About
naicow’ay ko puna iso? “Where is your umbilical cord?” Pangcah/Amis elders would ask this.
The place of birth is the direction connecting one to maternal culture and the earth, a guide for tracing back to one’s inner origins.
Beneath the tropical almond trees, elders gently adjust the fine vines in the sea breeze, aligning warp and weft to weave an exquisite rice sieve. Residents along Taiwan Provincial Highway 11 on the east coast slowly weave their regional environment, life experiences, and perspectives into their cultural history over time, forming an intricately interwoven cultural tapestry. The five tribes and three ethnic groups of Fengbin Township each possess distinct characteristics, yet they collectively strive to restore lost cultural elements, ensuring lives no longer drift rootless.
The “Mipaliw Creative Action for Regeneration Project” initiative unfolds through numerous sub-projects. Elders recount past uses of materials, their narratives transformed into maps identifying local cultural resources. Artists collaborate with tribes to experimentally explore traditional material applications. Different communities participate in art workshops and the creation of traditional story picture books, narrating the timelessness of each life moment. Tribal crafts and rituals are documented, and diligent people meet across diverse spaces. Time and again, the active participation of tribal members demonstrates that culture is unfolding and being created in the present. They inherit traditional culture while beginning to translate and innovate with a contemporary perspective—and we are fortunate to be part of it.
Most tribal members do not hold what we would consider fixed, single occupations. Many live as slashers—embracing multiple identities and skills. These abilities are largely cultivated through life skills imparted by traditional tribal education: navigating mountains and seas, weaving and spinning, singing and dancing. Their environmental knowledge rivals that of urban experts.The tribe’s concept of employability is primarily transmitted through apprenticeship, relying heavily on oral or hands-on instruction. There are no other forms of documentation, such as written records or visual archives, to preserve this knowledge. Faced with rapidly shifting values, if the younger generation does not learn and carry on these traditions, this precious knowledge and wisdom will gradually fade away with the passing of the elders. Through elders’ oral accounts, we learn that traditional tribal life’s approach to the environment, its foundational principles and models for regeneration, uniquely align with the government’s community revitalization policies emphasizing a “people-centered” philosophy. This underscores the critical importance of preserving traditional knowledge and culture as the lifeblood sustaining tribal communities.
Revitalization must return to the tribe’s own origins—the patterns and attitudes of traditional life—to seek individually tailored roles. The assembly-line structures and market-driven industrial definitions we once recognized no longer meet the needs of contemporary society. All beginnings must return to the individual, re-examining how to unlock or trigger personal creative potential—this becomes the critical key to developing revitalization industries. In other words, to empower local residents with proactive, self-directed creative production (self-formation), understanding the historical context of traditional cultural crafts, artisans’ techniques, and cultural thinking is now an urgent foundational necessity.
From the perspectives of art and artistic creation, we contemplate the potential for future creative industries in local and regional development. Artists sharing their creative expertise and tribal trainees sharing traditional skills or unique cultural mindsets can better highlight or guide the possibilities for the evolution, renewal, and innovation of tribal culture. This allows tribal residents to enter a state of creation or make it a habitual part of their lives, embarking on a journey from discovering local DNA to activating local DNA.