On entering the home of Tien Chun-chou (Truku name Igung Shiban) you see box after box of materials spread out on the floor in front of you. A large bookcase stretching from ceiling to floor covers an entire wall and is stuffed with letters of agreement, land waivers, leasing contracts, cadastral data... all organized by category.

Tien Chun-chou's closest and longtime ally, chairman of the Hualien branch of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union Chung Pao-chu says, "Of all the disputes with cement factories, the Asia Cement case is certainly the one with the most complete documentation. This is all owing to Sister Tien and her husband."

Hu Wen-hsien, who has steadfastly remained in his home town for more than 30 years, unwilling to take compensation and move away, points to the desolate land surrounded by barbed wire fence and the mountains behind, from which the sound of blasting can regularly be heard. He hopes some day while he's still alive he will be able once more to feel the land of his ancestors beneath his feet.

An unexpected life

In 1995 Tien Chun-chou, who had left her native village 22 years earlier, brought her ailing Japanese husband back to Hualien to convalesce. Before she was even able to unpack the furniture she had sent to Hualien, Tien Chun-chou attended a coordination meeting on the expiration of Asia Cement leasing rights. It was then she learned for the first time that the land of her father and her tribespeople was gone.

During the meeting a serious argument broke out among the township office, the Asia Cement Corporation and the tribespeople. It got to the point where someone grabbed the microphone and wanted to start a fight. The three sides broke up and left on bad terms, but unexpectedly a pile of important documents, including many suspicious letters of agreement and land waivers, was left behind.

With this large stack of material in hand, Tien Chun-chou and her husband spent an entire year on motorcycle going to the Household Registration Office and the Land Registration Offices to gather more material. They consulted lawyers and notaries and they interviewed more than 100 Aboriginal landowners. The results: they discovered that to a person these landowners denied having signed the "land waivers" that would lose their land for them.

With tears in their eyes the elderly landowners asked for help and Tien Chun-chou, already past 50 herself, began to throw herself and her husband body and soul into the movement to "give back our land."

Cabinet after cabinet of documents and material on the land, the law and the Aboriginals attest to ten years of devoted effort by Tien Chun-chou.

A Tokyo love story

Tien Chun-chou was born in 1943 in Hsiulin, Hualien. Her father was the first Truku Christian convert and her mother was a midwife. Tien's childhood years were spent with her grandmother going into the mountains to plant sweet potatoes and corn and with her uncle hunting in the mountain forests. Once when she was in sixth grade her mother went away for training and Chun-chou took her place helping women in the tribe give birth. She had absolutely no fear of the bloody scene that came with the territory.

After graduating from middle school Tien Chou-chu entered National Taichung Nursing College and became a full-fledged midwife. In 1977 she brought an end to her first marriage and with a friend went to Tokyo to pursue beautician studies. Once in the process of asking for directions, she got to know her current husband, Tadao Maruyama and a romantic "Tokyo love story" unfolded.

The beautician course wound up in a short three months and after Tien had returned to Taiwan, like the affectionate "Momotaro" of Japanese folklore Maruyama braved all hardships and visited her four times, finally taking her back to Japan to marry after winning her hand. To while away the lonely hours in a foreign land, Tien Chun-chu studied handicrafts in Japan and earned many teaching certificates as a puppet maker. She was planning to return to Taiwan and teach the craft but now her four large iron chests filled with specialized books sit quietly on the back balcony of her Hualien home.

Leafing through a neatly bound volume of photocopies of "land waivers" at Tien Chun-chou's home, one can begin a discussion of the Hsiulin movement to regain their land with the regulations governing "mountain reservations" (later termed "Aboriginal reservations") issued by the government in 1968. At that time the National Government carved out 260,000 hectares of mountainous land as a reservation area. The Aborigines had land use and cultivation rights to this area but they had to cultivate the land for ten years (now changed to five years) before they could get ownership of the land.

Yet the regulations clearly stipulated that these reservation areas could not be transferred or leased to Han Chinese but only to Aboriginals. But during that era when economic development was worshiped above all else, a convenient "exception" was included in the regulations. Han Chinese could, in fact, lease and develop the land if it were for the purpose of mining, quarrying, or sightseeing or for industrial resources and did not hinder national security.

In 1973 the Asia Cement Corporation was attracted by Hsiulin's rich mineral resources and decided to set up a factory there. They also held a public meeting in Fushih Village in Hsiulin to explain the leasing arrangements. They made a commitment to the townspeople of a nine-year lease and issued compensation payments of NT$3,000 per landowner for crops and buildings on the land. But the landowners didn't know that according to the Mining Act Asia Cement could, if it wanted to, lease the land in perpetuity regardless of whether the landowners agreed or not. Neither did they know why Asia Cement the next year obtained the letters from all of them waiving their land rights.

