Taiwan Indigenous News

Tuesday, 25 October 2005

Female head of the national park system seeks to improve parks
... She said she could sense the wisdom of the mountain forests as passed down throughout the ages by Taiwan's indigenous peoples. The ...

Hsieh reveals moves to help indigenous students
... crystal display television to the students at an elementary school in Taitung County and announced more measures to help Taiwan's indigenous children secure ...

Tribe wants official recognition
... "Taiwan's indigenous tribes are all unique minorities in this country, but we are all the original residents of the island. Every ...

The Amis

Myth and Celebration: Amis Festivals

The Milaedis (originally also Paladau, roughly meaning “ocean worship”) is the most important Amis festival before the Malaikid (“bumper harvest festival”) and serves mostly to commemorate the ancestors’ hardships during the Great Flood, and to thank them for passing down the skills of fishing and survival on the ocean.

The Milaedis features reenactments of activities that are central to Amis life, such as catching and eating fish. The focus is on the traditional methods and tools of fishing. The fishing gear includes fishing baskets (kanas or karrihic), fishing nets (sali), bamboo fish traps (pakar or caholac), and “fishing screens” (cering, used in swamps and marches). Methods include the “stun” and the “drive” approach. Witnessing the Amis’ Mileadis festival, one may learn a lot about their longstanding fishing culture and the pervasive influence it has had on the development of their civilization.

In addition to their highly sophisticated fishing tools and techniques, the Amis also developed agricultural methods such as shifting cultivation to grow crops on dry land. When the harvest season arrived, the entire village would participate in a solemn ceremony to thank the Spirits for blessing the tribe with a bountiful crop. This was the origin of today’s Malaikid.