Practices of Indigenous Self-Determination in Cultural and Digital Governance

Abstract

Across international and domestic legal frameworks, Indigenous self-determination has achieved normative recognition. In Taiwan, this recognition appears in constitutional interpretation, the Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, and through engagement with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Yet legal affirmation does not automatically translate into institutional transformation. The core question of my project is therefore whether Indigenous peoples really possess the right to self-determination, and how that right is negotiated and lived across shifting sites of governance. I ask: What does Indigenous self-determination look like in practice when it moves beyond doctrinal articulation into cultural institutions, and increasingly, digital infrastructures? How does sovereignty evolve as governance shifts from physical spaces, from museums to digital domains? This inquiry is grounded in my positionality as a Pangcah/’Amis community member from Taiwan pursuing doctoral training in the United States. While Indigenous Data Sovereignty frameworks have gained momentum, Taiwan has only begun to engage with Indigenous governance in digital policy. My project situates Taiwan within global Indigenous conversations while also interrogating how its distinctive geopolitical condition reshapes prevailing assumptions about sovereignty and recognition.