Passing the Baton: Displacement, Return, and Resettlement

The Pazeh legend has it that the people are descended from Maqiyowas, who came come down from heaven to settle and had offspring in the plains of central Taiwan. One day, a flood came and inundated the homeland of the Pazehs. Almost the entire village was killed except for Savung Kaisi and Vana Kaisi, a sister and brother who fled to the mountains and survived the disaster. A few days later, when the flood receded, the couple resettled in Fuluton (today’s Fengyuan in Taichung), got married, and had a daughter and son......

How much did you know about Taiwan Plains Indigenous Peoples at first? In the very beginning, my knowledge about them is zero, but now it has gone from zero to one......

When Daway returned to his family land in 2000, it was a wild jungle. It had been abandoned for quite a long time and was severely damaged by the floods in 1959. Daway initially wanted to come back here and live a simple, quiet life in the woods, so although he never received any landscape design training, he still put in much thought and effort to create a pleasant living space. Shortly after Daway returned to his hometown, and started to learn more about their language and culture. Eventually, Daway transformed this piece of land into the “Pinialay mupuzah Pazeh a reten” Cultural......

You have visited other Bunun communities before, how is this one different from the others? The Bunun communities I visited before also have a lot of vegetable gardens, but theirs don’t blend into the surroundings as well. Most of them are flat gardens tended by the elderly and surrounded by mountains. They are also very vast. The gardens I saw today are terraced fields in the woods......

The Taiwan Plains Indigenous Peoples were formerly known as “civilized aborigine” in the Qing dynasty and “Pingpu peoples” during the Japanese rule, respectively. Throughout their history, however, they have lived so close to the majority Non-indigenous people and were even assimilated into the mainstream society that they have lost their indigenousness, with their identity gradually fading from people's memories or being ignored intentionally. Yet the Pazeh people based in Ailan, Puli, are still striving to preserve their indigenous culture despite their cross-ethnic lifestyle.

What indigenous cuisine impressed you most? Cinavu is the most basic. There’s also Reeves's muntjac meat, flying rat, and wild greens. The Bunun people also have lots of bitter bean dishes and soups......