After Facial Tattoos Were Banned: How Weaving Brought gaga Back to the Tribe

In 2001, Yu-Ma Da-Lu established the Miaoli County Indigenous Crafts Development Association in Xiangbi Village, Taian Township, Miaoli. In 2003, the Association introduced the Multiple Employment Development Program, giving tribal women the opportunity to relearn dyeing and weaving. The starting point of this path was not a beautiful garment, but an Atayal person discovering that they did not even recognize their own ethnic textiles. ¹

Long before this, the faces of Atayal people once bore lines that could speak: facial tattoos. Men’s tattoos were associated with adulthood, hunting, or guarding, while women had to first learn to weave. Facial tattoos were not mere decoration; they were marks of becoming a person capable of bearing responsibility in society. In the early 20th century, the Japanese government banned this custom, causing the transmission of facial tattoos to be interrupted. ²

Facial tattoos stopped on the faces of the previous generation, but weaving did not remain only in museums. This is precisely the most intriguing aspect of Atayal cultural revitalization: what needs to be recovered is not a replicable pattern, but a complete set of life rules that place people, families, land, and ancestral spirits together.

A River and a Song, Bringing People Back to the Tribe

Figure: Photo of the exhibition space for the Wulai Atayal Ethnological Museum's "Weaving. Return—Wulai Atayal Ethnological Museum 20th Anniversary Special Exhibition." Image provided by the museum's official past exhibition pages, embedded via hotlink, not downloaded. ³

The National Cultural Arts Foundation’s online magazine once wrote that Yu-Ma Da-Lu stood on the suspension bridge leading to Xiangbi Village, with the waters of the Da’an River beneath her feet. She sang songs about walking with ancestral spirits and began to tell why she had returned. As a young woman, she had worked as a junior high school teacher and a civil servant. Later, due to work requirements, she sought materials on Atayal textiles, only to discover that as an Atayal person, she was so unfamiliar with her people’s textiles. ⁴

This “unfamiliarity” was not a personal oversight. A preservation project from the Institute of Architecture and Cultural Heritage at National Taipei University of Arts points out that the loss of Atayal dyeing and weaving involves not only technical breaks, but also the connections between oral traditions, land knowledge, textile patterns, clothing, and ethnic culture. The Wulai Atayal Ethnological Museum’s recent “Weaving. Return” special exhibition placed Atayal language, textile patterns, daily objects, and in-depth interviews of tribal members’ life experiences side by side, showing that the object of museum preservation is not a single garment, but a set of cultural relationships that continue to interact with each other. ^{5 3} When no one knows how to weave a certain cloth, what disappears along with it may be the people who explain it, the places that remember it, and the social context that knows when it should be worn. ⁵

Yu-Ma Da-Lu chose to return to the tribe, relearning from her grandmother and elders, and then placing field research, museum collections, and the hands of weavers on the same table. This action looks like craft preservation, but is actually closer to a cultural archaeology: not digging up an ancient artifact, but asking how a piece of cloth once entered a person’s life.

Curator’s Note: The hardest part of cultural revitalization is often not making the lost objects, but making them needed again in daily life.

Facial Tattoos Are Not Totems, They Are Social Resumes

The Council of Indigenous Peoples refers to Atayal facial tattoos as ptasan, explaining that they were once marks of adulthood, and also had aesthetic, apotropaic (warding off evil), and ancestral spirit identification meanings. Women qualified for facial tattoos only after completing weaving studies, while men’s were linked to hunting, combat, or guarding abilities. The patterns on the forehead, chin, and cheeks also differed by position according to gender. ²

These norms made facial tattoos like a social resume carved into the skin. It did not answer “what pattern do you like,” but “what have you learned, for whom are you responsible, and what is your position in the group?” Viewing facial tattoos merely as indigenous-style totems causes one to miss their most important original part: facial tattoos point to human capability and relationships.

A special topic from the National Archive of Cultural Heritage also reminds us that facial tattoos once consolidated identity within the Atayal group and left complex cultural traces in interactions with different ethnic groups. However, social changes caused this custom to gradually wither, and subsequent revitalization work must be undertaken jointly by tribal members, scholars, and cultural workers. ⁶ Here, “revitalization” cannot be understood as rewinding history. Bodies that were banned, mocked, and forced into silence will not return to their original position because of an exhibition.

English cultural reports on Atayal facial tattoos and weaving similarly point out that male facial tattoos are associated with adulthood and bravery, while female facial tattoos are linked to weaving skills. The article also mentions that ramie was once the traditional weaving material, but today it is often replaced by more convenient, colorful wool, and the use of ramie is decreasing. ⁷ This change illustrates that culture is not a fixed set of materials: as materials change, the negotiation of skills and identity also changes.

