The tribal villages of Taiwan's nine aboriginal peoples, found in the mountains of Taiwan and outlying Orchid Island, hold an abundance of traditional culture. Tribal people, however, have seemed powerless to confront the changes history has brought. Ever more immersed in mainstream culture, they have witnessed the disappearance of their tribal cultures and seen their fellows leave their old homes for the modern society outside their tribal villages.

In recent years, tribal people who have entered that larger society have realized that if they don't actively try to seek out their roots, the culture of their own people will soon vanish.

Some of them go back to their tribal villages in the mountains or by the sea, and use Chinese where there was no writing to record their tribal epics. Their endeavors include searching for tribal histories, collecting and transcribing oral literature, researching ceremonies and investigating music and dance. And a group of aboriginal people in the cities is creating literature about their tribal communities.

Because writing is by its very nature a weapon of cultural sovereignty, using it in a tribe that had no written tradition to record the tribe's essence does two things: It helps the young to understand their tribe, with the expectation that they will be attracted to their heritage and pick up the torch, and it affects larger society, challenging some of the common stereotypes.

According to rough estimate, there are about 40 or 50 groups involved in making written records of the culture of these tribes. The Taiwan Aboriginal Culture Research Center is compiling data about their work from a detailed questionnaire they distributed.

Attention has been given to this issue already for some time. Sowed and nourished by tribal life, the seeds have sprouted and will grow tall and strong.

The sowers, who work both in the mountains and by the shore, have gradually gained influence. Among them, one was a key figure of street protests: Syman Rapongan. Now he has returned to the tribe and embraced the old ways, spending his days with the flying fish.

The call of the flying fish: More than four years ago, Rapongan flew back to his village of Hungtou on Orchid Island in the Pacific Ocean. Today, wearing a diving suit, he emerges out of the water with several big fish in his hands. The people of the tribe gathered around cannot help but compliment him. Accompanying him home, one sees a string of dried fish hanging in his doorway and a lantern made out of fish scales hanging inside. From this scene, you can probably already tell that he is a changed man. Now 37, Rapongan graduated from the French Department of Tamkang University and was once a major figure in the anti-nuclear movement. What made him come back? His parents are elderly and he is their only son, and he found himself longing for the tribe and the ocean. Then there was the contemptible environment of Taipei. And so he came back to teach at Orchid Island Junior High four years ago.

Having studied and lived on the outside for 17 years, he found himself alienated from tribal life. When he first came back, he discovered that his knowledge of the tribe was very superficial. And the tribal people looked upon him as one of those who return "with a face turned always to Taiwan." This hurt him very much. When he talked to the people of his tribe about opposing nuclear waste storage and about fighting for their rights, he discovered that he wasn't being given the respect he thought he deserved.

Then he slowly came to understand that with the Yami's "flying fish culture," a man's value and position in society was based on whether or not he was accepted by the sea and whether or not he could support his family through his own labors. Though he had a position at the junior high school and abundant experience, he didn't have any of the productive skills that an adult should have, and so little weight was given to what he said.

And so he worked hard to change, learning from his fellow tribesmen how to make boats, row, dive into the water and spear fish. With good stamina, in just two years he could dive more than ten meters underwater, spear fish accurately and select the right ones to be taken. He finally obtained the approval of the tribe.

Pride of the solitary fisherman: He remembers the first night he went out fishing alone. He nabbed some 70 flying fish in all and also some common dolphins. The people of the tribe all said he had done very well. He remembers how people made room for him to pass as he walked by them the next day. "What an honor!"

Often, he would grab his fishing gear and go to the shore upon returning home from school. As a result, fresh fish was always on his dinner table, even in winter.

After coming back and living for more than 4 years among his tribe, which has no writing of its own, he discovered the reasons behind many of their legends, myths and taboos, and so he recorded interviews with the elders of the tribe and published them in a book, Myths of Patai Bay.

He says his former poetry and essays just reflected on the hardships of adjusting to a new environment. In comparison to the legends passed down from their ancestors, its content lacked all of the joy and sweetness of life. For example at the beginning of June, after the Yami have netted the flying fish, they hold a ceremony of prayer for them. It overwhelmed him.

Spirits of the flying fish,

You are the spring of life for the Yami.

The tribe holds this rite for you.

So that this season next year.

Will be like those of the past,

And you will jump into our nets

And fill the bellies of our boats. And if they catch a big fish, they sing in praise:

When the fish on the line is tired,

The rod stands up straight,

Then springs back on the rocks.

The gods of heaven are rowing for us.

How easy and delightful.

If Rapongan is the flying fish of the Yamis, then Chiu Chin-shih--or Auvini as he is known to the people of Haocha Village in Wutai of Pintung County--is the Cloud Leopard of the Rukai.

