Hla'alua: From "Southern Tsou" to Their Own Name, What the Sacred Shell Festival Preserves

30-Second Overview: On June 26, 2014, the Hla'alua and Kanakanavu were officially recognized, becoming the 15th and 16th indigenous groups in Taiwan. The story of the Hla'alua is more than an administrative "division of groups"; it involves the Four Villages of Taoyuan, the Sacred Shell Festival centered on shells, and a language gradually losing its space in daily life amidst the gaps between Bunun, Mandarin, and the educational system. What the name change truly seeks to reclaim is the ability for tribe members to tell their own stories in their own names.

A Name, First Taken In by Others

On June 26, 2014, the Executive Yuan approved the name recognition proposals for the Hla'alua and Kanakanavu. After that day, the official list of Taiwan's indigenous groups increased from 14 to 16; the Hla'alua became the 15th group. This date is often written as a systemic change, but for the tribe members, it feels more like a name that had long been placed in others' categories, finally returning to their own hands. ^{1 2}

The Hla'alua were previously often categorized under the Tsou and referred to as "Southern Tsou." This term did not appear out of nowhere: in the late Qing Dynasty, Han people referred to them as the "Upper Four Villages," and during the Japanese colonial period, this was continued as the "Upper Four Villages" or "Four Villages." The classification left historical traces, compressing groups with different languages, rituals, and social organizations into a single, larger name. ^{1 3}

The Hla'alua's own name is Hla'alua. The National Cultural Memory Bank recorded the tribe members' population at approximately 413 as of January 2020. This is data from a specific point in time and should not be misread as real-time population statistics for 2026. ⁴ Data from the Council of Indigenous Peoples indicates that this ethnic group primarily resides in Gaohsiung City's Taoyuan District (Gaohsiung Village and Taoyuan Village) and Namaxia District (Maya Village), composed of four villages: Paichien, Meilong, Talu, and Yan'er. The Cultural Park's introduction also uses the four villages and the Sacred Shell Festival as the entry point to understanding the Hla'alua. ⁵ The four villages are not just four markers on a map; they are units where rituals, kinship, and tribal politics actually operate. ¹

📝 Curator's Note: Name recognition is not about swapping one label for another. It is about returning the question of "who has the right to name" to the tribe members' own language and life.

The Sacred Shell Is Not an Ornament

The most recognizable ritual of the Hla'alua is miatungusu, also known as the Sacred Shell Festival. The sacred shell takiarʉ is regarded as the dwelling place of the Shell God or the spirits of the ancestors. Therefore, the shells are not mere decorations on clothing, but a medium connecting ancestral spirits, agriculture, the tribe, and the future. Council of Indigenous Peoples ethnic data places it in the context of agricultural rituals: the festival prays for peace, abundant harvests from farming and hunting, and the prosperity of the tribe members. ¹

There is a gesture in the ritual that is difficult to replace with modern objects: the offering of wine with the sacred shell. The chief priest immerses the sacred shell in wine and observes the changes in the shell's color. In the ethnic group's understanding of rituals, the shell turning red symbolizes that the Shell God has drunk its fill, and the ritual has received a response. This is not about turning a natural object into a mysterious spectacle, but about allowing a tribe to confirm through a shared action that "we are still together." ^{1 6}

Descriptions of the festival cycle and its modern form vary across sources. Council of Indigenous Peoples data records that the Sacred Shell Festival is held approximately every two or three years. Local cultural publications state that modern public events are often condensed into a single day, divided into segments such as the initial welcoming of spirits, pig-stabbing ritual, bringing out the Shell God,慰勞 (consolation/comfort) ritual, exorcism ritual, and communal hunting ritual. These differences remind us that rituals have traditional norms but also adjust between community conditions, event arrangements, and external displays; one cannot treat a single public event as the only version. ^{1 6}

In March 2025, National Kaohsiung Normal University led a Cultural Learning Tour, placing the activity in the Yan'er village, the tribal ritual sites of the Four Villages in Taoyuan Village, the Meilan tribal ritual site in Gaohsiung Village, and Xingguo Elementary School. The event description characterized the Sacred Shell Festival as a moment for dialogue with ancestral spirits and for consolidating ethnic consciousness. It also allowed indigenous language learning, tribal spaces, and school education to meet on the same path. ⁷

📝 Curator's Note: The most moving aspect of the Sacred Shell Festival is not that the shell "magically turns red," but that tribe members must bring it back to the ritual site together and remember how to do it, so that the culture appears again in the next festival.

