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Past imperfect
Tony Coolidge’s mother never shared her Taiwanese Aboriginal background with
him. ‘Voices in the Clouds’ documents his journey of self-discovery and examines
the persecution that indigenous people face
By Catherine Shu / Staff Reporter
Voices in the Clouds follows
Taiwanese American Tony Coolidge’s search for his roots in the Atayal Aboriginal
tribe.
Photo Courtesy of Voices in the Clouds
Voices in the Clouds follows
Taiwanese American Tony Coolidge’s search for his roots in the Atayal Aboriginal
tribe.
Photo Courtesy of Voices in the Clouds
While growing up in the US, Tony Coolidge
(陳華友) was told very little about his Taiwanese mother’s background.
“She went through great pains to bring us up American, to keep us speaking
English so we could succeed, so we could adapt and fit in,” he says.
After his mother’s death from cancer in 1994, Coolidge visited Taiwan to
reconnect with her relatives — and made a life-changing discovery. On a trip to
his mom’s hometown of Wulai (烏來) in New Taipei City, Coolidge found out that she
was a member of the Atayal tribe. Up to that point, he had never even heard of
Taiwanese Aboriginals.
Coolidge’s quest to find out more about his family’s Aboriginal background — and
why it had been hidden from him — is the subject of Voices in the Clouds (眾族同聲),
a documentary by director Aaron Hose. Released last year, the film will be shown
with Chinese subtitles for the first time at the Urban Nomad Festival’s closing
night on Sunday, followed by a question-and-answer session with Coolidge.
Coolidge recalls that on his trip, the topic of his family’s background did not
come up until he questioned his aunt about the Aboriginal art he saw on the
streets of Wulai.
“I thought, ‘What were Native Americans doing here?’ That’s what it looked like
to me,” Coolidge told the Taipei Times on Tuesday. “And then she told me, ‘No,
that’s our tribe.’ I thought, ‘Our tribe? Atayal?’ I was surprised, shocked.”
Back home, Coolidge started researching the tribal group’s history. A magazine
article he wrote about his trip caught the attention of filmmaker Aaron Hose.
“The fact that while he was visiting Wulai, he discovered that his entire family
are descendants of the Atayal tribe, this blew me away,” Hose wrote in an
e-mail. “Like Tony, I, too, was surprised that he hadn’t ever heard about it
from his mother.”
In late 2005, Hose and his filmmaking team followed Coolidge and his brother
Steven on a return trip to Taiwan. Voices is a moving account of Coolidge’s
journey to learn more about his ethnic identity. At the same time, it casts a
light on the persecution suffered by Taiwanese Aboriginal tribes.
As he found out more about the challenges faced by Aborigines, Coolidge began to
understand why his mother never talked about her background. In the film, one
Aboriginal elder recalls having to take on different identities in succession:
tribal, Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese. A father describes how classmates
labeled his young son a “barbarian.”
“When I first went, it was very evident that there was not a lot of pride about
the culture,” Coolidge says. “To me, it was a total avoidance of that culture,
in my own family and my relatives. Throughout Taiwan, I got the sense that there
wasn’t a positive attitude toward indigenous cultures or people.”
The son of an American GI who left his mother before his birth, Coolidge was
born in Taiwan but immigrated to the US when he was a small boy. He grew up on
military bases around the world with his mother, stepfather and three younger
siblings.
Though she kept her ethnicity hidden from him, Coolidge knew his mother missed
Taiwan and dreamed of returning before she was diagnosed with cancer. In a
poignant scene, Coolidge recalls a time when he tried to ease his ailing
mother’s homesickness by taking her to a Florida amusement park called Splendid
China.
Two years later, after she passed away, Coolidge made his first trip to Taiwan
as an adult. “After she died, my quest was not about discovering her culture,
but about going and reconnecting with her family and bringing back her spirit in
a way,” Coolidge says. “Only I discovered something totally unexpected.”
Coolidge says he can relate to the bigotry faced by his Atayal relatives because
of the discrimination he experienced as an Asian American. In the American
south, his mother and stepfather were viewed negatively for being a mixed-race
couple; at school, his classmates taunted him with fake kung fu moves and “ching
chong” noises.
“I can’t say I fully understand what my mother went through, but I understand
what discrimination was like,” Coolidge says. “It gave me an understanding of
why she did what she did to fit in with mainstream culture.”
Despite language and cultural barriers, Coolidge says he has always felt
welcomed in Taiwan. He now lives in Tainan with his wife, Shu-min Hsu Coolidge
(徐淑敏), and their three children.
In the film, Shu-min is candid about the misconceptions she had about Taiwanese
Aborigines before accompanying her husband on his journey of discovery. Voices
in the Clouds was made for American audiences, but Coolidge and Hose hope it
will give Taiwanese people a chance to reflect on their country’s complex,
multi-layered ethnic heritage.
Hose says that when the film was screened at US film festivals, several
Taiwanese-born audience members told him that they, like Coolidge, were
surprised to find out about their home country’s Aboriginal tribes.
“I figured, ‘How are we ever going to help preserve a dying culture if people
from their own country don’t even know the culture exists?’” Hose said. “Raising
awareness is the first step on a long road toward preservation.”
“It’s from having a strong sense of belonging that you have a foundation to move
forward in your life,” Coolidge added.
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