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Rethinking
Rethinking resource resource
identification and utilization identification
The reconstruction of indigenous
ethnoecological knowledge in Fata’an 187
Wetland, Taiwan Received 17 March 2010
Revised 23 September 2010
Wei-Chi Chang Accepted 5 November 2010
Department of Environmental and Cultural Resources,
National Hsinchu University of Education, Hsinchu, Taiwan

Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to explore the following questions: What are resources for humans and
what are not? How does nature “become” a resource? Does the result of cultural resources’
re-identification and utilization benefit cultural conservation?
Design/methodology/approach – The main methods used were participant observation (from
2005 to 2007) and in-depth interviews. In-depth interviews included local elites, wetland farmers, and
local tourism business owners.
Findings – The process of culture becoming resources includes three stages: resource identification,
meaning-giving, and social reduction. The achievement of each stage is a result of the interactions of
local powers. When the aims of the identification and utilization of cultural resources excessively
combine with some interests of capitalism, there is often a conflict between preservation and
development.
Practical implications – The results of the analysis suggest that, if this program could acquire
local consensus and local participation, it could really benefit cultural resource conservation.
Originality/value – This study proposes the “indigenous concept of resource” as a critical viewpoint
on the current concept of resource.
Keywords Culture, Ethnic groups, Resource management, Knowledge management, Taiwan
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Today, resources are an important issue. However, people treat their resources in
conflicting ways. On the one hand, when people face the problem of natural resource
exhaustion, the importance of resource conservation is emphasized. On the other hand,
under the distribution of capitalism and the commercialization of the world, the need to
re-define or re-create resources is raised in conjunction with the desire of material or

This study was supported by the National Science Council under project grant NSC
96-2621-Z-158-001. The author would like to thank the National Science Council for their
generous financial support. Part of the research produced was presented at the 11th International
Congress of Ethnobiology held by The International Society of Ethnobiology, in Cusco, Peru, Management of Environmental
Quality: An International Journal
28 June 2008. Finally, the author appreciates all the people of the Fata’an tribe who provided her Vol. 22 No. 2, 2011
with this material and helpful suggestions. She is also very grateful to Hsuan-Hsuan Lee and pp. 187-199
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Chris Hsieh for their wonderful editing, and to the anonymous reviewers for their comments on 1477-7835
the earlier version of this paper. DOI 10.1108/14777831111113374
MEQ mental satisfaction. Therefore, many cultural components that were not regarded as
“resources” before, such as livelihoods, lifestyle, and values, are now considered a new
22,2 kind of “resource” to be developed and utilized. For example, so-called tourism
resources, landscape resources and ecological resources are all the result of concerns
about the potential benefits of resource utilization. However, these phenomena
introduce the following series of questions: What is and is not considered a resource for
188 humans? How can culture and nature “become” resources? Does resource utilization
benefit resource conservation? To clarify these questions, it would be helpful to
understand the dilemma between resource conservation and development.
With more than ten indigenous ethnic groups, Taiwan is a country of multiple
cultures. However, these indigenous people have been governed by a racial assimilation
policy for almost a century. This racial assimilation has resulted in the loss of cultural
characteristics, and modernized lifestyles. As a result, indigenous cultures have become
dead cultures exhibited in museums. In 1995, with the advance of democracy and open
society, Taiwan launched a cultural policy called “community revitalization” to
encourage locals to re-establish their traditions and local characteristics (Council for
Cultural Affairs, 2004). The slogan of this policy, “Cultural Industrialization and
Industrial Culturalization”, soon became a core concept and concentrated resources from
the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Council of Agriculture, the Soil and Water
Conservation Bureau, the Council of Indigenous Peoples and local governments, for the
project. It can be said that the policy is the promoter of cultural resources re-identification
and utilization in Taiwan. Since non-cultural sectors are involved in the practice, some
phenomena worth studying in depth are raised:
.
Owing to the involvement of non-cultural sectors, categories that were not
considered “cultural” in the past, such as nature, agriculture, and industry, have
now been classified as “cultural” in order to consider their potential for becoming
a “cultural resource”.
.
Indigenous and rural cultures, which were regarded as backward and undeveloped
in the process of colonization and modernization, have been re-emphasized. Thus,
the disappearance of traditional lifestyles, livelihoods, and local knowledge were
quickly re-identified as important resources for forming local identity.
.
The connection between community revitalization projects and indigenous
tourism development policy has alluded to the direction of cultural resources’
re-identification and reallocation.
This study is specifically concerned with “nature elements”, which are regarded as
“cultural resources”. Investigating the indigenous ethnoecological knowledge and
traditional livelihoods in the Fata’an tribe, eastern Taiwan, this study aims to explore
the following questions: How does nature “become” a resource?; and Does the result of
cultural resources’ re-identification and utilization benefit cultural conservation?

