Residents of Siaolin Village in Kaohsiung yesterday visited the Shanlin District (杉林) Household Registration Office in the hope of registering their households with the annotation shou fan (熟番) to promote self-identification within the village.
Throughout the Qing Dynasty and the Japanese colonial period, the governments classified Aborigines into two types — those who had more contact with the Han migrants and were familiar with Han culture and those who were not — and distinguished them by adding the words shou (熟), or “civilized,” and sheng (生), “uncivilized,” respectively as their ethnicity.
The practice has been changed to adding the official names of the 16 government-recognized Aboriginal peoples.
The Pingpu, whose recognition as a separate ethnicity was removed in the 1960s, have been campaigning to reinstitute governmental recognition of their Aboriginal status.
Pingpu Aborigines are a number of Aboriginal communities that live mostly in the nation’s lowland regions, and whose cultures and languages are seriously threatened — some have already become extinct, while others are endangered.
Those who are aged 80 to 90 still have their Japanese colonial period identification with the annotation shou as their ethnicity.
Village resident Hsu Ta-chun (徐大駿) said that while members of the Bunun, Amis and Rukai peoples, and even the Kanakanavu people — who were recognized as official Aborigines last year — are able to be classified as Aborigines in the household registration system, the Pingpu are unable to do so.
Some in the village have no knowledge that they are actually descendants of Aborigines until they become adults, Hsu said, adding that they hope that the reinstatement of the annotation would help villagers consolidate their Aboriginal identity.
“We hope that by presenting our family trees we can persuade the government to add the annotated text,” Hsu said, adding that if they succeeded it would be one step toward the rectification of the status of the Pingpu.
Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) commented on the issue on Saturday last week, saying she would push for the legal recognition of Pingpu Aborigines as well as Aboriginal autonomy if she is elected president in January.
So far, the Tainan City Government is the only government institution that officially recognizes the Pingpu as Aborigines, while the central government has declined to grant them recognition.
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