An Altar for Our Ashes
灰燼之壇

Taiwan is comprised of lands shaped by overlapping cosmologies, colonial inheritances, and unfinished reckonings.

Indigenous communities have practiced land-based, relational forms of governance for millennia, grounded in reciprocal cosmologies and ritual stewardship. These systems have been repeatedly disrupted by waves of colonization: from early European incursions (Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese), to Qing displacement, to Japanese assimilation policies, Han settler expansion, and the militarization of Indigenous lands under martial law.

Meanwhile, Daoist, Buddhist, and Han folk practices have formed a parallel civic infrastructure: temple networks, pilgrimage routes, spirit mediums, and seasonal rituals that organize social life, offer care, and attune us to the rhythms of the more-than-human. These practices are often overlooked in formal accounts of governance, yet they sustain collective memory, distribute care, and shape how we navigate uncertainty.

Taiwan’s modern state, built under authoritarian rule and now a fragile democracy, has initiated transitional justice efforts—truth commissions, archives, and state apologies—but these processes remain limited. They are often politicized, reduced to symbolism, or stalled by bureaucratic inertia. Many feel these efforts do too little too late. They have not fundamentally shifted how power operates, or how healing is held. As we attempt to reckon with our past and navigate a precarious geopolitical and ecological future, it becomes increasingly clear that we cannot—and do not wish to—wait for institutions to deliver structural justice.

An Altar for Our Ashes asks: What might a more decentralized, peer-to-peer approach to reparative justice look like? Can ritual, cosmology, and embodied practice offer tools for collective healing and ecological realignment? How might such practices inform our wider cultural organizing efforts, and expand our imagination about the networks and infrastructures we build?