Methodology
This paper is part of the research produced during a three-year project (2005-2007)
called the indigenous ecological maintenance, cultural heritage, and tourism
development plan. This was a development plan for the local sustainable regional
integration of eastern Taiwan. The main methods were participant observation and
in-depth interviews. The objects of the in-depth interview included local elites, wetland
farmers (including property owners) and tourism business owners in the wetland area.
The data and information obtained from in-depth interviews was first processed from Rethinking
field survey records and verbatim interviews. This was followed by the encoding of
important sentence extraction. Finally, a semantic analysis was completed in the
resource
interpretive pursuit of the native viewpoint. identification

Theoretical framework
The definition of cultural resources 189
“Cultural resources” is an innovative phrase, which combines the terms “culture” and
“resources” to cover two broad areas. It is a difficult phrase to describe precisely.
The definition of “culture” has always given rise to ardent discussion in
anthropology. One of the most well-known definitions was raised by the British
anthropologist, Tylor. He pointed out that culture is a complex whole that includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, and customs as well as any other capabilities and
habits gained by man as a member of society (Tylor, 1958, p. 1). However, in Keesing
(1986), Goodenough and Geertz emphasized that culture is not only lifestyles and
habits, but also a system of meanings shared by a certain group. Geertz (1973,
pp. 144-5) defined culture as an ordered system of meaning and symbols, in terms of
which individuals define their world, express their feelings, and make their judgments.
He was particularly concerned with how people live in the webs of significance, give
their actions meaning, and communicate through the systems of shared meanings.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
resource), “resource” is defined as:
.
a source of supply or support, an available means;
.
a natural source of wealth or revenue; and
.
a natural feature or phenomenon that enhances the quality of human life.
From these definitions, the term “resource” mostly refers to natural resources, potential
use for humans, and benefit to human life. Interestingly, there was no vocabulary entry
for “resource” in the famous Chinese dictionary, Cih-yuan. This was a large dictionary
of the ancient Chinese language designed to facilitate the reading of classic literature,
and was published in 1815 (Ching Dynasty). The definition of “resource”, from a
modern Chinese Dictionary, is available nature or labor (Ministry of Education, 1994).
This definition has been obviously influenced by the impact of Western culture. In
Chinese, the word for “resource” is formed by two characters, zih and yuan. Zih
represents “support, dependence and capital”. Yuan means “the origin of the water
current”. Therefore, the term composed by these two characters can be interpreted as
“the origin or foundation for living”. Similarly, there is no concept of “resource” in
indigenous Taiwanese societies. To these indigenous people, nature is not only used for
people. Nature is to be shared by all living beings (including humans).
Archeologists invented the term “cultural resources” in the 1970s (King, 2004). The
broad use of the term is relatively recent and is most often used in the heritage
management field. The term has numerous meanings and references such as:
.
The literal meaning of “cultural resources” is to treat “culture” as a kind of
“resource” (Moriyama, 2007, p. 62).
.
“Cultural resources” is synonymous with cultural heritage, which includes
physical assets such as goods, documents, technology, architecture, cultural
landscape, and other visible and potential resources as well as intangible
MEQ properties such as oral traditions, performing arts, customs, rituals and events,
and knowledge of nature and the universe (Yamashita, 2007, p. 14).
22,2 .
“Cultural resources” refer to both historic properties and properties that are
thought to be historic by a certain society or group of a certain age (King, 2004,
p. 5).
.
“Cultural resources” include any or all of the following: indigenous graves and
190 cultural items, shipwrecks, museum collections, historical documents, religious
sites, religious practices, folk life, tradition, other social institutions, theater
groups, orchestras, and other community cultural amenities (King, 2004, p. 5).
.
“Cultural resources” also refers to the “cultural use of natural resources”, which
means to utilize nature in the culture category, give it a cultural meaning, and
make it a kind of “cultural resource” (Moriyama, 2007; King, 2004).

The utilization of cultural resources

Few research studies have discussed the utilization of cultural resources or how
something is molded into a cultural resource. The utilization of cultural resources can
be summarized as follows:
.
The identification of something as a cultural resource is with a strong ideology of
“used for people”. On the one hand, avoidance of lessened value due to damage or
wear and tear is expected. On the other hand, they are also aggressively
considered for use (Shimizu, 2007, p. 124).
.
The practice field of cultural resources includes three levels: everyday life, the
state and the market. Molding cultural into a kind of resource is not a common
phenomenon in human societies (Yamashita, 2007, p. 17). At least, in indigenous
societies, it is the result of the penetration of colonialism and capitalism.
.
The re-identification and reallocation of cultural resources is a process of
constructing meaning. Social actors manipulate culture, through the process of
embodiment or objectification, or to benefit from extracting some parts of a
culture and give them a meaning, symbol, political claim or commercial purpose
(e.g. tourism) (Shimizu, 2007, p. 127).

Results and discussion

The Fata’an background
The Fata’an community belongs to Guangfu Township, which is in Hualien County
(Figure 1), located on the less polluted east coast of Taiwan. It is inhabited mostly by
Taiwan’s largest indigenous nation, the Amis. The Fata’an is one of the oldest Amis
tribe and has a population of about 7,100, including 2,850 indigenous people. The
remaining others are Han Chinese people who migrated into the area since 1948
(Guangfu Township Administration Office, 2009).
Today, the living space of the Fata’ans is generally divided into three areas: the
business street, the tribe, and the wetland (Figure 2). The business street area is a space
for the Han people’s shops and residences. A sugar factory established during the
Japanese-colonial period is located at the southern end of this area. Some Fata’ans have
worked there since 1920. From that time, large numbers of Han Chinese people move
into Fata’an for seeking jobs in the sugar factory. Traditionally, indigenous people live
in tribe areas and fish and gather in the wetland. In the 1930s, after the Japanese
colonial force occupied eastern Taiwan, the Japanese government started promoting
 Rethinking
resource
identification

191

Figure 1.
The location of Fata’an

Figure 2.
The area occupied by the
Fata’an people
MEQ the industrialization of rice production. Large-scale rice cultivation appeared in the
wetland area and harvests were managed by the state. Commercialization of colonial
22,2 products was mainly driven by the expansion of goods production that the Japanese
market needed (Economic Research Department, 1959). Subsequently, cash crops
replaced traditional crops. After the Second World War, Taiwan was taken over by the
Republic of China, and the sugar factory was included as a state-owned enterprise.
192 According to the various stages of national development needs, some policies were
promoted, such as the mechanization of rice farming, industry dependent agriculture,
industrial development and tourism development. These policies also impacted land
use of the Fata’an wetland. Local farmers were directed to rice planting, the livestock
industry, lotus cultivation, agricultural leisure and the tourism industry. Therefore, to
Fata’ans, the wetland was no longer “the origin or foundation for living” or the
environment that locals “shared with all beings”. Instead, it had become a resource to
provide economic value and support national development plans.

