Two Pazeh Aboriginal writers were honored by the Ministry of Education with awards at an event in Hualien County on Friday for their efforts to revive and preserve their critically endangered language, which they said has been a very difficult task because the government does not officially recognize their people.
Award recipients Pan Ying-chieh (潘英傑) and Wang Pan Mei-yu (王潘美玉) are relatives from the Pazeh family clan, from the Ailan area (愛蘭) of Nantou County’s Puli (埔里).
Pazeh is one of Taiwan’s 10 Pingpu Aborigine groups, also known as lowland Aborigines. They say their language, culture and ethnic identity are disappearing because they are excluded from the benefits of official government recognition enjoyed by the nation’s 14 Aboriginal peoples.
Photo: Hua Meng-ching, Taipei Times
Pan Ying-chieh said the Pazeh family clans in Puli have organized an association to promote their culture and to resuscitate the language, with seminars and classes being held at the local Ailan Presbyterian Church on weekends and during holidays.
“Our people decided that we must do this, because our mother tongue is nearing extinction, with just a few elderly speakers still using the language. It is like a patient dying in a hospital emergency ward, with doctors and families trying their best to save its life,” he said.
Pan, 66, said Pazeh is listed by the UN as one of 18 critically endangered languages in the world, with only a few native speakers.
He said he is very disappointed at the government’s continual denial of the existence of the Pazeh Aboriginal people and their language, which belongs to the Austronesian linguistic family of the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asian regions.
Wang Pan, 81, has lived in Puli’s Ailan area for most of her life. The town is one of only three remaining towns in Taiwan with a native Pazeh population. There are only a few thousand Pazeh Aborigines left.
“I learned the Pazeh language during my childhood, but most of the time I spoke Hoklo [also known as Taiwanese]. This is because in those times Taiwanese society was prejudiced and looked down on us Pingpu Aborigines. Other people called us “fan” [番, a derogatory label for Aborigines]. Because of this discrimination, I did not learn our Pazeh language well,” she said.
She again started learning the language in 2007, when Pazeh elders organized weekly seminars and classes in order to preserve their culture, save their mother tongue from dying out and passing their customs on to the younger generations.
Due to her childhood familiarity with the language, Wang Pan advanced rapidly and became a Pazeh language teacher herself. She now presents classes to young people.
Wang Pan said the main reason for writing in Pazeh and competing for the ministry’s language awards is to make the government and the public aware of the Pazeh people’s determined efforts to revive their culture, and to save their dying language.
Pan Ying-chieh said that several members of their Pazeh community are writing literature, poems and narrative stories in the Pazeh language, using the romanized alphabet system that is used by all of Taiwan’s Aboriginal writers.
“This year we had five members eligible for the ministry’s awards for Aboriginal literature. We were excluded from participating last year, because the government does not recognize the existence of the Pazeh language,” Pan said.
He said the Pazeh Aborigines collectively applied to the Council of Indigenous Peoples in 2006 for restoration of their original “Indigenous” status, which they had held in the household registry system along with the Gaoshan, or highland Aborigine groups, during the Japanese colonial era and up to the 1950s during the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration.
“Despite our repeated efforts and lobbying the government, we are to this day still excluded and not recognized as an Aborigine group,” he said, “In any case, we will continue our efforts to save our Pazeh culture and language.”
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS