Thousands of Pingpu (平埔), or “Plains” Aborigines, rallied in front of the Presidential Office yesterday demanding that the government restore their Aboriginal status. With many dressed in traditional outfits and holding traditional instruments, they chanted slogans and sang as they marched from the Legislative Yuan to Ketagalan Boulevard.
Rather than constituting a single Aboriginal tribe, Pingpu refer to between nine and 14 tribes — depending on the type of classification — that once inhabited flat lands across the country.
However, these people gradually “disappeared” over the course of time, largely because of interaction with Hoklo and Hakka settlers who began coming from China in large numbers about 400 years ago.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
“To interact and trade with newcomers, Pingpu started to learn to speak Hoklo [also known as Taiwanese] and Hakka, and adopted Chinese names and surnames,” said Chan Su-chuan (詹素娟), an assistant research fellow at Acadmia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwan History.
Aside from business connections, intermarriage between Pingpu and Hoklo or Hakka also became common, Chan said.
“The interaction and cultural assimilation strengthened especially after the Qing government took over Taiwan in the 17th century,” she said.
In some instances, Pingpu who had made special contributions to the Qing government were honored by being granted Chinese surnames by the imperial court.
With Chinese surnames came with family books in which the origin of each surname is recorded.
Such family books contributed to the loss of Pingpu identity.
“In the family book of a Pingpu family with the surname Tuan [段] living in Tainan County, it is written that the Tuans are descendents of Bigan [比干, a Chinese official from about 3,000 years ago],” Chan said. “But in fact, Pingpu with the surname Tuan have no biological connection whatsoever with the Tuan family from China.”
Results of censuses conducted during the Japanese colonial period in 1935 showed that more than 57,000 people still identified themselves as Pingpu, while in 1956, another census — this time conducted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government — showed that 27,000 people identified their ethnic group as “others” from a list including “Taiwanese,” “Mainlander” and “mountain compatriots,” or mountain Aborigines.
Comparing the censuses, geographer Yap Ko-hua (葉高華) said that parts of the country where people referred to themselves as being of unknown ethnicity more or less coincided with areas occupied by Pingpu in the 1935 survey.
“When the [KMT] government set up a new ethnic classification system after World War II, it did not leave room for the Pingpu,” Yap wrote on his Web site. “As a result, [the Pingpu] became people ‘of unknown ethnic origin’ in official records.”
In addition to the critical condition of their culture, Pingpu have completely lost their legal status. Pingpu descendents have gradually forgotten who they are — until 10 or 20 years ago, when some decided to fight back.
Sixty-year-old Aylian Hsiao (蕭愛蓮) lives in her native Puli Township (埔里), Nantou County, did not know she was a Pingpu Aborigine from the Kahavu tribe until 10 years ago when her mother created a Kahavu Culture Association and asked Hsiao if she wanted to be a member.
“I said ‘sure, but why?’” Hsiao said, adding that “all my life, people have told me that I look like an Aborigine and asked if I was one. I always told them that I wasn’t.”
“My mother then asked me: ‘Did you not know you’re also an Aborigine?’” she said.
Ever since Hsiao became aware of her Kahavu identity, she has been very active in the Pingpu revival movement and has even endeavored to learn her lost mother tongue.
“There are four Kahavu villages around Puli where some elders are still able to speak Kahavu,” Hsiao said. “I’m old, I don’t learn very quickly, but if I can learn a word or a phrase a day, I would know 365 words in a year and that adds up with time.”
Last year, two Pazeh Pingpu from Puli, Pan Ying-chieh (潘英傑) and Wang Pan Mei-yu (王潘美玉) — in their 60s and 70s respectively — won an award from the Ministry of Education for writing poems in the Pazeh language, after learning to speak it for five years under the tutelage of 94-year-old Pan Chin-yu (潘金玉), the only person who can speak the language in Puli.
About 200 people now attend Pan Chin-yu’s Pazeh lessons.
Siraya Culuture Association chairwoman Uma Talavan and her husband, Edgar Macapili, spent seven hours digging through documents left by the Dutch 400 years ago and published a 1,400-page Siraya lexicon last year.
The Sirayas are Pingpu who live mainly in Tainan County. Some of the Siraya traditions — mostly religious rituals — are still practiced today.
The Tainan County Government was also the first government authority to recognize Pingpu as Aborigines. A county-level Siraya Aboriginal Affairs Committee was created in 2006 and since January the county government has allowed residents to register their Siraya identity — provided they can prove it with household registration records from the Japanese colonial period.
However, the movement suffered a major setback when the Ministry of the Interior declared the Tainan County Government’s move illegal, saying that confirmation of Aboriginal status fell under central government jurisdiction.
The Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP), on the other hand, said in a press release that Pingpu could not be granted Aboriginal status as they “voluntarily gave it up by not registering themselves as Aborigines in the 1960s and the 1970s.”
In 1946 the Taiwan Provincial Government issued executive orders to several counties notifying residents to register their Aboriginal status according to records from the Japanese colonial period. For various reasons, most Pingpu did not do so.
“This just doesn’t make any sense because if you’re Aborigine, you’re born an Aborigine. How can you give up your own identity?” Chen Chun-an (陳俊安), a Siraya Culture Association member, said. “Besides, not all the counties received the executive letter. Tainan County, for example, did not get it.”
A copy of the executive order showed it was sent to governments in Taipei, Hsinchu, Nantou, Pingtung, Hualien, Taoyuan, Miaoli, Kaohsiung and Taitung.
“Even if you did see the letter but did not register at the time, you should still be able to do so according to the Aboriginal Identity Act [原住民族身分法],” Chen said. “After all, a law has higher status in the legal and administrative hierarchy than an executive order — they should act according to the law.”
Following their demonstration yesterday, representatives of the protesters were received by a Presidential Office official who took their petition and promised to forward it to government institutions within a week.
“We’ll wait for a week or two. If we don’t get a positive response from the government, we do not rule out filing a lawsuit against CIP Minister Chang Jen-hsiang [章仁香],” Uma said.
Meanwhile, Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) said the county government would continue to accept Aboriginal registration from local Sirayas despite the warning from the ministry.
“That’s because the county government is the one that’s acting according to the law,” Su said.
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