The Fata’an wetland culture: pa-lakaw

Prior to national rule and capitalism, the Fata’an indigenous people had their own
unique philosophy managing the wetland. In this section, the resource view of the
Fata’an indigenous ethnoecological knowledge is interpreted through the traditional
fishing culture called pa-lakaw.
The Fata’an Wetland is located at the junction of the Fata’an River (a branch of the
Hualien River) and the alluvial fan of the Okakay River. Influenced by a sharp fall in the
terrain and inflow from the Futen River at the base of Mountain Ma-Si (see Figure 2),
accumulated water cannot drain away. Because of this accumulation of water, a swamp
formed in this area. It is the so-called Fata’an Wetland. The Fata’an Wetland is
approximately 1 kilometer away from the Fata’an tribe. The area of the wetland is
around 126 hectares. Because an underground spring as well as many ditches and pools
are present in the area, it is a good place for fish and shrimp to live, but not for people. In
the past, the main activities of tribe people in the wetland included fishing and gathering
of edible wild herbs. Cultivation is limited at the edge of the wetland. Even so, the
wetland supported the Fata’ans with their self-sufficient life and culture.
According to Chiu (1962), there were eleven fishing methods used by the Fata’an tribe.
The most unique one, which other Amis tribes do not have, is the pa-lakaw. The lakaw is
a fishing facility created by the Fata’an people for adapting to the wetland environment.
In the Amis language, lakaw means trash. It is so named because the lakaw is made from
recycled materials (trash) found in the wetland. Pa-lakaw means to fish using the lakaw.
The lakaw is a pool built up along the riverside, and opens into the river. Three layers
constructed of bamboo and branches are placed in the pool (Figure 3). The first layer, at
the bottom of the pool, is constructed with hollow snake wood trunks and big, thick
bamboo tubes in which esquamate and demersal fishes (such as eels, rice-field eels, and
catfish) can live. The second layer, made from Chinese Crape Myrtle, is for small fish and
shrimp to hide and breed. The third layer, made of a few bamboo tubes on the top, has a
large space and connects with the river. The third layer attracts Tilapia and Crucian carp
for foraging. Therefore, the Amis people always say, “the lakaw is like a house to provide
a shelter for fishes” (field note, April, 1, 2008).
About three or four months after finishing the lakaw, the fish and shrimp have
become big and fat and it is time to start fishing. Each lakaw is managed by a family.
People who do not have their own lakaw can request co-operation from people who
have one and they can get some fish after the operation (Chiu, 1962, p. 77). Fata’an men
 Rethinking
resource
identification

193

Figure 3.
The structure of lakaw

usually go fishing in the morning. Sometimes they go there by themselves, sometimes

