On 30 July 2026, Siraya became the seventeenth group of Indigenous People recognised by the Taiwanese Government. This is a remarkable event following a 2022 judgment (‘the Siraya case’) ruling that any Austronesian ethnic group of Taiwan ‘whose ethnic languages, customs, traditions, and cultural characteristics still exist, whose members maintain ethnic identity, and for whom there are objective historical records, may apply for recognition as Indigenous Peoples according to their ethnic group’s wishes’, and ‘their members may obtain indigenous status in accordance with the law’.¹

To understand the importance of the development, some context is required. Prior to the massive Han settlements since the seventeenth century, Taiwan was primarily inhabited by Austronesian populations. As settler colonialism spread, these original inhabitants have been roughly divided by the Han-majority society and the administrations into two categories: those that are more ‘barbaric’, ‘untamed’, and ‘different from “us”’, and those that are more ‘humanlike’, ’civilised’, ‘similar to “us”’. The latter type, which has been assimilated by the Han-majority society to a greater extent, is commonly known as the Pingpu groups. Siraya is one of the Pingpu groups.

The two categories have been differentiated in law. Since 1945, the distinction between the two had taken the following legal form: the less assimilated groups were of the special status of ‘Mountain Compatriots’, while those of the Pingpugroups were ordinary citizens without any special status. At that time, assimilation was regarded as a legitimate goal of society, so that the special status of ‘Mountain Compatriots’ was generally not considered as something worth pursing from the perspective of the authority. Instead, the special status meant troubles in governance before the goal of assimilation could be fully achieved. As such, those of the Pingpu groups were regarded as ordinary citizens without a special status not because of disrespect or discrimination but because they were ‘good enough’—that is, assimilated enough.

This distinction has become particularly problematic after the global indigenous movements reached Taiwan in the 1980s, when the significance of having a special status as such has fundamentally changed. For those ‘Mountain Compatriots’, one of their earliest demands was not to abolish the special status but to discard the designation, as it was considered derogatory. The ‘Indigenous Movement of Name Rectification’ succeeded in having the term ‘Mountain Compatriots’ replaced by ‘Indigenous Peoples’ in the Constitution in 1997. But how about the Pingpu groups? Prior to the Siraya case, the official position was that, since the term ‘Indigenous Peoples’ was to replace ‘Mountain Compatriots’, it could not have included the Pingpu groups. Consequently, those who identified themselves as Siraya could not acquire indigenous status. Some of them brought the matter to court, and it was not until the Siraya case that a Pingpu group could be legally recognised as an Indigenous People and those of the recognised Pingpu groups can thereby obtain indigenous status. After decades, it seems like justice finally arrived for Siraya and potentially other Pingpu groups.

And yet it is more complicated than it seems. It turns out that the development has not been welcomed by all those who are already of indigenous status, i.e. the former ‘Mountain Compatriots’. Their discontent is mainly about the historical assimilation of the Pingpu groups to the Han-majority society. Concerns range from a fear that the Pingpu groups sharing the indigenous status might weaken indigenous distinctiveness,² to the absence of a common experience in facing oppressions and conflicts.³ A phenomenon that probably adds to the concerns, especially after the official recognition, is certain people expressing that they have discovered their eligibility for acquiring indigenous status after checking their household records and noticing that one of their ancestors was marked as Pingpu. These people typically had no idea otherwise that they might be indigenous in any other aspect, such as language, custom, or culture. It is hence not entirely inconceivable why some of the former ‘Mountain Compatriots’ may have doubts about the Pingpu groups acquiring indigenous status—despite the genesis of the distinction between the Pingpu groups and the former ‘Mountain Compatriots’ being a colonial device of assimilation, and its enduring effects of turning the colonised against one another.

II

The Siraya case is fascinating in many ways. One insight it provides is the complex dynamics between two closely related and yet different concepts that are both referred to in discourses on indigeneity: indigenous status and indigenous identity. My argument is this: indigenous status and indigenous identity are tied together as different aspects—bodily and psychic—of being indigenous, which corresponds to ‘the dual structure of colonialism’ identified by Fanon and Coulthard.⁴ Moreover, as we shall see in the Siraya case, rather than a mutual compatibility, the two aspects may be in tension from time to time and potentially transform one another. It should perhaps be noted from the outset that the purpose here is simply to outline the dynamics of these concepts, which is only a preparation for further critique of the very notion of being indigenous.

What do I mean by indigenous status and indigenous identity? By indigenous status, I am referring to the institutionalisation of being indigenous. Through the notion of status, being indigenous is stabilised as a special condition of a person. The condition is institutional in the sense that it is not just a description of the person but at the same time attaches to the person a more or less ascertained collection of normative implications. In law, indigenous status takes the form of a set of rules governing the acquisition (and perhaps relinquishment) of the condition, accompanied by the collection of rights, titles, claims, benefits, or duties that follows. Meanwhile, the institutionalisation is not limited to the sphere of law. That is, indigenous status can also be a social one, although it has more obscure boundaries. Indigenous status in the social sense refers to the enduring understandings formed and shared by the society as to who or what is to be recognised as indigenous and the normative implications of such recognitions. In both senses, indigenous status is, however, not to be reduced to the set of rules of recognition or the collection of normative implications; for the status is conceptually prior to them, bringing grounding and meaning to them. The institutionalisation in both senses can be observed in certain expressions of one being indigenous with the purpose of making the normative implications: one is indigenous, therefore one is entitled/expected/allowed/etc to X.

