Designer, activist, academic,
and author of Lo—TEK,
Design by Radical Indigenism.
A leading expert of Lo—TEK nature-based technologies for climate-resilience.
Her eponymously named studio brings creative and conceptual, interdisciplinary thinking to urban projects and corporate clients interested in systemic and sustainable change. Julia regularly teaches urban design at Harvard and Columbia University.
TEK Report on the Traditional Millet Cultivation of the Central Pangcah Amis, Taiwan
Date: 2024
Location: East Longitudinal Valley, Taiwan
Project Team: Julia Watson
Client: Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute in the Taiwanese Ministry of Agriculture
A TEK report investigating the traditional millet food system of the Amis, which was prevalent prior to colonization, and which continues to be referenced in Amis creation stories and agricultural rituals.
Julia Watson was invited by the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute from the Taiwanese Ministry of Agriculture to study the agricultural traditions of the Amis, the largest Indigenous group in Taiwan. The following TEK Report is an investigation on the traditional millet food system of the Amis, which was prevalent prior to colonization, and which continues to be referenced in Amis creation stories and agricultural rituals. The report offers the Landscaping for Ecological Agriculture project an alternative and complementary climate adaptation narrative that is guided by traditional knowledge and indigenous agricultural technologies. These technologies can work to support the green infrastructure approaches included in the agriculture project. Presented like a chapter of the Lo—TEK Book series based upon workshops, co-author(s) feedback, reviews of text, drawings and imagery, the report is composed for a diverse professional and non-professional audience. The report documents the traditional millet food system, and its successor, the colonially introduced rice terrace system of the Amis, through architectural drawings that can be understood by an engineer or local farmer. This report also offers brief case studies of indigenous communities and traditional agricultural nature-based technologies that could additionally inform the agriculture project.