Indigenous Literature

30-Second Overview:
In 1932, the first works by indigenous intellectuals were published in Riban no Tomo (理番の友), marking Taiwan's indigenous literature's transition from oral tradition to the written era.
Today, the languages of the 16 indigenous tribes face an endangered crisis—those fluent in tribal languages are mostly aged 70–80 or older.
Scholars call the next decade the "critical period for language preservation."
From Sun Tai-chuan's (孫大川) culture of mountains and seas to Hsia Man Lan-po-an's (夏曼·藍波安) maritime writing, contemporary indigenous literature is not just cultural revitalization, but a literary bridge connecting Taiwan to the Austronesian world of the Pacific.

In 1994, a young Bunun (布農族) man stood at a podium at Columbia University in New York and said to a room full of scholars in English: "Our literature has no writing, but it is older than any literature that does."

He was Sun Tai-chuan, who would later become the theoretical architect of Taiwan's indigenous literature. In that moment, he sought to prove a fact that shocked the Western academic world: the oral literature of Taiwan's indigenous peoples is one of the oldest Austronesian literary traditions in the world—predating Malay literature by 2,000 years and Hawaiian indigenous literature by 1,000 years.

But even more surprising is that this world's oldest literary tradition is disappearing at an unprecedented rate.

📝 Curator's Note
The paradox of Taiwan's indigenous literature lies in this: it is the oldest literary bloodline in Taiwan, yet it is the youngest "modern literature."
Stories passed down orally for thousands of years were only first written on paper in 1932.

1932: A Historical Turning Point from Sound to Script

1932 was the most important dividing line in the history of Taiwan's indigenous literature. This was the year that the Japanese colonial-era magazine Riban no Tomo began publishing works by indigenous intellectuals, officially ushering indigenous literature into the era of written creation.

For thousands of years prior, indigenous literature relied entirely on oral transmission: myths, legends, ritual songs, and prayers. The Atayal (泰雅族) creation myth, The Giant Rock Gives Birth to Humans, may have been recited for 3,000 years. The Bunun Prayer Song for a Bountiful Millet Harvest, performed in eight-part polyphonic harmony, is hailed as one of the world's oldest forms of polyphony.

These works had no written form, but they lived in the voices of the people, in every ritual ceremony, and in the lullabies mothers sang to their children.

After 1932, things began to change.

✦ "When a nation's literature jumps from sound to paper, it is not just a change in form; it is a revolution of an entire way of thinking."

The Urgent Reality Behind the Numbers

16 tribes, 42 dialects, 588,660 people. This is the basic data for Taiwan's indigenous peoples today. But another set of numbers warrants more attention:

What does this mean? Po Hung-ming (波宏明), Chairman of the Council of Indigenous Peoples Language Development, is blunt: "In the next ten years, as those who can speak full tribal languages pass away without successful transmission, language and culture will truly enter a state of decay."

UNESCO has classified Taiwan's indigenous languages as "endangered"; while levels vary, all face crises. Among the 2,000 endangered languages worldwide, the languages of Taiwan's 16 tribes account for one-sixteenth.

The Saisiyat (賽夏族) situation is among the most severe. Feng Wei-ping (風薇萍), a Saisiyat language teacher at Wufeng Elementary School, expressed a heartbreaking reality: "There is a word in Saisiyat, minhaeha:o', which means 'if someone hunts a wild boar and does not share it, causing neighbors to wait until they fall ill, they must go and apologize'—an entire tribal ethic is condensed into one word, but no equivalent translation can be found in Chinese."

Once such vocabulary is lost, what is lost is not just language, but an entire way of thinking.

1987: The Literary Revitalization Movement After Democratization

With the lifting of martial law in Taiwan in 1987, indigenous literature underwent its second major turning point.

In 1989, Pai Pang-sa-le (台邦‧撒沙勒) of the Rukai (魯凱族) tribe founded Yuan Bao (原報). In 1990, Wa-li-si No-gan (瓦歷斯‧諾幹) of the Atayal and Li-ge-la-le A-nu (利格拉樂‧阿女烏) of the Paiwan (排灣族) co-founded Hunter Culture (Lie Ren Wen Hua) magazine. In 1993, Sun Tai-chuan established the Shanhai Culture Press (山海文化雜誌社), a decision later evaluated by the National Taiwan Literature Museum as one of the "major events in the development of Taiwan's New Literature."

This was no coincidence. The rise of the localization movement in Taiwan during the 1980s broke the monism of "Chinese culture," and multiculturalism began to be affirmed. Indigenous peoples suddenly realized they no longer needed to hide their identities; instead, their culture became vital proof that Taiwan was "distinct from China."

But this shift brought a complex question: In what language should indigenous people write?

Most indigenous writers chose Chinese. This was a decision of painful pragmatism—tribal languages lacked modern writing systems, and Chinese was the only way to ensure their works could be read by a wider audience.

Hsia Man Lan-po-an wrote in Eyes of the Sky: "Using Chinese characters to write about the Tao (達悟族) people's ocean is like using someone else's vocal cords to sing my own song."

The Global Breakthrough of Maritime Literature

Hsia Man Lan-po-an's work changed not only Taiwan's literature but also the international understanding of Taiwan.

His Eyes of the Sky (2012) tells stories from the perspective of fish, subverting traditional anthropocentrism from the very beginning. British literary scholar Ti-han Chang described it as a classic "geostory"—a new narrative form that transcends borders to connect humans and nature.

More importantly, Hsia Man Lan-po-an's maritime writing repositioned Taiwan within the context of the Pacific. Taiwan is no longer a "periphery of China," but a "center of the Austronesian world in the Pacific."

