It has only been very recently that Aboriginal peoples have been brought into thinking about Taiwan's history. Before the 1970s, all discourse about Taiwan's history was within the framework of the history of China. While this is not wrong in itself, it leaves out countless elements in the rich tapestry of the development of Taiwan over the last three or four centuries. There was only a change in the direction of historical research with the expulsion of the ROC from the United Nations and the beginning of political and social transformation in the 1970s.

Following expulsion from the UN, the legitimacy of the government of the "Republic of China" came under challenge both from within and without. Internally, ROC legitimacy rested on the five-power constitution, with elected representatives from the various provinces of China. But once the government had retreated to Taiwan in 1949, it became impossible for any of the provinces in mainland China to elect new popular representatives. Under the circumstances, how could the government continue to claim legitimacy? With the aging of ROC representatives in Taiwan plus the expulsion from the UN, the problem became acute, raising serious anxiety about legitimacy, anxiety that persisted right up to the lifting of martial law in 1987.

There was also the problem of international legitimacy. After expulsion from the UN, the government could no longer represent "China," and its overseas agencies could not use the term "Republic of China" in their names. So under what name would they participate in international activities? Such questions challenged the external legitimacy of the ROC. It was only with these internal and external shocks that thinking about history in Taiwan began to undergo structural transformation.

Sun Ta-chuan, director of the Graduate Institute of Development for Indigenous Peoples at Dong Hua University, has been involved in the movement for the revival of Aboriginal culture over more than a decade. Among other contributions, he founded Shanhai Culture Bimonthly as a voice for autonomous Aboriginal writing.

Bentuhua penetrates history

While international and cross-strait variables were beyond the unilateral control of Taiwan, something could be done inside the country, giving rise to calls for bentuhua [variously translated as "Taiwanization" or "localization"]. Broadly speaking, over the last 30 years, the main driving forces in Taiwan's historical development can be embraced under the term bentuhua.

Politically, then-premier Chiang Ching-kuo named Hsieh Tung-min, a Taiwanese, to be governor of Taiwan, and also advanced the careers of Taiwanese politicians such as Lin Yang-kang, Lee Teng-hui, and Chiu Chuang-huan. Taiwanization became the centerpiece of personnel policy. Economically, the national budget, which had formerly been almost exclusively for the military and its mission of "recovering mainland China," became more focused on economic construction, laying down a foundation for Taiwan's economic miracle.

Meanwhile, bentuhua on the social level meant the emergence of new or previously hidden forces. Opposition political magazines sprang up one after another calling for reform. The figures associated with Meilitao (Formosa) magazine, who were all arrested in 1979, became the main force for the development of multi-party politics as they were released from prison in the 1980s and 1990s. These social forces continually crashed against and eroded the foundations of authoritarianism, and Taiwan society grew increasingly pluralistic.

Bentuhua was reflected in several ways at the cultural level. One was in the changing aesthetics of language. When I was small, teachers, program hosts, and newscasters had to speak Beijing-accented Mandarin. But at the end of the 1970s, the popularity of Lin Yang-kang inspired a new definition of linguistic charm, because his Taiwanese-accented Mandarin sounded so sincere and homey. The transformation of the aesthetics of language has continued, and Mandarin need no longer be spoken with perfect pronunciation. On the contrary, it is enlivened and enhanced when sprinkled with some Taiwanese or spoken with an Aboriginal accent.

A second change came in the area of music. Previously, Taiwanese songs had been considered vulgar and inelegant. But then in the 1980s [singer] Feng Fei-fei made many Taiwanese songs into hits, greatly transforming the feel of Taiwanese music. Thereafter, the Taiwanese songs of Hung Jung-hung and Chiang Hui claimed a large audience, and people like Lim Giong, Chen Ming-chang, and Wu Bai brought rock and roll and the Taiwanese language together. A number of composers also drew inspiration from Aboriginal musical elements.

After the ROC government took control of Taiwan, it forced all Aboriginal people to take Chinese names, which was a severe blow to Aboriginal culture. The policy was abandoned as a result of a 1980s movement among Aborigines calling for the return of indigenous names. The man in the photo holds a sign with his Atayal, Japanese, and Chinese names. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)

The native literature debate

Similar things were happening in literature. Before the 1970s, the main styles were anticommunist literature, the literature of nostalgia for mainland China, and modern literature. The first can be understood as resulting from political factors, and the second as emerging from the natural longing for home among those who had fled the chaos of mainland China to come to Taiwan. Modern literature, meanwhile, was an offspring of Anglo-American literature and existentialism.

