[9] Based on genetic studies, Orchid Island was settled by the ancestors of the Tao people during the Austronesian Expansion (approximately 4000 BP) from the mainland of Taiwan.

They maintained close contact through trade and intermarriage with the Ivatan people of the neighboring Batanes Islands of the Philippines until the beginning of the Colonial Era.

In the early 1870s, William Campbell saw the island from aboard the Daphne, and wrote:[11] We had a very stormy passage, so much so, that my servant boy and the Chinese preacher (Chiu Paw-ha) who accompanied me, were dead sick during the seven days we were at sea.

While laboring off the Island of Botel Tobago, our mainsail was torn in pieces ; and, for several days, every other great sea we faced threatened to engulf us.

We saw their huts, and could make out rows of little canoes or rafts drawn up on the beach.During Japan's rule of Taiwan, its government declared Kōtō Island an ethnological research area off-limits to the general public.

After the Republic of China took over Taiwan, the island was administered as the Hong-tou-yu "township" of Taitung County after 19 January 1946 but the Japanese restrictions on visitors remained in effect.

Because of these policies, the Tao continue to have the best-preserved traditions among the Taiwanese aborigines[12] despite the end of the ban on settlement and tourism in 1967.

Tao Aborigines have protested, and since the early 1990s demonstrated, their desire to rid their island of the "evil spirits" of nuclear waste.

The geochemistry of the rock shows that it is enriched in sodium, magnesium, and nickel but depleted in iron, aluminum, potassium, titanium, and strontium.

[citation needed] The islanders are mostly farmers and fishermen relying on a large annual catch of flying fish and on wet taro, yams, and millet.

During the opening ceremony, the township chief said that the store could provide conveniences to the local residents such as fee and tax collection.

[34] In a bid to allay safety concerns, Taipower has pledged to repackage the waste since many of the iron barrels used for storage have become rusty from the island's salty and humid air.

Taipower has for years been exploring ways to ship the nuclear waste overseas for final storage, but plans to store the waste in an abandoned North Korean coal mine have met with strong protests from neighboring South Korea and Japan due to safety and environmental concerns, while storage in Russia or China is complicated by political factors.

In February 2012, hundreds of Tao living on Orchid Island held a protest outside the nuclear waste storage facility.

[15] Chang Hai-yu, a preacher at a local church, said "it was a tragedy that Tao children are being born into a radiation-filled environment".

Scores of aboriginal protesters "demanded the removal of 100,000 barrels of nuclear waste stored on Orchid Island, off south-eastern Taiwan.

Authorities have failed to find a substitute storage site amid increased awareness of nuclear danger over the past decade".

Due to this suspected abuse, members of Control Yuan called for an investigation into the electricity subsidy to Lanyu Island in 2012.