Hunting for life's truths in a fast-paced world

HUALIEN, Taiwan – In the rain, it was far more challenging to catch up with Umin Sibang and not fall down the slippery stone stairs.

Sibang wasn't bothered by the weather at all. He walked smoothly and effortlessly in the mountain forest located immediately behind his house.

"No worry! Just stay where you are. I'll be back soon," said Sibang, moving with the swift grace of a Ninja, his steps soft and secure. He came back with a bundle of wood 10 minutes later, a grin on his face. "Later, I can show you how to make animal traps from the wood!"

Sibang built his house. He grows his own food, raises chickens and ducks. He hunts wildlife for his daily meals. He is connected to the earth, the forest, the land in a way that urban 21st- century humans cannot even begin to fathom.

Sibang does not have a telephone. Not a landline. Not a cellular device.

The air smelled sweet and earthy. Sibang walked by his front yard. Some of his relatives were cooking "banana sticky rice" from scratch for lunch. Others were sitting in front of an outdoor fireplace.

Sibang and his family are Truku (Taroko), one of the 16 indigenous tribes in Taiwan.

Taiwan is far and away the leader of the global semiconductor industry and for decades has produced cutting-edge products to tech giants. Around the world, this small island nation is renowned for innovation and technology. At the same time, it also has very deliberately set out to preserve the variety of languages and cultures of its indigenous tribes.

"I like to live here. I feel connected to the land and the mountains. I really have a lot of freedom," said Sibang, adding that life in a Truku village in the first years of the 21st century is full of happiness.

Even as demographers and statistics say that thousands upon thousands of people crave a move to cities for opportunity, Sibang personifies the alternative – a unique, unhurried lifestyle that emphasizes connection and the value of an irreplaceable culture thousands of years old, passed down by their ancestors with the expectation that it would be carried on and on and on.

Which it is.

It not only is still alive – it is thriving.

A brief history

Taiwan was inhabited by peoples of the Austronesian Linguistic Family for over 8000 years before the 17th century, when the Han Chinese arrived.

The Austronesian Linguistic Family includes over 2000 languages, including many of the major languages of Southeast Asia and those of the Micronesian, Melanesian, Polynesian islands of the Pacific and Madagascar.

The Taiwanese indigenous peoples' languages are also among them.

Just as with many indigenous peoples around the world, colonization left a huge impact on many of Taiwan's indigenous tribes.

According to the Indigenous People Cultural Foundation, when the Dutch arrived in Taiwan in 1624, though main purpose purportedly was trade and commerce, they began missionary work as well – building churches, introducing the Roman alphabet and teaching the local peoples Christian doctrine.

About the same time, the Spanish also came to Northern Taiwan for missionary work.

These historical facts would affect many indigenous peoples' religious beliefs.

Skipping ahead many centuries: Taiwan would fall under Japanese colonial rule between 1895 and 1945.

The Japanese government occupied many of the indigenous peoples' lands and implemented strict rules:

To avoid organized resistance, indigenous peoples were also often forced to relocate and live in mixed tribal communities. In addition, the indigenous peoples were assigned a Japanese name and asked to speak only Japanese.

When the Nationalist government took over Taiwan after World War II, the indigenous peoples were again forced to abandon their own cultures, this time to assimilate into Han culture.

For example, in pubic they were asked to speak Mandarin but not their own languages; new laws called a halt to hunting traditions; they were randomly given Chinese names.

With hundreds of years of oppression by different regimes, indigenous peoples' cultures were gradually dying out until the very first indigenous rights advocacy group, called the "Association for Advancing Taiwan Indigenous People's Rights," was established in 1984. Since then, more and more people and organizations have sought to raise awareness of indigenous peoples' cultures while protect their rights and dignity.

Still, it has proven a considerable and complicated challenge to preserve the indigenous way of life and the cultural heritage that goes with it. And official governmental support for the indigenous way of life is only about 30 years old – a short blip of time in comparison to the hundreds of years other forces, one after the other, have lined up to confront the indigenous peoples.

Pushing for recognition

For more than 400 years, colonists discriminated in various ways against the indigenous peoples.

In 1984 came the first indigenous rights advocacy group: "Association for Advancing Taiwan Indigenous People's Rights." Their mandate: urging the public to understand who the country's original inhabitants were.