with their families. When fishing, they use the rakal (fishing trap) and the cerin (fishing
curtain) to sever the connection between the river and the pool. The men block other
breaches with mud and weeds in order to prevent the escape of the fish and shrimp.
The water is then ladled out. When the water becomes shallow, the bamboo canes and
branches are deconstructed layer by layer, and the fish and shrimp are caught with a
bamboo fish trap or net. The Fata’an people are quite content with their catches. They
only take what they have and they never over-fish. Certain types of shrimp will be
returned into the water because they are fish food. Human beings do not eat these
shrimp in Fata’an culture. When esquamate and demersal fishes are caught, they are
used to feed chickens and ducks. This resource view is formed through the interaction
between local people and nature. Nature is not only a resource for people to use, but it is
also shared by all living things.
Usually, the Fata’an people collect some edible wild herbs near the lakaw for
cooking some of the fish, and then have lunch there. After lunch, they have a short rest.
Later, they reconstruct the lakaw in good order and divide the fish and shrimp between
them. Lakaw materials can be used repeatedly, as long as defective parts are replaced.
Traditionally, the Fata’an practice a matrilocal system of marriage. Therefore, the
neatness and tidiness of a lakaw is the standard by which a man is evaluated and
whether he is hard working or not. A lazy man (recognized by his untidy lakaw) would
find it difficult to get a woman to marry him. From an ecological perspective, sanitary
lakaws benefit the growth of fish and wild herbs. Through a long history of ecological
interaction with nature, the Fata’an people have built up a huge system of knowledge
about edible wild herbs. There are more than 200 kinds of edible wild herbs in their
indigenous knowledge database. A diverse ecological environment makes Amis good at
wild herb recognition. Therefore, the Amis people are called the “herb-eating people”.
The plentiful land provides Amis a rich dietary life. In the words of an Amis man:
For the Amis, all the creatures in sky, on earth or under the water are edible. However, we do
not overwhelm them (narrated by Lalan Unak, October 2007).
MEQ From here it is known that the traditional Fata’ans do not treat nature as a “resource”
from which they benefited. On the contrary, the culture of pa-lakaw was created. The
22,2 Fata’ans adapted to natural regularity and set them up as one part of the food chain.
Through pa-lakaw activity, Fata’ans have embedded the natural wetland environment
into the “culture” category, and given it a cultural meaning. Through the social
conventions such as the sharing of catches, the maintenance of lakaw, and non-excessive
194 fishing, compliance with the value of “symbiosis with nature, sharing with all beings”
can be achieved. Therefore, we can say that the lakaw is not only a tool for survival, but
also a cultural mechanism for natural sustainability. Such a view is very different from
the view of resources or cultural resources in Western societies. As one Fata’an said:
For us, the indigenous people, especially, [wetland] is the support and continues to be part of
our lives (narrated by Rungan Cheng, February 6, 2006).

