Topic: Indigenous and Colonial Memory
How does Taiwan mark Indigenous and Colonial Memory?
原住民族抵抗日
- Local date
- June 26, 2027
Indigenous Resistance Day only entered Taiwanese law in 2025. Until then the country's commemorative days and holidays rested on an eight-article regulation issued by the Ministry of the Interior, which nonetheless bound every public and private body, school and association in the country; a Legislative Yuan research paper called its legal rank too low for what it did and recommended raising it to a statute. The Act on the Implementation of Commemorative Days and Holidays, promulgated by presidential order on 28 May 2025 in ten articles, writes "Indigenous Resistance Day: 26 June" into Article 3, subparagraph 8. The same article also carries Ethnic Equality Memorial Day on 21 March and Indigenous Peoples' Day on 1 August — three related commemorations in one statute, none of them a day off. What that legislation did change was the ritual leave: indigenous annual rituals went from one day to three.
原住民族日
- Local date
- August 1, 2027
In Taiwan the day is a commemoration, not a holiday. Article 3 of the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative Days and Holidays sets 1 August as Indigenous Peoples' Day, but Article 4 limits paid commemorative days to six — Founding Day, Peace Memorial Day, Confucius' Birthday, National Day, Retrocession and Guningtou Victory Day, and Constitution Day — and closes with the sentence "all others are not days off." The date points at a constitutional amendment: on 1 August 1994 the additional articles of the Constitution replaced *shanbao*, "mountain compatriots," a term used for over forty years, with *yuanzhumin*, original inhabitants; the fourth round of amendments in 1997 added the collective form, indigenous peoples. The Executive Yuan fixed the date as Indigenous Peoples' Day when it approved the draft act in 2005, and on 1 August 2016 the President apologised to the indigenous peoples as head of state. The actual leave sits elsewhere. Article 5 of the same act lists indigenous annual rituals among the folk festivals, with dates announced by the Council of Indigenous Peoples after consulting each people's customs and its communities, and Article 6 gives anyone with registered indigenous status three days off chosen according to their own people's calendar — the only leave in Taiwan set by ethnicity and available only to those who hold that status. The Council currently recognises sixteen peoples.
What is this topic?
In the United States the second Monday in October is one square on the calendar claimed by two names.
Federal law has not moved: 5 U.S.C. 6103 still lists Columbus Day, and 36 U.S.C. 107 still asks the President for an annual proclamation marking "the anniversary of the discovery of America." Everything else moved around it — South Dakota replaced the day with Native Americans' Day in 1990, Maine renamed it in 2019, Alabama keeps three names on one line, and the White House issued Indigenous Peoples' Day proclamations for exactly four years.
Taiwan wrote three such commemorations into statute and gave a day off to none of them, Brazil renamed its day in 2022 without making it a holiday, India created one in 2021, and Japan recognised an indigenous people without giving it a date.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.