A Name, Returning Along the Coast
30-Second Overview: The history of the Kavalan is not merely an event of "being recognized by the government in 2002." To understand this ethnic group, one must simultaneously see the river-sea life of the Lanyang Plain, the dispersion caused by the 1878 Kalawan War, the preservation of language and rituals in Hualien-Taitung communities, and how banana fiber weaving returns cultural memory to daily life. 1 2 3
In 1987, Kavalan people from Xinshe, Hualien, performed songs and rituals in Taipei. At the performance venue, the people spoke their own ethnic name, revealing to the outside world that Kavalans, previously thought to be "Sinicized," could still sing, conduct rituals, and live in the Kavalan language. After this "Fengbin Night," the name-restoration movement stepped out of the tribe, becoming an action demanding the state to once again see the ethnic subjectivity. 2
On December 25, 2002, the government announced the Kavalan as the eleventh indigenous ethnic group of Taiwan. 1 Within this same history lies another fact difficult to cover up with a simple statement of "successful name restoration": some descendants, whose ancestors were listed as "Flatland People" in household registers, have not yet obtained indigenous status. 2
Thus, the story of the Kavalan cannot be compressed into a timeline from "disappearance" to "recognition." It is more like a woven thread: some remember the language by the sea, some remember the ancestral spirits in rituals, and some peel the stems of banana trees into fine fibers, weaving a name back onto the cloth.
📝 Curator's Note: The starting point of an ethnic group being seen often precedes an official announcement. Only when people refuse to forget themselves in their daily lives does the possibility of a public name reappearing exist.
The "Plain People" of the Lanyang Plain
The Kavalan call themselves kavalan, and official materials explain this as "people of the plain." They have long inhabited Yilan, with settlements near rivers and the coast. Early dwellings featured stilt-style architecture, and they engaged in exchange trade via navigation. 4
A research paper preserved in the Lanyang Museum indicates that the story of the Kavalan ancestors "coming from the sea" was long passed down from grandfather to grandson, and father to son. It was not until 1896 that Japanese ethnographer Inoguchi Masanori first recorded these oral traditions in writing. 3
This oral history mentions a place called Mariyan, and describes ancestors rounding Sandiao Cape to arrive in Yilan, then known as "Ha-zi-nan" (蛤仔難). It is a memory of the tribe, not a single route fully proven by archaeology; the same museum research also lists different archaeological and linguistic hypotheses. 3
The ancestral route awaits more dialogue from materials. When an ethnic group lacks its own written history, external archives easily become the sole voice, but the history of the Kavalan also remains in the coast, estuaries, canoes, and place names still told.
Archaeological data shows that sites related to the Kavalan are mostly distributed along coastal dunes, estuaries, or inland plain swamp areas. These locations indicate that water bodies directly constituted the living conditions of settlements, food, transportation, and exchange. 3
From Lanyang to Hualien-Taitung: Dispersion is Not the End
In the late 18th century, Han people began to enter the Lanyang Plain. In the early 19th century, the Qing government established the Kavalan Prefecture, changing the land and administrative order. From the mid-19th century, Kavalan people left their original habitats in large numbers, migrating to the coasts of Hualien and Taitung. 1
One branch established the Kalawan Community in Hualien. In 1878, the Kavalan and the Sakizaya jointly resisted Qing government forces, resulting in the Kalawan War. After the war, tribe members were forced to disperse to the east coast and the Hualien-Taitung Rift Valley; some entered Amis communities, living under the identity of Kalawan people. 5
Academic research places this event in the context of "how traditional territories change due to state intervention," pointing out that after the Kalawan incident, the activity space of Kavalan people in the Qilai Plain and the east coast changed. 6
External records often write this history as the disappearance of an ethnic group, while tribal memory offers a different account: tribe members changed their names and hid their language to survive, searching along the coast for places to settle.
The Kavalan in Xinshe, Hualien, were once called Kaliawan by surrounding ethnic groups. Before the name-restoration movement, this name made it difficult for outsiders to connect them with "Kavalan," but for the tribe members, the断裂 of the name did not mean the memory was also broken. 4
Xinshe faces the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Central Mountain Range to the west. After the Kavalan arrived, they diverted water on limited terraces to grow rice, and engaged in fishing, gathering, and maritime activities. Official materials list rivers, coasts, and maritime exchange as important conditions for Kavalan life. 4
📝 Curator's Note: Migration changed the map, but did not take the sea away from Kavalan life.
