Sing our songs on our Land!

  After studying a year in the department of Ethnology, I feel like I have known more about different ethnos in Taiwan. There are aboriginal people, Holo people, Hakka people, and new immigrants from other countries that consisted Taiwan's culture today. We discussed a lot of issues about ethnos nowadays and how to define an ethno. The questions such as: What's the traditions that can represent Holo people or Hakka people? What's the importance of a genealogical tree of your family? What can truly decide your ethno, blood or self identity? I have never learned and thought about these kind of questions before. There are no definite answers to these questions, but they make me think lot about myself, my family and my culture.

  Aboriginal people in Taiwan have been under the influence of dominant culture(the Han culture?), and are slowly losing their own distinguish traditions. However, nowadays the awareness of aboriginal people's self identifications are rising and some aboriginal people are speaking up for their own.
  Last weekend, I went to a mini concert of one of the aboriginal band-台玖線(Tai Nine Line), and they sang some songs about their tribe and sang in their own language. I really enjoyed their music, and their performance was very inspiring too. They encouraged people to sing in our native languages(such as Taiwanese, aboriginal languages), which is the most genuine ways to convey our feelings! I had a very spiritually satisfied night!