**1. Introduction**

It is commonly believed that the mitigation of the climate change impact needs to "think globally and act locally". The phrase is popular in international environmental movements since the 1980s that urges a common thinking of us living on the same planet and demands different allied actions from the local communities across the world to protect the earth. It indicates a common future of ours, in which we seek solidarity. While the global has been understood through many different languages and cultures, it is oftentimes perceived as the index of a hegemonic epistemology, for, unfortunately, these different forms of knowledge are not strong enough to contest with the dominant form of Western science. The global thinking based on scientific understanding often indicates a unitary voice that suppresses other forms of understanding the world. This paper argues for an alternative way of thinking based on indigenous knowledge without losing sight of facing the global crisis. It centralizes

the role of indigeneity so as to challenge Euro-American/Western epistemological privilege and evoke the planet as a resilient and sustainable home for all sentient beings.

Indigenous resilience is a way of thinking. Social-ecological resilience theorists study institutions, systems, and individuals so that they can understand how they withstand, or why they succumb to, significant disruption. Resilience is regarded as the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance without flipping into a qualitatively different state [1]. It is a normative concept and yet "the efforts to define it must be situated in the context of contested and evolving human interests and the uncertainties of human interaction" [2] (p. 5). This kind of reasoning with a critical focus on "situatedness" entails indigenous perspectives of understanding resilience. Knowledge that is "situated" acknowledges social, cultural, and historical rootedness to specific locations, places, and life practices [3]. It evokes an important aspect of indigeneity (for further discussion on the topic, see [4]), which allows the original inhabitants of a place to make truth claims to practices, thoughts, science, logic and reason, verified by accumulated experience with their traditional lands, communities and transactions with the environment. Indigenous people are active participants, rather than passive observers, of the Earth processes. A thorough engagement with the concept of resilience from indigenous perspectives may lead to recognition of new dimensions of "ecosystemic processes that contribute to human flourishing" [5]. We approach resilience from indigenous perspectives as a dynamic process of cultural and ecological adaptation and transformation in the face of global climate change, crucial to not merely the survival but thriving and flourishing of human and non-human species [6].

This paper aims to articulate a meaningful response to recent calls to indigenous and local knowledge on food as a source of resilience in the face of global climate change. By retrieving the values and practices indigenous people of Taiwan, specifically Tayal women, associated with human and non-human ecologies, our collaborative work with the indigenous community explores indigenous resilience and its relevance to indigenous cultural knowledge and global environmental concerns. Pivoting on the "Millet Ark" action, a Tayal conservation initiative of the bio-cultural diversity of millets, this study revolves around issues of how Tayal communities adapt to the climate change, how to reclaim their voice, heritage, knowledge, place, and land through food, and how to narrate indigenous "counter-stories" of resilience and sustainability.

The paper is divided into four parts: (1) "introduction," in which we acknowledge indigenous and international grassroots voices and review relevant literature; (2) "methodology," which lays bare the significance of "walking" and "narrating"/"narrative" as methods, using the storytelling tradition of Tayal people as its backbone; (3) " the cultural narrative of "Millet Ark," which investigates indigenous foodscape and adaptation strategy as they are embedded in Tayal migratory history; shifting, fire-fallow and intercropping cultivation in the millet culture; the bio-cultural diversity of millets in the context of Tayal livelihood; and the Tayal women's position and their connection to the land.; (4) "conclusion," which prioritizes the indigenous knowledge as an essential part of contemporary discussions of resilience and reflects on the implications, limitations of the work, and further development of the research.

#### *Acknowledging Tayal People's Food Culture—A Review of Literature*

Tayal people's food culture reveals the depth of their understandings and knowledge about the local ecosystem and living places. This locally situated knowledge is, however, marginalized by the global capitalism as well as modern scientific knowledge under the proceeding of the Anthropocene. The traditional millet growing accompanied by multi-species cropping, shifting agriculture, rich knowledge of related rituals has powerfully demonstrated the people's interdependence with nature and its advantage in living with the environment. Meanwhile, the tendency of monoculture cultivation, standardization, and mass production of agriculture has encountered unprecedented challenges due to the impact of global warming. It is high time that the world starts to reflect upon a new reappraisal of the value of indigenous ecological agro-knowledge.

