Formosa Aborigines

Taiwanese aborigines are optimistic. They accept life as it is, and live in harmony with nature. Their languages are also the very origins of Austronesian languages. However, as the Dutch East India Company, set its foot on Taiwan in the early 16th century, a succession of ethnic conversion, integration and changes were introduced. The Taiwanese aborigines were ruled under external forces for 500 years; from the colonization of the Netherlands in 1922, the Qing Dynasty in 1683, and the Japanese, under whose rule they have been persecuted, oppressed, and controlled.

When the KMT (Kuomintang, often translated as the Nationalist Party of China) retreated to Taiwan from China, the aborigines continued to try to survive and to coexist with other ethnic groups.

Before the KMT, the Taiwanese aborigines had never been exposed to Chinese Confucian culture. After the KMT gained its legitimacy, it ruled with an iron fist, and implemented various policies to expedite the subjugation of the aboriginal people and eradicate their traditional culture.

In terms of education, propaganda was used to insinuate that the aboriginal culture was barbaric.The KMT had required that aboriginal people speak only in Chinese, forbidding them from speaking their mother tongue, and forced them to adopt Chinese names. Those policies had drastically changed the traditional structure of the aboriginal people, and affected their minds and their understanding of their own ethnicity.