Walking the Path Back: East Pu Bunun Hunting Knowledge and Forest Co-Governance
Original Chinese title: 把路走回來：東埔布農青年如何把狩獵、土地記憶與山林共管接起來
A new public record follows an East Pu Bunun youth learning with elders and reconnecting hunting ethics, family migration and land memory. The governance lesson is to connect community rules and monitoring without disclosing restricted locations or knowledge.
全明正
Bunun from Shuanglong Village | Cultural and visual documentarian | Long-term focus on energy transition, materials science, low-carbon supply chains, industrial policy, and local environmental governance
On October 28, 2026, the Nantou Branch of Taiwan's Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency launched *Walking the Path Back*. Public agency and media accounts describe East Pu Bunun youth Wang Yung-chieh learning with elders and revisiting ancestral living areas to understand place names, family migration, hunting ethics and relations with land. The public lesson is not a route map. It is a record of learning through relationships.
TITV also reported that the journey brought the young participant back to public issues, land and knowledge around millet. Across the three public sources, hunting is connected not only with taking game but also with family responsibility, belief, ritual, rules and observation of forest change. This article stays within that published governance context and does not reconstruct routes or restricted family knowledge.
Responsibility matters more than coordinates
The branch says its long-term work with the East Pu community includes a hunters' organization, a hunting covenant, outcome reporting and wildlife monitoring. Together, these practices connect individual experience with collectively discussable rules. Public communication can explain that governance exists without exposing locations, species sites, ritual detail or family-restricted knowledge.
The public value is not greater disclosure. Hunting grounds, species and route records may cause harm when separated from context, and family relationships should not be rewritten as universal rules. A safer design separates publicly accountable procedures from community-controlled knowledge: outsiders may learn that rules, monitoring and review exist while the community retains authority over detail and interpretation.
Transmission needs time and youth decision-making
Youth should not be treated merely as recorders. Language transcription, environmental observation and media work require clear roles, time and a way for results to return to the community. Communities may decide that some materials are for internal learning, some for public education and some should have no digital copy.
AI can organize approved reports, compare versions and flag missing fields. It should not infer hunting grounds from fragments, supply cultural meanings, or represent one family's account as a rule for all Bunun people. The enduring value of walking the path back lies in connecting memory, ethics, reporting and joint decisions while keeping authority with knowledge holders.
Three short questions for governance
First, whose action is the record meant to support? If it is mainly for youth learning and community governance, visibility need not be the goal. Second, who can correct or withdraw it? Names, locations and images need an accountable contact. Third, how do monitoring results return to collective decisions? Numbers sent only to an outside system are unlikely to become durable governance.
The book's central reminder is modest but important: traditional knowledge is not a data package that remains complete after relationships are removed. Connecting path-finding, ethics, reporting and monitoring helps youth learn not only what happened in the past but also how responsibility to land, family and shared rules is practiced now.
Sources
- Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency | *Walking the Path Back* (October 28, 2026).
- TITV News | Bunun youth, land and learning (October 28, 2026).
- Central News Agency | Youth, cultural continuity and forest stewardship (October 28, 2026).
AI use and content-safety disclosure
AI assisted source comparison, copy editing and this English draft. No field visit or community interview was conducted. The article does not disclose routes, species locations, ritual detail or family-restricted knowledge.