But then came the debate over "native literature" in 1976. Writers such as Wang Chen-ho, Huang Chun-ming, Yang Ching-shuo, and Wang To argued that literature should reflect the real life of the society in which it is set. This debate determined the course of literary creativity, and thereafter urban literature and consumer literature also appeared as reflections of real life.

In the three decades since 1970, discourses of history, culture, and politics have been forced to define the content of bentuhua [which literally means "this-land-ization"]. Who, after all, really represents "this land"? Is it the Taiwanese originally from Fujian province, who speaks the dialect we now call Taiwanese? How about the Hakka, who do not speak this dialect but began immigrating here as long ago as the Fujianese? Or is it the earliest residents-the Aboriginal peoples?

It has been in response to such questions that historical research has shifted from Chinese history or contemporary history to earlier periods of Taiwan's history. With this shift, a large amount of historical data, long present but never really seen, has emerged on the Japanese colonial era [1895-1945], on the Qing dynasty era [17th century to 1895], and even on the Dutch and Spanish colonial moments [17th century]. From everywhere evidence has surfaced which shows that, while Taiwan's history may not have the complexity and depth of Chinese dynastic history, it cannot by any means be said that there is no foundation for a genuinely Taiwan-centric history.

Along this main axis of rethinking history and ethnicity, the question of the Aboriginal peoples-one with a legitimate and just claim to attention-became prominent. Examination of the Aboriginal question in the past had not gone much beyond simplifying to the point of simply expressing concern for a disadvantaged group. Over the last couple of decades, there has finally been a somewhat more objective and healthy angle from which to explore Aboriginal issues.

The Aboriginal peoples never developed written languages. In histories written by Chinese, the indigenous peoples were seen as outsiders. Through these histories we can only indirectly understand the Aborigines. You could say that in the past the indigenous peoples were a group without a seat at the table of history, and even though they suffered greatly, no one knew.

Before the 1980s, academic work on aborigines was largely confined to anthropology. Research focused on things like the clothing, social structure, and myths and legends of the various tribes. Aboriginal culture was treated as something already dead, as a museum specimen. This type of research was of no help at all in understanding how living indigenous people were responding to changing times.

But following the founding of the Alliance of Taiwan's Aborigines in 1984, giving Aborigines their own voice, mainstream society began to pay attention to issues like Aboriginal adaptation to mainstream society, Aboriginal economic conditions, and obstacles to learning for the children of Aborigines. Scholars from disciplines like social psychology and education began to study indigenous peoples from various angles.

Prior to the 1980s, the Aborigines were a people who had no voice, and historically all answers to the question "Who are the Aborigines?" were provided by non-Aborigines. But in that decade, people embarked upon a retracing of indigenous history, and began coming up with many new and different answers.

During the Japanese colonial era (1895-1945), under the colonial regime's policy of "turning all Taiwan residents into loyal citizens of the Emperor," Aborigines were for the first time exposed to nation-state consciousness. The photo shows a picture of an Aboriginal unit recruited into the Japanese army just before they shipped out to the South Pacific. (rephotographed from A History of the Rule of the Colony of Taiwan)

Who are the Aborigines?

The Qing dynasty term for Aboriginal peoples was fan [μf], which originally meant tracks left by the passing of a wild beast [and is generally translated into English as "barbarian"]. The depictions of Aborigines in Qing dynasty documents as long-haired brutes little different from animals reflected the Chinese understanding of aborigines as barbaric and backward. The Qing categorized Taiwan's indigenous peoples according to the degree to which they had been Sinified as "strange barbarians," "transforming barbarians," and "familiar barbarians." This categorization was based on "how much he is like me," and naturally gave Aboriginals no autonomous status or value.

In 1893, Hu Tiehua (the father of Hu Shih), then assigned to Taichi Rural Township in Taitung, expressed in a memorial his strong opposition to the Qing court's policy of pioneering the mountains of Eastern Taiwan and "pacifying the natives." He felt that, seeing as there were many different groups of Aboriginal peoples in Eastern Taiwan, it would prove difficult for Han Chinese to understand and control them. In fact, the Aboriginal peoples remained total strangers to the Qing court, which exercised only weak control over them, and understood them even less. This is reflected in a comment made in 1895, following the cession of Taiwan to Japan, by a Japanese anthropologist, who wrote: "My field research is like shining a light into a hitherto completely darkened land."

The Japanese colonial rulers of Taiwan adopted a radically different policy from the Qing court, leading to new responses to the question, "Who are the Aboriginal peoples?"

Following the Meiji Restoration at the close of the 19th century, Japan grew increasingly powerful and became one of the world's major powers, posing a challenge to the Eurocentric world history that prevailed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. As Japan moved with determination to create its East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, the sea-power faction in Tokyo placed particular emphasis on Taiwan's vital strategic position. Given Taiwan's centrality in the Co-Prosperity Sphere, at the juncture of Northeast Asia and the South Pacific, it was to be assertively managed and reshaped, rather than neglected as it was under the Qing.

