The birth of the movement
Icyang Parod, now deputy minister of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, was one of the movement's most important leaders. An Amis born in Hualien, Icyang didn't learn that his legal name was Liu Wen-hsiung until he entered elementary school. Even in what was an Aboriginal elementary school, students were not permitted speak their mother tongue. Unable to find his classroom or explain his predicament, "Liu Wen-hsiung" simply sat down on the school's athletic field and cried for help. Getting get a handle on Han society was very difficult for Aboriginal students cut off from their mother culture and mother tongue within the educational system.
It was only after Icyang entered NTU and began talking to other Aboriginal students that he realized the injustice and unfairness to which Taiwan's indigenous peoples were subject.
On 29 December 1984, Icyang gathered the Aboriginal Youth Association that he led, the Tang-wai Writers' Association, and members of the Taiwan Presbyterian Church in the large conference room on the ninth floor of Mackay Memorial Hospital and formed the Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines (ATA).
On hearing about the formation of the group, Hsieh Shih-chung, who currently chairs NTU's Department of Anthropology, took a leave of absence from his PhD program in the US and returned to Taiwan to study it. Hsieh, who last year was recognized by the Executive Yuan for his work on the restoration of Aboriginal names, believes that the formation of the ATA was a seminal event for indigenous peoples more used to keeping a low profile. Like a stone thrown into a still lake, it made waves and awakened the Aborigines' long-dormant inner strength.
In its earliest days, the ATA addressed the unfair circumstances faced by each of Taiwan's indigenous peoples. When Icyang took over leadership of the association in 1986, he changed its direction, taking members into the streets for what was to be the movement's explosive "golden decade." He also revamped the indigenous peoples' movement, elevating it from an aid-seeking movement to a protest movement fighting for ethnic autonomy.
Under Icyang, their first proposal was that Taiwan's indigenous peoples be called by their proper names. For more than 400 years, groups from outside of Taiwan had bestowed their own names upon the island's Aborigines. At the ATA's urging, Taiwan's nine distinct officially recognized indigenous peoples (this number has since increased to 12) began referring to themselves collectively as "Aborigines" to distinguish themselves from Taiwan's Han Chinese majority.
With the passage of amendments to the ROC constitution in 1994, which established a national consensus on using "Aborigines" to address Taiwan's indigenous peoples rather than the more pejorative terms that had been used before, the 20-some passionate young people who had begun discussing Aboriginal issues in 1984 tasted for the first time the sweet fruit of victory.
In 1991, some 500 university students and members of the ATA took to the streets with the support of church groups and under Icyang's leadership to call for the establishment of an Aboriginal affairs commission at central government level. However, a number of the protesters, including Icyang and his deputy Mayaw Kumod were jailed for a year for violating the assembly and parade law. In the courtroom, Icyang spoke only in his mother tongue and requested an interpreter. This angered the judge, who cited him for contempt of court and increased his sentence. "In those days," says Icyang, "Aboriginal rights were the only thing I thought about." Now a key figure in the setting of Aboriginal policy, he smiles when he reflects back on his courage and single-mindedness.
The restitution of Aboriginal lands was next on the agenda. On 10 December 1993, Icyang took his tribe north, departing the Hualien-Taitung area early in the morning bound for Taipei. Unfortunately, their train broke down halfway to the capital, and they missed the protest march. But when the nearly 2,000 elderly tribespeople ultimately made it to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial on foot, their raised voices brought the indigenous peoples' movement to a climax.
"Taiwan's indigenous peoples' movement got a late start relative to similar movements overseas," says Icyang. "But it moved very fast. When our demands didn't conflict with the interests of mainstream society, we almost always received a very satisfying response."
The formation of the Council of Aboriginal Affairs (now the Council of Indigenous Peoples) in 1996 provided the 30 Aboriginal townships in the mountains and the 25 in the lowlands with a direct channel for communication with the central government, and began the construction of new administrative and legal structures for Taiwan's indigenous peoples. Over the next several years, the government passed new laws covering Aboriginal education, ID cards, surnames and worker protections.
"Noteworthy political and legislative strides were made in Aboriginal affairs," says Sun Ta-chuan, a Puyuma. But the movement encountered so little resistance that it lost focus and essentially ran out of steam.
Meanwhile, the tribes were confronting another problem: while young people had been active in the street protests, few remained in the villages. Generally speaking, people of working age have left the villages in search of jobs, leaving behind only children and the elderly. This has resulted in something of a disconnect between the movement and the villages, where employment is the most pressing concern. Hsieh refers to the many movement people who, when they returned to their villages to run for political office, have suffered defeat as "elites who are far removed from the masses."
Whether struggling to be heard in the cities or returning to their home villages to put down roots, the brave youths who led the Indigenous Peoples' Movement 20 years ago are still fighting for what they believe in. Pictured is Icyang Parod.