Typhoon-displaced Taiwan’s Bunun tribe battles to save heritage

KUALA LUMPUR, 28 SEPTEMBER 2026 —

Taiwan’s Bunun People Cling to Vanishing Homeland as Climate Change and Neglect Erase Their Mountain Village

With 14 years of failed reconstruction efforts and a government resettlement policy that has scattered its people across lowland cities, the future of this ancestral home now hangs by a thread, as climate change intensifies the very disasters that forced its evacuation.

For the Bunun, Tengjhih was more than a settlement; it was the heart of their identity, a place where children played among abandoned houses now overgrown with wild grass, where elders once taught traditional songs and rituals, and where the land itself sustained their livelihoods. Today, only five stubborn residents remain, including 70-year-old Bi’ Ismahasan, who still tends to her tea and coffee plants despite losing her entire harvest in 2026.

The rest—150 people—were relocated to cities like Kaohsiung and Liouguei District after the typhoon killed 755 across Taiwan, though Indigenous territories, home to just 2.1% of the population, bore 70% of the disaster’s worst damage. The government declared Tengjhih a "high-risk zone," but repeated reconstruction attempts have collapsed under the weight of extreme weather, with typhoons in 2012, 2021, and 2025 each tearing away sections of the mountain road.

The latest setback in 2025 left the village more isolated than ever, its people trapped between grief for what was lost and the fading hope of return.

Dahu Ismahasan, 60, president of the Bunun tribal council, still makes perilous trips to Tengjhih along a narrow, unguarded mountain road, risking his life to reconnect with the land his family has inhabited for generations. "When we were children, we played here. We were happy, innocent," he recalls, his voice heavy with memory as he surveys the empty streets now claimed by stray dogs.

The typhoon spared no lives in Tengjhih, but it stole everything else—the road, the crops, the tourism that once supported the village, and the very possibility of a future there. Now, Dahu lives in Liouguei, where he watches his people adapt to city life, their cultural ties weakening with each passing year. "If this village disappears, our people will disappear too," he warns.

His 85-year-old mother, Clrenge Ismahasan, who moved to the neighboring hamlet of Erjituan after Morakot, still clings to fragments of the past. She remembers the day the floods came: "Everything was flooded. We couldn’t get down from the mountain." Yet when asked what she misses most, she and two other elderly women sit in silence, their hands trembling over drawings of Tengjhih, too painful to speak.

The Bunun’s struggle is not just about physical displacement but the erosion of their cultural and spiritual foundation. Traditionally, young people would return to the mountains after education to carry on rituals, teach the language, and pass down hunting and farming knowledge.

But now, Saminat Maliklan, a 55-year-old cultural guide and one of the last holdouts in Tengjhih, watches her 11-year-old granddaughter—who visits from Kaohsiung—struggle to learn the Bunun tongue amid the distractions of city life. "I try as much as possible to speak with her in our mother tongue," Saminat says, preparing tea from garden leaves while explaining how she once taught her children to carry wood, pull weeds, and plant crops.

"But today, when they come back, there is no village and no work." The loss of land means the loss of livelihoods, too. Bi’ Ismahasan, who once relied on tourism and agriculture, now survives on government assistance after typhoons wiped out her harvests year after year. "In 2026, I lost my entire harvest," she says. "Every year is worse than the previous one. I lost all the customers who used to come to Tengjhih."

The government’s response has been slow and inconsistent, despite Taiwan’s 2005 Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, which mandates "free, prior and informed consent" (FPIC) for development projects on Indigenous lands. Yet the law’s protections have done little to shield the Bunun from forced relocation. Dahu and other villagers have spent nearly 20 years writing to authorities, pleading for a way home. "We keep that hope in our prayers," he says.

"The wind and rain won’t last forever. One day, the road will be better, and the lives of the people here will be better too." But for now, the road remains a casualty of climate change, with each typhoon season bringing new destruction. The Tengjhih Forest Recreation Area, once a source of income and cultural pride, has been indefinitely closed, leaving families like Bi’s without means to sustain themselves.

In Kaohsiung, young Bunun people form associations to preserve seasonal rituals, but Dahu fears the emotional connection is already fading. "Our children will no longer be able to bury us in the mountains," he says. "And our souls will not be able to return to our ancestral land. We will be condemned to wander far away."

The story of Tengjhih is a microcosm of a broader crisis facing Indigenous communities across Asia, where climate disasters and development policies collide to displace entire ways of life. For the Bunun, the fight to return is not just about rebuilding a road but reclaiming a future—one where their language, rituals, and connection to the land endure. As Saminat tends to her granddaughter, she knows the weight of that responsibility.

"Our rituals and ceremonies are disappearing," she says. "If we don’t fight for this village, what will we leave for the next generation?" The answer, for now, remains uncertain. But in the silence of Tengjhih’s empty streets, the wind carries the echo of a people still holding onto hope.