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 Thao believe that the owl was once a young woman. The legend says that in the ancient days, there was a girl who became pregnant with child, even though she didn’t know how. As a result, her fellow tribespeople looked down on her, and no matter how much she pleaded with them, she couldn’t convince them of her innocence. In the end, the poor young woman could no longer bear the shame, and so one day she went away into the mountains all alone, and there she soon starved to death.
After her death, she turned into an owl and henceforth lived in the deep forest. Whenever a Thao woman was with child, the owl would fly to her family’s house and keep hooting to remind the woman to take good care of herself, ensuring a smooth delivery. Now the Thao began to miss the young woman they had driven away, and they felt guilty about having treated her so badly before. To make amends, the Thao do not kill owls. Another reason why they do not kill or hunt these birds is that the Thao believe that owls know all the paths and tracks in the deep mountain forests where they live, and therefore it would bring bad luck to kill them—if you do, you will certainly get lost in the mountains. And to this day the Thao also hold that the owl has foreknowledge of women’s pregnancies. The coming of an owl to the house of a woman with child is always greeted as a good omen. All in all, the owl has become a totem of the Thao tribe.