Two Pazeh Aboriginal writers were honored by the Ministry of Education with awards at an event in Hualien County on Friday for their efforts to revive and preserve their critically endangered language, which they said has been a very difficult task because the government does not officially recognize their people.
Award recipients Pan Ying-chieh (潘英傑) and Wang Pan Mei-yu (王潘美玉) are relatives from the Pazeh family clan, from the Ailan area (愛蘭) of Nantou County’s Puli (埔里).
Pazeh is one of Taiwan’s 10 Pingpu Aborigine groups, also known as lowland Aborigines. They say their language, culture and ethnic identity are disappearing because they are excluded from the benefits of official government recognition enjoyed by the nation’s 14 Aboriginal peoples.
Photo: Hua Meng-ching, Taipei Times
Pan Ying-chieh said the Pazeh family clans in Puli have organized an association to promote their culture and to resuscitate the language, with seminars and classes being held at the local Ailan Presbyterian Church on weekends and during holidays.
“Our people decided that we must do this, because our mother tongue is nearing extinction, with just a few elderly speakers still using the language. It is like a patient dying in a hospital emergency ward, with doctors and families trying their best to save its life,” he said.
Pan, 66, said Pazeh is listed by the UN as one of 18 critically endangered languages in the world, with only a few native speakers.
He said he is very disappointed at the government’s continual denial of the existence of the Pazeh Aboriginal people and their language, which belongs to the Austronesian linguistic family of the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asian regions.
Wang Pan, 81, has lived in Puli’s Ailan area for most of her life. The town is one of only three remaining towns in Taiwan with a native Pazeh population. There are only a few thousand Pazeh Aborigines left.
“I learned the Pazeh language during my childhood, but most of the time I spoke Hoklo [also known as Taiwanese]. This is because in those times Taiwanese society was prejudiced and looked down on us Pingpu Aborigines. Other people called us “fan” [番, a derogatory label for Aborigines]. Because of this discrimination, I did not learn our Pazeh language well,” she said.
She again started learning the language in 2007, when Pazeh elders organized weekly seminars and classes in order to preserve their culture, save their mother tongue from dying out and passing their customs on to the younger generations.
Due to her childhood familiarity with the language, Wang Pan advanced rapidly and became a Pazeh language teacher herself. She now presents classes to young people.
Wang Pan said the main reason for writing in Pazeh and competing for the ministry’s language awards is to make the government and the public aware of the Pazeh people’s determined efforts to revive their culture, and to save their dying language.
Pan Ying-chieh said that several members of their Pazeh community are writing literature, poems and narrative stories in the Pazeh language, using the romanized alphabet system that is used by all of Taiwan’s Aboriginal writers.
“This year we had five members eligible for the ministry’s awards for Aboriginal literature. We were excluded from participating last year, because the government does not recognize the existence of the Pazeh language,” Pan said.
He said the Pazeh Aborigines collectively applied to the Council of Indigenous Peoples in 2006 for restoration of their original “Indigenous” status, which they had held in the household registry system along with the Gaoshan, or highland Aborigine groups, during the Japanese colonial era and up to the 1950s during the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration.
“Despite our repeated efforts and lobbying the government, we are to this day still excluded and not recognized as an Aborigine group,” he said, “In any case, we will continue our efforts to save our Pazeh culture and language.”
Taiwan’s Liu Ming-i, right, who also goes by the name Ray Liu, poses with a Chinese Taipei flag after winning the gold medal in the men’s physique 170cm competition at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Asian Championship in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, yesterday.
Costa Rica sent a group of intelligence officials to Taiwan for a short-term training program, the first time the Central American country has done so since the countries ended official diplomatic relations in 2007, a Costa Rican media outlet reported last week. Five officials from the Costa Rican Directorate of Intelligence and Security last month spent 23 days in Taipei undergoing a series of training sessions focused on national security, La Nacion reported on Friday, quoting unnamed sources. The Costa Rican government has not confirmed the report. The Chinese embassy in Costa Rica protested the news, saying in a statement issued the same
A year-long renovation of Taipei’s Bangka Park (艋舺公園) began yesterday, as city workers fenced off the site and cleared out belongings left by homeless residents who had been living there. Despite protests from displaced residents, a city official defended the government’s relocation efforts, saying transitional housing has been offered. The renovation of the park in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), near Longshan Temple (龍山寺), began at 9am yesterday, as about 20 homeless people packed their belongings and left after being asked to move by city personnel. Among them was a 90-year-old woman surnamed Wang (王), who last week said that she had no plans
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
RSS