Talk:Taiwanese indigenous peoples/Archive 1

message: The current map is fair-use-only. Could someone recreate it as a GFDL or PD map? – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 15:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: right|350px|An other map showing Taiwanese aborigines
...Han immigration in the 1600s.
:Should that really link the decade of the 1600s, or should it be 17th century? --Brion 09:22 Oct 21, 2002 (UTC)
I put the plains up today and I'll throw a bit up on current tribes and government policy later, I'm trying not to be too long winded with this subject, but it is tricky to give a meaningful explaination.
This all gets so complicated. I just discussed a few details with Dr. Paul J.K. Li, a historical linguist, who pointed out that the people of central Taiwan are predominantly the descendents of Hakka who lost their language and all records of being Hakka after mixing with the Pazeh who also chose Hakka names and lineage books.
:: It's only complicated if you try to fit it within the 
simplistic ideas of ethnicity that are part of modernism.  The truth is that like the rest of the world, if you chart out the genetic lineage of Taiwanese, you'll find that everyone has been intermarrying everyone else, and that ethnic identity labels are ephemerial and socially constructed.
-- Roadrunner
-----
Changed some of the wording.
First of all, all signs do not point to the creation of a separate non-Chinese identity.  
Second of all, I don't know of any current supporter of Chinese reunification on either the Mainland or Taiwan that sees the interest in aboriginal affairs as an effort to split the nation.
--Roadrunner
"Today, most tribes that the Republic of China (ROC) recognizes are concentrated in the highland mountains of Taiwan".  That has not been true for at least a decade.  A large population has been living and working in the cities for years.  "Second generations" (if not beyond) have been born and raised there.  A-giau 21:12, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Prologue

message: "Little was known about Taiwan's highland aborigines until European and American explorers and missionaries began seeking out the mountain tribes in the 19th and early 20th centuries."
: By whom?  Obviously the highland aborigines knew about themselves.  See Edward Said's Orientalism.  A-giau 21:22, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Avoid the passive voice if possible 

message: The current list of tribes used ROC official recognition is confusing for they mixed the high land tribes with the plane tribes. Therefore I suggest that they should get rearranged according into the high land and plane tribes. I also removed the Arikun and Lloa from the list since these two were actually same tribe called  Arikun Lloa in an earlier classification which was later classified as Hoanya. 
*Classification of the plane tribes--Mandarin
Mababa 04:43, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: List of Tribes/Plane Tribes

message: *Data links early settlers to African diaspora
Mababa 05:42, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Externals might be useful

message: Proponents say this is without any consideration for the socio-contextual value headhunting played in many societies on Taiwan.  Er... proponents of headhunting? Mark1 09:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:   Proponents say .... 

message: http://61.31.195.133/ethnic/modules/xcgal/albums/ethnic/realname/cover/realname_cover-back.jpg
– Kaihsu 18:52, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming convention 

message: The Chinese characters that served to clarify some of the romanizations were deleted by another editor. I put them back. S/he deleted them again with the note: "This is English Wikipedia."  I do not see any reason to be offended by the presence of written forms of another language in an English encyclopedia article. The object of adding characters should be to be helpful to those readers who may wonder what is going on. Romanizations may represent a "dialect" of Chinese with which a reader is not familiar.  The characters do not get in the way and they do not cost money. 
And, if you are set on being a language purist, why not remove all of the Chinese characters?  Why stop there? Remove the Chinese romanizations too, since this is not an article in Chinese and not an article about Chinese?  P0M 06:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Calm down. I'll ask some other people what they think. Personally, I just don't see why this is necessary. Most people going to English Wikipedia can't read Chinese, so how is that helpful? The characters also look like they get in the way. --Khoikhoi 08:49, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I must agree with the deleter. Chinese characters, as a rule, don't belong in the main bodies of articles beyond the opening sentence, unless the article is on that subject. The article gives meanings and romanizations, so there is really no need. Wikipedia has a clear policy on this subject, and to include characters unnecessarily like this goes against it. elvenscout742 09:30, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree I find the characters in understanding the names given in the article but that's my opinion. Abstrakt 01:18, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I also disagree with deleting Chinese characters. Regardless of whether someone knows Chinese or not, they might be doing research with the Chinese words in front of them and be able to compare them to the Chinese words in wikipedia. There have been so many romanization systems used for Chinese over the last 500 years. Its important to have a standard... the original Chinese... especially for people or place names or special titles or phrases that might not on their own deserve an article. Mike 22:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Too many were added however. It's fine if you just a have few in the article, but with too many they just get in the way and make it harder to read the article. --Khoikhoi 23:23, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  deletion of Chinese characters from the article 