"Dividing the Family" Is Not Turning Against Each Other

What is most easily overlooked in the name recognition process is that the Hla'alua and the Tsou are not strangers. Indigenous ethnic literature records that on September 8, 2012, the Northern and Southern Tsou groups held a public hearing at the Alishan Township Office. The scene contained emotions formed through intermarriage, kinship, and long-term interaction, as well as different judgments regarding ethnic classification, language disappearance, and future resources. ²

This literature leaves a specific metaphor: the Hla'alua and Kanakanavu wish to be understood as "brothers who have grown up and need to divide the family," rather than interpreting separation as forgetting each other. This statement does not eliminate conflict, but it pulls name recognition back from "seeking more benefits" to issues of cultural lifelines. ²

A 2014 Public Television (PTS) report placed this history in a clear institutional setting: the Executive Yuan meeting approved the name recognition, and the Hla'alua and Kanakanavu officially became the 15th and 16th groups. The report simultaneously noted that the two groups had been striving for name recognition for six years, and name recognition was expected to become the starting point for preserving culture and language, rather than a final certificate. ³

For the Hla'alua, the sharpest tension lies here: kinship relations can continue, but ethnic names, languages, and rituals cannot therefore be treated as the same thing. Loving families do not have to share only one ethnic name. Shared history does not have to erase each other's differences.

A Language, How It Quietly Disappears in the Tribe

A 2014 research article pointed out that Hla'alua language and Tsou language are not the same language that can be naturally mutually intelligible. The three languages differ in vocabulary, morphology, and grammar. The article also recorded that in Gaohsiung Village, the Bunun language has long become the dominant community language, while Mandarin has expanded its scope of use through schools and media. ⁸

What the researchers heard in the field was not a simple answer of "tribe members do not love their own language," but a series of daily choices: parents speak to their children in the language they are more familiar with, children are exposed to Mandarin in school and on television, and cross-ethnic marriages and work mobility bring in Bunun or Taiwanese Hokkien. The language thus does not die suddenly on a certain day, but gradually withdraws from the family through decisions of "which language is more effective to speak today."

Interviewee Amahlu once said: "There are very few people left who can speak Hla'alua; if we don't hurry up and find a way to save it, it will be too late." He proposed starting from kindergartens, allowing children to be exposed to the indigenous language in immersive environments. The weight of this statement lies in its simultaneous acknowledgment of the language's crisis and the admission that relying solely on a few classes per week in school may not be enough to bring the language back into life. ⁸

Another interviewee, Aluvai, offered a statement more like a door: "Very few people here speak Hla'alua kai; even if we speak it, no one understands... If everyone is Hla'alua chatting together, we might end up speaking it." The indigenous language has not disappeared into an abstract "break in inheritance"; it still hides in certain people, certain relationships, and certain moments that only open when tribe members gather together. ⁸

📝 Curator's Note: Language revitalization is not about sticking a few words back into a textbook, but about making people believe again—when I speak this language, someone will truly catch it.

Cultural Revitalization Is Not Sealing the Past in a Glass Case

The contemporary form of the Sacred Shell Festival shows that cultural preservation is not completed by simply hiding artifacts. When introducing the Sacred Shell Festival, the Kaohsiung City Cultural Bureau specifically mentioned tribe members returning from outside to the tribe to clean, decorate the clubhouse, and ritual sites. Local publications concretely write the "offering of wine with the sacred shell" and the "throwing shells for blessings" of Meilong village into understandable ritual segments. ⁶

In 2024, Indigenous View reported that the Indigenous Knowledge Research Center of National Kaohsiung Normal University hosted a symposium on the knowledge of the two groups, including the syllables and grammar of the Hla'alua language, as well as the process of elders, tribe members, and experts jointly organizing knowledge. The report mentioned that relevant teams are working towards a Hla'alua knowledge dictionary and ethnic education. ⁹

Here lies an important counter-intuitive point: name recognition is not the end point of cultural preservation; rather, it makes the responsibility of preservation fall more clearly on the tribe members and their collaborative teams. Museums, schools, research centers, and the government can provide resources, but they cannot decide for tribe members which word should be kept, which ritual segment can be made public, or which story should be told by whom.

The Hla'alua's name therefore appears not only on the list of ethnic groups. It appears in the place names of the Four Villages of Taoyuan, in a preserved shell, in the moment an elder hesitates over which language to use when speaking to a child, and in the actions of repeatedly returning to the tribe and relearning rituals.

Questions Left for the Next Festival

If one only looks at June 26, 2014, the Hla'alua's story seems like a completed tense: officially recognized, ethnic category established, name written into the system. But if one shifts the gaze to the ritual site and the family, the story is still in progress. The number of language users has decreased, the population size is not large, and rituals need to strike a balance between traditional norms and contemporary public events. ^{2 3 8}

Therefore, the importance of the Hla'alua lies not in the number "Taiwan has a 15th group," but in what it allows us to see as the true measure of ethnic recognition: whether a group can preserve its linguistic differences, whether rituals can be not only watched but also learned by the next generation, and whether, while sharing kinship history with the Tsou, they can still say Hla'alua.

At the next Sacred Shell Festival, the chief priest will still face the shell, the wine, and the tribe members. That gesture looks small, yet it answers a big question: when a name was once taken in by others, who is still willing to bring it back?

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