The publication of a book tracing the Aboriginal rights movement from the 1980s is a breakthrough, as Aborigines are often overlooked in studies of Taiwanese history, Academia Historica President Chang Yen-hsien (張炎憲) said yesterday.
Chang made the remarks during a press conference in Taipei to launch a two-volume book on Aboriginal history published by the Academia Historica and the Council of Indigenous Peoples.
Entitled A Collection of Historical Documents in Taiwan's Aboriginal Movement (
Through pictures, original manuscripts, newspaper clippings, maps and personal accounts from Aboriginal movement leaders, the book guides readers through major events in the Aboriginal movement from 1983 through 2002, when President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) confirmed a "new partnership agreement," paving the way for future Aboriginal autonomy.
"With this book we have challenged the Han-centric view that Taiwanese history is only 400-years old," Chang told the news conference.
"Aborigines lived in Taiwan before the Han people migrated from China; and long before the Aborigines, there were people who lived on this land but left only some traces and remains that we have discovered through archeological findings," he said.
Chang said that the Aboriginal rights movement was often overlooked in the study of political and social movements in the 1980s, adding that "we really need to pay more attention to it."
A member of the audience surnamed Lo (
Lo said he spent 24 years as a political prisoner during five decades of authoritarian rule under Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) authoritarian rule.
"I had many cellmates who were Aborigines and their stories should have been recorded as well," Lo said.
Chang agreed, but said it would have taken too much time to include everything, but he promised to try and record earlier history in future publications.
Lyiking Yuma, a former activist, urged the public to continue making history.
"This publication is by no means the end of our struggle -- we must continue to write our history," she said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not