Qalang Smangus Tribal Commons in Northern Taiwan

Description

Via Hugu Sutej:

"The small tribe Qalang Smangus of Atayal people lives in mountain area of northern Taiwan, who has gained great achievement in striving for a sustainable community livelihood and well-being for all beings around us through tribal sovereignty, eco-occupation, de-facto governance, and management of commons in these twenty more years. There is not any recognition or support from the government side, but it has been spontaneously integrated with great creative institutional adaptation and knowledge innovation to transform all the invasive alien elements from the modern world that are always been destructive and disastrous in almost all the other cases.

In a post-colonial, post-modern, and post-traditional complex difficult situation, only recently from 1st January 2004, a new governance institution based on common ownership of all means of production was developed and adopted by the tribal council along with a new tribal community protocol for land usage, natural resources conservation, and eco-tourism business that is based on its holistic traditional labors-knowledge-belief system, gaga. Following their common ownership and cooperative community livelihood, its eco-tourism incomes from the up to 60 thousands tourists annually is distributed into the same minimum wages for men and women, providing breakfast and lunch meals (qutux nigan: community is a place for eating together), providing subsidies for raising children, taking care of old peoples, participating the primary school of tribal pupils and offering scholarship for higher education, etc.. The community also covers the needs of new housing for young couples.

Take care of and take care by a natural heritage of a primary forest of thousand years old endemic Taiwan cypress with more than 20,000 giant trees in their traditional territories, Qalang Smangus is an inspiring contemporary model that restores the deep connection between human, land, and nature in seeking an alternative way to be survival, revival, and sustainable for their future generations. Just don’t forget that we are still in struggling to resist against the multiple sieges from the mainstream state and market operations." (email 2015)