Land, Community, and Resilience

By Peter Morehead

My journey to Taitung has been part of a personal quest for a deeper connection with the land, community, and a place where I would be needed. Originally from the Great Lakes area of North America, I first arrived in Taiwan for a semester abroad program in 1990.

After my classmates left, I stayed on for the summer to explore the island on foot. During a two-month walk down the east coast from Taipei to Kenting, I soon fell in love with Taiwan and was eager to learn Mandarin so I could understand this place and its diverse peoples on a deeper level. I soon came back on a scholarship for a year in Taipei, after which I sought out Tainan for its language courses and less obstructed view of the sky than Taipei. On weekends, I’d try to see how far I could hitchhike or bus into the mountains or the east coast. During these first few years in Taiwan, Taitung always held a place in my heart and I dreamed of living there.

If you dream enough in one direction, things may tend to fall into place eventually. I met my wife Hui-I, at a Puyuma harvest festival in Taitung, and began hanging out with Taitung friends. We shared a common dream with some of these friends to find land for starting our own homesteads between the ocean and mountains. After years of searching, we finally found an ideal piece of land between Xingchang and Dulan, in the area known in the Amis language as Gadangdang, and spent all our money on it.

Buying land isn’t for everyone, but for us this was not only a personal investment, but also an investment in our career as our dream has always been to design and create an oasis of food and a classroom for helping others learn permaculture design — a whole systems design process that aims to satisfy the needs of both the ecology and human livelihoods.

Starting in 2000 we began practicing and teaching permaculture in Taipei, but eventually found that we needed to sink roots into actual ground in order to take our life and courses to the next level. We had (and still have!) much to learn about how to live on the land and are forever indebted to the Amis – the original inhabitants of this area – for protecting and nourishing this land over hundreds of years.

The Amis land ethic is one we strive to learn from; before the modern world collided with this land, the Amis had already developed permaculture, living continuously from the perennial gifts of the land, recognizing the limits of ecological resources, and enhancing biodiversity through the mere act of living a carefully thoughtout local land-based culture.

From a permaculture perspective, once you’re familiar with ecological principles it isn’t hard to realign to such a mindset and way of life. I often explain to visitors how immensely satisfying it is to know that every time I take a shower the greywater that goes down the drain is directly sucked up by a banana plant just meters away, soon to be transformed into another deliciously sweet fruit. In essence I’m consuming my own waste; but in more complex terms I’m a participating member in an intricate network of living creatures that live around our home. This kind of ecological cycle is an example of what Hui-I and I teach and practice at our home, Earth Passengers Permaculture Learning Center.

I sometimes joke with my students that since moving here, I feel like the proverbial frog in a well who only knows about his own local conditions. This is partly because I’m fascinated that there’s so much to learn about one piece of land and the endless ways it can be designed to provide for both human needs and the larger needs of the ecosystem. Also, for the last decade we have been super-engaged in building our learning center, planting and maintaining the gardens and food forest, and then trying to find the time to just sit back, enjoy our progress, and take it all in. For years, I’ve been confining most of my activities to about a kilometer radius and still somehow find new secrets hidden in this area every year. Relocalization is very important to us in trying to decrease our ecological footprint, reduce our dependence on unsustainable mainstream systems, and increase our resilience.

However, in the process of staying local, we have also found a world of wonder in working with our neighbors to build community. First, some of our course participants are attracted to Taitung and have already been looking for ways to move here. Life is easier for both them and us as this network of like-minded people continues to grow and we find ways to share skills and resources.

One of our favorite activities is potluck dinners with neighbors. In the past we organized with our fellow potluckers a skill-exchange system whereby each person takes a turn to teach all the others a skill. From this activity we eventually decided to start up a local market, which occurs a few times per year at Xinglong Elementary School (

Inspired by the local goods and services that our neighbors provide, working with a local community development organization and backed by the National Development Council, we launched a local community currency called “Mibi” (from the Amis word “Mipaliw,” meaning mutual aid). This is a way to encourage more grassroots transactions and keep money flowing locally rather than always ending up in the pockets of chain-store billionaires. Certain communities around Taitung County are conducive to these kinds of local actions as people are close enough to interact, yet sufficiently distant from larger service centers to realize the commonsense of supporting local products and services.

One of the most encouraging signs that we’re working in the right direction is that we see more and more Taitung residents attend our courses. Some are interested in redesigning their land, school, business, or residence to be more selfreliant in terms of water, energy, food, and disaster prevention. As environmental and social conditions become harsher and less predictable, more people are becoming interested in bolstering their resilience. Some neighbors have noticed that the learning center has been able to function through the extreme damage caused by the last two major typhoons that passed directly through our area these last two years. While shops and residences in the surrounding area went without water and electricity for days, we were able to immediately provide basic services to our students, who were relieved to be able to use our composting toilet, wash their hands with water from our rainwater tanks, get home-cooked meals from our wood-fired kitchen, and charge their devices on our photovoltaic system. For them our classroom was a comforting refuge away from the chaos of the village.

One last thing I’d like to mention about the benefits of Taitung has to do with one of the greatest milestones in our career: the hosting of the 15th International Permaculture Convergence in December 2024. Dozens of dedicated volunteers have been working hard with us for the last few years preparing for this major event, and we were honored to receive support from the Taromak community and the Taitung County Government. These organizations were eager to provide assistance and resources to make our event a success.

Over 300 international participants from 35 countries were impressed at the vibrancy of Taiwan’s indigenous people and the perspective that Taitung brings to Taiwan and the world at large, mainly owing to its cultural diversity, universal hospitality, and relatively unspoiled natural resources. Many said that, in their minds, this event helped put Taiwan on the world map. Looking back at the success of this six-week-long event, we can wholeheartedly say we made the right choice by holding it in Taitung!