Indigenous Knowledge and Endogenous Actions for Building Tribal Resilience after Typhoon Soudelor in Northern Taiwan

Indigenous peoples often face significant vulnerabilities to climate risks, yet the capacity of a social-ecological system (SES) to resilience is abstracted from indigenous and local knowledge. This research explored how the Tayal people in the Wulai tribes located in typhoon disaster areas along Nanshi River used indigenous knowledge as tribal resilience. It applied empirical analysis from secondary data on disaster relief and in-depth interviews, demonstrating how indigenous people’s endogenous actions helped during post-disaster reconstructing. With the intertwined concepts of indigenous knowledge, SESs, and tribes’ cooperation, the result presented the endogenous actions for tribal resilience. In addition, indigenous knowledge is instigated by the Qutux Niqan of mutual assistance and symbiosis among the Wulai tribes, and there is a need to build joint cooperation through local residence, indigenous people living outside of their tribes, and religious or social groups. The findings of tribal resilience after a typhoon disaster of co-production in the Wulai, Lahaw, and Fushan tribes include the importance of historical context, how indigenous people turn to their local knowledge rather than just only participating in disaster relief, and how they produce indigenous tourism for indigenous knowledge inheritance. The paper contributes to contemporary tribal resilience research as well as cooperation actions among tribes through indigenous knowledge, all of which exhibit social, nature, and economy resilience from their own indigenous knowledge to address the possibility of governance and disaster adaptation.