Summer Camp for Aborigine City kids

Situated on the middle reaches of Hsiukuluan Stream in Juisui Township, Hualien County, Chimei is one of the most remote villages in the county. Long ago known as the original home of the Ami people, it has become more familiar in recent years as a halfway stop for white water rafters going down the Hsiukuluan.

On July 16 this year, 40 or 50 visitors showed up at this tranquil little village. In addition to the adults, the children varied greatly in age, from the third grade to tenth. Pasty-faced, bespectacled, wearing T-shirts and tennis shoes, they looked at a glance like typical children from the streets of Taipei.

Following in Their Ancestors' Footsteps: "Come on, friends! Let our young hearts take wing in the sunlight on the eastern shore. Come on, friends! Let's follow in our ancestors' footsteps, chasing the wind and the waves and the sun!"

Those lyrics are from the theme song of the Eastern Shore Youth Summer Camp for Ami Culture, and "follow in your ancestors' footsteps!" is precisely why the children came to Chimei. In fact, each and every one was a bancha--the Amis' word for themselves. It's just that having lived in the city for so long, they've not only forgotten their native language and customs but have even come to look city born and bred.

The mitrator of the Ami Culture Youth Summer Camp, Tien Chun-chih, who is also president of the Taipei Aborigine Community Development Association, believes that too many children of aborigines in the city not only can't speak their ancestral language or dance their ancestral dances but also know nothing about their ancestral culture, and some even feel ashamed of being aborigines.

Aborigines in the city are an underprivileged group, she believes, and to build up self-esteem, they need real power--by having jobs, for instance, to earn a living--but they also need greater self-awareness and appreciation of the finer aspects of aborigine culture to affirm and respect themselves. The Ami Culture Youth Summer Camp, was planned and formed for just that purpose.

"I hope that each child who comes here becomes a cultural carrier," she said with feeling, "a seed sown abroad to burgeon and grow. "

A Pavilion as Classroom: Chimei was chosen because of its associations with Ami origins. In ancient legend, the Amis are said to have originated from a brother and sister who drifted over from the mainland and settled up on Chimi Mountain, to the southwest of Chimei Village. Holding the camp at Chimei, Tien Chun-chih said, holds symbolic significance as a search for one's roots and also gives the youngsters a chance to acquire "on-site education."

The last four days of the camp's week-long program were spent at Chimei. The first three were devoted to a tour of the eastern seashore, where the group viewed the magnificent scenery and, more importantly, had a chance to watch some of the harvest festival, which the east coast Amis celebrate during July and August. On July 15, they visited the Malan district and spent the "holidays" with the older aborigines, and on July 16 they visited the paleolithic remains of an Ami site at Taiyuan and Changkuang in Taitung County.

After arriving in Chimei, their main activities moved indoors, to the classroom. The town activity center became camp headquarters, and a concrete pavilion for tourists built at the foot of a mountain slope provided a ready-made classroom.

Inside, "the new breed of aborigines"--which is how camp counselor Hsu Chin-ping, a teacher at Chinhsien Middle School in Taipei County, describes the second generation of aborigines raised in the city--gathered in a circle to listen to the teachings of the aborigine elders.

Speaking in a mixture of Ami and Mandarin Chinese, the elders teach the children about their cultural roots, from traditional pottery, clothes, food and dance to etiquette and customs, myths and legends, rites and ceremonies. Even though some of little bancha had a hard time concentrating in the soft breeze of a warm summer afternoon--in fact some of them couldn't resist the temptation of running off to play--there was a roll call system, so it was easy enough to maintain general discipline.

Nalowan Likes to Dance: Lu Hsi-chen, who just tested into the Taipei First Girls' High School, said she got a lot out of what she learned. Her father takes back her to Malan for the harvest festival each year, and she has learned some Ami ceremonies. She was particularly impressed to learn the meaning of Ami names: Someone named Banay, for instance, may well have the same name as their paternal grandmother. A mother who is good at dancing or hopes her daughter will be may name her Nalowan. And someone named Potal may well have been born during the harvest season or on the grain drying ground. . . .

The way Lin Cheng-lung, a thin and gentle looking sixth-grader, felt about the whole course is this: "If I go off in the wilderness some day, I can tell which plants to eat." He scored 95 and came in first on a test on recognizing edible wild plants. Asked if he knew any of them beforehand, he answered frankly, "Some of them, because my father taught me, but some I didn't!"

Lin Cheng-lung's father is obviously a conscientious parent. In fact, almost all of the children were sent there by their mothers or fathers instead of coming on their own initiative.

Adding "Urban Ingredients": Be that as it may, they all reaped rewards by attending. Just look at the pictures they drew or the diaries they wrote of what they had seen and heard.

One child drew a fearsome-looking robot and wrote in the names of its eyes, ears, nose and other features in Ami. Another, moved by the town's fresh mountain air and the friendliness of its inhabitants, wrote in his diary, "Technology brings progress but it also sets people backward." The children stayed up talking about what they had learned each night and wouldn't go to sleep until the counselors had told them to hush and go to sleep.

What made the counselors proudest was the children's pottery pieces. Some had "city product" written all over them, like a pizza, coffee cup or baseball mitt. But there were also pieces depicting Ami life, like a traditional offering cup, a mortar and pestle, an anthropomorphic monster and so forth. Some of the offering cups were decorated with lines and patterns that represent the finest feature of Ami pottery.

Having lived so long in the city, the "new breed of aborigines" were as happy as colts when they got back to nature. Maybe it was their genes! What the children enjoyed most was getting close to nature, not studying in the classroom. After a day of pottery making, the teacher told the kids to go to the bank of the stream and wash their claycovered hands and faces. To her surprise, washing up turned into a full-scale bath--almost all of them jumped in for a swim.

Riding an Ox Like Riding a Horse: Just then, several Chimei children came by, driving a dozen or so oxen home after pasturing. Their "noble posture" sitting on the oxen's backs made their little cousins from the lowlands stare at them in awe. "How come they can ride an ox just like a horse?" one of the children exclaimed.

That kind of praise, in the ears of the older bancha who were leading them, was a bit depressing. "All of that used to be a part of growing up in the wilderness!" said Hsu Chin-ping, a biology teacher, shaking his head. "For Amis, seeing a river and not being able to cross it, seeing a wild plant and some of the dances. But this was the first time she had heard about the pottery, customs and not being able to distinguish whether or not it's edible, or seeing an animal and not being able to draw close to it means you don't deserve to belong to the tribe."

Tung Yu-chuan, a counselor who is also an elementary school teacher, observed that the reaction to nature of these little bancha who grew up in the city wasn't natural.

Some of them didn't want to go barefoot for fear of hurting their feet. Some of them were afraid to go in the water. And the girls acted coy and affected about it. But the boys and girls from Chimei at the camp got along with each other naturally and jumped in the water with a splash.

Camp director Tien Chun-chih, who has studied aborigine dance in depth, felt the same way.

She said that when she heard the children complain that aborigine songs and dances were just the same few melodies and steps repeated over and over again, her heart bunched up inside her. "How can you explain to these city kids who have never experienced real Ami life that the meaning of the songs and dances doesn't lie in showy performances or clever innovations but in bringing people together and consolidating the tribe!"

Non-Banchas?: The children from the city really are different from those born and raised in Chimei, Tien Chun-chih says. When they dance, even though the steps are the same, the Chimei children are more nimble, vigorous and unrestrained. And in singing, the city kids' voices are hoarse and lacking in primitive resonance.

"They can't speak Ami and they can't dance the traditional dances. They're afraid to go up in the mountains and cross rivers. They can't pick out wild berries and they can't hunt," Hsu Chin-ping sighs. If they ever really wanted to return to the wilderness, these little aborigines raised in the city probably wouldn't be able to survive.

Of course, the camp wasn't aimed at making the children return to live in the mountains or on passing judgment on them. In fact, it seems doubtful whether aborigine traditions can be preserved even in a remote mountain village.

Camp chief of staff Lu Tien-kuei points out they originally thought they would be welcomed by the local villagers like their own flesh and blood, but as soon as they arrived the whole atmosphere seemed wrong.

"Too commercialized," Lu said. The traditional dwellings were gone and replaced by tourists lodgings. The carvings on top of the concrete pavilion are actually copied from Africa. And what hurt the most was, most of the local businessmen treated them like ordinary tourists.

"NT$500 to hook up to a water tap, and NT$150 for a kilo of fish," Lu said. "It's not right for a bancha in the mountains to treat a bancha from the city like that!" After he protested, the major of Chimei finally agreed to intervene. Even though the prices stayed the same, the merchants presented them with several cases of beer for the closing ceremony, to show they still considered them part of the family.

"We'll never go back there again!" Lu said disappointedly. But who can guarantee that any other village will treat them with the traditional fraternal friendship they expect? The main reason may be that the people of other villages aren't completely bancha any more either.

Never the Twain Shall Meet?: One image stands out in particular. Each time the city children headed off to the pavilion singing aborigine songs and looking pleased with themselves, the local people would come out and watch curiously, but during all four days of activities, the local children never once joined in. Most of the 11 Chimei children scheduled to take part in the camp skipped class off and on and were almost completely absent by the end.

The local children said they couldn't attend because they were too busy with the crops--they had to help the family look after the oxen, work the fields and feed the chickens. But considering the fact that when they did take part they always sat huddled together in the back, the real reason may well have been that they felt out place with the city children. They didn't have snazzy T-shirts and tennis shoes and weren't so glib and effusive, so they started to feel down on themselves. One of the local children, Hu Shan-fu, thought the city children were "too lively." The original aim of the camp for the local children and the city children to interact with one another seems not to have been achieved, let alone their making friends.

But if the purpose of the camp, as originally conceived by Tien Shou-chih, was just to let this "new breed" understand where their roots lie and not to be ashamed of being aborigines, then the camp can be considered a success.

"I only know a little bit about Ami culture right now, but I'll let my children know more." Lu Hsi-chen's words are very adult sounding, but it's hard not to find them moving.

[Picture Caption]

The children look on as a cow who has just given birth carefully licks its calf's umbilical cord.

Chimei is known for its longans, a tropical fruit with a green skin. A couple of local children have climbed up a tree to eat them. What bliss!

The little bancha are listening to the legends of their ancestors' origins. Ironically, the carvings on the pillars are actually copied from Africa.

Come on, friends, let's savor the carefree life in the mountains ourselves! During group activities in the evening, the camp counselors take a turn dancing themselves.

Afraid of the woods and the water, the little aborigines of the city no longer react naturally to nature.

The class on recognizing wild plants stumped a lot of them.

Now try to think, what are the differences between life in the city and life in the mountains?

A mortar molded by one of the children has just the right look, fully capturing the spirit of Ami pottery.