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Township declares
itself Pingpu Aboriginal area
By Hua Meng-ching / Staff reporter
Hualien County’s Fuli Township (富里) has become the nation’s first
self-proclaimed Pingpu Aboriginal township, following a declaration by township
Mayor Huang Ling-lan (黃玲蘭), who also pledged to pursue official recognition from
the central government.
There are 9,000 Pingpu Aborigines among the township’s population of 11,000.
The central government does not recognize the Pingpu people’s Aboriginal status.
Most of the Pingpu Aborigines in the township live in Dongli Village (東里),
previously known as Dajhung (大庄).
Local historian Chang Chen-yueh (張振岳) estimates that at least 400 households in
the township and more than 1,000 people are Pingpu Aborigines.
Pan (潘), a surname that the Qing Dynasty government granted to Pingpu
Aborigines, is the most common surname in Fuli, he added.
In 2005, the then-Tainan county government recognized the Siraya Pingpu
Aborigines as a tribe and started to allow Sirayas to register their tribal
identity in 2009, while the Greater Kaohsiung Government declared last month
that it would grant the same recognition on the city level, Huang said.
Fuli would follow the example of the two cities, and campaign for the official
recognition of Pingpu Aborigines — mostly Sirayas — in the township by
recognizing the tribe on a township level, in a bid to raise awareness of the
tribe’s identity and preserve its culture.
On Friday, more than 130 Siraya Aborigines gathered at the konkai (公廨), a
traditional place of assembly and religious worship to celebrate the township
office’s recognition of the Siraya tribe, they also prayed to ancestral spirits,
asking them to bless the campaign.
Huang called on all Sirayas in Fuli to submit copies of the household
registration records granted to them during the Japanese colonial period to the
local household registration office, adding that if a household registration
record is marked with shou (熟) or ping (平) the family was officially recognized
as Pingpu Aborigines by the Japanese colonial government.
After collecting sufficient copies, the township office intends to deliver the
documents to the central government via the county government, and request
official recognition of Fuli as an Aboriginal township.
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