To Stay Close with Communities: Implementing the Project of “Traditional Culture Industry Development in Indigenous Communities”

Two to three decades ago, with the structural change in Taiwan's economy and the emerging capital market, young adults from indigenous peoples have been increasingly migrating to urban areas in order to pursue a more stable life. This phenomenon has stimulated an urban migration of labor force within indigenous communities, causing them a detachment from their mother culture. When interacting with other ethnic groups, indigenous people would encounter a heavy dose of stereotypes that have fed the brains of most people for a long time. Those negative portrayals of them have led to a social discrimination and triggered a crisis within indigenous self-identification, preventing the cultural heritages from being passed onto the next generation. In order to create a friendlier society with an ethical diversity, the team of the first round of a USR project "Collaborative Working, Rediscovering Life Stories of Traditional Territory Curriculum" continues by collaborating with padain, kaviyangan, and pucunug communities in Pingtung County to conduct the task of preserving cultural knowledge of forests. The team's aim is to take cultural interpretation back in local communities, hoping to build an environment for learning the knowledge of forests and bringing it into practices.

The locus of the collaboration as mentioned above contains abundant paiwan cultures. padain is said to be the origin of paiwan people as well as their history, beliefs, rituals, customs, and legends. After Typhoon Morakot (2009), two thirds of original community were covered in mud after severe flooding there. People can only recall the memories of how beautiful the community used to be as it had been before the destruction. Paiwan people still strive for maintaining the original appearance of their "home;" however, it's hard to have a sustainable and practical way for people to pass their knowledge from generation to generation. With the outflow of young people and its flagging economy, the communities are facing a heavy blow when trying to preserve their cultural heritage. Similarly, the number of the youth in pucunug community who migrate has been increasing. Because people might reconstruct their self-identification during the migration, the phenomenon is shaking the foundation of the inheritance of the continued practice and of living heritage. A higher cultural consciousness has been created among indigenous people in recent years; as a result, people establish local organizations and begin to dedicated to conserving their heritages and advocating the passing of traditional ceremonies, native species cultivation and revitalization. kaviyangan community, on the other hand, is a lack of local industries because its location is near urban areas where a diversity of people is around and frequently interacting with it. The frequent interaction causes its people to have a better adaptation to modernization, having a living attitude of pursuing innovation and changes. Consequently, in order to pursue a "better" education and life, a myriad of people is going away from homes and move to the urban areas.

People perish, but stories of them carry on. To pave the way for the story of padain, our team went back to the chief's home in their old village. From the very fundamental material-collecting to every step of restoring and recovering the whole house with a heart of respecting and reminiscing the spirit and the land history, the team who did the restoration work could feel that every soul of padain reside inside the spirit of their people, inside the "house" which has been long protected and preserved by the people. The old village is difficult to get to; therefore, the journey back to the old villages could take quite a toll on the elders. By listening to the elders' storytelling and treading on the trails of the old village, the team manages to reconstruct a geographic model, document and film the interviews with the collaboration with students from NPUST (National Pingtung University of Science and Technology). This work cannot be fulfilled without piecing together elders' stories. Every part of memory they give to the team is a blessing to the old village. 

To take the context of paiwan's traditional celebration and rituals into account, the team of the project, collarborating with the local people, stayed in pucunug community for the first half of the year to document "Maljeveq" (or Five-Year Worship) and collected the songs and chants. Through the association with the biggest family in the community and the local organizations, the team felt an intimate connectedness between the ancestors and pucunug people. Also, the team closely observed the difference between the worldview of local people and mainstream opinions. In the second half of the year, the team continued to follow the context of traditional celebrations and rituals to collect the basic information of the community. Through several discussions and piecing things together, the team hoped to build up an overall picture of a repository of forest knowledge and cultural resources exclusively belongs to pucunug community. Additionally, through the discussions, the team also hoped to develop the possibility of integrating traditional ritual knowledge and ecological education in order to promote economic and cultural advancement in community and local business and to achieve a sustainable future. 

Between 2018 and 2019, the first round of the project began its partnership with kaviyangan community. What the team had done so far are mapping out borderlines of traditional domains, doing interviews, conducting plant and animal survey of old kaviyangan community, collecting the knowledge in songs and chants, and doing oral history interviews with elders. The work, being collaborative with the community people, is step by step achieving the goal of preserving the cultural legacies. In 2019, the graphic representation of sixty Houses were measured and documented. Following that number, it now has grown to a hundred and twenty-nine in total this year. The team is gradually putting together all pieces and creating the community map based off of Houses of the old village, the traditional space of rituals and ceremonies, delineating the landscape based on the oral history. In the second half year, the borderline investigation will also be associated with the results of interviews and the graphic representation of Houses, combining into a manual which will provide future generations to draw upon.

Finally, we would like to raise the visibility for local communities through implementing the project within collaborative research partnerships between communities and universities. A sustainable way of having self-determination could be built again from the education system. After a half year's intense preparation, NPUST has established the program of "Traditional Culture Industry Development in Indigenous Communities" in September, 2020. Throughout the program, it aims to help the youth to become involved and practice their customs in their communities. To learn and experience lifestyles of different ethnic backgrounds, for the indigenous youth, is to develop an awareness of the power of cultural diversity.