[Taiwan’s roughly 580,000
Indigenous people in 16 officially recognized tribes share ancestry with
Austronesian people who departed the island by boat thousands of years ago and
settled as far away as Madagascar and New Zealand. For centuries, the ones who
stayed were marginalized by newcomers, including imperial Japan and ethnic
Chinese, who came in waves starting in the 17th century and have governed the
island since the 1940s. Today, 98 percent of Taiwanese are ethnic Han Chinese.]
By Alicia Chen and Gerry Shih
Sangpuy Katatepan Mavaliyw stopped
singing, then switched to Mandarin. This was an ode to the ancestral land that
he revered, he explained — the land on which the crowd of 200 Chinese-speaking
Taiwanese now stood.
“We have had many colonists who
have come here,” Sangpuy said, not delving too deeply into the painful history
of his Puyuma Katratripulr tribe. “But Taiwan has always been the same,” he
added, “nourishing us, protecting us.”
Sangpuy then launched into the song
“Mavva,” or “Embrace,” one of the tracks that helped make the 45-year-old
former iron worker an award-winning singer and one of several Indigenous
artists who are gaining mainstream traction in an era of political change in
Taiwan.
Taiwan’s roughly 580,000 Indigenous
people in 16 officially recognized tribes share ancestry with Austronesian
people who departed the island by boat thousands of years ago and settled as
far away as Madagascar and New Zealand. For centuries, the ones who stayed were
marginalized by newcomers, including imperial Japan and ethnic Chinese, who
came in waves starting in the 17th century and have governed the island since
the 1940s. Today, 98 percent of Taiwanese are ethnic Han Chinese.
[Taiwan’s
tea party aims to burst Beijing’s one-China bubble]
Although Taiwan’s relationship with
China is intensely debated, one thing is certain: there has been a shift among younger generations who
increasingly do not feel China’s emotional pull but rather embrace their home
island’s history, and its Indigenous culture, as an expression of being
distinctly Taiwanese.
In 2017, Sangpuy won the award for
best album at Taiwan’s Grammys, the Golden Melody Awards. Last year, the
R&B singer Abao, full name Aljenljeng Tjaluvie, emerged as the biggest winner at the 2020 awards with the
album “Kinakaian,” which means “Mother Tongue.”
In awarding the album, propelled by
modern electronic beats but sung in the Indigenous Paiwan language, judges said
Abao’s music “reflects the greatest consensus of Taiwan’s society this year.”
Indigenous dance troupes like
Taitung’s Bulareyaung Dance Company and the Tjimur Dance Theatre in Pingtung
have garnered lavish reviews in Taiwan and abroad.
The growing visibility of
Indigenous artists follows Taiwan’s political and social liberalization since
the 1990s, when the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), which had fled from China in 1949,
began to lose its iron grip on power. Taiwan saw the rise of the nativist
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which advocates a national identity
separate from China.
The current president and DPP
leader, Tsai Ing-wen, is one-quarter Paiwan, and she formally apologized to the
Indigenous population for past injustices in one of her first presidential
speeches in 2016. Tsai’s spokeswoman, Kolas Yotaka, who belongs to the Amis
ethnic group, legally changed her name in 2005 after Taiwan relaxed KMT-era
laws that required every citizen to have a Chinese name.
[Taiwan
frets over how Biden administration would deal with China]
In recent years, mass movements
like the 2014 Sunflower Movement, when tens of thousands of students occupied
the legislature to protest a proposed trade agreement with China, have also
reinforced Taiwanese identity, according to sociologists. Polls also show
Taiwanese sentiment toward China soured further last
year after pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and China’s crackdown.
“The social atmosphere is
changing,” said Suming Rupi, a singer who struggled a decade ago to convince a
record label to back an album sung in Amis. After his first 2010 album received
critical acclaim, he released four more recordings.
“The events such as the 2014
Sunflower Movement and then the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2019
prompted Taiwanese people to value what is seen as our culture,” Suming said.
“If we speak Mandarin Chinese, it’s hard to stand out. But if we speak Taiwan’s
Indigenous languages, then that absolutely presents Taiwan’s culture. That’s
one of the reasons why our music is getting easier to be accepted by the
public.”
Since 2013, Suming has drawn
thousands of visitors to his Amis Music Festival in his hometown, where he has
invited Indigenous musicians from Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines, as
well as Taiwan’s LGBTQ and feminist groups.
[China
threatens invasion of Taiwan in new video showing military might]
Daya
(Da-Wei) Kuan, a professor of ethnology at National Chengchi University and
a member of the Tayal tribe, also pointed to geopolitical factors.
“Under Chinese pressure, Taiwanese
are emphasizing that our cultural roots are no longer from the central plains
of China,” he said. “They’re beginning to highlight the characteristics of
Taiwan’s Aboriginal culture and connecting Taiwan closer to the Austronesian
countries in the Pacific.”
For centuries, Taiwan’s Indigenous
population faced discrimination, land seizure and forced assimilation. Villages
were razed and their residents pressed into labor during Japanese occupation.
Tribal languages were banned after the KMT arrived in Taiwan in 1945. Some
coastal Indigenous languages are now extinct
In her 2016 speech, President Tsai
apologized for “centuries of pain and mistreatment.” Taiwan had to face “the
truth” to move forward “as a country of one people,” she said.
Tsai pledged to give Indigenous
communities greater autonomy and strengthen their land rights. Her
administration announced a native languages act that would expand instruction
for 16 native languages in schools, which activists say has represented
progress.
But many artists and activists say
that beneath the mainstream recognition of Indigenous singers, conflicts over
land rights and development remain an uphill battle. For all their musical
success, artists have not been able to translate that popularity into broad
support for their causes.
The Amis singer Panai Kusui, for
instance, has held a protest for more than 1,400 days in central Taipei to
demand that the government expand the territory that Indigenous tribes can
reclaim as their ancestral land.
[Trump
upsets decades of U.S. policy on Taiwan, leaving thorny questions for Biden]
Daya, the ethnologist, said the
public might find Panai’s music more digestible than her message. “I don’t
think it’s proportional: the people who like her music and the people who
actually follow Indigenous causes,” he said.
On a recent Saturday night in
Taitung, on the Taiwanese east coast that is slowly seeing commercial
development, Sangpuy ran through upbeat songs and ballads. He chanted in the
Pinuyumayan language and played a mouth harp and yueqin, a moon-shaped,
four-stringed instrument. He sang about the feel of spring water and the scent
of the wind.
Backstage, the singer said he has
been happy to see ethnic Chinese fans fill 1,000-seat auditoriums in Taipei and
the public’s tastes change. Taiwanese today should “lay deeper roots” after
spending decades gazing at China, he said.
“In school we learned about the
Yangtze River and the Yellow River and all of China’s provinces, but nothing
about Taiwan’s rivers,” Sangpuy said. “We knew everything about the outside
world and nothing of our own soil. That’s not right.”
After the show, Jeff Wang, a
23-year-old ecology student who took a train for hours to the concert, waited
in line for Sangpuy to sign his CD. Wang, who is ethnic Chinese, had seen
Sangpuy listed on a social media post introducing Taiwan’s “must-listen”
musicians. He was hooked by the music and message, Wang said, even if he didn’t
immediately understand the lyrics.
“I’m very proud to be from a place
surrounded by so many different cultures,” Wang said. “After all, they were
here before we Han.”
Read more
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upsets decades of U.S. policy on Taiwan, leaving thorny questions for Biden
Taiwan
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