The Austronesians - that means in Greek “ the people from the southern islands “- are originally coming from the continental south east Asia, part of Indochina and what is today China, few thousand years ago. They moved to Taiwan, then began their migration towards the south, spreading on the Oceans settling down in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia on the way. To the west, they went to Madagascar, to the east, Easter Island and to the south, to New Zealand. All the languages spoken in this huge area belong to the Austronesian family, proving that this wave of migration was one of the most significative in the history of humanity.
We don’t know much about the Austronesian people in Taiwan, before the arrival of the first colonial powers during the 17th century. Nevertheless, till late in the 19th century, most of the territories of the highland ethnic groups, in the mountainous parts of the island, had remained unknown. In fact, their inhabitants were feared as fierce head-hunters.
Head-hunting was a widely spread practice among all the Taiwanese ethnic groups except the Yami. It was forbidden by the Japanese authorities at the beginning of the 20th century. Its social and ritual aspect was very important as the head-hunters were benefiting from an elevated social status. Its purposes were to mark a passage to adulthood, to avenge a prior death, to repulse bad luck or bring chance to the family or the village. Heads were kept on shelves, close to the living. The single head, symbolizing the hunted head, is a very common motive on the Paiwan and Rukai objects.
A Bunun head hunter with his trophy.
Drinking alcohol made from fermented millet was important to all indigenous groups except the Yami. Alcohol was consumed to celebrate important events and was always offered to ancestors—often associated with betel nut chewing—during prayers or ceremonies. Even today, before drinking some aborigines still dip a finger in their glass and throw a few drops in the air to share with ancestral spirits.
If in the north and centre areas, indigenous groups do not have much anthropomorphic carving, in the south, it is a very different story. The Paiwan and the closely related Rukai and Puyuma tribes have an elaborated tradition of wood carving in which human figures and animals are the main subjects. On their further away island of Lanyu, the Yami also share this tradition but in a much less extended way.
Concerning the facial tattoo, there are still a few elderly people with them among the Atayal, the Truku and the Saisiyat, a practice that was forbidden by the Japanese in the early 20th century. The purpose of facial tattoos was to make tribe members recognizable to their ancestors after death so that they could be welcomed to the next world. They are also said to make people more beautiful, and to honor men for their hunting and headhunting skills and women for their purity and weaving skills.
A facial tattoo in process in the 1910s.
The aborigines’ shamanism and animist beliefs have been widely replaced by Christianity or the popular Taiwanese religion—a mix of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.
The Aborigenes today
With the exception of the Kavalan, Amis, Sakiraya and Yami, most of the dozens of original lowland groups, now banded together under the generic term Pingpu (Plain), have disappeared or become integrated with Han Chinese communities following large-scale settlement by Chinese from the 17th century onwards. One result of this ethnic mixing, which only the highlands tribes resisted until relatively late, is that genetic studies show that 80 percent of Taiwanese people have some aboriginal DNA.
Today, despite government policies aimed to benefit aboriginal people and notable improvements in various aspects of their lives, by any social or economic measure, they still represent a disadvantaged section of Taiwanese society.
The central government has an agency dedicated to the aboriginal groups, the Council of Indigenous peoples, and measures were taken to help preserve aboriginal languages, as they are now officially taught at school.
Restoring tribal names has been another long struggle for the aboriginal civil rights activists. The law required from 1946 to 1995 that all Aborigines adopt a Chinese name. Nevertheless, since the lifting of the ban, only 6 000 Aborigines have reverted back to their tribal names. Obstacles are mostly discriminations from the mainstream society and administrative difficulties.
On the subject of the self-rule, the autonomy has been promised to the indigenous groups in 2000 by Chen Shui-bian while he was on the presidential campaign trail. Since then, the idea has resurfaced but has never gone very far. A government plan is on the making, but there will be a lot of questions to answer : how to draw and decide the borders of the future tribal regions ? How are these new regions going to finance their autonomy ?
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