The Institute of Yilan County History is holding a special exhibition of historical documents, manuscripts, photographs and books tracing the Kavalan people’s struggle to gain official recognition.
The Kavalan began their struggle for recognition in 1987 and attained their goal in 2002, when the central government officially listed them as the 11th Aboriginal people of Taiwan, the institute said.
The word Kavalan, which means “flatland people,” historically referred to many Aboriginal peoples — the Kavalan, the Turuboan, the Qauqaut and the Pazeh-speaking groups of the Pingpu peoples — in the region now known as the Yilan Plain, the institute said.
Photo: Yu Ming-chin, Taipei Times
Since the 11th century, the Kavalan were the most numerous people on the Yilan Plain until they were displaced by Han colonists, who began migrating en masse to Taiwan in the mid-19th century, it said.
While some Kavalan Aborigines migrated within the Yilan region and became Sinicized, others traveled by boat and settled further afield in Hualien and Taitung, it said.
Using Han-centric colonial classification, successive regimes in Taiwan referred to the Kavalan as shengfan (生番), huafan (化番), shanhoushenhfan (山後生番), shoufan (熟番) and Pingpu, it said.
After World War II, the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government continued the use of those colonial categories by classifying Taiwanese Aborigines into nine state-recognized “tribes” — designated as plains or highland dwellers — which excluded the Pingpu peoples, such as the Kavalan, it said.
The special exhibition is a narration of the history of the Kavalan and their struggle for identity and recognition through archival materials, it said.
People visiting the exhibition and landmarks near the archeological site of the Kavalan settlement in Yilan County can post selfies on the institute’s Facebook page in exchange for an owl keychain made of banana tree fiber, it said.
Owls are a good omen in Kavalan mythology, the institute said.
The exhibition ends on Aug. 30.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods