ABSTRACT

Before the Han Chinese, now the dominant ethnic group in Taiwan, migrated from China to the island some 400 years ago, indigenous Taiwanese 1 had inhabited Taiwan for at least 6,500 years. Today, their 540,000 people compose only about 2.3 percent of Taiwan’s total population of 23.4 million. While about half still live in their traditional homelands – the mountainous areas and the less populated east coast – since the 1970s, many young indigenous people have become industrial laborers in the cities, and many now live permanently in the urban areas. Over the past 100 years and particularly during the past five decades, their living standards have declined. While most indigenous communities have been incorporated into Taiwan’s capitalist economic system, the majority of their people possessed neither the education nor the skill to earn a decent wage in the modern sector. Many young men ended up laboring in the most dangerous and low-paying industrial sectors, such as the construction, fishing, and farming sectors (Council of Indigenous Peoples 1999), and prior to the 1990s many young women, willingly or not, found their way into prostitution and other dehumanising jobs. While living standards have increasingly improved since the 1990s, their socioeconomic status remains at the bottom of the spectrum. For instance, according to a government study, the average indigenous family income in 2010 was only 46.3 percent of the national average (Council of Indigenous Peoples 2011).