Taiwan Indigenous News
Friday, 20 February 2009
TB Treatment Delays In Taiwan
It should also be noted that the mortality rate and incidence of TB are much greater in aboriginal communities in Taiwan than in non-aboriginal areas. ...
Taiwan's indigenous population up 2.05 percent
MOI officials said the increase was about six times that of the 0.34 percent rate of growth of Taiwan's overall population. Taiwan's indigenous people were ...
Not the same old song and dance
He aims to present a more authentic picture of Aboriginal performing arts and culture. “I want our customers to see the performances in their most original ...
President pushes to boost tourism in Taiwan's indigenous areas
8 (CNA) Concerned over the development of tourism in Taiwan's indigenous areas, President Ma Ying-jeou asked government agencies Sunday to work with travel ...
The Kavalan make and weave their clothes with natural materials, and they are expert weavers and embroiderers. They employ mobile horizontal weaving machines to weave their favored ramie (China grass) into clothes, achieving aesthetically pleasing patterns by interweaving them with colored yarn. Banana trunk fiber or fiber from other trees is also spun into yarn and interwoven with the ramie material to provide extra protection against cold and wind.
The most cherished and special traditional Kavalan craft is banana fiber weaving: the leaf sheaths of the banana tree’s false stem are separated, dried in the sun and processed into fiber yarn—all by hand.
Today, only the Kavalan women of Hualien County’s Hsin She still preserve the art of making yarn from banana trunk fiber and weaving it into cloth. In the Lanyang Plain, the tribe’s original home, the Kavalan way of weaving and making clothes has long been lost. It is a rather complex process that involves separating the leaf sheaths, hanging them out to dry, applying the yarn to the weaving machine, and finally weaving it into cloth. In many ways, banana fiber weaving has become a symbol of the Kavalans’ cultural revival, a kind of totem that proves the tribe’s existence as a distinct ethnic and cultural entity.