Indigenous status is bodily in several senses. First, indigenous status is material, in the sense that it is ascertainable by the world external to the person of the status—psyche requires disclosure, while body is overt by being material. Secondly, indigenous status is organic, in the sense that it must be situated within a larger system to acquire purpose. Unlike indigenous identity, as we shall see, which finds its purpose inwardly for an ideal of authenticity, the significance of indigenous status requires a greater normative order to signify it through its relations with other (non)statuses. Thirdly, indigenous status in most jurisdictions retains the ancient emphasis on the notion of blood. Blood here does not necessarily involve ‘scientific’ understandings such as DNA or blood quantum laws. Prior to modern biology subsuming the notion, it is first and foremost the symbol we have used to understand bloodline, genealogy, and kinship. In other words, it is a legal or social understanding of blood rather than a biological one. Regarding the emphasis on blood, indigenous status is not very different from the conventional statuses in the law of persons that are based upon or coloured by the notion of family⁵—a notion that is primarily societal and not biological. Blood symbolises the forceful relations that are not up to the individual’s choices or reflections—status as such might be reflected upon, and yet it does not depend solely on the reflections.

And then we have indigenous identity, which is quite different. To pinpoint what indigenous identity means—or what identity means—is controversial and challenging considering the many debates surrounding the ideas. For present purposes, by indigenous identity, I am referring to a perception of oneself as indigenous based on certain experiences that are supposedly (that is, supposed by the person) shared by those of indigenous identity. Indigenous identity here is at its most individualistic and is distinguished from notions such as tribe identification of its members, which—according to the framework here—is more akin to a form of indigenous status. Since indigenous identity is a perception, it begins from the subject who takes the circumstances external to him into himself as his experiences; based on those experiences, he develops a sense of who he is authentically, which he holds as his identity. Indigenous identity is thereby—in contrast to indigenous status—psychic, for it is a state of mind. This is not to say that indigenous identity is hence something purely arbitrary. For not only that it is supposedly based upon shared experiences but also that the subject’s interpretation of the experiences is modulated by broader contexts external to them. Nonetheless, indigenous identity is ultimately a looking inward for the sake of oneself under the ideal of authenticity, i.e. for the purpose of identifying who oneself authentically is. The reference of the broader contexts and the supposed collectivity based on supposedly shared experiences are but means to the purpose.

III

In the Siraya case, indigenous status and indigenous identity diverge and interact with one another in three ways. First, prior to the ruling and the recognition, there were those who identified themselves as not just Siraya but indigenously Siraya. However, they were denied indigenous status in the legal sense; their indigenous status in the social sense was also questioned, especially in cases where ways of living had been largely assimilated. What can be observed is a situation where indigenous identity is present while indigenous status is absent, and a tendency of indigenous identity seeking concretisation in indigenous status, as if the psyche seeks materialisation in the body. When speaking of struggles for recognition in the indigenous context, it seems to me that a powerful function of recognition through law or convention is to transform indigenous identity into indigenous status, so that the fluidity of the psychic indigenous identity can legally or socially be institutionalised and stabilised. Of course, the transformation through recognition is not neutral and involves questions such as recognised by whom or as what.

Secondly, after the ruling and the recognition, while there are indeed those who strive to participate in or revive the Siraya language and culture, there is also the phenomenon of certain people ‘discovering’ that they are of (or eligible for) indigenous status simply because they found out they have a drop of ‘indigenous blood’. The latter’s indigenous identity is doubted by some of the former ‘Mountain Compatriots’ as unauthentic or different, for it seems that their perceptions of themselves are not based on experiences shared by those former ‘Mountain Compatriots’. They have not experienced certain ways of living, certain traditions, customs, or languages, or certain injustices, discrimination, or conflict that fostered the indigenous identity. What can be observed is an opposite situation where indigenous status is present while indigenous identity is in doubt, which leads to an effect of unsettlement and strangeness—as if the psyche mismatches with the body—that may in turn be interpreted by the former ‘Mountain Compatriots’ as an experience their indigenous identity is based upon.

Thirdly, on the one hand, indigenous identity may seek to be stabilised as indigenous status and become a criterion of the status; on the other hand, indigenous status may reversely facilitate the construction of a new indigenous identity. The mismatch between indigenous status and indigenous identity according to some former ‘Mountain Compatriots’ leaves a gap where potentially a different indigenous identity can fit: the peculiar identity is based not on the experiences of the former ‘Mountain Compatriots’ but precisely on the absence and imaginations of those experiences that could have been there, triggered by the disruptive discovery of descent. Both indigenous identities are to take place within one indigenous status, as if two psyches are in one body; what it transforms is how the bodily indigenous status manifests itself in the broader normative order, where normative implications—political ones, in particular—of being indigenous change.

Jack Y-J Chou is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong

1Taiwan Constitutional Court Judgment 111-Hsien-Pan-17 (2022) Case on the Indigenous Peoples Status for the Siraya People, [1].

2Lu Tai-Cheng, ‘Siraya constitutional interpretation case: indigenous members of Taitung County Council oppose including Pingpu groups as lowland Indigenous Peoples’ Central News Agency (Taitung, 28 June 2022) <https://www.cna.com.tw/news/asoc/202206280191.aspx> accessed 17 September 2026 [my translation].

3Hsieh Wen-Hua, ‘Pingpu groups struggling for name reification insulted by the Indigenous Council’ Liberty Times (Taipei, 25 June 2009) <https://news.ltn.com.tw/news/life/paper/313887> accessed 17 September 2026 [my translation].

4Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Markmann tr, Pluto Press 1986) 12–13; Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks (University of Minnesota Press 2014) 33–34.

5On status and the family, see Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law (Beacon Press 1963) 164–165.