The Sakiazya were once the biggest tribe on the Hualien plains, but now find themselves spread through Hualien City and the Hualien County townships of Hsincheng, Chi-an, and Shoufeng, amongst others. As Taiwan has developed industrially, there has also been a large number of Sakiazya moving north to take advantage of the growth. Today, the tribe's population is estimated at somewhere between 5000 and 10,000.

Walis Pelin, minister at the Council of Indigenous Peoples, explains that tribal recognition depends on differentiation by language, faith, and culture as well as the desire for recognition by the tribe. The recognition of the Sakiazya was driven not only by substantial tribal support, but also by the tribe's unique language and culture.

Historically, the Sakiazya can be traced back to 1636, when the Spanish referred to them as the Saquiraya. During the Dutch period, the Dutch East India Company dispatched a team of explorers to the east coast to scout for gold, and records from those trips refer to a people known as the Sakiraga--today's Sakiazya.

The Chialiwan Incident

During Taiwan's administration by Qing dynasty China, the Hualien plains played a vital role in the lives of the Sakiazya; the tribe resisted their oppression by Qing troops, leading to a number of major armed conflicts. Then, in 1878 the Chialiwan Incident occured, a major conflict which the Sakiazya lost, sending their people fleeing. They continued to disperse during the Japanese rule, hiding amongst the Amis in order to avoid being put to work by the authorities and after fleeing floods. As a result, when the Japanese began to distinguish the different Aboriginal tribes, the Sakiazya were lumped in with the Amis.

The Sakiazya language has been considered a dialect of Amis, but in fact the two differ substantially. Research indicates that Sakiazya has a vocabulary commonality rate of less than 60% with the five Amis dialects, while those same dialects share a rate of 90% with one another. Thus in Aboriginal language examinations, while it is common to hear of Amis students successfully passing tests in two or more Amis dialects, they may find it extremely difficult to pass a Sakiazya examination.

The path to recognition

The movement for recognition of the Sakiazya can be traced back to July 1990, when the late tribal elder Tiway Saion held an ancestral rites ceremony--the first Sakiazya ceremony in over a century--on the banks of the Meilun River in Hualien City, building awareness of the tribe. He also later staged the tribe's harvest festival ceremony. In July 2006, building on the ancestral rites ceremony, the Palamal fire god ceremony was held in remembrance of the Chialiwan Incident and the tribe's sacrifices.

The tribe also took the initiative to organize their own tribal council, primarily aiming to rebuild their culture. In 2003, they convened a meeting of opinion leaders to discuss the issue of official recognition, and in 2004 they established the Hualien County Sakiazya Tribal Development Association, officially inaugurating the movement for recognition. The tribe issued an application for recognition to the Council of Indigenous Peoples in 2005, along with over 4800 pieces of documentation and tribal imagery as support.

In the interests of tribal equality and development, the council asked the Institute of Ethnology at National Chengchi University to carry out further research to determine the boundaries between the Sakiazya and other tribes through objective measures such as language, faith, and customs, as well as more subjective aspects such as tribal consciousness. Eventually, the Executive Yuan officially recognized the Sakiazya as one of Taiwan's now 13 Aboriginal tribes.

At the subsequent celebration in Chi-an Township, Hualien, Sakiazya chieftain Moi Bolaw (Chinese name Huang Teh-yung), wearing traditional tribal clothing, led three tribal leaders in giving special thanks to the Amis people for their century-long acceptance of the Sakiazya. Then he and Amis chief Telop Lengos (Huang Kuang-ming) exchanged staves, knives, and books, symbolizing the establishment of a partnership of friendship and equality between the two tribes.