Accessing indigenous land rights through claims in Taroko Area, Eastern Taiwan

Abstract

The thesis explores how indigenous people access land rights through claims. Land claims happens on the encounters between different regimes of property. The authors found indigenous people have many ways to express their land claims since Japanese time. There are individual claims on lands like reservation land that suggests individualism among indigenous communities. There are collective claims on autonomy, co-management of river resources and development projects. Various mapping activities are analyzed to show how indigenous connect them with the lands. The thesis constructs a framework to express land property claims that are based on indigenous ideas on human unit, institution, rights and land resources.