National Aboriginal Day
National Aboriginal Day (June 21)
An interesting fact about me, Cat. I know, I am so full of myself! I LOVE talking about ME and my family! Especially my mother’s side. I come from a family of aborigines.
My family in Taiwan is very dear and important to me. They are some of the most wonderful people you will ever meet. They are native Taiwanese of Polynesian descent.
As a matter of fact, there is a movie about my tribe that came out in 2011, called “The Warriors of the Rainbow”. There was an incident in the early 1900s that almost destroyed my tribe because they decided to fight the Japanese to try to take their land back, knowing they may get wiped out. FYI, if you decide to watch this movie, they made it as real as they possibly could. They were built/trained to behead and it shows in the movie… with that said, lots of blood and lots of death. If you don’t like the sight of blood or detached heads, this is not a movie for you.
The tribe’s traditions have stopped or changed significantly since then. My great aunt, who passed in Sept of 2019, was about 113. The truth is nobody knows her actual age because the government started taking records of their existence when she was already in her 30s and they gave her a birth certificate in the wrong year, 1922. My mother believes she was 113 years old when she “crossed the rainbow”.
My great aunt was the last tribal member with the traditional face tattoo. They believed they needed this tradition to be able to cross the rainbow. Each person had to prove they could take care of their family and/or their tribe. For women, they had to prove they could clean, cook, and weave. Men had to prove they could provide food for the family and fight for their tribe. Once they prove it with action, they get a face tattoo and they are guaranteed the right of passage to cross the rainbow. My great aunt got hers at the age of 8. Because she was the last surviving tribal member with the traditional tattoo, she was a national treasure of Taiwan. There was a very big national funeral for her and all medical expenses were paid by the government.
I cannot remember exactly when, but in recent years, one of the governors took the stand to properly apologize to the tribe for the years of mistreatment from the city. In the eyes of the Chinese, they were savages and they treated them badly. Since then, my tribe has been getting many benefits, such as free education.
Top left is my great aunt (Yaki Lawa)
As a child, going into the village, which was deep and high in the mountains, was like a roller coaster ride and I loved it. We got into the bed of a tiny truck with wooden boards (long 2 x 10s) that were fastened down the sides of the truck for seats. Some of these trucks did not have covers and I always sat on the side so I could see the drop on the side of the mountain we were driving over. The dirt road was so narrow, that I couldn’t even see it from where I was sitting. Every so often there would be another vehicle heading in the opposite direction. One of the vehicles would have to reverse to a spot where there is sufficient space to pass the other.
Once we got to the village, my favorite place to play was in the rice paddies. The water, the tadpoles, the bugs, and everything else I found out there made it like a playground full of live toys! It was also gorgeous out there.
Now that the village is an attraction for tourists, the roads are made safer, the walls at the entrance to the village and inside the village have murals, and the rice paddies no longer exist. I don’t like the change, but it is amazing that my tribe is getting recognized and are finally getting some respect as human beings.
There is so much more to share, but this will turn into a book if I tried!
Happy National Aboriginal Day!
