ABSTRACT
Following 400 years of colonisation and aggressive educational language policies, the Taiwanese government have made great strides in promoting language documentation and maintenance of the island’s Indigenous (Formosan) languages since the early 1990s, through changes in the constitution and educational reform. However, despite such measures, recent statistics show that exam takers passing the higher levels of the Indigenous Proficiency exam are negligible, with national speaker numbers continuing to decline. While various educational issues, including lack of qualified teachers, low-quality educational resources and insufficient teaching time are well-documented, the underlying socio-economic issues are arguably more responsible for the lack of uptake. While much of the government’s focus has been given to improving language education in more rural, traditional Indigenous homelands, the steady migration away from impoverished rural areas has resulted in almost half of the total Indigenous population (70% of the working-age population [15+]), now living in urban areas, separate from their linguistic and cultural centres. In major cities, where Indigenous families regularly face socio-economic inequality and institutionalised racism, the utilitarian pressures placed on second language education greatly outweigh any intrinsic motivation urban students may have towards learning their native languages, and yet the cultural and linguistic support required of young urban Aborigines is rarely addressed. Due to this, most language education initiatives have been top-down approaches, and so have failed to take root in the communities themselves. Despite this, there are a growing number of promising initiatives taking place outside of mainstream education, which may help reenergise the language revitalisation movement in Taiwan, such as the establishment of language nests and nanny programmes, experimental/immersion schools, master-apprentice programs and newer technological approaches, including the establishment of a Sakizaya language edition of Wikipedia. While the obstacles facing young Indigenous people in contemporary Taiwan are indeed great, these exciting movements that are gaining momentum show that they are in no way insurmountable.
