Path to modernization
The children were thrilled that they could get on an airplane and go overseas, but Liao is clear about the focus of Vox Nativa: "Performances or competitions are just a ticket to world travel for these children. Vox Nativa intends to care for and guide the children through college. We've made a 10-year promise with the children that each and every one of them will have the power and right to choose his or her own future."
Vox Nativa estimates that it requires about NT$8000 per student, per month (about NT$100,000 over the course of a year). In all, it needs about NT$10 million per year to operate.
Apart from working hard to raise money, an even larger difficulty is finding teaching resources for the children: When the children enter junior high school, they inevitably face academic pressures with regard to passing the entrance exams for senior high school. Mathematics in particular is a discipline more suited to Western or Han Chinese modes of thought. For Bunun children, math often seems an unfathomable riddle.
Bukut discovered Lin Yicheng, the principal of Nantou's Qingshui Elementary School, who has been researching "constructive mathematics" for 20 years. Patiently, he teaches via "mathematical conversations," finding situations in everyday life to foster a love of mathematics among the children. Lin will take children out to a trapezoidal plot of land, asking them to divide it equally for planting three crops. This teaches them about drawing triangles. Questions about how much seed to sow, how much manure to apply, and so forth also require developing mathematical conceptions. Through these hands-on life experiences, he develops confidence and interest in mathematics among the children.
Setting out from Taipei at 8 a.m., foreign teachers from the Association for Empowering Fundamental English Education come every Saturday to hold class.
"It is only through the good works and generosity of many," says Liao, "that we can achieve success."
In order to realize the ideal of "putting Aborigines on a path toward modernization," Vox Nativa has engaged in much internal discussion and debate. What if these children embark on bright futures only to be assimilated into Han Chinese society like so many of their forerunners, demonstrating an unwillingness to return to the mountains and give something back to tribal society?
"That would show that they have the ability to live down in the lowlands-and in fact are 'returning home' after being displaced from there by the Dutch, the Japanese and the Han Chinese," says Liao. "Let nature return to nature."
Vox Nativa has set this mid-to-long-term goal for itself: In 2012, at the seventh World Choir Games in the United States, "We want to take the gold," so that "Taiwan's Vienna Boys Choir" can make a name for itself on the world stage.