In 1991, the Name Rectification Movement was launched. Now the indigenous peoples officially demanded that the society should use the term "yuanzhumin" – meaning the original inhabitants.

However, a first constitutional amendment did not respond to this request, maintaining the discriminatory term "shanbao," which literally means "mountain people."

In 1992, a rally for name rectification failed again.

It was not until 1994 that then-president Teng-hui Lee made a commitment to change 'shanbao' to 'indigenous people' in the Constitution. It went in effect on August 1, a day later established as Indigenous Peoples' Day.

In 2016, on a celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day, President Ing-wen Tsai apologized on behalf of the government, the first such apology in 400 years, to the Taiwanese indigenous peoples. She also publicly acknowledged the mistakes made by successive governments.

"Taiwan is known as a culturally diverse society," Tsai said. "But even today, indicators on health, education, economic livelihood, political participation and more still show gaps between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples."

She added, "Meanwhile, stereotypes and even discrimination against indigenous peoples have not gone away."

And she said, "Indigenous peoples maintain tribal order according to traditional customs, and ecological balance according to traditional wisdom. But in the process of modern state-building, indigenous peoples lost the right to steer their own course and govern their own affairs."

That it, their cultures, languages, traditions and social structures were, in the course of modern state-building, put at risk of extinction.

Now, these first inhabitants of the nation still face discrimination or, on a day-to-day level, what many would now call microaggressions.

Ciwang Teyra, an assistant professor at National Taiwan University who specializes in indigenous peoples and social work, said mainstream Taiwanese society is laced with unconscious assumptions and stereotypes about indigenous people – they are good at sports, singing and dancing, and, further, they all like to drink and speak with filler words.

These, in modern parlance, typically lead to microaggressions.

Teyra also said that many indigenous seniors can be discriminated against by others due to their accents.

"When your native language is not the most spoken language in the society, you are likely to have an accent. Because of their past experience, many people decided not to teach their children Indigenous peoples' native language."

Teyra said the president's apology marked real progress. However, she also said much work remains – to educate literally thousands if not millions of Taiwanese.

"If we can engage in self-reflection to identify why we have bias towards the indigenous peoples," she said, "we're likely to prevent microaggressions."

Truku Traditions

In 2004, the Truku were officially approved as the 12th indigenous tribe in Taiwan. The tribe is known for its face tattooing culture, just like others – known as the Seediq and Atayal – because the three tribes originally belonged to the same family.

In the past, the Truku people were given a first face tattoo as a tribal identification on their forehead when they were 5 to 6 years old. It serves as an identifier – saying that those kids are from the same family. In addition, when transitioning into adulthood, only women who know how to weave and men who know how to hunt are qualified for another face tattoo. The second face tattoo also implies that they are ready for marriage.

Even though the face tattooing process can be painful and time-consuming, the Truku people still believed that those who can endure the intense pain are able to prove themselves as professional hunters or weavers and can eventually cross the "rainbow bridge" to gather with other tribe members in the afterlife.

The Japanese banned this tradition. They thought it was uncivilized.

"My aunt had a face tattoo on her forehead. She only got one tattoo, but the Japanese still could not accept that and scraped her tattoo off with a knife. They were really brutal," said Piteyru Ukah, a hunter and singer who has devoted his time to preserving and promoting Truku culture for decades.

"There are meanings behind our face tattooing culture which already existed for hundreds of years."

With the colonial oppression in the past and the societal pressure in today's world, the Truku, Seediq and Atayal face tattooing culture has all but disappeared in Taiwan.

Ipay Wilang of the Seediq tribe, 103 years old, is the only remaining person in Taiwan who still has the original face tattoo.

In the Truku people's minds, the second tattoo for men denotes a symbol of bravery and maturity; it also proclaims that a man so marked, equipped with hunting skills, is extremely valued.

Since the Truku people lived a self-sufficient lifestyle, they farmed and hunted. The hunting? That was a man's job. In the mountains.

A professional hunter should be familiar with terrain, be able to frequently track animal movement and observe animal habits. Some hunters use shotguns to get the prey, while others practice the most traditional method — trap setting. Indigenous people usually place two types of traps in mountains, including leg-hold traps, which are designed to catch animals by their limbs, and neck snares, which trap animals by their neck.