The reconstruction of ethnoecological knowledge and traditional livelihoods

However, the Fata’an way of utilizing ecology is not efficient under the developmental
views of modernization and capitalism. To a capitalist society, the Fata’an do not fully
utilize their resources. This results in mainstream society deeming rural and tribal
areas as “backward” and “undeveloped”. Therefore, modern developments, such as
mechanized farming, cash crop cultivation, industrial development and tourism
development, were brought to local people to resolve problems of the “lack of
effectiveness” in the use of rural resources.
In 1995, when the Taiwan government began to promote the community revitalization
policy, a different directive was put forward. In the past, development only focused on
natural resource exploitation. In comparison, community development focused more on
cultural resources, or how to make nature a cultural resource. Fata’an was selected as one
of ten models in the first wave of community revitalization in Hualien and a new policy –
“cultural industrialization and industrial culturalization policy” – were instituted at that
time. The first step in policy implementation was professional groups entering the local
area and empowering locals in the investigation of local characteristics and local
resources. The questions were then raised of how to use local resources in proposed
projects to unite the community, carry out community landscape design, and conduct
activities on local skills, crafts and community interpretation. Another question involved
the activation of “resources” towards the goal of “cultural industrialization and industrial
culturalization”. The final goal was the expectation of locals to endogenously give an
impetus to local revitalization from the bottom up after the departure of the professional
groups. Therefore, it can be said that the process of “cultural industrialization and
industrial culturalization” is a kind of cultural engineering, through which nation or social
actors manipulate some specific value or tradition and mold it into resources (Hobsbawm,
1983; Meyerson and Martin, 1987).
Analysis of the process found that it could be divided into three stages: “resources
identification”, “meaning-giving” and “social reduction”. The explanations of the three
stages through the case of Fata’an are as follows.
1. Resources identification. What are resources? What are not? This is often a
political issue for specific groups, especially when this distinction connects the
interests. When a government-subsidized community revitalization project enters a
local area, it is prone to this problem (Chang and Chi, 1999). At the beginning of the
community revitalization project, the locals were asked to reveal local characteristics
on the views of “resources.” The identified characteristics can then be developed by
government funding. Thus, the “identification” process brings “resources.” Sometimes Rethinking
resource identification was put to a public discussion, sometimes not. Frequently, local
elites or outsiders hold the right of resource definition.
resource
“Identification” implies two kinds of situations. The first situation involves making identification
non-resource objects into resources. For example, pa-lakaws were not executed for quite
a long time because they were not thought valuable under the logic of modern
development, which emphasizes the production benefits. However, in order to promote 195
the new policy in the wetland, pa-lakaws were made into a “tourism resource” and
re-emphasized by locals. The second situation involves giving a new meaning to
something that is already a resource, making it become an innovative resource. For
example, edible wild herbs are thought of as dietary “resources” in local life. However,
when the community revitalization project began, the wild herbs were identified and
given a new meaning as “ethnoplants”. Subsequently, an eco-tourism
interpreter-training program aimed at adults was first held in 1997 for a group of
seed teachers. These seed teachers then promoted the teaching of the Amis edible wild
herbs, and took children to the wetland to learn their ethnoplants. Therefore, the
wetland became a local “teaching resource” to understand the local culture.
Next, this study inquired into “who” has the power to identify Fata’an’s resources.
This study found that most acceptors of community revitalization project in 1995 were
intellectual elites around 40 years old. In the gerontocracy of Amis society, these
middle age elites did not have the right to speak yet. Moreover, Fata’an is the biggest
tribe in central Hualien. The tribe still holds grand annual harvest festival activities
and preserves the ancient houses. Compared to the wetland, where traditional
livelihoods had disappeared, cash crops such as rice and lotus, which had been
cultivated for years, destroyed the environment. The tribe has more representative
Fata’an Amis characteristics.
Why has the wetland been pointed out? First, it is a consideration of the balance of
power. When compared to the tribe with solid and strong power structure, the border
wetland is a virgin land of “cultural development”. Here, the young intellectual elites
can have more freedom of speech. Therefore, it is obvious that these intellectual elites
have been involved in the ecological recovery of the wetland, the reconstruction of the
lakaw, the development of the ethnic tourism, the training program of eco-tourism
interpreters, and the creation of innovative tribal recipes. The participation of the local
non-indigenous Han elites is also seen here.
The second factor is based on the strategy of “power borrowing”. In the past, when
the tribal authority had yet to be replaced by colonial power, the tribal institutions still
had the force of constraint on improper land use. However, when the liberal economy
penetrated and private ownership was popular for a time, public pollution problems,
which the tribal powers solved with difficulty, were only worked out by the public
authority. For example, local elites hoped that the residents would re-recognize the
value of the wetland from a tourism perspective, and, as a strategy, forced the
Township Office to begin negotiating with pig farms regarding pollution by pig waste.
As a member of the Fata’an elite said:
To me, “eco-tourism” is just a term borrowed from urban people. What we really care about is
how to protect this wetland through activities. . .As the Fata’an Wetland is already called an
Ecological Area, although we don’t want to describe it this way, this seems to be the best
compromise currently. Only in this way will the Government pay more attention to the
wetland (narrated by Guochen Yang, August 2003).
MEQ 2. Meaning-giving. Weber described a human as “an animal suspended in webs of
22,2 significance he himself has spun” (Geertz, 1973). Each group has its own way to
interpret the meaning of things, and even to give meanings, not only to passively
accept significance (Geertz, 1973). Humans act in the significance, create meanings and
are controlled by the meanings. Williams (1982, quoting from Duncan, 1990, p. 133)
pointed out that culture is a “signifying system”. In this system, the social order is
196 communicated, reproduced, experienced and explored. In accordance with the
argument of Shimizu (2007), culture is a complex system, so it cannot be directly used
as a resource. When a certain part of culture is pointed out, it should be given a