message: Re: "The undocumented 'displacement scenario', which claims Taiwan's aborigines immigrated to the mountains, becoming 'Gaoshan', "
And also: "Contrary to the popular misconception that the Pingpu tribes, under pressure from Han immigrants, fled to the mountains becoming Gaoshan tribes, documented facts show that the majority of plains people remained on the plains, intermarried immigrants from Fujian, and adopted a Han identity, where they remain today..."
This is certainly true of a very large number of Pingpu individuals. It is also certainly the position of Shepherd (1993). However, the first quote above is one of a few statements in this article (and related ones) that have the air of flat assertions. I'm concerned that some of these assertions may gloss over areas that are or may be subject to debate within academia, or that simply may not be as cut-and-dried as the text might lead one to believe.
E.g., some Siraya speakers in the Tainan area relocated to the mountains due to an influx of Chinese (Tsuchida and Yamada 1991:1-10).
[I do see the word "majority" above]. I realize that semantically this leaves open the possibility that a nontrivial minority of Taiwanese aborigines may have escaped or been forcibly relocated to the mountains, or met some other fate (see below). However, it seems to me that the wording might lead the casual reader to infer that none of these are true to any meaningful degree. It seems a tad bit less than transparent.
In this particular case, has a broad consensus coalesced around Shepherd's position? What about this use of the word "undocumented".. is it a bit strong, in this case? Is there significant scholarly debate of this point? More to the point, can we come up with enough contrary evidence that we should modify the above to warrant saying that "some/many" escaped or were driven or relocated to the mountains, and "some/many" were killed outright in warfare with the Han Chinese?
I also acknowledge that those last words may be politically sensitive. Please accept my apologies. However, I'm only in pursuit of accuracy and clarity.
Ling.Nut 03:57, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "driven into mountains"? 

message: All of the changes I've made so far are to the topmost section, above the List of Peoples (in fact, above the discussion of "raw" and "cooked" etc.). As time permits, I hope to check many other details etc. I'm more of a linguist than an anthropologist, however, and many details are way outside my area of familiarity.
Ling.Nut 16:57, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Major changes 

message: I have some suggestions for re-organization that I'd like to offer for discusion. If no one objects, I'll do them myself as time permits (unless others  want to change things themselves). Here they are:
# Creation of a relatively brief  "Migrations and Forced Relocations" section. Several details sprinkled throughout the article would be moved here from their currect position. Also, some counter-opinions would be offered. The section heading is long, but the distinction seems germane.
# Creation of a "Recognized Peoples" section of text to go along with the excellent list already in place. Again, this would mainly involve moving several details sprinkled throughout the article from their currect position. The section will also include discussion of non-recognized peoples. However, I thought the section heading "Recognized and Non-recognized Peoples" would be clumsy. The existence of Recognized Peoples seems to imply that there are others who are not... Done (Renamed "List of peoples" section; moved some info into new section. See discussion topic below)Ling.Nut 19:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested Changes 

message: All these changes were made to "History of Aboriginal Peoples"
# Deleted the entire section, after moving major portions of it to other sections.
# Deleted the following sentence, not because it is not useful, but because at the moment I am not sure where to put it. Besides, it was the last sentence left after all other changes: "The Dutch, Japanese, and Chinese supply the earliest records of aboriginal life on Taiwan."
# Moved the "According to the Taiwan government..." paragraph to the (newly-renamed) "Recognized Peoples" section.
# Deleted these sentences about Formosan languages: It is believed that the Austronesian languages and cultures originated on Taiwan roughly 6,000 years ago due to a lengthy split from its root in southern Asia. Linguistic evidence shows a greater diversity of languages on Taiwan than other Austronesian speaking areas. Linguists also note earlier linguistic separations that mark the earliest settlements. I believe this is good info, but it needs to be on the "Formosan Languages" page. Also needs relevant citations.
# Moved "This theory has been strengthened by recent studies in human population genetics" to the paragraph about Formosan languages.
# Deleted the following sentences: "In 1697, Yu Yong-he (???) arrived in Taiwan to procure sulfur. His account of aboriginal settlements along the western plain and in the Taipei basin is an invaluable source of information." I believe this info is of interest only to scholars, who can find the relevant source for themselves. However, I did not delete the Yu Yong-he source from the References section. Someone may use it.
# Moved this sentence to the European section "The Dutch East India Company (VOC) included details of their encounters with peoples on the western plain as well as peoples from the south and southeast."
Ling.Nut 19:00, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes to "History of Aboriginal Peoples" 

