Opinion: When 'Incident' Became 'Campaign' — Historical Justice for Cikasuan Must Not End at Heritage Listing

On June 18 this year, the Hualien County Government announced the registration of 'O nipilais nu Ripun tu Cikasuan: Japan's Invasion of Cikasuan Campaign' as a county-level historic site, categorized as an ancient battlefield. When I saw the announcement, my first thought wasn’t that another entry had been added to the list. What I saw was that the name finally made clear who initiated this campaign and on whose land it occurred.

For a long time, this history was known as the 'Cikasuan Incident.' The word 'incident' sounds nearly neutral, like an accidental conflict without a subject. 'Pacification,' too, perpetuates the colonizer’s perspective, portraying Indigenous peoples as those who needed to be conquered and civilized. Now, renaming it the 'Japan's Invasion of Cikasuan Campaign' is not about perpetuating hatred, but about restoring the missing subject—the aggression and resistance that had been erased—and returning them to history. Naming is never just about labels; it determines from what position society understands the past.

Since 2011, young people have walked from the old settlement to the places where displaced community members now live. In 2016, I crossed the Mugua River with my child on my back. As my feet touched the water, I only wanted my child to know that the path we were walking was one of ancestral escape and dispersal—and also the path for descendants to return to their own history.

Each story told along the way over these years has made me more certain: Cikasuan cannot be confined to just the two words 'the incident.'

Hualien County’s justification for registration states that the 1908 campaign led to the destruction of a community with nearly 400 years of history under colonial rule. The people of Cikasuan were forced to cede their living space, and their labor was exploited by the colonial empire for development in eastern Taiwan. The significance of this text lies in its refusal to treat the end of hostilities as the end of history, instead linking the land seizures, population displacement, and labor exploitation that followed the campaign.

Therefore, what we truly need to ask is: Where did the land, people, and memory of Cikasuan go after the campaign?

After being forced to leave their old settlement, land that had once been inhabited, cultivated, and used for rituals—land woven with kinship networks and tribal governance—was redefined by the colonial government as 'wilderness,' then converted into state-owned land and space for settlers. 'Wilderness' did not mean the land was originally uninhabited; it meant people were first removed, and then their names, settlements, and traces of life were erased from maps and records.

After the 1908 campaign, displaced Cikasuan people and other Amis communities were incorporated into colonial infrastructure projects—railways, roads, bridges, and ports. When we talk about eastern development, we celebrate railway openings, the Jiyeh settler village, and the construction of Hualien Port, but we rarely ask: On whose land were these so-called 'progressive' projects built? And whose bodies and labor made the empire’s proclaimed development possible?

The Cikasuan experience is not an isolated local history; it is connected to the entire colonial development of eastern Taiwan. When development history only highlights pioneers, settler villages, transportation, and administrative systems, it remains the version left behind by the rulers. Indigenous peoples are not cultural elements standing beside development history waiting to be introduced—they are the ones who directly bear the consequences when land is taken, resources exploited, and populations reconfigured.

Historical justice for Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples advances through repeated acts of renaming and institutional correction. From the renaming of 'mountain compatriots' to 'Indigenous peoples,' the inclusion of 'Indigenous peoples' in the Constitution, the enactment of the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, national apologies, and the establishment of the Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Committee—many of these changes were won through long-term Indigenous activism.

These achievements do not mean the work is complete, but they prove that when the state is willing to correct language, laws, and institutions, the historical order once taken for granted can begin to shift.

On July 30 this year, the Executive Yuan officially recognized the Siraya people as Taiwan’s 17th Indigenous group. This achievement followed decades of naming campaigns, legal battles, and cultural revitalization, building on the 2022 Constitutional Court ruling and the 2025 Indigenous Plains Peoples Identity Act. The Siraya’s recognition reaffirms that a people’s existence cannot be determined solely by colonial administrative categories, household registration fields, or bureaucratic convenience. This is not an extra favor granted by the state, but the state beginning to correct the erasure caused by past systems.

Yet, having a name written into an announcement or law does not automatically change how society remembers history. Even if Cikasuan is listed as a historic site, if textbooks still only introduce the Jiyeh settler village without explaining how the land was acquired, if they only mention the Hualien-Taitung Railway and Hualien Port without discussing how Indigenous labor was mobilized, and if only colonial monuments and memorials are preserved while descendants are denied the chance to tell their ancestors’ stories, then this official notice may ultimately amount to nothing more than a signpost.

Listing should be the beginning of action. First, the seven dispersed Cikasuan communities—Taichang, Nanhua, Chinan, Guangrong, Pinghe, Shoufeng, and Xikou—should jointly participate in the preservation, research, interpretation, and governance of the historic site. Second, the old settlement, the Mugua River escape route, railways, settler villages, and post-dispersal settlements must be reintegrated into a single historical narrative within Taiwan’s eastern development history, Indigenous history, and colonial labor history. Archives scattered across Taiwan and Japan should continue to be digitized, translated, and made publicly accessible—so future generations are no longer forced to prove their ancestors’ existence solely through the colonizers’ written reports.

The descendants of Cikasuan return to the old settlement, walk the Mugua River path, and delve into Japanese archives for a simple reason: they hope this history can be seen again through the eyes of their people. True reconciliation cannot be claimed until the untold history is understood.

History may be forgiven, but it must not be forgotten.

When 'incident' was renamed 'Japan's Invasion of Cikasuan Campaign,' this announcement corrected a colonial label. But our work is not yet done. Historical justice must be realized in curricula, land, memorial spaces, and governance—so that those once forced into silence can once again become the subjects who narrate their own history.

From the village’s perspective, it becomes clear: what we seek to reclaim is not just the name of history, but the very angle from which history is told.

*The author is a community general director, long engaged in Indigenous cultural heritage and local revitalization initiatives.