Seeing Like a Colonial State: Post-colonial Dossierism, Patriarchal Governance, and Indigenous Status Recognition in Taiwan

When I applied for Truku Indigenous status in 2022, I discovered that my mother had never been officially registered as Indigenous in Taiwan and my application was therefore denied. Only through an arduous bureaucratic process was I able to obtain state recognition of my Truku Indigenous identity. This experience led me to ask what epistemic and ideological foundations structure Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples Status Act (IPSA). Drawing on narrative inquiry and combining autoethnographic reflection with legal and policy analysis, this article identifies two ideologies underlying the Act: post-colonial dossierism and patriarchal governance. Taiwan’s recognition regime privileges colonial archives over Indigenous self-determination while operating through patriarchal norms of descent and identity transmission. This study contributes to the literature on postcolonialism in two ways. First, it identifies dossierism and patriarchal governance as mechanisms through which colonial epistemology is reproduced in law. Second, it shows that once colonially produced documents are codified as mandatory state law, it legitimized the colonial way of seeing and, in turn, shapes how colonized subjects come to understand themselves.