This shift carries political significance. The flying fish culture of the Tao people depicted by Hsia Man Lan-po-an shares similar maritime knowledge systems with the indigenous peoples of the Batanes Islands in the Philippines and the Cook Islands. His work has prompted international scholars to seriously discuss the concept of "transpacific indigenous ecocriticism."

The "Wayu-wayu islanders" created by Wu Ming-yi (吳明益) in The Polyeye (Fu Yan Ren, 2011) have belief systems directly inspired by Tao culture. This is no coincidence—indigenous literature has become a vital resource for Taiwan's literature to "go global."

The 15th Taiwan Indigenous Literature Awards: Institutional Maturity

The 2024 15th Taiwan Indigenous Literature Awards offer total prizes of NT$810,000, with the application deadline on August 16.

Behind this figure lies 30 years of institutionalized progress for indigenous literature:

• 1993–2026: From Shanhai Culture Press to the Indigenous Culture Foundation.
• 2001: National Dong Hwa University established the College of Indigenous Studies, creating the Department of Indigenous Languages and Culture.
• Academic Explosion: Universities such as National Chengchi University and National Sun Yat-sen University have successively opened indigenous literature courses.

But the true indicator is the expansion of the writer community. From the early "Movement Generation" (Sun Tai-chuan, Wa-li-si No-gan, Hsia Man Lan-po-an, Pa-tai), to the new generation including Ma Yi-hang (馬翊航), Cheng Ting (程廷), and Huang Hsi (黃璽), Taiwan's indigenous literature has formed a succession system spanning three generations of writers.

💡 Did You Know?
Pa-tai's The Flute Heron (Di Xuan) is set against the history of the Bunun people, but it is not an "ethnographic novel"—it uses literature to rewrite forgotten history.
This "historical reconstruction" has become a key characteristic of contemporary indigenous literature.

The Race Between Language and Literature

The problem now is: time is running out.

According to the UN's "International Decade of Indigenous Languages" (2022–2032), of the 2,000 endangered languages globally, it is estimated that 1,500 will be completely extinct before the end of this century.

All 16 indigenous languages in Taiwan are on that list.

Surveys by the Council of Indigenous Peoples Language Development show that the "last generation" capable of speaking tribal languages fluently is mostly aged 70–80. In ten years, when these people pass away, if effective transmission has not occurred, the languages will move from "endangered" to "extinct."

The government is taking action:

• 2017: The Indigenous Languages Development Act was passed, making tribal languages "national languages."
• Language Certification: For 16 languages and 42 dialects, the overall pass rate has exceeded 50%.
• Master-Apprentice Program: One-on-one transmission, though scale remains limited.

But the outcome of this war for language preservation ultimately rests on literature.

A culture without language is merely superficial tourism. Po Hung-ming's words strike at the core: indigenous literature is not just literary creation; it is the final battlefield for linguistic survival.

Literature as a Bridge to the Austronesian World

On the map of world literature, Taiwan's indigenous literature holds a unique position.

Taiwan is the origin of the 250 million-strong Austronesian people and preserves the most ancient Austronesian vocabulary. Robert Blust, a renowned scholar at the University of Hawaiʻi, believed that studying Taiwan's indigenous languages is equivalent to studying the origins of entire Pacific civilizations.

This gives Taiwan's indigenous literature a global perspective. When New Zealander Māori writer Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider achieved international success, Taiwanese readers found that Hsia Man Lan-po-an's The Boy and the Great Shark told almost identical myths of "humans and sea monsters."

This is not a coincidence; it is a shared cultural memory.

The internationalization of Taiwan's indigenous literature is not about becoming "world literature," but about reconnecting the Pacific cultural network severed by colonialism.

In recent years, works by Taiwanese indigenous writers have been successively translated into English, Japanese, and Korean, engaging in dialogue with Canadian and Australian indigenous writers at international indigenous literature symposiums. These exchanges prove: Taiwan's indigenous literature is not a tributary of Taiwan's literature, but a vital component of Pacific literature.

Conclusion: The Last Singers

Today in 2026, when you flip through a novel by Pa-tai in a Taipei bookstore, or hear the Bunun eight-part polyphony on a music platform, you are witnessing a miracle:

A literary tradition that should have disappeared has not only survived the impact of modernization but has also bloomed with new flowers.

But this miracle is fragile. Languages disappear faster than glaciers melt. Every young person who no longer speaks their tribal language may be the last listener of an ancient story.

Indigenous literature faces not just the challenge of literary creation, but the responsibility of civilizational inheritance. They must preserve the oldest voices amidst the torrent of globalization and recreate traditional wisdom within the languages of modernity.

This is the most difficult task in Taiwan's literature, and its most precious gift.

Because when the last Saisiyat elder passes away, it is not just a language that vanishes, but a way of seeing the world. When the last Atayal ancient melody is forgotten, it is not just a tune that is severed, but the dialogue with the ancestral spirits.

What indigenous literature must do is ensure that this day never comes.

References

• Indigenous Literature of Taiwan - Wikipedia
• 2024 15th Taiwan Indigenous Literature Awards - Indigenous Culture Foundation
• When Languages Get Lost: Focusing on Indigenous Culture Can Also Be Very International - United Daily News
• Taiwanese Literature in Transition: Indigenous Writing and Eco-literature as Method - Taiwan Insight
• Implementing the "Indigenous Languages Development Act" — Promoting the Revitalization of Indigenous Languages - Executive Yuan
• Shanhai Culture Press - Taiwan Indigenous Literature Audio-Visual Digital Archive
• Council of Indigenous Peoples Official Website
• Taiwan Indigenous Name Rectification Movement - Wikipedia
• Taiwanese Local Mother Tongue Literature - National Taiwan Literature Museum