meaning to transform it into a “resource”. The process of molding the cultural into
resources is to extract some parts of culture, give it meanings, symbols, political claims
or commercial aims (such as tourism) (Shimizu, 2007). Through the process of
embodiment or objectification, social actors can benefit from it. Therefore, the process
of molding the cultural into resources is also a process of making sense. It is especially
important for the cultural use of natural resources. For example, traditionally, most
Fata’ans live in the tribe area, with very few in the wetland. Thus, during the
development of wetland tourism, many locals and tourists commonly questioned
whether the wetland represented the tribal culture or not. For this reason, tribal elites
often emphasize the connection between the wetland and the tribal culture via cultural
activities held in the wetland.
For example, the year-round springs are the ecological characteristic of the wetland.
It brings the culture of pa-lakaw, and the significance of respect for the aged. In 2003,
young elites gained a government grant for springs landscaping and interpretative
signs. When the landscaping was finished, an activity was held to honor the elders at
the wetland. Children were arranged to represent a custom of retrieving water with
traditional bamboo tubes and dedicate it to the elders. The elites explained that,
influenced by the convenience of tap water available now, this custom has disappeared.
Traditionally, this cultural activity was not held in the wetland particularly. It was
deliberately chosen to be revived in the wetland to strengthen the connection between
the wetland and the tribe. Meanwhile, all of the interpretative signs and local media
reports gave meaning to the springs and advanced the transformation of the springs
(natural phenomenon) into a cultural resource.
From here, it is known that meaning-giving is an important stage in the process of
molding the cultural into resources. It not only establishes a dominant discourse for the
legitimacy of this process, but also precedes social struggle through discourse.
In 2003, the Township Office used “eco-tourism”, a currently popular term, as the
slogan of the Fata’an Wetland Ecology Festival it was promoting. This activity mainly
promoted the beautiful scenery of the lotus and wetland environment. The promotion
of eco-tourism not only attracted tourists, but also attracted the involvement of local
indigenous and Han tourism business owners and interpreters. Most of these Han
eco-interpreters were either volunteers with the Society of Wilderness or the Wild Bird
Society. They are a group dedicated to the concept of environmental protection. They
hope to accumulate funds from interpretation income to restore the wetland and
conserve the land by land trust. Their interpretation emphasizes scientific knowledge
of the environment. Although the Han adopt some Amis knowledge in their
interpretation, they often express their disagreement with the Amis ecological
knowledge in front of the tourists. An Amis eco-tourism interpreter remarked that,
 Once I went to hear what they introduce to the tourists. Many aspects of Amis culture were Rethinking
explained wrong. They even told the tourists that our lakaw damaged the landscape, our
traditional stone boiling is unsanitary (narrated by Mayao, May 28, 2006). resource
Between the Amis and the Han, there is a wide difference in the significance of the
identification
wetland, and it has caused confrontation. Amis has tried to recapture the right of
interpretation of the wetland. They argued:
197
The wetland is not an ecological area, but is the living space of an aboriginal people. We live
here and we have our own classification of edible wild herbs, fish and shrimp and our own
way to use wetland. However, neither of the above ways matches so-called “Ecology”. Han
people have only been in this wetland for 40 years, but they want to dominate the
thousand-year-old indigenous culture (narrated by Lalan Unak, October 2007).
Here, both sides actually disagree on the meaning of “resources.” For the Han
interpreters, the wetland is an object that should be protected from any damage. Its
existence is as a “resource of environmental education and interpretation”. For this
reason, they have negated the Fata’an way of using the wetland through the authority
of “ecological sciences”. However, for the Fata’an people, the wetland is a part of their
lives and they themselves are part of the wetland food chain. Therefore, they think that
they have the rights to share this wetland with all living beings.
In this case, meaning-giving is evident in the way that the cultures can be seen as
educational resources, tourism resources and so on. The difference is that Han people
treat nature as “the other”, but indigenous people never distinguish nature as self or the
other. Indigenous people put it into their own cultural system to look for the meaning,
and make a new linking between these meanings and the world.
3. Social reduction. Finally, these identified cultures still need to be returned to the
society by the practice of social actors and then they can have a real value of
“resources”. For example, pa-lakaws are identified as a resource representative of
Fata’an cultural and ecological knowledge. Fata’an people even give a meaning to it by
naming it “eco-fishing”. However, if this new given meaning cannot be returned to the
society and supported by both Fata’an Amis and Fata’an outsiders, its value will be
limited. This is why the practices of restoring the lakaw or actively encouraging people
to experience palakaw in the wetland are pushed. These actions contribute a great deal
to the awakening in the local people of respecting their living culture of the wetland. On
the other hand, it provides an opportunity for tourists to experience pa-lakaw and
understand the unique ecological wisdom of the indigenous people.
However, in the process of social reduction, the imaginative visions between social
actors may be different from each other. Thus, the results of the practice are often
contradictory to the initially given meanings. For example, in 2003, the Township
Office promoted eco-tourism through the Fata’an Wetland Ecology Festival. Through
the media, and with help from the Township Office and the Council of Agriculture,
many new facilities and road developments have taken place. The result has been a
rapid change in tourism of the Fata’an wetland from small eco-tourism units to mass
tourism. The masses of tourists crowding into the Fata’an wetland distort the nature of
ecotourism. The inappropriate policy of planting exotic water plants has affected the
biological balance of the wetland. This result indicates that, despite the numbers of
Township Offices, tourism business owners, Amis farmers and intellectuals who
declare their support for “eco-tourism”, they do not have the same concept of the term
“eco-tourism”.
MEQ The original purpose of community revitalization project was to give an innovative
value to tradition and revitalize cultural resources through the representation and
22,2 reproduction of culture to benefit cultural resource sustainability. However, the
practice of social reduction of cultural resources was originally affected by some
personal political practices. Especially, when these practices are combined with capital
interests (such as tourism or commercialization), the situation is prone to conflict
198 between preservation and development.

