ABSTRACT
I began writing indigeneity in 2001, when I was a part-time anthropology professor at National Donghwa University in Hualien, Taiwan. At that time, I was introduced to Igung Shiban, a retired nurse of the Sejiq/Taroko nation who was involved in a legal case against the Asia Cement Company.1 She argued that the company and the Hsiulin Township Office illegally took possession of her tribal land when a township employee forged the signatures of the former landowners on documents relinquishing their property rights and stamped them with signature chops that had been left in the office for other purposes. When she asked me to assist her by writing an article in English for an international readership, I put together a special issue on Formosan indigenous nations in Cultural Survival Quarterly, a magazine for indigenous activists and their supporters. Although I originally wrote my article in that issue (Simon 2002) out of sympathy for Igung and the elders in her village, it turned out to be a political act with long-term implications. That essay changed my life by drawing me into her community as a frequent visitor and eventually as a parttime resident. Beginning in 2005, I have lived in the Sejiq/Taroko nation several months a year with the goal of writing an ethnography of economic development in that nation. Writing indigeneity for the Sejiq/Taroko, in conference papers and articles, has become a central part of my life. This is the story of that journey and a reflection on what it means to write indigeneity in Taiwan.