"We have a ceremony before setting traps," said Polo Sukang, a hunter, who emphasized that hunters should always have a respectful attitude so that ancestral spirits, ghosts and gods of the mountain will give them a blessing.

"We want to let our ancestors know that we are going to place traps in mountains, and hope we can receive blessings from them, and eventually get a prey to share with others."

Teyra, the professor, said hunting also implies the close connection among hunters, ancestors and their lands.

The hunt reminds them of the time when they learned those hunting skills from seniors and the fact that their ancestors were once in the same place practicing the same tradition. The hunting memories have been meaningful and irreplaceable in their life.

"No matter what kind of animal is caught by us, we will offer cigarettes and alcohol at the place where we caught the animal to honor our ancestors and thank them for giving us the gift," Sukang said, adding that hunters always follow what is called Gaya.

Gaya means daily life norms passed down from ancestors which include customs, beliefs, laws and taboos – in sum, practices that have held by the Truku people for hundreds of years.

"We can go hunting during fall and winter but need to let animals reproduce in spring and summer," Ukah said. "It's our way to maintain ecological balance."

He also said that hunting culture should exist, but indigenous peoples are not allowed to ruthlessly kill all of the animals or catch them all year round: "Going hunting all year round violates Gaya. Our ancestors will not allow that."

Just like men were expected to be professional hunters who are responsible for feeding their families, women in the Truku tribe were asked to master the art of weaving and make clothing for their husband and children.

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Truku cloth is known for its diamond pattern. That signifies the eyes of the ancestral spirit.

Traditionally, women would grow ramie, a type of plant that produces fibers, to make clothing.

Ramie fiber is strong, durable and absorbent, so the clothes made by it can be preserved for a long period of time. In addition, women will prepare pieces of handmade clothing for their daughters as a dowry. It's said that the more clothes a mother gives to her daughter, the more power the family has.

"I've been interested in weaving since I was in the fifth grade. Whenever my mom was weaving, I would watch it. People in the past really lived a simple life," said Bakan Sakay, a local resident, adding that the weaving process is complicated and usually takes her days to complete.

Since growing ramie and extracting fibers from the plant is time-consuming and labor-intensive, now fewer people are willing to use it for making clothes. Instead, cotton fabric, wool fabric or linen fabric, which are much cheaper and easier to get, have become key weaving materials.

The future

Over the past three decades, more people in Taiwan have become aware of the importance of the indigenous peoples' cultural treasures. There is now, for instance, under the president's office, what's called The Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Committee.

It seeks to "rebuild an indigenous historical perspective, progressively promote indigenous autonomous governance, restore indigenous languages and cultures, and improve the livelihood of indigenous communities."

The chief of the Xiing village, Imi Hrusi, said some number of teens in recent years have opted not to join the masses in the cities.

Instead, she said, they felt the call of village life, to "go back to the tribe and help increase awareness on our cultural heritage," adding, "That's a really good idea."

Even that brings with it a new tension: "However, I think when they use innovative ways to promote Truku culture, they can also invite elders to join the development plan. It'll be meaningful that the elders feel a sense of participation and know they are needed and well-respected."

Ukah added: "I hope that teenagers, no matter where they study and where they work, they can still keep in touch with seniors living in the tribe, learning about cultures from them. I was raised by elders who have face tattoos. Since they all died, I have the obligation to let everyone know that Truku, the ethnic group with the face tattoo, is equipped with an indomitable spirit and always values its cultural treasures."

Over the past 20 years, Ukah and his wife have visited many people in the tribe to record oral histories, get to know deeper about Truku history and make music based on the rhythms that elders would sing. His daughter has also been joining them on the journey of cultural preservation.

Ukah feels proud that his daughter, Tumun Piteyru, is committed to passing down the culture: "I feel satisfied when the younger generation is persistent and insistent in preserving the culture."

In her 2006 speech, President Tsai spoke of the ideal: of building "a country of justice, a country of true diversity and equality."

"I think in my life, the words 'rich' and 'poor' don't exist," Ukah said. "Life is just beyond that. I only care about passing down my culture. This is what I hope for."