In imposing its rule over Taiwan, Japan deliberately gave concrete forms to its imperial authority, as we can see from many historical documents. For example, there were precise rules governing the number of buttons, the weapons, and the shoes of ordinary policemen. With the adoption of such detailed forms, throughout society a new body language took shape that expressed degrees of authority. You can still see this in the body language of older people.

In combination with the extension of effective administrative control over Taiwan in its entirety, the Japanese began extensive field research, systematically recording and analyzing local ethnic groups, resources, languages, customs, and so on. Even in the 50 years since the end of the Japanese colonial era, there has been no effort at further surveys on a parallel scale. Moreover, using Taiwan as a base, they broadened the area of their studies to encompass the South Pacific, leaving behind an astonishing accumulation of files and data.

After more than ten years of effort, the Aboriginal movement has a framework for future development. The problem is that, in practical terms, Aborigines still face major economic, educational, and other problems.

The "nine tribes" appear

The Japanese also increasingly applied objective criteria to the subject of the indigenous peoples. For example, they categorized the Aborigines into groups based on criteria like mutual intelligibility of language, physical characteristics, social structure (for example, the Puyuma and Amis had matriarchal societies, the Rukai and Paiwan had aristocratic classes), and religious beliefs (e.g. ancestral worship, the belief in pygmy spirits). It was only at this point that the division of Taiwan's Aboriginal peoples into nine tribes appeared.

This classification had a major impact on the Aborigines' own self-image. For the first time, ethnic identification that transcended the tribal village began to take shape. My mother, for example, could never accept that she was "Puyuma," but always thought of herself as a native of Pinaseki village.

It was also in the Japanese era that Aborigines began to be considered as a whole, under the rubric Takasago. This generated a pan-Aboriginal consciousness among indigenous peoples, for the first time experiencing a sense of "we Aborigines" as opposed to everyone else. And when in the 1930s the colonial authorities launched the policy of attempting to force Taiwan residents to become Japanese in every way, Aborigines were for the first time exposed to identification with a modern nation-state, creating a foundation for Aboriginal loyalty to the Japanese emperor during the Pacific War of 1941-1945.

Unfortunately, Taiwan's residents were divided into three distinct classes in the Japanese era, with Aborigines in the lowest status group, so the experience of collective Aboriginal identification was a humiliating one.

After the ROC government took over control of Taiwan in 1945, it adopted a policy based on classification of Aborigines as "compatriots." In theory at least, everyone would be equal, but this policy neglected to respect differences. One of the most important changes was that every Aboriginal person was forced to take a Chinese name as their official identity. (Although the Japanese had a similar policy, it was not strictly enforced, and indigenous people could use their own as well as a Japanese name.) This compulsory Sinification of names was a severe blow to Aboriginal culture, because behind Aboriginal names lay a whole cosmology and value system.

For example, it is the custom of the Tao of Lanyu to change their names twice. For instance, the well-known author Syaman Rapongan used a different name prior to marriage that indicated unmarried status. If he has a child, he will have to change his name again. If the child dies, he will have to change it back to what he currently uses, which would be considered shameful. Thus names reflect the importance placed on lineage among the Tao. To draw a parallel, look at the Han clan system, in which surnames are based on patrilineage, and which emphasizes "never changing one's name no matter what." Just as for Aboriginal appelations, forcing people to change their name would be equivalent to a repudiation and collapse of the whole system.

Rectification of names

By the 1980s, in a general atmosphere of bentuhua, for the first time ever autonomous Aboriginal voices were heard answering the question, "Who are the Aborigines?" The younger generation of Aborigines, fully educated in Chinese and capable of manipulating language skillfully, formed the Alliance of Taiwan's Aborigines. They advocated a rectification of names, a recovery of their mother languages, and a return of Aborginal lands, seizing a position from which to give voice to indigenous culture and history.

One major step in the "rectification of names" was the call in 1984 for replacement of the official terms "mountain compatriots" or "mountain people" with the term yuanzhumin, meaning Aboriginal (or indigenous) peoples. (In fact, there is nothing demeaning about the term "mountain people" it's just that, for one thing, it did not fully reflect reality, and for another, as a result of its use in a different environment and time, it had already become pejorative.) This proposal was met with resistance from ruling elites and academics, and only in 1994 did the relevant legislation pass.

Now that Aboriginal self-awareness was flourishing, the question became: What should be the next step?