message: It broke my heart after making so many changes to it, but I strongly feel that the fairly detailed paragraph regarding Formosan languages should be moved to the article on that topic. Note that this involves moving not only my own additions, but also some sentences that were here from an earlier contributor. I know this may be objectionable to some, but to me it seems necessary.
I would also like to copy/paste the remaining sentences on Formosan languages to that page. However, I need to research the relevant Wiki copyright rules.
But see the next section, on Maori etc. This delays the move of info to the Formosan Languages pages just a bit.
Ling.Nut 19:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed "Formosan languages" paragraph 

message: I just noticed this topic far above, and the discussion of its sources.. Not sure, but it looks like maybe the three embedded citations that were used to support info about Formosan Languages may instead have been the correct cites for the sentence about Polynesian and Maori origins. In other words, correct citation, but placed on wrong sentence?
Now I'm afraid to move those citations the "formosan languages" page. I will research this. I will move the correct info to the Formosan languages page this week, as soon as time permits.
Ling.Nut 20:12, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revisit: Polynesian and Maori origins 

message: Ling.Nut is doing some excellent long-overdue work cleaning up this page. I had long planned on doing something similar myself, but never had time. I know it is scary to mess with what other people have written, but I feel that Ling.Nut is doing a careful job and I hope previous contributors will be supportive of his/her efforts! kerim 05:52, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thanks to [[User:Ling.Nut|Ling.Nut]]! 

message: I'm not sure about this sentence: Among today's twelve officially recognized peoples, the Kavalan are the only plains aboriginal group that has received tribal status. The remaining eleven are traditionally regarded as mountain aboriginals.
I believe the Thao are traditionally considered a Plains tribe as well.
Ling.Nut 14:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thao are plains... 

message: I'd like to suggest replacing the current outline-style list of tribes with the folowing navbox, which closely mimics the "Taiwanese aborigines" template:
The rationale for using this instead of simply inserting the relevant template is that the template has a link to the "Taiwanese aborigines" page, but this would be on that page. In other words, the page would contain a link to itself.
The benefits (in my opinion) of the navbox: looks cleaner/neater. Takes up far less vertical real estate on the page.
The principal drawbacks: we lose the alternate names and (perhaps more importantly) the Chinese characters.
Ling.Nut 19:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  question: navbox for list of tribes yes/no? 

message: Now I see why something felt out of place in the original structure. The Plains & Mountain sections seem to be all history -- they are not sisters to the "Modern days" section. They should be placed beneath a "History of Aboriginal Peoples" section -- but earlier, IIRC, they were all sisters.[I'm in a bit of a rush so no time to check the history of the Wiki page].
I'm going to put up some bare-bones changes to re-align things. Much that's now in the intro will be moved to a new "History of Aboriginal Peoples" section. i can't finish it today, so it will look ... unfinished.
Ling.Nut 14:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "History of Aboriginal Peoples" 

message: The biggest loss of info thru replacing the outline with a navbox, in my opinion, is the loss of Chinese chars for tribal names. However, I went to the subpage for each of the tribes listed. The majority of these subpages contain the Chinese chars. The only ones that do not: Siraya, Tsou, Basay & Ketagalan.
I do not have Chinese fonts, and am not sure if I try to cut/paste that it will work. They will look like ?? on my screen whether my cut/paste works or not. These chars can be recovered thru the history of this article.
Also, the Truku page needs to note that Seediq is another name for Truku (with some debate as to which refers ro the peope and which to the language, or if they both apply, etc etc etc). I can do that, but again, am not sure if I can include the Chinese chars (which can be found in the history of this article).
Ling.Nut 16:18, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Info lost due to navbox ("recognized peoples") 

message: I added two sections "Assimilation" and "Plains and Mountain tribes." This was done by collecting info from other sections, and making only trivial changes to text.
Ling.Nut 16:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added two new sections; no loss of info 

