State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2014 - Taiwan

The year 2013 saw a number of positive developments for Taiwan's indigenous peoples, who together make up around 2 per cent of the population and are concentrated in the less developed inland hills and west coast. The situation of Aboriginal communities has improved significantly in recent years. However, this has nevertheless taken place against a backdrop of entrenched prejudice and discrimination. Aboriginal communities continued to advocate for expanded cultural and political autonomy.

Many of Taiwan's Aboriginal languages are already extinct or critically endangered, partly as a result of their decades-long suppression by the government after 1945, placing their future survival in doubt. Past stigmatization, from which Aboriginal communities are still recovering, even extended to preventing the use of indigenous languages in the playground. However, in September the Ministry of Education announced that as of 2016 the national curriculum would be revised to include a compulsory component on native languages, including Aboriginal languages, Hakka and Hoklo. The move was greeted positively by many, though not all, teacher and parent organizations.

In November, county governments in some coastal areas announced registration for Pingpu Aborigines, a long unrecognized ethnic group who have been advocating for formal recognition for many years. However, despite repeated lobbying, the central government has yet to acknowledge their identity. Currently they are included in the collective description of 'lowland-dwelling Aborigines'. In early 2014, the government was accused of further marginalizing Pingpu Aborgines through a change in the educational curriculum that critics argued would reinforce their invisibility.

Despite public affirmations of support, the government again failed to pass the Aboriginal autonomy act during the year. In August, President Ma Ying-jeou committed to push through the legislation – a promise first made in 2008 – while defending his government's recent measures to improve livelihoods and service access for Aboriginal communities. However, at the beginning of 2014 the national parliament approved an amendment to the local governance law to allow Aboriginal communities the right to elect their own representatives and control the allocation of budget expenditure in their areas. It was welcomed by activists as an important step towards the realization of full autonomy.

In Taiwan, now a vigorous democracy, overt disparagement of Aboriginal communities is rare in the public sphere. While prejudices have not disappeared, political parties and major institutions such as galleries and museums have positively acknowledged and showcased Aboriginal cultures. For example, when animal rights activists called in May for Aboriginal hunting contests to be banned on grounds of cruelty, their argument did not target Aboriginal culture directly but a practice they accused of contradicting indigenous customs and damaging popular perceptions of Aboriginal communities. Nevertheless, ethnic tensions within the country remain a potentially divisive issue, and in previous years have been reflected in discriminatory comments regarding Aborigines and other ethnic groups, including by senior politicians.