2026 Millet Ark Delegationby 2026 Millet Ark Delegation
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Photo Credit: 2026 Millet Ark Delegation
THE HISTORIC Second Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding convened on April 25–26 at Thomas Berry Place in Jamaica Estates, New York, bringing together Indigenous leaders, policymakers, scholars, and activists from around the world. The Summit was organized under the theme “Indigenous Leadership for Protecting People, Peace, and Planet,” highlighting the role of Indigenous leadership in responding to global crises.
Exterior of Thomas Berry Place in Jamaica Estates, New York, which hosted the Historic Second Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding on April 25 to 26
At a time marked by intensifying geopolitical conflict, climate crisis, and widening inequality, the Summit foregrounded a fundamentally different understanding of peace: one grounded not in state-centric security frameworks, but in relationships among people, land, time, and generations.
Among the 300 participants from 80 countries attended the Summit
Among the 300 participants from 80 countries were members of Taiwan’s Millet Ark initiative (小米方舟)/ Linhuyan pruruw yuwaw qalang Tayal, the Indigenous-led effort rooted in the land-based practices of the Tayal, one of Taiwan’s Indigenous nations. Despite Taiwan being excluded from many formal international institutions due to geopolitical pressure, Indigenous communities from Taiwan continue to engage in global forums and dialogues in innovative ways. The presence of Millet Ark highlights how Indigenous communities navigate—and quietly challenge—these constraints, contributing grounded perspectives on land, healing, reconciliation, and justice.
Rethinking Peace Beyond the State
THIS SUMMIT FOLLOWS the First Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding held 11-12 April 2024 in Washington DC and led to the drafting of the First International Declaration on Indigenous Peacebuilding. One of the key themes of the Second Summit is to explore ways to implement the Declaration and reflect on 20 years of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), through highlighting Indigenous-led peacebuilding practices and showcasing successful Indigenous approaches to conflict prevention, mediation, reconciliation, and healing across diverse contexts.
Former Chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Mariam Aboubakrine, specially introduced the Millet Ark team from Taiwan, which is one of the Indigenous-led Place-Based projects of the Ărramăt Project
In the Summit, participants emphasized across panels that Indigenous approaches to peacebuilding cannot be separated from identity, family, community, land, memory, and relational ways of being. The Summit’s structure followed a symbolic “four seasons” framework, namely, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. In this structure, the Summit mapped cycles of life, conflict, renewal, and healing. Topics ranged from Indigenous women’s leadership and land defense to artificial intelligence, Indigenous diplomacy & peacemaking, and Indigenous treaties, constitutions, and future peace architecture.
Millet Ark: From Millet Revitalization to Peacebuilding Practice
WITHIN THIS GLOBAL conversation, Taiwan’s Millet Ark initiative (小米方舟), hereafter “Millet Ark”, offered a grounded example of how the Summit’s theme—protecting people, peace, and planet—can be enacted through land-based Indigenous practice.
The name “Millet Ark” draws from the story of Noah’s Ark, but rather than escape from disaster, it represents a slow navigation through overlapping crises of climate change and cultural rupture. Initiated nearly a decade ago in Tbahu (now administratively named as Tien-Pu in Hsinchu’s Jianshi Township), the project was founded by Tayal elder Pagung Tomi and scholar Yih-Ren Lin, together with a network of community collaborators. Through ecological-cultural walking practices and food education, the initiative has worked to revive traditional millet varieties among the Tayal people. Its aim has never been limited to agriculture: millet functions as a medium for restoring relationships—between land and community, language and knowledge, past and future.
The origins of the initiative trace back to Pagung’s participation in an international ecological farming gathering in Bhutan, the 2014 International Society of Ethnobiology (ISE) Congress, where encounters with highland farmers facing climate change prompted a rethinking of Taiwan’s own Indigenous landscapes. The disappearance of traditional millet varieties—directly resulted from state agricultural policies and market pressures—became a turning point. What followed was not immediate success, but years of hesitation, doubt, and community questioning: What is the value of millet? Can it sustain livelihoods? After more than a decade of sustained effort, these practices have taken root and evolved. What began as a tentative initiative has become a recurring, community-based practice involving an increasing number of participants, including younger generations. At the same time, it has gained wider recognition and become connected to broader global contexts.
Millet has been cultivated and revitalized in Tbahu, Taiwan, for over a decade through a community-based project founded by Tayal elder Pagung Tomi and scholar Yih-Ren Lin, together with a network of collaborators
This trajectory has since extended into international policy spaces. In October 2025, the Millet Ark team participated in the first meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Article 8(j) under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Panama, a historic global forum focused on Indigenous knowledge in biodiversity governance. At the meeting, the Millet Ark teamed up with the Ărramăt Project and presented how Tayal millet cultivation, Tayal law Gaga, and land-based knowledge systems are directly linked to biodiversity, health, and community well-being in a photovoice side event exhibition. This participation positioned the Millet Ark not only as a local revitalization initiative but also as part of a global-level growing network of Indigenous-led efforts shaping global conversations on biodiversity and governance.
Millet Ark at the Summit
AT THE SUMMIT, Millet Ark contributed a draft curriculum together with the Ărramăt Project in the Summit’s Summer session on fire stewardship, healing ceremonies, protection rituals for defenders, mediators, negotiators, peacekeepers, research, and documentation. The draft curriculum was a result of an internal workshop that the Millet Ark participated in during the 25th United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII). In addition, Millet Ark also took part in another Summer session entitled “Conflict, Violence, and Indigenous Land Defenders”, where panel speakers from Greenland, Manipur (India), Sudan, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Colombia shared their experiences, in so doing situating Taiwan’s Indigenous experience within a broader global discussion on conflict and violence.
Wasiq Silan, a Millet Ark member from the Tayal Nation, spoke on behalf of the team and invited them to join her at the front of the stage
During the session, Millet Ark member Wasiq Silan first stood and emphasized that conflict should not be understood only in terms of armed violence, but also as something profound–something one cannot label easily because the layered colonialism got too deep and complicated. Meanwhile, it is also pointed out that the fact that the Millet Ark team traveled from Taiwan but were denied access to the UN building due to the growing surveillance of the geopolitical pressure was itself also a form of state-centric blatant violence against Indigenous autonomy. Wasiq then invited the entire team to join her at the front of the stage. As they gathered, Tayal Elder Pagung Tomi performed Lmuhuw—a form of “singing map” that traces Tayal migratory histories and traditional territories.
“We give thanks to the Highest Spirit, to all peoples who come from every direction across the seas, and to those who live upon the land within diverse worlds of creation.
In this world, humanity has gone through many incidents. There are many injustices and conflicts that exist—affecting people, lands, forests, and the laws and lifeways (Gaga) of different peoples. Each person living in this shared world has been uniquely placed by the Creator, each carrying a distinct role. We hope that the pain and wounds of both land and people may be healed and comforted by the Highest Spirit—bringing solace to the heart and wiping away tears.
We give thanks to all the leaders and organizers who hold great strength and vision. On this important day, we are able to gather here, to speak freely, to exchange and share from the heart. May the Highest Spirit grant blessings and strength, so that we may continue to face the challenges of sustaining life in the many worlds to come.”
After Pagung’s Lmuhuw, Yih-Ren Lin explained that Lmuhuw describes a landscape that, unfortunately, remains only partially recognized, as these territories continue to face limited acknowledgment within Taiwan’s state framework.
When Song Becomes a Map
AS PAGUNG’S voice filled the room, the atmosphere shifted, and participants were drawn into a sonic landscape of migration routes, ancestral memory, and territorial knowledge.
At the venue, Tayal elder Pagung Tomi chants Lmuhuw (the Tayal epic and origin story). Video link here
Lmuhuw, meaning “to weave” or “to thread,” is not merely a song but a form of oral cartography. Through its structure and rhythm, it encodes histories of movement, land boundaries, and social relations. In this sense, it functions simultaneously as archive, law, and map—challenging dominant epistemologies that separate knowledge from place.
Millet as Memory, Sovereignty, and Return
HISTORICALLY, LMUHUW chants traced Tayal migration routes across Taiwan, identifying ancestral territories. Yet such knowledge systems remain only partially recognized within state frameworks. Against this backdrop, millet cultivation becomes a form of resistance and renewal. As millet is replanted, rituals, language, and social relations are reactivated. What emerges is not simply agricultural revival, but a broader process of healing—of land, community, and identity.
At the Summit, Millet Ark’s intervention made a key argument: that Indigenous leadership in peacebuilding does not begin in diplomatic negotiation or institutional design, but through the restoration of relationships grounded in land.
Some members of the Millet Ark team pose for a group photo with Binalakshmi Nepram (third from the left), Chair of the Global Alliance for Indigenous Peoples, Gender Justice and Peace
Millet, as the Millet Ark team suggests, is more than food. It is memory. It is pathway. It is a way of returning home.
The Millet Ark team has continued the Lmuhuw “threading” spirit by making global allies: we contributed to the Mahicantuck River Declaration which was adopted in the end of the 25th UNPFII; we also joined force to invoke the UNPFII to create a “Peace Caucus” and call upon the United Nations to declare an “International Decade of Indigenous Peacebuilding” 2027-2037 with the leadership of Binalakshmi Nepram. To conclude, Millet Ark offered a different modality of participation within an international space: one that flexibly forms allyship in a highly politicized space heavily shaped by the UN’s existing structure and the member states. In this sense, Millet Ark’s presence at the Summit was not only representational, but constitutive—actively reshaping the global space by the Indigenous-led place-based understanding of peace, conflict, and autonomy.
* This activity was supported by the Arramat Project (New Frontiers in Research Fund, Canada, NFRFT-2020-00188).