Taiwanese Indigenous Cultural Heritage and Revitalization: Community Practices and Local Development

The continuing interest and progress in indigenous communities and local economies based on traditional, cultural, and ecological knowledge contributes to indigenous resilience. Here we report on an ongoing collaborative project investigating the process of renewal of cultural heritage through strengthening the roots of indigenous cultural traditions of knowledge and practice, and the changing concepts of tradition. The project investigates the various mechanisms for conserving indigenous culture: How the heritage of indigenous culture is reconstructed; how this heritage is related to the social frame and practice of everyday life; how power intervention affects the contestation of heritage; and in the context of heritage contestation, how cultural heritage turns into economic capital in the tourism economy of the community. The project explores the process of cultural heritagization of indigenous traditional knowledge through six individual projects in the areas of food and edible heritage, ethnic revival, weaving, solidarity economy, cultural ecotourism, and indigenous agro-products. In addition, the project examines the establishment of a constructive dialogue between the “traditional future”, cultural heritage literature and local practice in the interest of the consolidation of alternative development.