Language revival efforts bring new life to Paiwan community

Piuma lies nestled in the foothills at the southernmost end of Taiwan’s Central Mountain Range. (Photo by June Tsai)

By June Tsai


Preschool children resplendent in traditional attire attracted attention at the annual harvest celebration of the indigenous Paiwan people in Pingtung County’s Taiwu Township Aug. 15 as they sang fluently in the Paiwan language together with tribal elders.

This group of old and young hailing from Piuma, a village of 700, took first prize in the singing competition. The children’s ability to match their vuvus, or grandparents, note for note was something that took many in the audience by surprise.

“The language gap between generations is huge,” said Gincu Kuvangasan, a teacher at Piuma’s only day care-cum-kindergarten. “Young parents don’t speak Paiwan with their kids, and vuvus, who mostly speak only the tribal language, must try to communicate with their grandchildren in Mandarin Chinese they learned from TV.”

Things began to change in November 2008 when the community day care center was established thanks to a training program initiated by the Council of Indigenous Peoples. The day care gradually evolved into a more ambitious kindergarten where the Paiwan language is used as much as possible.

The brain behind the kindergarten language-immersion project is Tjuplang Ruvaniao, an urban-educated Piuma villager who returned home in 2006, after years of working in the big city.

The village faces many kinds of social problems, from a lack of care resources to high unemployment and economic setbacks, according to Ruvaniao, who now serves as secretary-general of the Piuma Community Development Association.

“When the association started to operate, we found care issues to be particularly serious, with village elders, children and students all needing some kind of attention,” she said.

To address the problem, the association began by founding the day care center for village children aged between 2 and 6.

“There are virtually no jobs here, unemployment among men has increased and parents cannot afford to send their children to public kindergartens in nearby towns, let alone more expensive private ones,” Ruvaniao said.

Located in the village, which is about a 40-minute drive from the nearest towns, the preschool has proven to be a godsend to parents. “The care service helps mothers find and keep jobs, for extra money or as the family’s only breadwinner.”

Enrollment in the center has risen from the initial 17 to 30 this year.

The idea to institute a preschool program taught in Paiwan grew out of work with tribal elders, Ruvaniao said.

“The association organizes weekly group activities and health checks for elders, when they are engaged in discussion on community affairs,” she said. “After listening to them I felt what concerned them most was the gradual loss of tribal memory and culture.”

Piuma was originally located high in the southern part of Taiwan’s Central Mountains, near Dawu Mountain. Its remote location made access to health care and education difficult, resulting in outward migration that prompted the villagers to negotiate a land exchange deal with the government, Ruvaniao recounted.

In 1968, the village resettled at its current location to the southwest, nestled in the foothills close to the flatlands of Wanluan Township. Memories of the arduous resettlement have contributed to tight community ties and a strong sense of mission among elders to preserve tribal heritage, Ruvaniao said.

This historical context made the initiation of an all-Paiwan curriculum in the preschool highly relevant. “It has reignited the group’s interest in heritage and preservation,” she said.

Kuvangasan, who taught for nearly 20 years at kindergartens in urban areas, answered the village’s call and came home to lead the preschool. Under her guidance and through consultations with elders, pupils have learned vocabulary and expressions that even their parents do not know.

“In the beginning, classes entirely in Paiwan made the young children very anxious,” Kuvangasan said. They refused to come to school, suddenly needed diapers again and resorted to physical rather than oral communication with each other.

Within six months, however, they had adjusted. Kuvangasan made mixed use of Paiwan and Mandarin, and captured the children’s attention with knowledge about tribal festivals, plants and insects, and arts and architecture, all of which could be seen in the local area. She taught them traditional songs and others she made up herself to help familiarize the children with what they were learning.

Another important step was involving elders and other village members, using the fields of millet, taro and peanuts as classrooms, where the children learned about agricultural work and the meaning of harvest and sharing.

“The effects of such classes went beyond anything we’d expected, as we saw a 90-year-old vuvu shed joyful tears when she heard children sing and talk to her in Paiwan,” Ruvaniao said.

In this way the kindergarten has even contributed to the association’s senior care efforts. “Seeing village children speak the tribal language has given the old people great spiritual and psychological comfort,” she said.

The children’s progress affected parents and young teachers as well, helping them reclaim their half-abandoned mother tongue. Kao Yu-en, another teacher, said, “We are learning along with them to speak the language, which we understand but have trouble speaking.”

Even some families who had moved out of the village sent their children to the preschool.

“I prefer aboriginal education to the regular kindergarten operated according to urban standards, because the way my child is taken care of here in Piuma reminds me of my childhood, when the whole village was our school,” said Zepul Lajuganivun, who works at the Piuma Cafe, the village’s restaurant and informal information center.

But before long the preschool program ran into administrative hurdles. The Ministry of the Interior found irregularities with the kindergarten’s facilities and faculty, and in April 2009 it lost its financial support.

In other aboriginal villages, similar day care centers had to close down when their financial support was cancelled, and teachers got no pay. The Piuma preschool managed to stay open for four months with backing from the community association.

Then, fortunately, an experimental program proposed by the CIP was approved, which will keep the kindergarten in operation until the end of 2012.

“We hope by then the government will have really recognized the different situation in aboriginal villages, and their special needs for child and senior care,” Ruvaniao said.

She stressed that aboriginal communities should be allowed more flexibility in terms of laws and regulations. “For instance, our problem is less with teachers lacking government-recognized certificates than with the lack of faculty who can speak Paiwan.”

All in all, the kindergarten has played a pivotal role in keeping the village and its community spirit alive. It has also proven to be a source of a sense of security for parents, and hope for preservation of the culture for elders, according to Ruvaniao.

“Over the years, children brought up in their own language and culture will have confidence in themselves as they know where their roots are,” she said.

This article first appeared in online Taiwan Today Sept. 18, 2011.

Improving Taiwan’s end-of-life care

By June Tsai

In July, a Taiwanese anesthetist, a terminal cancer patient, had a party to bid farewell to her family and friends.

News on this “living funeral” and the participants’ openness to death amazed readers in a society where talk of death is customarily avoided. The tendency to shun such communication has also hampered the advancement of end-of-life measures including palliative care, life support withdrawal and do-not-resuscitate orders.

In the face of this cultural taboo, hospice care began to develop in Taiwan thanks to the efforts of a group of medical professionals dedicated to ensuring that terminally ill patients get the best care possible, without overtreatment.

Mackay Memorial Hospital formed a palliative care team of physicians and nurses focusing on patients with terminal cancer in 1987, and in 1990 the hospital built Taiwan’s first hospice, with eight beds, according to Fan Chun-kai, a psycho-oncologist who served chairman of Taiwan Hospice Organization for four years.

Also in 1990, a foundation was set up to cover necessary costs because hospice care was not yet recognized by the country’s National Health Insurance system, Fan said. The Taiwan Hospice Organization was established in 1995 to promote related practices, and as more and more practitioners were involved, professional associations of physicians and nurses were also founded.

At Mackay, palliative care was also integrated with other wards, bringing physicians from different specialties together with social workers to support patients not in the hospice ward. This collaborative model has spread to other hospitals as well.

Department of Health tallies show 37 hospitals nationwide now provide hospice care, and 64 offer at-home palliative care services. More than 7,000 patients get in-hospital palliative care each year, representing 15 percent of all terminally ill cancer patients. Overall, an estimated 13,000 cancer patients—not necessarily incurably ill—receive this services annually, in hospices, regular hospital wards or at home.

Cancer has been the leading cause of death in Taiwan since 1982, and in 2006 NHI began to cover hospice care for cancer patients. By January 2011, 39 percent of terminally ill cancer patients had received palliative care services.

Although this coverage represents progress and is higher than that in other countries, it did not reach the DOH’s goal of 50 percent by 2010, Fan said. Clearly, more work is needed to promote the concept of hospice care as helping patients face death with dignity.

“People often see the hospice as a place to await death, but it actually adds something more to their care with specialists attending to their physical, psychological and spiritual needs, rather than leaving them at death’s mercy,” said Sandy Chang, head nurse of Mackay’s hospice ward.

Hospice care also benefits patients and their families by helping them look at death as part of life. “Without support, survivors may collapse following the death of a loved one due to the sorrow and stress of long-term care giving,” she said

“But it has been rewarding that family members of our patients would return to our hospice department as volunteers, hoping to pass on their experience of accompanying loved ones on the path to death,” she said.

While palliative care can help both patients and their families deal with death, families may still face agonizing decisions—and controversy—when the patient experiences a life-threatening medical emergency or is in a coma.

The Hospice and Palliative Care Act, first passed in 2000, gave citizens the right to complete a DNR and assign durable power of attorney.

The law was named in a compromise, according to Chao Co-shi, a professor at National Cheng Kung University’s College of Medicine. “Legislators wanted to avoid negative public sentiments to expressions such as death, end-of-life and terminal patients.”

“But the important thing was that patients, their families and doctors now had legal recourse for action,” said Chao, an expert in the ethics of health care and member of ethics committees at several hospitals. “It is the natural and legal duty of doctors to save lives, but to prolong a patient’s life at any cost only incurs more pain for the patient. A DNR order helps doctors do what they can to save a life, rather than prolong the process of dying.”

The statute as originally passed allowed the withholding of cardiopulmonary resuscitation when the patient has been diagnosed as terminally ill by at least two physicians and a signed DNR order exists. Family members of a comatose patient could authorize the order, and a 2002 amendment permitted them to authorize withdrawal of life support under the two conditions above.

The latest revision, effective from January 2011, further stipulates that in the absence of any advance health-care directive, durable power of attorney or family agreement, life support can be discontinued with the unanimous written consent of a patient’s spouse and immediate family members, plus the approval of the hospital’s medical ethics committee.

Despite the provisions of the law, however, maximum treatment without regard for efficacy or benefit to the patient is still the norm, Chao argues. This is due to the prevailing view that not using CPR or life support is equivalent to abandoning the patient, along with the fear that insufficient treatment will lead to death.

“There was a case in which the patient, whose limbs were blackened and distorted by poor circulation, smelled rotten immediately after he was removed from the extracorporeal membrane oxygenator (ECOMO),” Chao said.

In other cases, “intrusive treatment with tracheostomy tubes, nasogastric tubes or catheters only inflicts pains, while seeing all those tubes coming out of the body of an unconscious patient can cause grief for family members too,” she said.

Besides inflicting pain, life support for the terminally ill is costly, Chao said, citing statistics showing that only 26 percent of ECOMO treatments are successful, and prolong the average patient’s life only 30 days, at a cost of NT$4.75 million (US$165,000).

For families, of course, the decision to withdraw life support may still be very difficult, even when patients have expressed the desire not to have their lives prolonged. In such cases, hospice advocates agree that family meetings convened by the hospital may help resolve the dilemma.

Hospital ethics committees must also do more as consultants and educators to help families and doctors make ethical choices, Chao said.

According to an informal poll by Chao, very few hospitals have pulled the plug on terminal patients. Instead of following the procedures outlined in the act, hospitals simply maintain life support, or, fearing litigation, ask families that insist on withdrawing life support to sign an against-medical advice-discharge form.

Change has also been slow to come with regard to extending life artificially in emergency situations. Only 52,000 people have signed DNR orders and had it noted on their NHI cards, according to the health authorities.

Thus although Taiwan is the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to have a law recognizing the validity of a citizen’s advance health-care directive, there is still a long road ahead before dignified end-of-life care becomes the norm, Chao noted.

This article first appeared in Taiwan Today in Aug. 7, 2011.

Seediq artists make fashionable heritage

Leather-made notebook by Awi Tuman.



By June Tsai

Their tradition of tattooing their faces was banned by the Japanese colonizers of Taiwan in the early half of the 20th century. Their tradition of weaving has been under threat because of capitalism and the industrialization of society. And yet the Seediq people have managed to preserve their ancestral customs, while introducing creative ideas to adapt to changing times.

Lidu Lumu, a Seediq artisan from central Taiwan’s Nantou County, said her ambition is to create a popular brand for her products, which she makes using old weaving instruments and by drawing on traditional Seediq totems.

“I believe our tribe’s unique weaving art has the potential to shine in the world,” she said.

In the last few years the Seediq tribe has certainly made a comeback. For most of the last seven decades, ever since the Kuomintang arrived in Taiwan in the late 1940s, the Seediq were wrongly classified as a subgroup of the Atayal tribe, to make it easier to administer them. The long-awaited recognition finally came in April 2008, when the Seediq were officially listed as Taiwan’s 14th indigenous group.

Recently the tribe has become much better known not only in Taiwan, but throughout the world, thanks to the epic film “The Rainbow Warriors: Seediq Bale,” which has already been nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Due for commercial release in Taiwan this September, the movie tells the story of the people’s famous revolt in 1930 against the Japanese colonial rulers.

As the group’s history is gaining publicity, Seediq arts and crafts, which could play a critical role in the cultural industry, are attracting new attention. Yet this prominence is only possible because Seediq artists have been quietly honing their skills since long before all the recent attention.

Lidu Lumu is one of the few younger women able to weave in the old way. “Weaving was considered a very important part of a woman’s virtue, and girls were expected to master it before they were married. But now you won’t find even a few women my age who know how to do it,” the 45-year-old said.

“People don’t like to learn traditional weaving because it’s really demanding,” said Lidu Lumu, who, with the support of her husband, started learning weaving from the tribe’s elderly women when she was 25.

With an “ubun,” a wooden loom, weavers have to sit in an L shape on the ground for an extended period of time, she said. Moreover, traditional Seediq weaving involves cultivating ramie, processing its fiber for spinning and making the brittle material into cloth.

It took Lidu Lumu five years to gain the whole set of skills. Then she set out to learn sewing, patchwork and design by participating in classes outside of the tribal village.

“Traditional patterns are somewhat limited and dull in color, and when I blended them with Japanese cotton, leather or patchwork art, they had greater market appeal,” she said.

To promote her works as a market brand, Lidu Lumu opened a studio in her hometown in the 1990s. Her work began to win prizes in design competitions, and was recognized as one of the best 100 souvenirs representing Taiwan in 2008. They can now be purchased in airports and museums of indigenous culture.

Though she has brought new elements into the tribe’s weaving art, Lidu Lumu sticks to handmade cloth and the diamond shape, which has a special significance to the Seediq. “Blending old and new to create fashionable appeal to customers is how I want more people to learn of the Seediq’s cultural assets,” she said.

Tradition has also inspired Awi Tumun, who like Lidu Lumu lives in Nantou’s Renai Township. His craft is applying the face-tattooing art onto leather.

“The importance of face-tattooing can never be underestimated, as it is recognition of a woman’s weaving skills and a man’s hunting prowess as well as his ability to protect the weak,” said Awi Tumun in his workshop.

In tattooing, he added, one can trace the Gaga, or the set of rules that guides the tribe in their life and activities.

Leather, which is close to skin color, is the medium that allows him to carry out his tattooing work, which provides an introduction to the Gaga, Awi Tuman said.

The 47-year-old began his career as a photographer for a wedding organizer. “I took photos throughout Nantou, and observed the gradual loss of elders with face tattoos, as well as the increased mixture of people of different ethnicities.”

From this experience, Awi Tumun decided he would try to preserve the Seediq tradition. He visited elders to learn the tribe’s sagas, arts and crafts, such as weaving and rattan ware making. Having also tried painting, stone sculpting and pottery making, Awi Tumun resorted to leather around 10 years ago.

Some of his works are for decoration, but most of them are for use, such as pocketbooks, stationary, wallets and handbags. They feature aboriginal totems or images of tribal people. The carved lines and warm colors appear to be conveying a message to onlookers.

In one portrait, a somewhat disproportionally enlarged bamboo earring on a man in profile attracts the viewer’s attention.

“Bamboo means the land,” he said. “In the course of their migration, our ancestors used bamboo to carry millet seeds, which they would spread on the ground to test its fertility, to help them decide whether to settle down there.”

Only after having learned of the customs of the Seediq can one really appreciate his leather sculpting, according to Awi Tumun. “I want my works to first tell a story about the culture before they are seen as a commodity.”

Awi Tumun believes leather is the proper means for him to reach the market. “I can apply my ability in sculpting and painting,” he said. “And the end product is durable and lightweight, and has a trendy feel.”

Married to a Paiwan wife, Awi Tumun also incorporates cross-cultural elements into his works. He sometimes produces leather work inscribed with totems of other tribes. “Creativity makes sense here only when you approach the elements with respect and proper knowledge of their underlying cultural meaning.”

Unlike Lidu Lumu’s products, the only place to buy the works of Awi Tumun is at his atelier. Its name, Alan Sapah Meepah, means “your home in the tribe.”

Customers interested in his works must go visit the village. The reason for this, he said, is to encourage prospective buyers to acquire firsthand knowledge of the work’s origins. “You will find out that it’s here you get the unique Seediq culture and its best elements,” he said.

Both artists believe in innovation to create market opportunities and a lively community economy, yet their greater concern is the sustainability of the indigenous heritage.

Lidu Lumu is worried less about factory-made copies taking the place of her popular leather-textile shoulder bags than the disappearance of the hand-weaving tradition.

“I have taught younger women the techniques, but my students, unable to sustain the hardships and rigors, have dropped out of class,” she said. Now she is thinking about proposing collaboration projects with vocational schools.

Awi Tumun would like his studio to play an educational role. The studio has become a place where village children like to drop by and play around, acquiring knowledge about their own culture through his works, he said.

“In the past, the tribal village was like our school, where we learned our customs and language from elders. But it is not so for today’s children, who receive a compulsory modern education,” Awi Tumun said.

“I hope the studio and our works will make our culture more accessible to them, so that the culture does not become something that can be found only in museums.”

This article first appeared in online Taiwan Today Aug. 26, 2011.