Taiwanese aborigines

Nationwide RecognizedTaiwanese indigenous peoples or formerly Taiwanese aborigines, Formosan people, Austronesian Taiwanese or Gāoshān people, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, who number almost 530,000 or 2.3% of the island's population—or more than 800,000 people, considering the potential recognition of Taiwanese plain indigenous peoples officially in the future. Recent research suggests their ancestors may have been living on Taiwan for approximately 5,500 years in relative isolation before a major Han immigration from mainland China began in the 17th century. Taiwanese aborigines are Austronesian peoples, with linguistic and genetic ties to other Austronesian people. Related ethnic groups include Polynesians, most people of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, among others.AfricaAsiaEuropeNorth AmericaOceaniaSouth America Taiwanese indigenous peoples or formerly Taiwanese aborigines, Formosan people, Austronesian Taiwanese or Gāoshān people, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, who number almost 530,000 or 2.3% of the island's population—or more than 800,000 people, considering the potential recognition of Taiwanese plain indigenous peoples officially in the future. Recent research suggests their ancestors may have been living on Taiwan for approximately 5,500 years in relative isolation before a major Han immigration from mainland China began in the 17th century. Taiwanese aborigines are Austronesian peoples, with linguistic and genetic ties to other Austronesian people. Related ethnic groups include Polynesians, most people of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, among others. For centuries, Taiwan's aboriginal inhabitants experienced economic competition and military conflict with a series of colonising newcomers. Centralised government policies designed to foster language shift and cultural assimilation, as well as continued contact with the colonisers through trade, intermarriage and other intercultural processes, have resulted in varying degrees of language death and loss of original cultural identity. For example, of the approximately 26 known languages of the Taiwanese aborigines (collectively referred to as the Formosan languages), at least ten are now extinct, five are moribund and several are to some degree endangered. These languages are of unique historical significance, since most historical linguists consider Taiwan to be the original homeland of the Austronesian language family. Taiwan's Austronesian speakers were formerly distributed over much of the island's rugged Central Mountain Range and were concentrated in villages along the alluvial plains. The bulk of contemporary Taiwanese aborigines now live in the mountains and in cities. The indigenous peoples of Taiwan have economic and social deficiencies, including a high unemployment rate and substandard education. Since the early 1980s, many aboriginal groups have been actively seeking a higher degree of political self-determination and economic development. The revival of ethnic pride is expressed in many ways by aborigines, including the incorporation of elements of their culture into commercially successful pop music. Efforts are under way in indigenous communities to revive traditional cultural practices and preserve their traditional languages. The Austronesian Cultural Festival in Taitung City is one means by which community members promote aboriginal culture. In addition, several aboriginal communities have become extensively involved in the tourism and ecotourism industries with the goal of achieving increased economic self-reliance and preserving their culture. For most of their recorded history, Taiwanese aborigines have been defined by the agents of different Confucian, Christian and Nationalist 'civilizing' projects, with a variety of aims. Each 'civilizing' project defined the aborigines based on the 'civilizer''s cultural understandings of difference and similarity, behavior, location, appearance and prior contact with other groups of people. Taxonomies imposed by colonizing forces divided the aborigines into named subgroups, referred to as 'tribes'. These divisions did not always correspond to distinctions drawn by the aborigines themselves. However, the categories have become so firmly established in government and popular discourse over time that they have become de facto distinctions, serving to shape in part today's political discourse within the Republic of China (ROC), and affecting Taiwan's policies regarding indigenous peoples. The Han sailor, Chen Di, in his Record of the Eastern Seas (1603), identifies the indigenous people of Taiwan as simply 'Eastern Savages' (東番; Dongfan), while the Dutch referred to Taiwan's original inhabitants as 'Indians' or 'blacks', based on their prior colonial experience in what is currently Indonesia. Beginning nearly a century later, as the rule of the Qing Empire expanded over wider groups of people, writers and gazetteers recast their descriptions away from reflecting degree of acculturation, and toward a system that defined the aborigines relative to their submission or hostility to Qing rule. Qing used the term 'raw/wild/uncivilized' (生番) to define those people who had not submitted to Qing rule, and 'cooked/tamed/civilized' (熟番) for those who had pledged their allegiance through their payment of a head tax. According to the standards of the Qianlong Emperor and successive regimes, the epithet 'cooked' was synonymous with having assimilated to Han cultural norms, and living as a subject of the Empire, but it retained a pejorative designation to signify the perceived cultural lacking of the non-Han people. This designation reflected the prevailing idea that anyone could be civilized/tamed by adopting Confucian social norms. As the Qing consolidated their power over the plains and struggled to enter the mountains in the late 19th century, the terms Pingpu (平埔族; Píngpǔzú; 'Plains peoples') and Gaoshan (高山族; Gāoshānzú; 'High Mountain peoples') were used interchangeably with the epithets 'civilized' and 'uncivilized'. During Japanese rule (1895–1945), anthropologists from Japan maintained the binary classification. In 1900 they incorporated it into their own colonial project by employing the term Peipo (平埔) for the 'civilized tribes', and creating a category of 'recognized tribes' for the aborigines who had formerly been called 'uncivilized'. The Musha incident of 1930 led to many changes in aboriginal policy, and the Japanese government began referring to them as Takasago-zoku (高砂族). The latter group included the Atayal, Bunun, Tsou, Saisiat, Paiwan, Puyuma, and Amis peoples. The Tao (Yami) and Rukai were added later, for a total of nine recognized peoples. During the early period of Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) rule the terms Shandi Tongbao (山地同胞) 'mountain compatriots' and Pingdi Tongbao (平地同胞) 'plains compatriots' were invented, to remove the presumed taint of Japanese influence and reflect the place of Taiwan's indigenous people in the Chinese Nationalist state. The KMT later adopted the use of all the earlier Japanese groupings except Peipo. Despite recent changes in the field of anthropology and a shift in government objectives, the Pingpu and Gaoshan labels in use today maintain the form given by the Qing to reflect aborigines' acculturation to Han culture. The current recognized aborigines are all regarded as Gaoshan, though the divisions are not and have never been based strictly on geographical location. The Amis, Saisiat, Tao and Kavalan are all traditionally Eastern Plains cultures. The distinction between Pingpu and Gaoshan people continues to affect Taiwan's policies regarding indigenous peoples, and their ability to participate effectively in government.