The Truku elders of Taiwan still dream about their mountain home four decades after bulldozers tore it down — a classic symptom of trauma as community members struggle to accept their loss.
At one evening gathering, Miya Yudaw described his recurring dream, where the mountain was still whole, dotted with quiet farms of millet and sweet potatoes, and the air clean, only to wake each time to the misery of reality.
"The mountain is our home and the land is our blood," said Miya, 65, who leads a group that has been fighting for more than 20 years for a mining firm to return their ancestral land in Hualien on Taiwan's rugged east coast.