Prior to the launch of Taiwanese aborigine’s Name Rectification Campaign, the Truku and the Sedek could not be distinguished [or independent] from the Tayal people in Taiwan—mostly because these three groups have shared a common Facial Tattoos ritual. Officials and the majority of the Taiwanese used to apply a method of categorizing these distinctive aborigines into a homogenized “ethnic” group. This research, however, pays attention to the shared Facial-Tattoo culture among these three groups and identifies them as the aboriginal people with Facial-Tattoos. Based on the previous studies, Facial-Tattoos aborigines were mostly located in three areas of origin: Pinsbkan, mount Ta-Pa-Chien, and mount Bai-shi. Adopting the framework of three-origin systems, this research uses in-depth interview and fieldwork data to explore how scattered aboriginal populations imagined their original roots and traced their ancestor’s migrant routes in their self-reflective narratives.
Facial-Tattoos groups have preserved different identities; and accordingly, recounted different “region legends” in various contexts. Migration legends have been conceived as the crucial element in Facial-Tattoos aborigine’s collective memories and associated with their ethnic histories, tribal origins, and community values. Nevertheless, Facial-Tattoos groups are keen to pass on migration legends orally from generation to generation in order to understand their ancestor’s exile and migration experiences. Their ancestor’s experiences, on the other hand, also help aboriginal people to identify their own communities and/or to confirm their property rights over the land. As a consequence, we see great diversity in the narratives of these migration legends, which reveals a reciprocal process of sharing and receiving aboriginal people’s dialogues within their groups and reflects their shifting ideologies of “the Others” in different sociohistorical contexts.
This research shows the predominant paradox of “three-origin systems” may lose its authority in mainstream discourses and face its challenge from the people situated in non-tradition positions. Likewise, the rise of ethnic nationalism in the postwar society of Taiwan stimulated a revival of aboriginal identity, along with a series of indigenous movements to redress past wrongs and to develop collective ideologies in different aboriginal communities. In the spirit of division rather than interaction, Facial-Tattoos aborigines consistently tell stories about their exiled ancestor’s original roots and migration routes as a mean to include or exclude different people in their communities. And, even though today the Facial-Tattoo ritual is disappearing [disappeared], these people still take efforts on preserving ancestor’s migration legends to the next generation, and use these stories to identify[/separate] themselves from the majority society.