How might we understand Taiwan’s history through the lens of settler colonialism?
Pailang Museum is an art project initiated by two Han settlers to revisit Taiwan’s histories of settlement and dispossession. Our early work traced how the camphor and tea trades, infrastructure development and warfare drove colonial frontiers deeper into Indigenous territories—from the Qing Empire’s frontier lines to the electrified fences of Japanese rule. These boundaries may have disappeared from contemporary maps, but the settler-colonial order has persisted through Taiwan’s democratization since the 1980s.

“Pailang” is a colloquial term used by Indigenous peoples in Taiwan for their Han settler counterparts. Generally neutral in everyday use, it is often linked to the Taiwanese phrase pháinn-lâng, meaning “bad guy”, and carries traces of the history between us. We take this name as a starting point for examining our own position. What histories have made our lives possible? What privileges do we inherit? What responsibilities come with them?

Our work currently centres on Pailang Journal, a bilingual online publication bringing Indigenous and settler writers into conversation about art, culture and society. These exchanges prompt us to question perspectives we take for granted. Through field walks, board games and gatherings, we also bring people together to reconsider familiar landscapes and the histories they hold.

As Han settlers initiating this project, we take responsibility for learning about Indigenous histories, struggles and contemporary realities, and for examining our own presence and role within them—an elephant in the room too often left unaddressed. We hope to make Pailang a space for collective learning and dialogue, putting what we learn through ongoing engagement with Indigenous issues into action and turning apology into sustained practice.