in most places.

Most civilians are prohibited from possessing firearms, including shotguns, rifles and shotguns, according to Taiwanese fire legislation. Beyond indigenous hunters, only fishermen can apply for permission to own a harpoon gun.

The Indigenous Peoples Legal Center said the decision by the Supreme Court on Friday could take precedence over gun rights and have a major impact on Taiwanese indigenous rights.

An indigenous people hold a hunting festival in Chishang Township, Taitung County [Sam Yeh/AFP]

Although many communities are legally protected, they do not have the same level of protection as the First Nations of Canada or the Maori of New Zealand.

The administration of President Tsai Ing-wen, the first leader of some indigenous ancestors, has shown interest in spreading the rights of indigenous peoples.

Entrepreneurs hope that community-friendly resolutions can help exacerbate this cause.