Hundreds of Pingpu Aborigines representing several different tribes from across the country yesterday staged rallies at several locations, urging political leaders to grant them official recognition as Aborigines.
As they arrived at the offices of the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) and the presidential campaign or party headquarters of the People First Party (PFP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) they sang: “We are Pingpu Aborigines, we’ll never forget who we are, let’s stand up and remind them not to forget their great-great grandmas,” a line from the theme song behind the movement that they hope will see them gain official recognition.
The Pingpu are Aborigines who live in flat areas of the country. Because of a long history of contact and intermarriage with Han immigrants from China over the past four centuries, Pingpu culture, including language and identity, has been eroded.
In the song, the Pingpu said they wanted to remind people of their “great-great grandmas” because most of the early Han immigrants to Taiwan were men who married Pingpu women.
Research by Taipei-based McKay Memorial Hospital geneticist Mary Lin (林媽利) shows that at least 80 percent of non-Aborigines in Taiwan have genes from Austronesian peoples.
During the Japanese colonial period most Pingpu could still be identified and have their Aboriginal status noted on their household registration records. However, most lost official recognition of that status in the 1950s and early 1960s after the KMT regime moved to Taiwan as they failed to register their identity with the new government.
“It’s not our fault that we didn’t register our Aboriginal identity, it was because of administrative errors on the government’s part,” Tainan Pepo Siraya Culture Association chairwoman Uma Talavan said. “We Pingpu have lived in Taiwan for 500 to 6,000 years, it’s a fact, and we should not suffer for the government’s mistake.”
She said that in 1957, when the Taiwan Provincial Government asked people who were noted as Aborigines on their household registration cards from the Japanese colonial government to register their ethnic identity, “many Pingpu communities did not receive the official notice, even though we Sirayas have Aboriginal status marked on household registration cards.”
The Pingpu were received by CIP Planning Department Director Alang Manglavan, who only said the council would “respect the wishes of the Pingpu.”
At President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) re-election campaign -headquarters, campaign office Administrative Department deputy director Wu Kuo-sheng (吳國勝) said: “The only thing I can do is to take your petition to the Executive Yuan, since we’re only a campaign office and have no power.”
When asked if he could help arrange a meeting between the Pingpu and Ma, Wu said he could not give a definite answer.
The PFP and the DPP, on the other hand, responded much more positively to the Pingpu’ appeal.
“What happened to the Pingpu is certainly because of the government and what a responsible government would do is correct that mistake,” PFP spokesman Wu Kun-yu (吳崑玉) said. “If the PFP wins the presidential election, we would handle the issue through the executive branch, and if we don’t, we will help take care of it through the legislative branch.”
DPP Department of Aboriginal Affairs director Icyang Parod, who doubles as a New Taipei City (新北市) councilor, said the DPP was supportive of the Pingpu’ demands.
“In [DPP Chairperson] Tsai Ing-wen’s [蔡英文] 10-year policy guidelines, she clearly stated that the DPP supports Pingpu’ call for official Aboriginal recognition,” he said. “In fact, the CIP under the DPP had already started to push for Pingpu recognition by creating a special panel for it — although unfortunately the panel was suspended in 2008 when the KMT took office.”
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