Re-imaging Nature: A Critical Review of the Transiting Human-River Relationship in Indigenous Maliqwan River Valley, Taiwan
Da-Wei Kuan
PhD student in the Department of Geography, University of Hawaii at Manoa
The "Natural" disasters, for instance mud-slide and water-flood, happened during typhoon seasons which led to numerous damages have been a more and more serious issue in the public concern in Taiwan. Living in so-called "environmental-sensitive" areas, mountainous Indigenes often incurred great blame as the cause of the environmental degradation. In response to the degradation, Taiwan government drafted a series of "National Land Restoration" police, under which the removal of indigenous villages was deemed as a necessary means. Aiming to challenge the geographical imagination behind it, this article took the transiting human-river relationship in indigenous Maliqwan River Valley as an example, explored the process indigenous Atayal people got displaced and argued that the "nature-culture" dichotomy continually dominating the "development" in this area since colonial era is just the disaster itself. In the end, this paper analyzed its recent emerged place-based indigenous movements, and suggested that such struggles may replace indigenous voice within the construction of "nature" and bring new geographical imagination other than the "nature-culture" dichotomy. The major conceptual tools brought to this task are "social nature", and the interaction between first (material) and second (mental) spaces in the making of place. The methods employed include literature review and discourse analysis.