A Banana Tree, How It Becomes a Cloth
One of the most visible cultural objects of the Kavalan is banana fiber weaving. The Lanyang Museum records that tribe members select banana trees that are mature but have not yet fruited, peel the outer layer of the stem, scrape off the light purple fibers, and then go through drying, connecting fibers, warping, and weaving. 7
One banana tree can weave a banana cloth approximately 70 cm long and 50 cm wide. This number first reveals the fragility of the material: the fibers are not durable and must be processed within a short time. 7
Before weaving, there is a simple Spaw ritual to pray for ancestral spirits to bless the process. The waist belt, loom frame, shuttle, beating board, and warp picker together constitute the working posture; the weaver sits on the ground, using their body to fix the tools, allowing the warp and weft to intersect grid by grid. 7
19th-century artifact collections left another clue to this craft. Mackay, while preaching in the Yilan and Hualien areas in the 1870s and 1880s, collected Kavalan clothing, banana fiber cloth, and ritual items. A batch of about 40+ items is now preserved in the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada. 8
These artifacts preserve rare clues, yet they are detached from their original tribal context, becoming specimens in museums. When contemporary tribes re-encounter them, the work is not just about replicating ancient patterns, but about allowing tribe members to decide how these objects should be understood today. 8
After 2002, banana fiber has become a medium for cultural revitalization and contemporary creation. Reports from Yuan Shi Jie describe it as a historical carrier, recording how artisans retrieve weaving patterns from early artifacts and tribal memories, and place them back into clothing and life. 2
The Lanyang Museum also preserves a quote from an elder: "In the early years, outsiders would come to buy them; now there are none, so young people mostly do not know how to make them." 7 The weight of this sentence lies in its refusal to package traditional crafts as a landscape that will never disappear; it speaks of who must keep the skills alive after the market recedes.
Rituals Bring Time Back to the Tribe
The revitalization of Kavalan culture is not just about weaving. East Coast communities in Hualien still record the sea ritual sbaw tu lazin, the harvest festival gataban, the year-end ancestor worship palilin, and rituals related to the female shaman metiyu. 2
The harvest festival in the Xinshe community is held in early to mid-August each year, to thank the earth spirits and ancestral spirits. The sea ritual is held when the coral trees bloom, with men going to sea to pray to the ocean god for peace and harvest. 2
Some rituals have ceased or transformed into public cultural performances. This change reminds us that cultural revitalization is not about bringing the past back intact; it is about renegotiating which contents should continue in which contexts after changes in transportation, education, marriage, state systems, and tribal population.
The society of the Kavalan has also experienced inter-ethnic marriage and identity changes. The migration and mixing in Hualien-Taitung communities have made ethnic names, language, and living spaces part of contemporary identity discussions. 2
Therefore, simplifying ethnic identity to blood quantum misses the most critical layer of Kavalan history: identity is made up of family, language, rituals, living spaces, and shared memory. 9
Three "Name Restorations" That Cannot Be Mixed
The name restoration of the Kavalan has at least three scales. The first is state recognition: the 2002 announcement brought the ethnic name into the official indigenous list. The second is identity registration: not all descendants who identify as Kavalan can obtain indigenous status through the same household registration path. The third is cultural practice: language, rituals, weaving, sea rituals, and family memory must be continuously used in tribal life, otherwise they will remain only as explanatory text in museums. 1 2 8
These three scales are related but cannot replace each other. An announcement can change legal classification, but it cannot replace an elder teaching a child the language. A collected banana fiber garment can preserve craft clues, but it cannot replace the tribe's decision on how it is worn today. A public performance can let society see the culture, but it does not mean all private rituals should be open to the public.
Who Has the Right to Name an Ethnic Group
The name "Kavalan" has had different spellings in different eras. 17th-century Spanish and Dutch documents appeared with forms like Cabalan, Kavalan, etc., while Han records appeared as Ha-zi-nan (蛤仔難), Jia-zi-lan (甲子蘭), and Ha-zi-lan (哈仔瀾). These names are not fixed translations of the same administrative unit, but textual traces left by different regimes, travelers, officials, and researchers when contacting the ethnic group. 8
In the late 19th century, Japanese ethnologists began to establish the knowledge system of Taiwan's indigenous peoples through classification, investigation, and photography. These materials preserved clothing, ancient documents, house boards, recordings, and images, allowing today's researchers to trace the life of the Kavalan. However, what investigators chose to record, what museums collected, and which column households were placed in, all affect how later people understand this ethnic group. 8
Therefore, an ethnic name is not just a noun in a dictionary. It relates to who can be clearly called in schools, household registers, museums, land discussions, and public policies. When tribe members demand the use of their own name, they are demanding not just a phonetic correction, but demanding that the state and society recognize a history that was not interrupted by administrative classification. 2 9
After "Name Restoration," Who Else Can Be Called Upon
The 2002 official recognition has institutional significance, but it did not automatically repair all identity fractures. Yuan Shi Jie reports that some tribe members who completed identity registration around 1956 and 1963 were included in the recognition; many descendants recorded as "Shufan" (熟番, Tamed Barbarians) in Japanese colonial household registers, later classified as Pingpu (Flatland) ethnic groups, have not thereby obtained indigenous status. 2
This is why "name restoration" cannot be understood only as a successful political event. It simultaneously involves household registration, land, educational resources, language inheritance, and who has the right to define "true indigenous people."
