Pingtung County plans to allocate more funding to assist local organizers and support activities for Makatao festivals this year to preserve the indigenous group’s culture and traditions, Pingtung County Government officials said.
The increased budgets would help elders and young people pass down and preserve traditional knowledge within Makatao communities, who reside mainly in the county’s rural villages, Pingtung County cultural affairs official Lee Ming-chung (李明忠) said on Thursday last week.
Subsidies are to be allocated to cultural research and field studies, and to record and publish Makatao histories, Lee said after attending the Makatao’s Gabulong Night Festival in Pingtung’s Wanluan Township (萬巒) on Feb. 5.
Photo: Jason Pan, Taipei Times
Pingtung County Commissioner Chou Chun-mi (周春米) has pledged to boost funding and expand the programs, Makatao elder Pan An-chuan (潘安全) cited Lee as saying.
The funding would also help the organization of the other two major Makatao cultural events this year — the night festivals in Neipu Township’s (內埔) Laopi Village (老埤) and Gaoshu Township’s (高樹) Ganabo Village (加蚋埔), Pan said.
“It is important to keep our Makatao culture and rituals alive, to teach to our young people so they can pass our traditions and identity to future generations,” Pan said.
“Makatao people, with our Austronesian language and culture, are the original inhabitants, living for thousands of years on Pingtung’s plains and coastal areas,” he added.
The Makatao hold the night festival on the 15th day of first month of the lunar calendar to celebrate the start of the new year.
Village elders have taken part in the tradition, following their ancestors, despite suppression and forced assimilation by the Japanese and the Han Chinese colonial regimes, Pan said.
The Gabulong Night Festival this year took place at the Temple of Immortal Maidens, whose creation myth the Makatao re-enact with the Tale of the Sacred Egg (仙蛋傳奇), which involves a ceremony and ritual dances led by female shamans.
The rituals seek a divine blessing from the maidens, and for timely rain to fall so that farms produce a bountiful harvest, Pan said.
Food offerings to the deities this year consisted of three slaughtered hogs laid in front of the temple, along with traditional Makatao dishes of rice cakes, sweet snacks, yams, clusters of betel nuts, sliced pork, fruit, meat and rice dumplings, and homemade liquor made from a year-long fermentation of glutinous rice, Pan said.
The shamans and Makatao elders invited participants and visitors to drink the liquor from bowls and cups for blessings and good luck for the coming year, Pan said.
Ritual processions and activities occurred throughout the evening as part of the Makatao and other Pingpu traditional celebrations known as night festivals.
Participants were invited to eat traditional rice dishes together, Pan said, adding that the Makatao do not allow visitors to remain hungry.
The Makatao in Pingtung County and the Siraya in Tainan County are among Taiwan’s major Pingpu groups, also known as plains aborigines, along with other groups such as the Ketagalan, Pazeh, Kaxabu, Papora, Taokas, Tavorlong, Hoanya, Babuza and other groups that continue their drive for official recognition as Taiwanese indigenous people.
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