**3. The Cultural Narrative of "Millet Ark"**

This paper focuses on the narrative of recovering millet in Taiwan indigenous cultural context, through which to find inspiration about adaptive mechanism in the face of climate change. It has to be told through the global-local interaction events concerning sustainability under the impact of climate change. The "Millet Ark" initiative involved by the authors exemplifies a social practice of collaboration between some indigenous people and academia. It starts from an international invitation but is based on a sincere support for local thinking. In 2013, Frederik van Oudenhoven, a Netherland environmental NGO organizer and a book-prize winner [22], got in touch with us through the International Society of Ethnobiology's secretary, Natasha Duarte. He was asked to establish a grassroots taskforce in response to climate change and in order to do so, he invited mountain-dwelling indigenous farmers from different countries to gather and discuss how climate change affected their environment as well as

find a solution based on their local knowledges. This concept is founded on the presumption that the residents of the high mountains would sense the impact of climate change more acutely than those in the modern urban settings. This is also why some of them become victims and are known as "climate refugees," for example, due to the accelerated effect of melting snow in mountains of the Himalayas or Tibet. Moreover, these indigenous farmers that reside long-term in the mountains must be able to react to the ever-changing natural environment, so they might have accumulated some local knowledge and created a culture around adapting to changes. This is what then we participate in the INMIP (International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples) [23], a global grassroots network organization founded on this kind of dialogue and cooperation. We anticipate the creation of a positive and proactive grassroots force and the discovery of a way to contribute as a collective voice from indigenous peoples on the climate change issue.

In the spring of 2014, this grassroots network concept finally came to life. Yih-Ren Lin and Pagung Tomi, two of our authors, as well as a few members of Taiwan's indigenous people, including Apuu Kaaviana from the Kanakanavu tribe, and Atung Yupas and Yapit Tali, who are both from the Tayal tribe, were invited to Bhutan to meet with mountain farmers from nine other countries and participate in a walking workshop. This process and outcome were later broadcasted by Taiwan's indigenous television network [24]. The walking workshop took us into the actual landscapes of the indigenous people in Bhutan, and the climate change issue was the main point of discussions. As we walked and talked, we pulled together different experiences and opened up an opportunity for mutually beneficial sharing among the different indigenous peoples. During the five-day event, we came up with a formal and public declaration on our stance regarding climate change [25]. Our representatives and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) then presented it at the international conference on climate change. In addition, our agenda this time also took us to the 14th International Society of Ethnobiology conference held in Bhutan. More importantly, as an indigenous woman from the remote mountain area in Taiwan, this was Pagung's first time to hear, through a friend's translation, the various farmers from around the globe and share their experiences dealing with climate change. She was moved and inspired, especially in terms of protecting traditional crops. This event later made her think about what she could do from her own cultural point of view.

In 2016, the group of Taiwanese representatives, inspired by the spirit of walking workshop, launched an "International Indigenous Ecological Farmers Alliance Conference" in Taiwan, as a response to the Bhutan Declaration, through collaboration with the International Society of Ethnobiology. All the countries that attended the conference created the farmers' declaration together after the walking workshop. Then Taiwan's representatives, Apuu Kaaviana and Yih-Ren Lin, brought it up during the Democratic Progressive Party's Central Standing Committee meeting as a reminder to the elected party of the indigenous small farmers' agricultural policy, as well as their determination to respond to the climate crisis together. As one of the indigenous representatives, Pagung decided to revert back to the traditional millet cultivation in her village, Tbahu. In addition to the eco-farmers conference, her action is also influenced by the following 2017 INMIP walking workshop in Peru, where indigenous farmers shared their experiences as they toured the world heritage site "Potato Park", which shows the indigenous contribution of their local knowledge in conserving rich varieties of potatoes.

According to Pagung, millet is the shared traditional crop of the Taiwanese indigenous peoples, and thus there is a deeply-rooted connection between the cultural history and local knowledge of the indigenous groups. Millet demonstrates not only biological diversity but also cultural and linguistic diversity. In other words, millet is not just millet itself. It has to be connected to the land the people belong to. Therefore, the key issue is the operation of the millet field and related knowledge which includes the millet's resilience regarding water supply, soil fertility and slope restriction. The fact that Taiwan is a subtropical pacific island no less with natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes presages the high probability of indigenous peoples' migration activities and forms their dynamic settlement livings. Thus, the natural and social process of how the millet field is produced has to be dealt with seriously. As we engage ourselves with the social practices of millet field restoration, the whole

traditional livelihood of the Tayal people begins to unfold itself. This livelihood illustrates how the indigenous people's traditional migration, environmental change and the basic food demand have converged to the millet field operation, which we consider to be foodscape production. The following are our observations and findings from the social practices and process of the "Millet Ark" initiative, including (1) Tayal foodscape and hidden adaptation strategy in their migratory history; (2) shifting, fire-fallow and intercropping cultivation in the millet culture; (3) the bio-cultural diversity of millets in the context of Tayal livelihood; (4) the Tayal women's position and their connection to the land.