message: deleted:
"Later research has found major errors in his classifications as Atayal means "I/me" and the Yami actually call themselves Tao, as yami in the Tao language means "we/us". The Paiwan were originally called Ruval and Batsul, a term they also applied to the Rukai. The Puyuma are named after the town of Beinan rather than an actual tribal name."
I think these could be moved to the articles for those individual tribes, after verification.
Ling.Nut 23:28, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  deleted from "highland tribes" 

message: deleted:
"The Dutch were also in search of gold and endeavored to cause the Puyuma people to lead them to the source of the island's gold. The Puyuma led the Dutch 80Km to the Kavalan Plain where trace amounts of the mineral could be panned from stream beds. This account is confirmed by both Dutch accounts and Puyuma oral tradition."
Seems interesting but kinda incidental.
Ling.Nut 23:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  deleted from Euro period 

message: Much reorganization but little or no textual change, except deleted the word "undocumented" from the migration section. I really think that to say something is "undocumented" is a very strong claim. I've seen articles that refer to tribes escaping to the mtns. I plan to research this issue.
Ling.Nut 23:57, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  added 2 subsections "migration to highlands" & "Japanese Rule" 

message: # I really think the Qing section needs reworking. This was the time of powerful, overwhelming changes for the western plains tribes, due to assimilation (both voluntary and forced). The info in this section, while interesting, doesn't give any idea of the sweep of change that took place.
# The Spanish deserve at least a paragraph in the Euro. section.
# The Ming deserve even more. The Han immigration that became a deluge under the Qing dynasty actually started in the Ming; as well as the deliberate sinicization of the aborigines through Confucian education.
# Neither the Japanese nor the Kuomintang sections discuss forced relocation of entire villages. Is this a politically sensitive topic??
# I still think a paragraph here and there can be deleted from some of the longer sections. After a week or two I'll take a fresh look at it.
Ling.Nut 15:38, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  95% done; some suggestions 

message: Deleted paragraph about how focus on indigenous issues is seen by supporters/non-supporters of Taiwanese independence. I didn't do it 'cause the latter may controversial; did it just 'cause it's other peoples view of the issue rather than about the aborigines themselves. Also section was getting long... but it is a notable fact.. I think this is a bit of a judgment call.
Ling.Nut 00:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  added radio/pop; deleted 1 para 

message: I've added many references in the for of footnotes, following the style of a previous editor (tho I moved those notes to the Formosan languages page). Now I am regretting it. It's hard to cite page numbers of books using footnotes. On the other hand, lots of harvard-style citations gets a bit cluttered.
All in all, I think the Harvard-style nay be the lesser of two evils. I'm thinking of switching all references to Harvard-style notes for consistency. Apparently these are beta... If anyone has objections, I'm happy to discuss.
Ling.Nut 02:58, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  footnotes v. Harvard citations 

message: As more research is conducted, it has become clear that the ethnic makeup of Taiwanese do not fall simply within the simplistic classifications normally used to describe them.  Lee Teng-Hui famously submitted to a blood test which revealed aboriginal genes among Hakka and Fujianese.
Politically, Taiwanese aborigines tend to vote for the Kuomintang.  Although this may seem surprising in light of the focus on the pan-green coalition on promoting aboriginal culture, this voting pattern can be explained on economic grounds.  Aboriginal areas tend to be poor and are dependent on patronage networks established by the Kuomintang.  One curious feature of Taiwanese electoral ballots is that candidates for the aboriginal seats running for the pan-blue coalition generally use sinified names while candidates for those seats running for the pan-green coalition tend to use original aboriginal names.
Ling.Nut 04:07, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  deleted from "politcis & rights" 

message: should there a section on Taiwanese aborigines who live in mainland China? On the German wikipedia, there are 2 articles, the main article about Taiwanese aborigines living in Taiwan and a smaller article about Taiwanese aborigines living in China.  Abstrakt
:: I hadn't thought of a section detailing where they are found today in significant numbers. This is a good idea, definitely. It should be added. Good call. Ling.Nut 19:06, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  section on Taiwanese aborigines living in mainland China? 

message: * GFDL Request Letter Sent for the map on the article page.
* See 
*--Ling.Nut 22:26, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  GFDL Request Letter Sent