The cloud leopard's den: Auvini's work is multi-faceted, and it mainly involves publishing newspaper articles about his interviews and research, which focus on traditional customs, tribal history, myths, legends, taboos, etc.

He has discovered rules that anthropologists overlooked governing how the Haocha people placed their dead in their own homes. For example, men who died from natural causes were buried in front of the central pillar, whereas women were placed beneath a platform by the window.

The burial site for those who committed suicide was behind the pillar and to the left. Those who died in accidents needed a special road back to the tribe, and their bodies are passed inside through the windows and placed at the back, right by the firewood. They believed that those who have not died naturally are not qualified to be buried with those who have, a belief that seems to impart a lesson. The dead are bent at the knees with a straight back and then wrapped in cloth. A knot is tied behind the neck, and their right palm is extended upward, meaning "please use the right hand to bless one's family." After placing the body in a grave two meters beneath the house's stone floor, filling the hole with dirt, and replacing the stones as snugly as possible, the eldest son or another relative would then unroll a straw mat over the grave and sleep there for 20 days.

"The dead weren't lonely, because they were separated from the living by only one stone," Auvini says.

His other main task has been to prod the people of the clan to return to the ancient Haocha sites.

Legend has it that when the ancestors of the Rukai were hunting with their sacred cloud leopard, they got to the ancient site of Haocha and the leopard would simply go no farther. The lay of the land made it a strategic spot that was easily defended, and with a waterfall and lake behind it, there was no fear of lacking water. It's just too bad that 12 years ago when the entire village moved down to the plains, their old village was left abandoned, its streets and gardens weed choked and its stone walls toppled. Auvini has been calling for a return to the old village.

Though now a key figure in the "return to historic Haocha Village" movement, he used to earn a high income as an accountant before taking the bold step to rejoin the tribe. More than just coming back to live among his people, at the beginning of this year he lead some of the tribal elders back to Old Haocha, where they restored six residences, including the home of the famous sculptor Li Ta-gu.

Now Auvini spends most of his time on the mountain, living the traditional hunter's life. Unless it is absolutely necessary, he rarely comes down. His meager income comes from occasional writing fees.

In August of this year, Auvini took two children and an old man to old Haocha, where they performed the harvest ceremony according to the ancient ways. Although few pay attention to such matters, he believes that the people of his tribe will in time give him their support, and he hopes that he can enlarge the ceremony next year.

The symbolic meaning of "tribe": If you mention the harvest or new year's festivals of the nine tribes, most people will have a stereotyped impression of a night spent singing, dancing, and drinking but will know nothing of their background or of how these unique cultural phenomena were distilled over time from tribal experience.

Besides the harvest festival, the nine tribes performed many different ceremonies, including the planting, fighting, head hunting, praying for rain, end of rain, short spirit and five years ceremonies. Their content is obvious from their names.

It's just too bad that the success churches had converting the heathen in the 1950s has combined with government policy to bring an end to these traditional ceremonies.

Various ceremonial rites, music and dance have been lost along with them. Now all that's left is a modernized version of the harvest festival, held for reasons of tourism and politics.

Still, with the younger generation living so far from their tribal homelands, it's better than nothing. Perhaps the music, dance and rituals of the festival will strengthen their feelings for their own culture and perhaps even spur interest in returning to the tribe.

Hu Tai-li, a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology at the Academia Sinica, often makes calls for the relevant government units to plan "harvest festival holidays" for each of the tribes, allowing the aboriginal people living in the cities to return to their tribal lands and be reunited with their people at least once a year.

The ploy to use the harvest festival to spark tribal people's interest in their own tribal ceremonies has seemed to work. In order to perform the songs and dances of the tribal harvest festivals, 11 young people from different tribes have formed the "Formosa Aboriginal Dance Troupe." They have gone to each of the tribes, studied their ceremonial music and dance, and then got up on stage to perform both in Taiwan and abroad.

From thought to action: But there are people who harbor doubts about this type of performance. Does it really benefit the tribes? "It definitely helps them," says Chiang Hsien-tao, a member of the troupe. He remembers last year when they were in Pingtung, performing a work by Lu Sen-pao, a master of the Puyuma tribe. Not only was he moved deeply himself, but he could see that many Puyuma people in the audience were in tears. "If there are emotions, there will be a reaction," Chiang observes.

Ethnologist Ming Li-kou, who has been responsible for producing the "Taiwan Native Peoples Dance Series" for four years running, points out that he does his best to give whatever tribe he is working with complete autonomy so that the people of the tribe work together to put on the most representative music and dance.

"Doing things in this way will strengthen the tribe's togetherness, so that they will go on by themselves to probe the deepest levels of their culture," Ming says. The eight main clans of the Puyuma tribe have all founded their own cultural associations, which look for subjects suitable for music and dance that will reveal the special features of the tribe.