In 2018, the Kavalan and Sakizaya held the 140th Anniversary Commemoration of the Kalawan / Takubuwan War, retelling the war and dispersion through exhibitions, documentaries, academic symposia, and tribal forums. The event also proposed that the purpose of commemorating the war is to understand ethnic equality, mutual respect, and historical justice, rather than creating new opposition. 5
Pan Chao-cheng said in the event records: "After the Han people entered Lanyang, the Kavalan migrated south to the Hualien and Taitung areas, living a turbulent life for over two hundred years." 5 This sentence puts the migration on the map back into human time: over two hundred years fall into the lives of generation after generation, and into the process of them building homes in new places.
📝 Curator's Note: Name restoration also does not mean returning to an unchanging past. It allows descendants the right to decide which things left by ancestors should continue to live today.
Letting the Name Stay in Daily Life
Today, the Kavalan are distributed in Yilan, Hualien, and Taitung. Official English materials list major distribution areas such as Zhuangwei and Wujie in Yilan, Xincheng and Fengbin in Hualien, and Changbin in Taitung, and record that tribe members have promoted respect for their ethnic name and subjectivity since the 1980s. 4
On the map, these places look far apart. Looking along the Kavalan's own history, however, they are connected by sea routes, marriage, rituals, language, and family memory.
The importance of banana fiber weaving lies precisely in that it turns grand history into an action hands can complete: peeling a layer of banana stem, extracting fibers, letting ten fingers connect short fibers into long lines, and weaving long lines into a cloth. Every step answers the same question: Is there still someone willing to use their own body to make this name?
The answer of the Kavalan does not stop at 2002. It is in the sea rituals of Xinshe, in the language sung anew in Yilan, in artifacts shuttling between museums and tribes, and in those who still demand fair recognition for Pingpu descendants. The name has returned; the next thing to do is to let it not have to leave daily life again.
Image Sources
The four internal images in this article are all taken from Lanyang Museum Issue 122 "Kavalan" Part I · Seeking — They Come from the Sea and Lanyang Museum Issue 073 · The Weaving of the Kavalan. The images are only for the purpose of explaining the article content; when used, one should comply with the copyright and licensing conditions of the original website.
References
- Council of Indigenous Peoples: Kavalan — Government official ethnic introduction, explaining self-name, distribution, Kalawan War, 1980s name restoration movement, and 2002 official recognition.↩234
- Yuan Shi Jie: The First (Name-Restored) Pingpu Ethnic Group, the Kavalan — Indigenous Peoples Television special report, discussing the recognition gaps that still exist after name restoration from the perspectives of ethnic subjectivity, rituals, banana fiber, and identity systems.↩2345678910
- Lanyang Museum: Issue 122 "Kavalan" Part I · Seeking — They Come from the Sea — Museum research special article, organizing oral ancestral sources, 1896 written records, archaeological distribution, maritime transportation, and different ancestral source theories.↩234
- Council of Indigenous Peoples: Kavalan — Official English page of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, providing Kavalan self-name, English place names, major distribution, history, and 2002 official recognition information.↩234
- Indigenous Peoples Literature: Crossing the Beacon Fire · Dispersion and Rebirth — Record of the 140th Anniversary Commemoration Activities of the Kavalan Kalawan War and the Sakizaya Takubuwan War — Activity record from the Indigenous Peoples Literature platform of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, preserving data on the two ethnic groups retelling the war and dispersion through commemorative activities, images, and tribal forums.↩23
- Airiti Library: "Exploring the Changes in the Activity Space of Indigenous Peoples in the Qilai Plain and East Coast Areas After the 'Kalawan Incident'" — Academic paper page from the Journal of Indigenous Peoples Studies, analyzing the changes in traditional territories and ethnic activity spaces centered on the 1878 incident.↩
- Lanyang Museum: Issue 073 "The Weaving of the Kavalan" — Museum craft research article, step-by-step explaining banana fiber sourcing, processing, warping, weaving, rituals, and elder oral accounts.↩234
- Indigenous Peoples Literature: Collected Pingpu Memories — The Kavalan Figure in Museum Artifacts — Museum research article from the Indigenous Peoples Literature platform, organizing the context of Mackay's collection, NTU Museum of Anthropology collections, and tribal collaborative curation.↩2345
- Fu Jen Catholic University Department of Sociology: From the Capitalized Ethnic Name to the Self-Touching of Daily Culture — The Practical Path of the Kavalan — Bachelor's thesis focusing on the name restoration and daily cultural practice of the Kavalan, providing academic discussion on the relationship between ethnic name, identity, and life actions.↩2