How a Cloth Bears a System of gaga

Seeing the Scale of Revitalization from Data

The gaga often spoken of by the Atayal is not just another pretty word for “tradition.” A special article on the Social Economy Portal describes it as a division of labor system and norms covering sacrifices, production, hunting, and combat. In this society, women’s weaving and men’s hunting and combat are equally important abilities for maintaining the group. ¹

Thus, when Yu-Ma Da-Lu and the weavers reproduced traditional garments, the problem they faced was not just how warp and weft intersect. They had to compare techniques, patterns, clothing, and cultural relationships from tribal fieldwork, elder interviews, historical documents, and old items collected in Japanese museums. The National Cultural Arts Foundation’s online magazine records that this work took nearly twenty years, leading to the 2008 publication of Reappearing Atayal—Catalog of Reproduced Pan-Atayal Traditional Garments, recording eight major branches and 217 traditional garments. ⁴

These numbers are important not because they make revitalization look large-scale, but because every garment pushes the question “who remembers” one step further. If only garments in museums remain, Atayal textiles will become a past to be watched. When tribal weavers re-disassemble, learn, and re-weave, it only then becomes a present that can teach, support families, identify land, and discuss identity.

Figure: Atayal weaver clothing weaving display in the exhibition "Between Warp and Weft, Weaving Without Tiring—Dialogue between Wulai Atayal Weavers and Textiles" at the Wulai Atayal Ethnological Museum. Image provided by the museum's official past exhibition pages, embedded via hotlink, not downloaded. ³

The National Taipei University of Arts’ preservation project therefore places ramie cultivation, spinning, weaving, garment reproduction, document organization, and field research in the same framework. This approach does not separate “technology” from “culture”: the growth of materials requires land, the meaning of patterns requires language, the wearing of clothing requires memory, and memory must have someone willing to speak it to the next generation. ⁵

From Museums Back to Children’s Bodies

Figure: Official exhibition image for the Wulai Atayal Ethnological Museum's "Siyon trakis Dear Little Millet—Special Exhibition on the Evolution of Wulai Atayal Seasonal Rituals." Image provided by the museum's official past exhibition pages, embedded via hotlink, not downloaded. ³

Yu-Ma Da-Lu’s work also encountered an awkward threshold: reproduced traditional garments are not antiques, and museums may not collect them. But they are not purely new creations, and art museums may not accept them either. The Social Economy Portal records that she later had over forty sets of reproduced garments enter the collection of the New Taipei City Sanxing Museum, thus giving reproduction a position between cultural assets and contemporary creation. ¹

This position is important. It refuses to lock “authentic tradition” in a century ago, and also refuses to downgrade what today’s tribal members make into仿古 (antique-style) commodities. Weavers are not workers making copies for the past; they are also deciding which techniques to keep, which patterns can change, and which materials need to be replanted in the land.

The interview published in the National Cultural Arts Foundation’s online magazine clarifies this judgment: Atayal weavers’ patterns are not unchanging, but develop new creations on the basis of tradition, changing with the weavers’ abilities and the times. After gaining tribal recognition, new patterns may also become part of tradition. ⁴ This is not diluting tradition into trendy design, but acknowledging that tradition has always had the ability to grow.

Starting in 2010, Yu-Ma Da-Lu led tribal workshops, tribal members, and designers to hold an Atayal Forest Fashion Show in Xueshan National Park, bringing clothing back to the ancestral lands of the Central Mountain Range, and creating new connections between culture, performance, design, and tribal autonomy. This history reminds people that cultural revitalization does not have to hide in “purity.” It can also enter public art, education, and industry, as long as the power of decision remains in the hands of tribal members. ⁴

Curator’s Note: True revitalization is not preserving tradition more beautifully, but giving the next generation the opportunity to rewrite it into their own lives.

After Facial Tattoos Disappeared, Language Is Still Catching Up

What facial tattoos and weaving carry is actually not just a set of visual symbols. A report from Indigenous View News Agency states that the Indigenous Language Promotion Council has collaborated with 16 indigenous language promotion organizations across Taiwan to hold language camps since 2020. Suyiduo Xi, the Atayal language promotion specialist mentioned in the report, also saw the importance of elders to cultural transmission through long-term field research, and began conducting corpus collection. ⁸

This work carries a sense of urgency: the history and culture that elders can speak will not automatically flow into the next generation’s ears. For language to return to daily life, someone must speak it at home, practice it in classrooms, and reuse the collected content in the tribe. For the Atayal, this is two sides of the same problem as the revitalization of weaving: one side preserves how hands do, the other preserves how mouths speak.

The Atayal Beishi Branch gaga oral tradition, registered on the National Cultural Heritage Network, places another layer before our eyes: knowledge of social operation, arbitration and mediation, and matchmaking is transmitted through oral narrative and song chanting. When gaga is only translated as “norms,” it easily becomes an abstract noun. Returning to oral tradition, we can see it as life knowledge spoken out, sung out, and used to handle relationships in concrete situations. ⁹

Therefore, when discussing facial tattoos today, we cannot just ask “are there still people tattooing their faces.” We should ask: what now bears the responsibility that facial tattoos once required a person to learn? Is it weaving classes, language materials, tribal rituals, family memory, or whether children finally understand what elders are saying when they return to the tribe after school?

