Over the last few years, a dream coalesced among some Tao tribespeople to build a boat and make an ocean voyage to, or perhaps even around, Taiwan. The journey would showcase the group's boat-making and navigation skills and raise awareness of its vanishing culture and customs. Furthermore, it would highlight the diminishing connection between humankind and the sea for all Taiwanese living on the main island. Drawing on these concepts, they proposed a project and applied to the Johnnie Walker "Keep Walking Fund" for sponsorship, which subsequently awarded them around US$36,000.
According to this proposal, the project was the brainchild of Tao social and political activist Shyaman Vengayen. He was supported by Lin Chien-shiang, a Han Taiwanese filmmaker who had worked closely with Orchid Islanders in the past on documentary films. Vengayen was also backed by five of the island's fishing clans, kinship organizations based around fishing teams unique to Tao society. Last November, they started to build a traditional Tao fishing boat, Lin said June 23.
This particular boat, composed of 60 wooden planks and measuring 10 meters in length, 1.7 meters in width and 2.7 meters in height, was the largest in living memory, Lin said. Nevertheless, it was made using traditional skills.
This reflected one of Vengayen's concerns: the preservation and revival of Tao culture. The fishing-clan social structure and the manufacture of wooden boats by hand and without the use of nails were at the core of Tao tribal tradition, Vengayen said in a June 6 CNA report. Following the introduction of motorized boats in the 1970s and encroachment of Taiwanese fishermen with modern technology on traditional Tao fishing grounds, the skills were starting to be lost.
In a move to help conserve these traditions, in 2001 a group of Tao people from different fishing clans were commissioned by the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung to build a big boat inside the museum. This broke a number of taboos surrounding boat construction, which, for one thing, is normally undertaken by a single clan. Permission was received from tribal elders, however, and the project was so successful it led to commissions from other organizations. Nine more were made, but some people felt that the boats were losing their significance in the process, the proposal stated. They therefore suggested making an 11th large boat using inter-clan cooperation, only this time it would take to the water, Lin said.
The boat would be called "Ipanga na 1001," the number meaning it was more than 1,000 centimeters in length and the words meaning "crossing over." This represented the trip it would make, Lin said June 23, "as well as a crossover between the Tao and Taiwanese, the traditional and modern, and the oceanic and terrestrial cultures."
Finally, with the money secured from Johnnie Walker, more promised by the central government, and a remaining sum of US$15,000 donated from a number of private individuals, the boat was finished. The 12 Tao tribespeople began June 19 the "Keep Rowing" journey that will take them and other islanders from Langdao Village on Orchid Island to Taipei in northern Taiwan. Even at the last moment they were delayed for a week by inclement weather but, once it improved, the boat was able to make the 49-nautical-mile crossing to the coast of Taitung County. The fast-flowing Kuroshio Current meant they had to take a somewhat circuitous route, however.
From Taitung the rowers will take about 30 to 35 days to travel up the east coast, stopping at Hualien, Yilan and Keelung. They will then round the north coast, and enter Taipei City via Danshuei River in time for the Tao representatives to attend the creation of a forum of Austronesian indigenous groups, scheduled for Aug. 1.
According to the original proposal, four teams of rowers would take turns in the boat but, to date, only two teams had volunteered. The project was open to people from Taiwan's main island, Lin explained, so that they could also get a taste of Tao fishing life.
After arriving in Taipei, he continued, the boat would be exhibited in front of the National Taiwan Museum. "We thought about exhibiting it in front of Taipei 101 to see what sparks it would ignite; placing the most traditional thing face-to-face with the most modern."
The boat would eventually be sold to a collector, and the money made would be distributed among the different clans "in accordance with the Tao culture of 'distributing fishes.'" The private investors would also get their monies back, Lin estimated.
Another reason for making the trip was to show how the Tao's ancestors had been able to journey from island to island across the Pacific Ocean. The next project for Vengayen and his team, once funds were raised, Lin said, would be to travel to the Batan Islands to the north of the Philippines, to meet the local Ivatan inhabitants with whom the Tao share much of the same language, culture and origins.
Write to June Tsai at june@mail.gio.gov.tw