What Is The Culture Of Indigenous People In Taiwan

WGSS 514

Final: Conference paper

Ching Chih Tseng

Vanishing voice: The culture of indigenous people in Taiwan

Today, I am going to tell a story, the story of indigenous people in Taiwan. First, I would like to introduce the background of Taiwan. In 1590, the Portuguese explored Taiwan and named ‘Formosa’ which means beautiful island. Now, people called Taiwan, or the officially name the Republic of China is my country. Taiwan has total area around fourteen thousand square miles. We have twenty three million three hundred forty thousand population.

Who live in the beautiful island?

Today, 98% of Taiwanese are descendants of a mixture of Han Chinese people which includes 70% Hoklo people, 14% Hakka people, and 14% Mainlanders. While 2% are indigenous people.

Taiwan indigenous people have lived on this island for perhaps 8,000 years. They are Austronesian-speaking people. Some anthropologists even believe the Austronesian people originated in Taiwan. After the founding of the Republic of China in 1911, the Nationalist government instituted the National Language Movement (NLM); a mass effort to standardize and propagate the National was selected as the supra-dialectal norm.

In 1916 the Ministry of Education authorized a system for transcribing alphabets which was renamed the National Phonetic Symbols (NSP) in 1930.

Moreover, Taiwan government arbitrary classified the indigenous people as savage people for over fifty years. Finally, the indigenous people lunched the aboriginal movement in 1984 was aimed at fighting for identity and the protection of rights. After almost a decade of the fighting movement, Taiwanese indigenous people finally changed their identity from savage people to the official name ‘indigenous’ people. Now, Tai...

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...ginal indigenous name is Abi. Amis people also called each other ‘Pangcah’, in our language, ‘Pangcah’ means people or same tribe. Amis has another meaning which is north, because Amis people live on the northern part of my country. I wish and hope that our voice, our unique culture can be heard and be seen by my country and the rest of the world.

Where is the social justice for the indigenous who live in Taiwan? We have fourteen different indigenous tribes in Taiwan; each tribe has their own language and traditional culture which is unique and beautiful. It is sad to consider that one day the indigenous cultures may disappear from Taiwan society.

The lift of martial law in 1987 marked a new era for a multi-culture and multi-lingual society in Taiwan. with this political change and worldwide multiculturalism, people stared to view dialects from a new perspective.