Aboriginal filmmaker — and independent legislative candidate — Mayaw Biho, along with several other Aboriginal singers and youths, yesterday urged Aborigines to give up Chinese names and revert to tribal names, starting with their Facebook names.
Showing their national ID cards with transliterations of their Aboriginal names in Chinese characters, Mayaw along with fellow Amis Panai Kusui, Sumay Kacaw, Ado’ Kalitaing Pacidal, who are all singers, and Lisin Haluwey — a student at National Dong Hwa University — told a press conference in Taipei that they are Taiwanese Aborigines, and called on all Aborigines to drop their Chinese names and readopt their Aboriginal names.
Although Aborigines have been legally allowed to use their tribal names as their official names since 1995, only about 20,000 out of Taiwan’s half a million Aborigines have used tribal names on official documents.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Before 1995, Aborigines were required by law to use Chinese family and given names.
“Not many people changed their names, because when they want to do so, they often have to go through a complicated process at local household registration offices, and could face discrimination from non-Aborigines in the country,” Mayaw told reporters.
“Sometimes Aborigines are just too busy to go to the household registration office to change their names, which would have to be followed by a long process of name-changing on all official documents,” he said.
All traditional tribal names have important cultural significance and could serve as a bridge between the person and the history, culture, and traditions of their tribe, Mayaw said.
He also encouraged Aborigines to demand that the place names of sites in traditional Aboriginal domains in Taiwan be converted back into their traditional Aboriginal names.
“If you don’t have time, or have some difficulties in changing back to your tribal names officially, why don’t you start by changing your screen name on Facebook or other social networking sites?” Mayaw said.
“This is a way for people around you to get used to your tribal names and, when the public gets used to it, the discrimination would disappear,” he said.
Lisin said that before officially changing her name, she had been pondering the questions “who am I?” and “what kind of person do I want to become?”
“Since I was little, my Aboriginal identity was a source of discrimination against me, and I always tried to hide my identity until entering the university’s College of Indigenous Studies,” she said.
“After entering college and having increased contact with Aboriginal communities, I gradually became proud of who I am, and decided to officially give up my Chinese name and readopt my tribal name because I want people to know who I am before they even get to know me,” Lisin said.
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:
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater