Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the interaction between indigenous sovereignty and embodied knowledge in society, Taiwan. Based on the sensory ethnographic research, it explores their concepts and body movements of walking in the mountain, and how they, by walking, shape and reshape meanings of the environment.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the interrelationship and interaction between indigenous sovereignty and embodied knowledge in the contemporary Bunun society. Bunun people is one of the Taiwan’s indigenous groups. Bunun people were used to living in the forest in the mountain. However, they were forced by the Japanese colonial government to settle down in the reservation areas in the plains since 1930. Even though their current living areas are far from the mountains, some of the Bunun people still use their own indigenous knowledge to work and live in their ancestors’ places. This paper is based on my sensory ethnographic research and use phenomenology anthropology to explore Bunun people’s concepts and practices of walking in the mountain. For the Bunun people, walking is a way of learning embodied knowledge in the forest, of remembering and creating stories, and of interacting with the environment in the forest. While they walked in the mountain, they also communicated with their ancestral spirits and their history at the same time. Track and path are not only cultural and natural landscape, but also sacred places and historical sites. In this paper, I will illustrate how the Bunun people, by walking, shape and reshape meanings of these places. Secondly, I will discuss how walking in the mountain contributes Bunun people to reflecting and rethinking the implications of colonialism for them, and how their embodied knowledge can play a role in pursuing indigenous sovereignty in the contemporary.