Chang Jung-wen, now deceased but then mayor of Hsiulin and a key player in these events, once said, "All this is something the Aboriginals agreed to." The problem is, can it really be that "over 100 landowners gave up the rights to a total of 270 parcels of land all given up on one and the same day?" Chung Pao-chu, who has done a great deal of research on the cement industry's major thrust into Hualien and Taitung cannot but help shake her head. There are obviously too many question marks in this whole story. And what you can see in the whole process is that to facilitate Asia Cement obtaining the lease and getting the landowners to give up their land rights, the township office actually played a behind-the-scenes role to push things along.

As for Asia Cement, they stress that everything was entirely legal. The company had the lease and the land waivers. Not only did the company in the very beginning give compensation to the landowners, for many years it has been giving the township office a yearly rent of over NT$15 million, and it has received an "Award for Excellence in Providing Aboriginal Employment" for the benefits it has brought to the local community. As it now faces Aboriginal requests to return the land, Asia Cement is hoping the government will solve this problem as quickly as possible.

Of all the Aboriginal townships in Taiwan, Hsiulin's loss of land is one of the worst of all. Researchers have pointed out that alcoholism and child prostitution among Aboriginals in Hsiulin are especially serious problems. This is related to the Truku's loss of land and the breakdown of their social structure.

The green patch in the picture is the land under dispute between the Truku of Hsiulin and the Asia Cement Corporation.

Give back our land

Fortunately, when the Hsiulin Township Government was processing the cancellation of land rights "for" the landowners, the documents contained many flaws so the Hualien County Land Registration Office rejected them and the process was incomplete--which has now opened up the possibility for the Aboriginals of Hsiulin of getting back their land.

During the ten-year dispute tribespeople have vacillated between outright reconciliation and negotiations where they have taken money from Asia Cement on the one hand and a desire to take back their land on the other. The older generation want the land back, want justice to be done, but many heirs who have long since moved to other areas for the most part just hope to get a quick victory, to take their money and be done with it.

Like a shrimp fighting a whale, from not understanding any of the wording of the legislation to flipping easily to any article you want--looking at that book of legal documents filled with sticky notes in Tien Chun-chou's hands, one can understand how much this wife and husband pair have thrown themselves into the struggle these past ten years. They are frequently out the door at three in the morning on their way to leading tribespeople to protests in Taipei and Nantou (where the provincial Aboriginal affairs commssion was located).

In 2001 the complaint made by the provincial Aboriginal affairs commissions demanding the abrogation of current landowner rights was turned down by the court and the right of the Aborigines to cultivate the land was affirmed. Leading the tribal landowners, Tien Chun-chou and her husband broke through a barbed wire fence and entered the Asia Cement factory from which the landowners had been excluded for 30 years to symbolically plant a taro.

After ten years of struggle Tien Chun-chou was conscious that her face had taken on a puffy and swollen appearance. Many years of stress and anger from running hither and yon took their toll: in 2003 Tien suffered a brain haemorrhage and was close to living in a vegetative state. After a week of emergency treatment in an intensive care unit, however, she was pulled back from the jaws of death.

After more than two years of rehabilitation, it is impossible to tell that Tien Chun-chou had a serious stroke, and the Asia Cement case is now being handled pro bono by the Winkler Partners law firm in Taipei. The case is currently the subject of an administrative appeal and is awaiting a reasonable response from the county government--otherwise it will be put before the administrative courts.

No sooner recovered from her illness, Tien Chun-chou once more has not a moment to rest. Tadao Maruyama, who was formerly chief production manager for the Japanese bakery SunMerry, has drafted a plan for the transfer of food technology. He hopes to have tribespeople learn Japanese fermenting and pickling techniques and develop some fine local Aboriginal products for market.

Ten years have passed. The old landowners, whose names were on the list Tien always carried around and who with her had lamented the loss of their land, cannot live forever and are passing away one by one. Tien Chun-chou hopes that one day she will be able to get back the land of her people and that the old landowners will have a good and hearty last laugh "over the rainbow."

Tien Chun-chou's husband, Tadao Maruyama, carefully goes through the book of legal documents. Having thrown himself into the movement to "Give Back Our Land" with his wife, Tien Chun-chou's husband has made Hualien his second home.