Is anyone on this forum familiar with Taiwanese Aboriginal culture? I am particularly interested in learning more about the festivals they have.
but there’s more than one tribe in Taiwan, are you doing a research or just a personal interest? This link might prove useful : apc.gov.tw/main/index_en.jsp
And the museum : museum.org.tw/SYMM_en/index.htm
For a quick look at the culture, try (apart from googling) to visit the aboriginal cultural village at sun moon lake. Pretty nice hands-on experience in my opinion.
For the festivals, some even have festivals in Taipei - I remember on the CKS Memorial Hall Plaza there was a harvest festival of different tribes.
While many of the aborigine rituals may seem interesting and colorful, one seems particularly barbaric to me and that’s the traditional Puyuma monkey ritual (also known as “monkey piercing ritual”) for boys coming of age into hunters. Apparently it’s only done symbolically now, but at the museum at 2/28 park I saw photos and description of how they used to lock a monkey in a bamboo cage so the boys could stab it with bamboo spears, supposedly proving their manliness.
culture.tw/index.php?option= … Itemid=157
Or, according to this version, they capture the monkey and tie it to a tree for the boys to shoot arrows at it. 
books.google.com/books?id=ZAwwax … ny&f=false
Bear baiting anyone?
OP, there is an excellent book called I believe Austronesian Taiwan or something like that. Send a pm to the poster called wix. He’s doing a masters thesis on aboriginals in Taiwan at the moment.
Why is it barbaric? It wasn’t you they put in the cage. Up in Alishan with the tribe I live with some things are still done for real.
It’s only not for the squeamish pc crowd. This if from part of the Harvest Festival and wild boar are often slaughtered. In the old days in the war festivals they would simply lop of the head of any unlucky interloper nearby at the time. They don’t do that anymore but there is still a collection of skulls up in our Kuba. ( Chiefs meeting hut in the backgound of top photo ) where women, and tourists, are still banned
This is my son, Abo. We get some nice scenery up here too.
Why is it barbaric?[/quote]
Because it’s a trapped monkey being tortured by kids with sharp sticks.
Sounds like what English teachers do with students.
They torture those little kiddies with little sharpened sticks to write English.
They weren’t called savages for nothing, you know. Hunter gatherers survived by killing and traditions die hard. I’m pretty sure if they could just pop across the road to Wellcome or Mitsokoshi for a styrofoam packet of chicken, they’d be quite happy to do that. But they couldn’t, and a lot probably still can’t, but would if they could.
You want to teach an 8-year-old how to kill a monkey? Easy. Take him into the jungle again and again and again. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Time consuming business when you’re depending on that monkey for your next meal.
Alternatively, catch one or two and teach the kids how best to kill and butcher it.
Nothing barbaric about it that I can see.
Crowds of gawking tourists snapping pics of the whole business? Now THAT’S barbaric.
I happened to catched the film Everlasting Moments a few weeks ago a the Taipei Film Festival.
http://eng.taipeiff.org.tw/Film/FileIntro.aspx?id=405&subid=5300&filmID=374
It’s a somewhat fanciful film about the plight of mountain aboriginals, the Atayal specifically, in modern Taiwan. Production value wise don’t expect much (looks a bit hammish really …) but coming from the perspective of knowing almost nothing about Taiwanese aboriginals the film did make me think and be a little more conscious about the various peoples with whom we share this island.
B.
[quote=“Satellite TV”]Up in Alishan with the tribe I live with some things are still done for real.
It’s only not for the squeamish pc crowd. This if from part of the Harvest Festival and wild boar are often slaughtered. In the old days in the war festivals they would simply lop of the head of any unlucky interloper nearby at the time. They don’t do that anymore but there is still a collection of skulls up in our Kuba. ( Chiefs meeting hut in the backgound of top photo ) where women, and tourists, are still banned [/quote]
Which tribe is this? Tsou? I’ve never been to an aboriginal village that live up in the mountains, so I’ve always wondered what kind of housing they live in. Wooden or concrete? Visited a tribe in Nanshan last year, but apart from the primary school, most of the buildings were derelict concrete with very few signs of aboriginal culture.
(I hope with this I can move the discussion back to the original topic of aboriginal culture instead of animal rights.)
[quote=“Satellite TV”]
They don’t do that anymore but there is still a collection of skulls up in our Kuba. ( Chiefs meeting hut in the backgound of top photo ) where women, and tourists, are still banned…[/quote]
And I plan on keeping it that way, dammit!!!
[quote=“sandman”]They weren’t called savages for nothing, you know. Hunter gatherers survived by killing and traditions die hard. I’m pretty sure if they could just pop across the road to Wellcome or Mitsokoshi for a styrofoam packet of chicken, they’d be quite happy to do that. But they couldn’t, and a lot probably still can’t, but would if they could. You want to teach an 8-year-old how to kill a monkey? Easy. Take him into the jungle again and again and again. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Time consuming business when you’re depending on that monkey for your next meal. Alternatively, catch one or two and teach the kids how best to kill and butcher it. Nothing barbaric about it that I can see.
Crowds of gawking tourists snapping pics of the whole business? Now THAT’S barbaric.[/quote]
That’s why part of our festivals are closed off to tourists anyways. They perform made up dance shows for the tourists to earn an income at local toursits centers on the weekends.
Some things are just not for public tourist viewing because firstly they don’t understand the culture and then get all squeamish and pc about how savage those savages really are. Of course any tourist really insisting to come in and see whats going on just gets to leave their head behind when they leave.
“Our” festivals?
“What do you mean, ‘our’, white man?” 
You mean, traditional Aboriginal dance doesn’t really use synthesizers, drum machines and disco lights? 
“Our” festivals? “What do you mean, ‘our’, white man?” [/quote]
I mean our as in my wife and I. Do you think there are no aboriginals with white skin?
It is very well known that some of the Tsou Aboriginal have very white skin. My wife is one example her skin is whiter than mine.
I have also performed some of the tribal dances. At one of the festivals it is required for men to dance continuously from dusk to dawn, along with a lot of drinking. It’s good fun.
[quote=“sandman”][…]
Nothing barbaric about it that I can see.
Crowds of gawking tourists snapping pics of the whole business? Now THAT’S barbaric.[/quote]
Many people of higher class will “visit” exotic lands and native peoples. Though they often mean well, it’s almost a condescending and arrogant affair. If you have a neighbor who does things differently from you, do you stroll over, take pictures, and start asking them about their culture? Of course not. But for some reason it is “OK” to do that to indigenous peoples or local peoples of a region. Yet they were just living their normal lives and doing things they way the do them. It is just that the on-going marginalization of these people is forcing them to do things they normally wouldn’t do, in order to survive. These include things like immigration, prostitution, low-paid labor, assimilation, tourism, and more. In many cases, indigenous people are forced to, or tricked by government policies, to do things they wouldn’t normally do. Some of these newer changes can be beneficial monetarily, but aboriginal people in Taiwan and elsewhere need to pay close attention to the paths they take to survive as a society, because they are a lot more likely to disappear as distinct cultures and genes if they do not.
It is heartening to know that many groups are beginning to really work hard towards re-vitalizing their culture.
I hope the Han Taiwanese support this and abandon their close-minded aspects of Chinese-ness.
Many many Taiwanese, especially bendiren have aboriginal blood in them, it’s high time they appreciate and recognize that side of their ancestry.
Just my 
[quote]Many people of higher class[/quote] :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
Well, there’s the Saami people. And perhaps the Ainu, but that’s controversial.