Despite the gradual disintegration of Aboriginal societies, “… many have held on, adapting and recombining the remnants of an interrupted way of life,” writes American anthropologist James Clifford in his book Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century. “They reach back selectively to deeply rooted, adaptive traditions: creating new pathways in a complex postmodernity.”

As a key site in the migrations of the Austronesian-­speaking peoples, Taiwan is home to indigenous peoples having rich and diverse cultures. Despite several periods under colonial rule, there are still many individuals who hold on to traditional customs. Wilang Mawi and his wife Pisuy Poro, who built an Atayal-style family house in Yilan County’s Nan’ao Township, and Akac Orat, who returned to Taitung County’s Chenggong Township to construct a residence in the Amis fashion, are all trying to rediscover ancestral techniques that are on the verge of dying out. By building a house collectively via labor exchange, they are hooking up Aborigines with non-­Aborigines, and connecting them with the land.

Crafting an Atayal abode

Amidst the secluded mountains of Nan’ao Township, a plume of white smoke rises above a traditional Atayal house. Making a fire in the morning and evening to keep the house, which is made of natural materials, dry and protected from insects is a daily routine for Wilang, a young Atayal man.

According to Atayal legend, their ancestors originated in what is now Ren’ai Township in Nantou County, but as their numbers increased, they gradually sought new outposts. Having moved northward from Nantou along the ridges of the Xueshan Mountains, the Atayal are found in Nantou, Taichung, Miaoli, Hsinchu, Taoyuan, and all the way to New Taipei’s Wulai District. Another branch of the Atayal, known as the Klesan, migrated east across Mt. Nanhu and settled in the area of the Heping North River. During Japanese rule (1895–1945), however, under the colonial government’s policy of ethnic relocation, the Klesan were forcibly removed to lower elevations and became the present-day Atayal of Nan’ao.

Wilang’s family was the last to migrate to the flatlands, and thus still has a strong connection to the mountains. Growing up hunting in the mountains alongside members of his father’s generation, the Atayal he knows are those who spent their lives in the highlands.

“In all of Nan’ao, you won’t find anyone my age who loves to roam the mountains as much as me.” Wilang’s tone of voice suggests regret for young tribe members who have abandoned the highlands and know nothing of the story of their community.

Hayon, Wilang’s grand-uncle, was the last chief of their family’s ancestral village of Haga Paris. Although Wilang grew up in Nan’ao’s Wuta Village, he realized that he was a child of Haga Paris and was keen to learn more about his community’s history, so he accompanied Hayon back to their native place. When they arrived where his ancestors were once based, the expression of nostalgic attachment on ­Hayon’s face inspired Wilang’s desire to build an Atayal family house himself.

Cultural identity transcends ethnicity: Many volunteers—including non-Aborigines—heeded the couple’s call to come to mountainous Nan’ao and erect a traditional Atayal house.

The weaving classes in the Atayal house are a vehicle for understanding the context and values of Atayal culture through learning about ramie fiber, the traditional loom, and community history.

Gaga: Identity and practice

For the Atayal, all the rules of life are based on gaga, the traditional moral code that covers their customs, beliefs, and worldview. When building a traditional house, according to gaga one’s blood relatives should provide assistance. But as lifestyles have evolved, it has become awkward to request friends and relatives to take time out to come and help. 

Therefore, Wilang and Pisuy adopted a broader interpretation of this code. “What we call gaga comprises self-identity and practice, which means that so long as you identify with the culture and put it into practice collectively, you are family,” says Pisuy. 

They went online seeking volunteers, and attracted more than 100 people, most of them not Aborigines, and even people from Taiwan’s outlying islands and Hong Kong took time off work to learn about traditional Atayal culture via house construction. In the end, it took more than three months to build their traditional Atayal house and complete this collective project.

Culture and life are fluid, notes Pisuy. When you return to your roots, what you grow to be is an Atayal person shaped by your environment.

The structure’s natural materials often need maintenance. “But I adore this house,” insists Akac Orat, who has chosen to return to Nature and nurture the soil. “And I will care for it so that it improves with age.”

Distilled from tradition

The scene shifts now to the Amis community of Madawdaw in Taitung’s Chenggong Township, where an Amis traditional house is located near a mountain with a view of the Pacific. This is artist Akac Orat’s “Malacecay Amis Traditional Family House Workshop and Storehouse.” The construction of this traditional house is the result of 600 man-hours of labor, and reveals the “beautiful unity” that the Amis word mala­ce­cay implies.

Akac, who had a studio in Taipei and curated many art exhibitions, later returned to Taitung to teach in elementary school. In order to enrich his pupils’ horizons, he launched experimental courses and an artist-in-residence program featuring artists from various countries.

But everything took a different turn in 2018, when he inherited a plot of land in Madawdaw from his Amis mother, and decided to quit teaching. “At first I contemplated selling the land and returning to Taipei to spend my days as an art events curator. But deep down, that wasn’t what I wanted.”

While struggling to find direction, Akac visited Wilang’s Atayal-style family house. The way the couple were living in their home, a fire burning in the hearth, touched him and reinforced his notion of building an Amis family house.

So Akac began his fieldwork and stumbled upon Madawdaw’s only three remaining traditional houses, hidden in alleyways or enclosed within ordinary dwellings. 

Futuru Tsai, director of the Center of Austronesian Culture at National Taitung University, explains that the Amis traditionally had an age-set system, with each cohort responsible for providing certain services and enacting certain tribal rituals. There was also a division of labor among age-sets in the construction of family houses, and the younger age-sets learned from this activity. Due to the prevalence of non-­indigenous religious beliefs among the Amis in the Chenggong area, the traditional division of labor by age no longer exists, and the family house has virtually dis­appeared.

The most arduous part is actually collecting the raw materials, explains Akac. To build a house, it takes at least 3,000 meters of stems of yellow rotang palm—a rattan bristling with sharp thorns—that must be gathered, split and trimmed. It took him two years just to collect the building materials, and this meant traveling islandwide. With Akac doing, learning and teaching simultaneously as they proceeded, all told it took more than three months for the volunteers to build the Amis-style structure. 

Through collecting the rattan, weaving it and actually erecting the house, he came to comprehend something. “It turns out that tribal learning takes a long, long time to observe, listen and feel.”

A master weaver, Akac Orat spent two years gathering raw materials to complete this traditional Amis house, which resembles a large-scale woven work and is located in Madawdaw, an Amis village in Taitung.

Akac Orat fashioned a terrace from mahogany, rattan canes and thatch where he weaves, daydreams and observes the ocean.

Tradition and the contemporary zeitgeist

Regarding the mission of cultural inheritance entrusted to them by others, Pisuy and Akac have both arrived at the view that they are simply choosing to live a life connected to tradition. After constructing her traditional family house, Pisuy learned to make fabric with her Atayal elders by planting ramie, spinning thread, and weaving it into cloth. Learning to love the land and respect life, she not only mastered techniques but also acquired the mindset of a weaver from her mentors.

When teaching weaving class in the family house, Pisuy Poro shares the story of the Atayal’s migrations and their facial tattoos. She believes that only when you understand what lies behind a custom can you grasp its spiritual meaning within your culture. 

“Now I can take the cloth I have woven to show my parents and grandparents,” said Wilang’s maternal grandmother not long before she passed. For an Atayal woman, when she crosses the Rainbow Bridge that links this realm with the hereafter, the act of bringing her loom and the fabric she has woven brings closure and fulfillment to her life as an Atayal. 

“Learning to weave is an education in becoming a complete woman,” Pisuy often says. 

In modern times, where the division of labor has become ever finer, weaving is no longer a survival technique to protect the body from the cold, and hunting, fishing and gathering are not all about food. In the past few years, various indigenous craft courses have blossomed in Taiwan, and many traditional house-building initiatives have been launched, attracting both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participants, and cultivating a focus on understanding the workings of nature, as well as more philosophical self-exploration. 

According to Tsai, the meaning of this kind of homecoming is to reconnect with one’s ancestors and to challenge the values of competition and book-­learning that mainstream society prioritizes. 

As James Clifford writes in Returns: “The fact of global indigènitude is inescapable. But in affirming this public presence we cannot forget the culture enacted around campfires and kitchen tables rather than at festivals or rallies.” 

Choosing to realize one’s culture through the way one lives—isn’t this a manifestation of the value placed on freedom and diversity in Taiwan? 

Through building traditional family houses, gathering natural materials, weaving, fishing and hunting, Wilang Mawi and Pisuy Poro (upper photo) and Akac Orat (lower photo) are able to practice their tribal customs in their daily lives, connect with nature, and tread a path that leads back to the lifestyles of their ancestors.