In Maori mythology, their ancestors lived in a land called Hawaiki before migrating across the Pacific Ocean and settling in Aotearoa, the Maori word for New Zealand.
Hawaiki’s location — and even its existence — is the subject of debate, but some scholars speculate that “Hawaiki” may actually refer to Taiwan. Now a new film, currently in pre-production and seeking fundraising, will explore what this academic theory means for young Maori and Taiwanese Aboriginal people in search of their roots.
Developed by the ATAYAL Organization, a non-profit, the film will follow a group of Maori students as they meet people of indigenous descent in Taiwan. Scheduled to be completed next January, Beyond Hawaiki still needs to raise 75 percent of its NT$13,886,700 budget.
Photo courtesy of Tony Coolidge and Tobie Openshaw
“What I would like to do is allow these students to interact with indigenous students, share their language and culture and look for similarities,” says ATAYAL Organization founder Tony Coolidge (陳華友).
Coolidge also hopes the film will increase exposure for the ATAYAL Organization’s Tap Root Cultural Exchange Program, which will bring together people from indigenous communities throughout the Austronesian region.
Raised in the US, Coolidge did not learn about his Atayal roots until his Taiwanese mother died in 1994. Coolidge’s quest to reconnect with his maternal family’s Aboriginal heritage — and find out why it had been hidden from him — was the subject of the 2010 documentary Voices in the Clouds (眾族同聲).
Photo courtesy of Tony Coolidge and Tobie Openshaw
While learning about his background, Coolidge also became fascinated with Maori culture and began to brainstorm ways to facilitate connections between Austronesian tribal groups.
“Learning about Austronesian theory made [that goal] even more concrete and gave it an academic foundation,” says Coolidge. “It’s more than just bringing tribes around the world together. It’s also an opportunity to create a family reunion.”
Coolidge and filmmaker Tobie Openshaw met with Maori students and potential “Beyond Hawaiki” subjects from the Auckland University of Technology when they traveled to New Zealand in July to attend the Wairoa Maori Film Festival.
During their trip, Openshaw filmed interviews with several young Maoris.
“I asked them what does being Maori actually mean to you personally? How do you straddle traditional culture with having to make your way in the world of today?” Openshaw says.
Openshaw plans to incorporate footage shot by the students, who have learned how to combine Maori storytelling traditions with digital filmmaking techniques, into “Beyond Hawaiki.” Some of the young people he interviewed said they became closer to their families while reconnecting with their heritage, but others were met with opposition when they decided to study Maori culture.
“There is this one guy who looks white. His father is white and his mother is Maori, and he had to overcome a whole bunch of things,” says Openshaw. “He said his father asked him ‘Why do you want to go do that nigger stuff for?’ His family grew up white and it was at a great personal sacrifice that he decided to go on a four-year Maori course.”
Beyond Hawaiki’s NT$13,886,700 fundraising goal will cover travel, production, marketing and legal expenses. A complete breakdown of the project’s budget is available at www.atayal.org/beyond-hawaiki.php. There will also be volunteer opportunities for people who want to participate in the making and distribution of the documentary.
Coolidge hopes Beyond Hawaiki will help the Tap Root Cultural Exchange Program expand.
“We’ll start with the Maori coming to Taiwan and bringing Taiwanese to New Zealand, and we will expand to new countries every year,” he says. “If all goes well, we’ll have a movie with each country added.”
Coolidge adds: “So many people in Taiwan have an Austronesian background and they don’t know it. I’m hoping that by creating an exchange between people, kids can see more opportunities for the future.”
■ For more information about Beyond Hawaiki and the Tap Root Cultural Exchange Program, visit www.atayal.org
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ!). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is