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Memories sustaining battle against decline of Aboriginal cultural identity

In a valley of pristine bamboo and cypress trees, Yasa Tiehmu painstakingly adds tufts of red and yellow flowers to his painting of a slender, nude Aboriginal woman.

The woman has long black hair, which is strangely reminiscent of the surging waterfall in the background.

"That's a fellow tribal woman I once saw taking a hot-spring bath," Yasa says, leaning over a simple wooden table outside his red, tin-roofed home in Wulai (烏來), a village about 20km southwest of the Taipei suburb of Sindian (新店).

Wulai sits at the northern end of the towering Hsuehshan Mountain Range (雪山山脈), seat of the Atayal tribe, one of the nation's 12 aboriginal groups whose 430,000 members make up a little less than 2 percent of the population. There are about 60,000 Atayal.

With more of their number being assimilated into Taiwan's increasingly complex urban society all the time, the Aborigines have been fighting a battle to maintain a separate cultural identity.

It is this phenomenon that Yasa says his artistry is dedicated to reversing.

"I draw from memories," he says, leafing through his rich paintings of tribal people farming, weaving, fishing and courting under a moonlit sky.

"Our children barely speak the Atayal language. They look at my pictures and exclaim, `This was how we Aborigines looked in the old days.'"

not alone

But Yasa is not alone in seeking to preserve Atayal Aboriginal traditions.

Deeper in the mountains, Tiehmu Ayung and dozens of his neighbors are determined to keep tranquil Fushan Village (福山) isolated from the influences of a tourism center set up 20km away for visitors who want a look at Aboriginal lifestyles.

NO DIFFERENT

Outwardly, however, these Atayal Aborigines aren't that different anymore.

Their bamboo and wooden houses have mostly been replaced by concrete structures.

And with a large proportion of tribespeople migrating to Taipei and other cities around the country, the battle to retain cultural distinctiveness is becoming ever more difficult.

"Life is difficult here even if we do have a great natural environment," says Lin Chao-hui, a township official in Wulai.
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