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Trauma, Rehabilitation and the Future

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The death of each victim represents the pain and fear of each family and each community. Authoritarian governments make them antagonize each other via manipulation and alienation. The Japanese colonial regime prompted Indigenous Peoples to encounter difficulties of large-scale loss of their own culture and land.


After the Second World War, the Indigenous elites were aware of the problems and attempted to demand Indigenous rights from the new regime, in hopes of the new government being different from the old colonial one and granting the right entitled to Indigenous Peoples. However, what they ultimately faced was the direct persecution of Indigenous elites by the state violence, the compulsory Sinicization of Indigenous communities in terms of cultures and languages, and a new round of colonization. With the democratization of Taiwan, the government has begun to pay attention to the rights and interests of Indigenous Peoples on the legal front. However, there is still a long way to go for granting them the fundamental rights of survival such as the cultural rejuvenation of Indigenous culture and the allocation of their traditional territories.


Endless Trauma and Fear

The February 28 Incident and the White Terror are suppression on dissensions among the ethnic groups as well as the ideology of Indigenous Peoples. Furthermore, they had been acting as a yoke which muzzled the Indigenous communities as a whole. After the rebellion case of Yapasuyong'e Yulunana (Tang Shou-jen), the Indigenous people were continually framed with cases related to Youth Alliance for the Self-Help Combat of Taiwan Hōrai Peoples, Taiwan Mountain Area Independence Movement Campaign and the Mountain Defence Team.


After being released from prison, the Indigenous victims of White Terror often became strangers to their families and friends, and their social networks were isolated, too. Under the monitoring of the intelligence unit, they faced more difficulties on employment. They could be alienated from the parent culture should they be ostracized by their native communities. The same thing also happened to the family members of the victims.

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