Conclusions and recommendations

Through the case study of the Fata’an, we found that in traditional Fata’an culture
there is no concept of “resource”. The Fata’an regard themselves as part of nature, part
of a natural food chain. They do not believe that nature can be a resource monopolized
by anyone. Instead, nature should be shared by all living beings. Under the influence of
the capitalism and government’s policies, the indigenous people began to regard it as a
resource. Regarding the process of molding culture into resources, three steps were
included by this study: resources identification, meaning-giving and social reduction.
The findings are summarized as follows:
. The achievement of each stage is a result of local power interactions. Therefore
investigating whom, what position, for what reason, what cultural resources are
and how to utilize the resources are important issues.
.
When the “resource view” of mainstream societies is excessively different from
that of indigenous societies, they are prone to conflict from the stage of
“meaning-giving”, which is subsequently extended to the subsequent practice of
“social reduction”.
.
As is the case in Fata’an, when the direction of resource utilization is unfamiliar
to the indigenous people, the “resource view” of mainstream societies usually
overrides that of indigenous societies. This results in the loss of the utilization
initiative and resource management. Moreover, the indigenous people will
depend on the government’s intervention. On the contrary, when it comes to their
environment, the indigenous culture will insist on their own ethnoecological
knowledge and try to recapture the right of interpretation of their living space.
That is the reason that internal conflicts are raised so easily.
.
When the aims of the social reduction of cultural resources excessively combine
with some interests of capitalism, they are prone to a dilemma between
preservation and development. This is because capitalists seek maximum profit
while conservation seeks resource sustainability.
According to the above conclusions, this study suggests that the awareness of local
people is very important to the cultural resource management. If this program could
acquire local consensus and local participation, it could be of real benefit to cultural
resource conservation.
Finally, this study proposes that the “indigenous resource view” is a critical
viewpoint on the current concept of resource. Today, the world has been completely
commercialized. Anything is for sale, including culture. The indigenous “resource
view” opens up an alternative possibility, and leads us to rethink the possibility of
returning cultural resources utilization to the origin of a sharing attitude and the value
of human life.
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About the author

Wei-Chi Chang earned a PhD at Japan’s Chiba University in 2004. Currently, she is employed as
an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental and Cultural Resources, National
Hsinchu University of Education. Her teaching and research interests mostly focus on
development issues such as tourism, organic agriculture, local food systems of rural society and
indigenous communities. Wei-Chi Chang can be contacted at: cihekkating@mail.nhcue.edu.tw

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