vol.22 (2026)
HU Chung Cheng Department of Regional Studies, Key words: hunter image, Taiwan indigenous peoples, hunting activities, hunting policies The purposes of this study are to analyze the evolution of laws and judicial decisions governing indigenous hunting practices in post-World War II Taiwan from 1945 to 2009 and to elucidate the transformation process of “hunter images” that the state sought to construct through legal institutions and their impact on cultural practices. This paper analyzes the content of legal provisions, judicial decisions, and administrative documents based on an analytical framework that traces the transformation of the legal status of indigenous peoples through three phases: specialization, de-specialization, re-specialization. The analysis reveals how the “hunter image” prescribed by laws and court decisions evolved across three distinct periods. Specifically, in the first period (1945–1971), against the backdrop of post-civil war security maintenance and mountain governance, indigenous hunters were positioned as “security maintainers.” In the second period (1972–1993), amid international isolation, economic development, and the global environmental protection movement, they were redefined as “environmental destroyers.” In the third period (1994–2009), with democratization, multiculturalism, and the introduction of international human rights norms, they were further redefined as “natural resource managers.” This paper examines how the idealized “hunter image” constructed by governing authorities in each period reflected the legal status and social positioning of indigenous peoples. The central argument concerns the qualitative distinction between the two forms of specialization in the first and third periods. While the former treated indigenous peoples as objects to be governed through authoritarian selection, the latter adopted a form that recognized them as rights-holding subjects. However, crucially, this re-specialization also functions as a new form of institutional cultural governance, attempting to confine hunting practices within the framework of desirable hunting culture as defined by the state, academia, and animal protection organizations. This structural contradiction is exemplified by the paradoxical fact that during 2005–2009 following the enactment of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, the annual average number of prosecutions for violations of the Guns and Ammunition Control Act (504 cases) and the Wildlife Conservation Act (136 cases) increased compared to the pre-enactment period (1990–2004), with the former increasing approximately 4-fold and the latter approximately 6-fold. This study elucidates this structural disjuncture and theoretically demonstrates the limitations of multiculturalism policies. Through this analysis, the Taiwan case provides an important theoretical contribution by revealing the general mechanisms of cultural institutionalization by modern states. |
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