I was born and raised in an era when I didn't dare to admit that I am Aboriginal. I remember the day I graduated from National Taiwan University, there was this classmate of mine, an Atayal girl, looking all around at the families of the other students. She couldn't bring herself to invite her own parents to this event, one of great honor and pride for a Taiwanese family, because they had traditional Atayal facial tattoos.

The generation before mine lived their lives in shame. It was hard to look at the expressions in the eyes of elderly people when they went out to do something as simple as buying train tickets. Even at home, they felt isolated because they couldn't understand what was said on TV. It was like their existence had nothing to do with the world around them. By the 1990s, the generation that followed mine, though now very willing to express their "Aborigine" identity, had lost track of what this word really means. They were already empty people who had lost the content of their culture; this is the serious test faced by the Aboriginal people of today.

Into the Constitution

In the 1990s and now in the 21st century, there have been new developments in the Aboriginal movement that should provide the framework for future directions. One is the existence of laws that specifically address the problems of indigenous peoples. In the past, all regulations related to Aborigines were only administrative orders, with all the affairs of the island's 400,000 indigenous persons placed in the hands of the 4th Section of the Office of Civil Affairs of the Taiwan Provincial Government. The Constitutional revisions of the 1990s began to formally recognize the existence of the Aborigines, and there is now a basis in law for protecting Aboriginal rights in such areas as land, the economy, and education.

In 1996 the central government established the cabinet-level Council for Aboriginal Affairs, and the special municipalities of Kaohsiung and Taipei set up similar agencies. In the years that followed, a number of laws were passed related to education, identity, names, and employment rights. It is only under the protection of laws and regulations that sustained development can be made in Aboriginal issues.

A second new development in the Aboriginal movement over the last decade has been the existence of Aboriginal culture. This covers a broad range. First is the creation and recognition of Aboriginal literature. There are at least 30 established Aboriginal authors in Taiwan today, and more than 100 works of Aboriginal writing have been published. You can see some of this work in a forthcoming four-volume set of collected Aboriginal literature, and another indicator is that universities now offer courses in this subject. Literature can discuss many subjects, such as man's place in the universe or man's relationship with nature, and is by nature a declaration of autonomy, so it is no less important than academic works.

In addition, there is considerable potential in Aboriginal arts like carving, embroidery, and beadwork. Though the market is soft, as Taiwan moves into the post-industrial age and people focus more on leisure and quality of life in an effort to make Taiwan into a better environment in which to live, Aboriginal culture can perhaps provide ideas about future lifestyles. The power and infectiousness of Aboriginal music also offers room for development. And in terms of visual media, things like the Amis film festival and the training of telejournalists at the Public Television Network have produced quite good results, offering society new angles from which to understand Taiwan. These developments in Aboriginal culture, though still scattered and uneven, have considerable vigor.

A third development of note has been the existence of Aboriginal academic work. Over the past ten years, scholarly work on the indigenous peoples has gone beyond the boundaries of anthropology to embrace many fields, and more than 1000 dissertations have been accumulated, providing a solid foundation for "Aboriginology." Dong Hwa University has established a special institute of Aboriginal ethnology; its (thus far) two departments and two graduate institutes and the 3000 specialists in indigenous affairs they have graduated over the last decade are closely linked to hopes for future development for the Aboriginal peoples.

Toward an Aboriginal community

A fourth development is the existence of an Aboriginal economy. But this is also the weakest link. Recently a friend studying in Germany returned to Taiwan, and said with obvious feeling that despite the flourishing of the Aboriginal movement in Taiwan over the past ten years, when he returned to the village where he had done field work seven or eight years ago, he discovered the same old thing: lonely old people, kids who quit school halfway through, and emptiness in the tribal community. "Haven't you noticed this gap?" he asked.

In fact, I share his feelings very strongly. There are still very many problems to be resolved in order for it to be possible for Aboriginal villages to be revitalized as overall construction in society progresses. The government and academia can play a supporting role, but it is mainly necessary to rely on the construction of an Aboriginal community consciousness. Currently there are many concerns about how resources are distributed. And the problem still exists of the inadequate economic capabilities of Aborigines. For instance, many Aborigines who have received loans to start up businesses have used them inappropriately, so that these loans in fact become the beginning of heavy debts. These social and economic problems are certainly the greatest test facing the indigenous people for the future.

Today, I began with reflections on Taiwan history and from that pursued the question, Who are the Aborigines? I also tried to bring everyone into the world of the indigenous peoples, and into the currents, contradictions, and concerns therein. The better an understanding we have of the soul of the indigenous peoples, then the more able we are to face Aboriginal problems from a perspective that is more detailed and more "human." Issues related to the indigenous peoples are a touchstone of whether Taiwan's culture can become even more outstanding, which is to say, the way in which the Aboriginal question is handled will demonstrate the cultural level of Taiwanese society.