In Maori mythology, their ancestors lived in a land called Hawaiki before migrating across the Pacific Ocean and settling in Aotearoa, the Maori word for New Zealand.
Hawaiki’s location — and even its existence — is the subject of debate, but some scholars speculate that “Hawaiki” may actually refer to Taiwan. Now a new film, currently in pre-production and seeking fundraising, will explore what this academic theory means for young Maori and Taiwanese Aboriginal people in search of their roots.
Developed by the ATAYAL Organization, a non-profit, the film will follow a group of Maori students as they meet people of indigenous descent in Taiwan. Scheduled to be completed next January, Beyond Hawaiki still needs to raise 75 percent of its NT$13,886,700 budget.
Photo courtesy of Tony Coolidge and Tobie Openshaw
“What I would like to do is allow these students to interact with indigenous students, share their language and culture and look for similarities,” says ATAYAL Organization founder Tony Coolidge (陳華友).
Coolidge also hopes the film will increase exposure for the ATAYAL Organization’s Tap Root Cultural Exchange Program, which will bring together people from indigenous communities throughout the Austronesian region.
Raised in the US, Coolidge did not learn about his Atayal roots until his Taiwanese mother died in 1994. Coolidge’s quest to reconnect with his maternal family’s Aboriginal heritage — and find out why it had been hidden from him — was the subject of the 2010 documentary Voices in the Clouds (眾族同聲).
Photo courtesy of Tony Coolidge and Tobie Openshaw
While learning about his background, Coolidge also became fascinated with Maori culture and began to brainstorm ways to facilitate connections between Austronesian tribal groups.
“Learning about Austronesian theory made [that goal] even more concrete and gave it an academic foundation,” says Coolidge. “It’s more than just bringing tribes around the world together. It’s also an opportunity to create a family reunion.”
Coolidge and filmmaker Tobie Openshaw met with Maori students and potential “Beyond Hawaiki” subjects from the Auckland University of Technology when they traveled to New Zealand in July to attend the Wairoa Maori Film Festival.
During their trip, Openshaw filmed interviews with several young Maoris.
“I asked them what does being Maori actually mean to you personally? How do you straddle traditional culture with having to make your way in the world of today?” Openshaw says.
Openshaw plans to incorporate footage shot by the students, who have learned how to combine Maori storytelling traditions with digital filmmaking techniques, into “Beyond Hawaiki.” Some of the young people he interviewed said they became closer to their families while reconnecting with their heritage, but others were met with opposition when they decided to study Maori culture.
“There is this one guy who looks white. His father is white and his mother is Maori, and he had to overcome a whole bunch of things,” says Openshaw. “He said his father asked him ‘Why do you want to go do that nigger stuff for?’ His family grew up white and it was at a great personal sacrifice that he decided to go on a four-year Maori course.”
Beyond Hawaiki’s NT$13,886,700 fundraising goal will cover travel, production, marketing and legal expenses. A complete breakdown of the project’s budget is available at www.atayal.org/beyond-hawaiki.php. There will also be volunteer opportunities for people who want to participate in the making and distribution of the documentary.
Coolidge hopes Beyond Hawaiki will help the Tap Root Cultural Exchange Program expand.
“We’ll start with the Maori coming to Taiwan and bringing Taiwanese to New Zealand, and we will expand to new countries every year,” he says. “If all goes well, we’ll have a movie with each country added.”
Coolidge adds: “So many people in Taiwan have an Austronesian background and they don’t know it. I’m hoping that by creating an exchange between people, kids can see more opportunities for the future.”
■ For more information about Beyond Hawaiki and the Tap Root Cultural Exchange Program, visit www.atayal.org
July 1 to July 7 Huang Ching-an (黃慶安) couldn’t help but notice Imelita Masongsong during a company party in the Philippines. With paler skin and more East Asian features, she did not look like the other locals. On top of his job duties, Huang had another mission in the country, given by his mother: to track down his cousin, who was deployed to the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II and never returned. Although it had been more than three decades, the family was still hoping to find him. Perhaps Imelita could provide some clues. Huang never found the cousin;
Once again, we are listening to the government talk about bringing in foreign workers to help local manufacturing. Speaking at an investment summit in Washington DC, the Minister of Economic Affairs, J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), said that the nation must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers for high end manufacturing by 2040 to offset the falling population. That’s roughly 15 years from now. Using the lower number, Taiwan would have to import over 25,000 foreigners a year for these positions to reach that goal. The government has no idea what this sounds like to outsiders and to foreigners already living here.
Lines on a map once meant little to India’s Tibetan herders of the high Himalayas, expertly guiding their goats through even the harshest winters to pastures on age-old seasonal routes. That stopped in 2020, after troops from nuclear-armed rivals India and China clashed in bitter hand-to-hand combat in the contested high-altitude border lands of Ladakh. Swaths of grazing lands became demilitarized “buffer zones” to keep rival forces apart. For 57-year-old herder Morup Namgyal, like thousands of other semi-nomadic goat and yak herders from the Changpa pastoralist people, it meant traditional lands were closed off. “The Indian army stops us from going there,” Namgyal said,
In spite of the next local elections being over two years away, there is already considerable intrigue and jockeying for position by politicians and their supporters. The local press runs quite a bit of content, mostly speculative, on who will run in what races and what the outcomes might be. This is an overview for English language readers to get a taste of the state of play. Four races in particular are drawing a lot of heat, those of mayors of New Taipei City, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung because in all four the incumbent mayors will be term-limited out. In