Taking even more direct steps, many tribal people have begun instructing the younger generation in the traditional songs and dances. Eyiyusu Poitsonu, who is the director of curriculum at the Tapang Elementary School in Alishan Rural Township of Chiayi County, came back home to work after graduating from Kaohsiung's Normal College.

Concerned about the loss of his people's cultural legacy, he gathered together traditional folk songs and began to instruct elementary school students in singing them, even those welcoming and sending off the gods in the Mayasui--or war ceremony. When those unable to chant the traditional tribal songs hear that even little children can sing these difficult holy songs in their native tongue, they react in a variety of different ways and gain confidence in their own culture.

But because none of the tribes have writing, it is hard to pass along the legacy. When Eyiyusu is recording traditional songs, he often runs into difficulties. He exhausts himself trying to understand many of the old phrases.

Word of mouth: Without writing, traditional taboos, ceremonies, knowledge, concepts, songs, myths, etc., must all be spread by word of mouth, and hence orally transmitted literature is one of a tribe's greatest treasures. If not given its due in today's fast changing society, the stories of the mountains will return to the wild and those of the sea to the ocean depths when the older generation passes away.

Fortunately, many native people are engaged in the recording of traditional oral literature. Take, for example, Eyiyusu's older brother Pasuea Poitsonu, who teaches at Tamkang University. By making comparisons between stories he has recorded himself and those collected in the 1915 "Investigation Report on the Aboriginal Tribes," he has discovered that "the Tsao tribe's oral descriptions are still quite complete," he says. "With this opportunity for comparison, you can be certain of the accuracy of this oral literature."

With the past educational system, the native languages did lose ground, with the result that much of their traditional culture was lost too. Field researchers fear most to hear that some elder has passed away, for each is a treasure trove of information.

So that the tribal languages will not die, the schools in the tribal areas are all proceeding with classes in the Native Languages. But teaching the mother tongue needs a supportive environment. Sun Ta-chuan, a Puyuma who teaches at Soochow University, says if the mother tongue really needs to be taught in the schools, it means that the battle has already been lost.

Although none of the nine tribes have writing, they rely on experience for passing on the vocabulary of daily living. Language is one of the links in the cultural chain, and learning depends on the environment. If a tribal language is spoken all around, it will naturally be passed along.

At the scene of a mother tongue competition in the mountains, one can see how the participants stammer and stutter when trying to make sentences. The scene helps to show how a mother tongue cannot be learned at school.

With the tribal languages are in difficult straits, young intellectuals of the tribes are using Chinese writing to try to preserve their traditional culture. Already there has been much work in the field, and 20 or 30 volumes have been published on the topic. Monthly Magazines include Walis Yugan's The Hunting Culture and Chung Kuei-chung's Aboriginal Past. Sun Ta-chuan is the editor-in-chief of the bi-monthly Taiwan Indigenous Voice, whose first issue, all 156 pages of it, came out in November.

The emotions of the tribe: Sun Ta-chuan has discovered in the course of his writing that because the education he received was not of Puyuma culture, his work can only capture a part of the tribal mood. When he comes back to the tribal lands, tribal seniors say,"What you talk and write about doesn't seem to be ours." And so he often reflects on how he can really return to the tribe and get to the heart of what he is writing about.

But can he find the special character of his tribe through his own creations? It is a problem hard to overcome.

Sun Ta-chuan thinks of it as transferring tribal culture into a written form so that others can enjoy it--just as those born after Li Pai's death can still enjoy his poetry.

With an understanding of how people have mixed together around the world throughout history, he says that at Taiwan's current stage--with the tribal cultures largely lost and the mother tongues unable to be passed down as before--"one must use the power of Chinese to ensure the survival of each of the tribal languages in a different form."

He also points to the strength of mainstream culture in monopolizing the media. The larger its share, the less space is available for the tribes. Sun Ta-chuan has resolved to erect a stage for performances by the tribes, so that all of them can use the space to reveal to the general public the essence of their culture and the knowledge of their ancestors.

"It's convenient that right now there is a group of writers in their thirties and forties with excellent command of Chinese but still conversant in their mother tongues, who are able to combine these two languages in their work to try to distinguish between the experiences of different peoples. There ought to be even more room for them to make the most of their talents, or else it will be even harder for the next generation," Sun Ta-chuan says.

Historical realities that are impossible to forget: "While the 'aboriginal literature' movement may have come after the Han Chinese 'native soil' movement, future historians of Taiwan's literature will not be able to overlook it."

The stories of the tribes are slowly being told, the tribal people slowly understood, and the value of their art slowly recognized. In the future, as more people return to their tribes, these seeds, planted with such toil, will sprout, blossom and bear fruit.

(text and photos by Cheng Yuan-ching/tr. by Jona than Barnard)