"During last year's event, the visiting groups and least had a chance to tour the villages," said a local journalist covering the East Coast affairs. "This time the whole event is focused on Taitung City. This shift seems to indicate a great emphasis on tourism at the expense of any real interaction between tribal peoples."
"Workshops and such like would be much more beneficial," Vasekalan said.
Sitting around a bonfire late at night after the festival had wrapped up for the day, I listened to a heated discussion about what it meant to be Lukai, one of Taiwan's smaller tribes which has been all but swamped by the more numerous Paiwan.
The speaker was a young man, as indeed are many who are trying to re-create a sense of tribal identity, whether through clothing, tattoos, language or lifestyle. But for the moment, this seeking for identity seems essentially inward looking; the outward trappings were, like those seen on stage, almost discreditable by comparison, something tawdry that undermined the serious issue of who you were.
Through all the rifts and currents that the Festival of Austronesian Cultures brought to the surface, the excited, happy yet slightly anxious faces of dancers from a local vocational college, all decked out it their festival best, was enough to provide hope that Aboriginal culture in Taiwan, despite somewhat shallow events like this one, had an awful lot to look forward to.
For your information:
From today until Dec. 31 there will be dance performances by visiting Pacific Islander dance groups between 2pm and 4:30pm outside the National Museum of Prehistory. In the evening from 7:30pm to 9:30pm events will move to the Taitung Cultural Bureau Auditorium. In addition there will be displays of traditional tribal rituals and
various pottery and handicraft workshops. More information can be obtained at the Web site of the Taitung County Government at http://taitung.gov.tw or by calling the Tourism Bureau information hotline at tel (02) 2349-1635.
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