Not All Atayal Tribes Weave the Same Answer

The Atayal are not a single template that neatly copies culture to every tribe. The Council of Indigenous Peoples’ ethnic group page has already reminded us that weaving materials, colors, patterns, and tattoo positions have concrete differences. The National Taipei University of Arts’ preservation project also lists the complex ethnic lineages and massive content of the dyeing and weaving system as reasons for needing investigation and organization. ^{2 5} Thus, when discussing “Atayal tradition,” the first thing to avoid is treating one tribe’s patterns as everyone’s common answer.

This is why weavers’ work cannot be completed by just one catalog. A catalog can leave the form, materials, and patterns of clothing, but cannot alone tell us when a certain pattern was used in a certain tribe, who passed it to whom, and in what contexts it was suitable to appear. Those judgments live in oral traditions, and also in the weavers’ tactile sense of materials. ^{4 9}

Contemporary design needs this caution even more. Yu-Ma Da-Lu and the workshop placing patterns into modern clothing, exhibitions, and public art does not mean anyone can arbitrarily extract a diamond or line, paste an “indigenous style” label on it, and complete cultural translation. The case on the Social Economy Portal is worth looking at not just because the works are collected or have a market, but because it binds research, technology, tribal women’s labor, and decision-making power together. ¹

This difference also changes the meaning of “preservation.” Preservation is not keeping a standard answer recognized by the outside world for tribal members, but giving tribal members enough data, language, and economic conditions to judge what should be reproduced, what should change, and what should not be displayed. The life of cultural assets lies not in them remaining forever still, but in them still having people who can responsibly move them.

The Banned Mark Left More Than Nostalgia

Recent English cultural reports still place Atayal facial tattoos in the context of gradually disappearing customs, pointing out that the language and memory on the tattoos are not just appearance, but cultural records carrying history and spirit. ⁷ Nearly a generation later, facial tattoos are still easily treated by the outside world as the first visual mark to identify the Atayal, but for tribal members, it should not be reduced to a face under the tourist gaze.

The history of the ban on facial tattoos lets us see how state policy cut off a form of bodily transmission. The revitalization of weaving and language lets us see how tribal members rearrange their own knowledge after the break. The two cannot replace each other: a piece of cloth is not a face, and a language class is not a lost ritual. But together they can leave the question in the present—who has the right to decide what counts as tradition, and who can bring tradition into the next generation’s life.

Yu-Ma Da-Lu’s story is important not because she “found back” a fixed past for the Atayal. She did something more troublesome and more vital: reconnecting museum collections, grandmother’s memory, tribal women’s labor, children’s education, ramie land, and the social norms of gaga. Culture thus becomes not just an object to be preserved, but a relationship that tribal members can continue to negotiate.

Facial tattoos may not return to every face. This fact should not be romanticized, nor written as culture being dead. When weaving is taught, language is spoken, people return to the tribe, and patterns can still change with tribal consent, the adulthood, responsibility, and identity represented by those lines are still seeking new skin.

This also explains why “cultural commodities” cannot be judged successful only by sales volume. Commercialization may give skills income, materials, and apprentices, but may also flatten complex tribal memories into an easily recognizable pattern. Yu-Ma Da-Lu’s case shows that culture and industry can meet, but there must be research, co-creation, and tribal choice in between, rather than just treating tradition as market packaging. ^{1 4}

For schools, this question takes another shape. The Social Economy Portal records that Yu-Ma Da-Lu collaborated with scholars to plan ethnic education starting in 2011, and the Bowuma National School was established in 2016. Indigenous View News Agency, from the perspective of language camps and corpus collection, presents how language returns to environments children can use. ^{1 8} One side is system, the other is daily life; lacking either makes it hard for culture to survive long.

Education should not just put Atayal culture into festival performances. If students are only told “this is Atayal” when they put on clothing and finish singing, they learn a curated image. If they can know how ramie is processed, why patterns cannot be arbitrarily appropriated, and how elders use language to tell a history, they begin to contact the responsibility behind the culture. The National Taipei University of Arts’ project placing land knowledge, oral tradition, and technology side by side exactly illustrates that this education cannot leave only the easiest-to-display parts. ⁵

The same logic applies to museums. Collecting reproduced garments can preserve an important stage of revitalization, but collections should not become the final home of culture. It should let people know who wove the work, which tribe it came from, which information is still controversial, and let later tribal members be able to use the data back, correcting statements. If cultural assets become only labels in display cases, they will once again separate from life.

The blank left by facial tattoos is therefore not a gap waiting for the outside world to fill. What the outside world can do is clarify the source, leave the differences, and return the power of decision to tribal members. What truly needs to be restored, how to teach, and how to display must be continuously negotiated by the tribe and tribal members. This slowness is not a failure of revitalization, but a refusal to define the Atayal again through external eyes.

What remains at the end will not just be photos of facial tattoos or a traditional garment. It may be a child finally understanding grandparents’ words, a weaver knowing where her patterns come from, a tribe being able to decide which culture can be public and which can only be transmitted in relationships. As long as these choices still exist, gaga is not just a noun of the past, but rules that people are still practicing together in life today.

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