The issue of traditional knowledge of agrobiodiversity is important, not only for Taiwan, but internationally. Berkes et al. argue that "traditional knowledge represents a summation of millennia of ecological adaptation of human groups to their diverse environments" [7] (p. 269). Indigenous peoples have observed and survived the changes in their environment for thousands of years. In indigenous foodscape is embodied "a capital of knowledge that contains not only the simpler, 'Is this good to eat?' type of information, but also the codified essential information on how to respond to changes in the environment" [7] (p. 281). Similarly, Zimmerer et al. emphasize "the value of locally sourced agrobiodiversity" [8] (p. 6). Along these lines of thinking, our research aims to retrieve the value of Tayal community in Taiwan as a model of "locally sourced agrobiodiversity" in response to global climate crises. Recent work such as "The Effect of Cultural Practices and Perceptions on Global Climate Change Response Among Indigenous Peoples" by Bayrak et al. examines how Tayal people have been affected by climate-related disasters and argues that their ways of responding to climate crisis should be incorporated comprehensively into global adaptation and mitigation policy in the face of climate change (see [9]). Nonetheless, little has been mentioned regarding the significance of the creation of a foodscape built on the relationship between indigenous people and the plants they cultivate for food. Our paper illustrates what is at stake when the relationship between indigenous people and the "first foods" they gather and cultivate is put at risk or interrupted due to the impact of global climate crisis (For a growing movement of foodways, human rights, and environmental justice, which is called the "local foods", "food justice", or "food sovereignty movement", see [10]). Our research focuses exclusively on a unique initiative of the "Millet Ark," on which we have collaborated with Tayal farmers and practitioners. It is grounded in connectivity and encounter rather than in division and separation between academia and the indigenous. The indigenous is the subject of self-articulation, self-reliance, and self-affirmation rather than that of research and scholarship. It illustrates the co-agency, co-organization, and mutual aid/support of researchers and indigenous people in solidarity.

Traditionally, Tayal people regard their surrounding environment as their food reservoir and know how to use it. Forests and rivers are regarded as part of their foodscape rather than scenic sites of national parks. Employing the concept of foodscape, we aim to explore places and spaces where Tayal people acquire food, prepare food, talk about food, and gather knowledge and meaning from food. First developed in the field of geography and later extended in sociology and anthropology, this concept furthermore directs us to investigate the institutional arrangements, cultural practices, and discourses that mediate indigenous people's relationship with food [11] (p. 16). Climate change as it takes place across the globe brings about warning messages to urge us to reflect upon ancient ecological wisdom like Tayal's food-based knowledges. Hsinya Huang notes elsewhere that national recognition of 16 Indigenous groups, the Tayal included, "marked a milestone in Taiwanese history" and provided "consistent and progressive formulation and execution of indigenous policies and coordinated planning for...the wellness of aboriginal peoples;" however, much remains to be done and indigenous groups continue to work "for self-reliance and self-affirmation" [12] (p. 165) (see also [10]).

Indeed, foodscape, which the Tayal call "nature's refrigerator" in an intimate way, is a dynamic social and historical process of foodways, most relevant to Tayal people's self-reliance, self-affirmation, and self-articulation. It embodies the people's seeking, producing, competing, or sharing, and surviving upon the food in the places they have walked. The principles and mechanism of resilience can be best explored and apprehended from this dynamic process. Biggs et al. disclose the principles as to how to build resilience through maintaining diversity, managing connectivity, fostering complex adaptive system thinking, etc. [13]. In this paper, an attempt is made to explore Tayal foodscape as a source of resilience by examining these principles.

This paper draws on seven years (2013–2020) of research and field investigation on the traditional territory of Tayal people as well as on over a decade of collaboration between academics and Taiwanese indigenous writers, farmers, and practitioners, which has contributed to the development of a school of cultural study that links Taiwanese indigenous studies to global frameworks of native science and aboriginal cultures. As members of Asia-Pacific Observatory the Humanities for the Environment (h*f* e) network (http://hfe-asiapacific-observatory.nsysu.edu.tw/), we work with colleagues from other 8 Observatories across the globe to identify and explore how humanities contribute to solve global, social, and environmental challenges in the Anthropocene. In this paper, the indigenous concepts of resilience, foodscape and sacred geography, household and well-being, subsistence tradition and bio-cultural diversity, etc. are conveyed in the form of narrative scholarship as our way of striking a balance between discursive formation and field practices. There are competing historical and cultural narratives deeply embedded in the landscape that indigenous people created. By including Tayal stories and words to best communicate their relationship with the land and local places, we aim to speak to the fullness of indigenous experiences and practices in their home place.
