This dissertation examines how the Rukai, an Indigenous people of Taiwan, have engaged in community-based ecotourism and the state's conservation projects in order to assert Indigenous sovereignty over traditional territories. This study focuses on the Adiri and the Labuwan communities, which are communities of the Rukai people living in the Wutai Township in Pingtung, Taiwan. The two Rukai communities have actively collaborated with the government on various conservation projects although the relationship between Indigenous peoples of Taiwan and the settler state's forest governance system has been riddled with conflicts. Existing research has portrayed collaborative environmental governance either as an instrument for co-optation of Indigenous interests or as a catalyst for a more equitable relationship between the state and Indigenous peoples. This dissertation builds on and extends this body of work by examining how the Rukai people have continued to assert sovereignty in the community-based ecotourism and collaborative conservation projects. Using a combination of ethnographic observations, interviews, and archival research, this dissertation explores how the Rukai community members have positioned themselves vis-a-vis the government and non-Indigenous society and how the Rukai people have articulated their relationship to ancestral lands in ecotourism and conservation projects.My findings suggest that the Rukai people have used ecotourism and collaborative conservation projects as a strategic platform to ensure their needs and goals for land-based self-determination are met and to assert sovereignty over ancestral lands, while remaining wary and critical of the colonial dimensions and constraints of the state's laws and policies. I argue that the positions and actions taken by the Rukai people were the "third space of sovereignty" (Bruyneel 2007; Diver 2016) that is neither outright resistance nor full compliance with the settler state's political and cultural systems. My analyses indicate that the Rukai people's engagement with the state's conservation projects was not simply a form of co-optation into the dominant discourses and practices; instead, it was one of the strategies employed by the Rukai people to seek their broader goals of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination given the political and economic realities and available options.
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