24 Facts About Taiwanese aborigines

Each "civilizing" project defined the Taiwanese aborigines based on the "civilizer's" cultural understandings of difference and similarity, behavior, location, appearance and prior contact with other groups of people.

The current recognized Taiwanese aborigines are all regarded as Gaoshan, though the divisions are not and have never been based strictly on geographical location.

Particularly among the Plains Aborigines, as the degree of the "civilizing projects" increased during each successive regime, the Taiwanese aborigines found themselves in greater contact with outside cultures.

The ethnic identity of assimilated Plains Aboriginals in the immediate vicinity of Tainan was still known since a pure Hoklo Taiwanese aborigines girl was warned by her mother to stay away from them.

Hoklo Taiwanese aborigines has replaced Pazeh and driven it to near extinction.

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Indigenous Taiwanese aborigines are Austronesian peoples, with linguistic and genetic ties to other Austronesian ethnic groups, such as peoples of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar and Oceania.

From around 5000 to 1500 BC, Taiwanese aborigines started a seaborne migration to the island of Luzon in the Philippines, intermingling with the older Negrito populations of the islands.

The Qing authorities hoped to turn the Plains peoples into loyal subjects, and adopted the head and corvee taxes on the Taiwanese aborigines, which made the Plains Aborigines directly responsible for payment to the government yamen.

Japanese rule ended the practice by 1930, but some elder Taiwanese aborigines could recall firsthand the practice as late as 2003.

The resulting Japanese policy, published twenty years before the onset of their rule on Taiwan, cast Taiwanese aborigines as "vicious, violent and cruel" and concluded "this is a pitfall of the world; we must get rid of them all".

Japanese ethnographer Ino Kanori was charged with the task of surveying the entire population of Taiwanese aborigines, applying the first systematic study of aborigines on Taiwan.

The Japanese encouraged Taiwanese aborigines to maintain traditional costumes and selected customs that were not considered detrimental to society, but invested much time and money in efforts to eliminate traditions deemed unsavory by Japanese culture, including tattooing.

The Japanese colonial experience left an indelible mark on many older Taiwanese aborigines who maintained an admiration for the Japanese long after their departure in 1945.

Taiwanese aborigines first encountered the Nationalist government in 1946, when the Japanese village schools were replaced by schools of the KMT.

Much of the burden of educating the Taiwanese aborigines was undertaken by unqualified teachers, who could, at best, speak Mandarin and teach basic ideology.

In many districts Taiwanese aborigines tend to vote for the Kuomintang, to the point that the legislative seats allocated to the aborigines are popularly described as iron votes for the pan-blue coalition.

In 1988, amid the ATA's Return Our Land Movement, in which Taiwanese aborigines demanded the return of lands to the original inhabitants, the ATA sent its first representative to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.

In 2008, the number of legislative seats was cut in half to 113, of which Taiwanese aborigines are represented by six members, three each for lowland and highland peoples.

However the idea that Taiwanese aborigines Han are a hybrid population genetically different from Chinese Han has been used as a basis for Taiwanese aborigines independence from China.

Alak Akatuang, secretary of the Pingpu Indigenous Peoples Cultural Association, said that the pan-green camp used the indigenous peoples to create a national identity for Taiwan, but the idea that Taiwanese aborigines people are not overwhelmingly descended from Han settlers is false.

The economic disparity between the village and urban schools resulted in imposing many social barriers on Taiwanese aborigines, which prevent many from moving beyond vocational training.

The Taiwanese aborigines quickly formed bonds with other communities as they all had similar political motives to protect their collective needs as part of the labor force.

The Taiwanese aborigines became the most skilled iron-workers and construction teams on the island often selected to work on the most difficult projects.

Recent laws governing the employment of laborers from Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines have led to an increased atmosphere of xenophobia among urban Taiwanese aborigines, and encouraged the formulation of a pan-indigenous consciousness in the pursuit of political representation and protection.