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- Panel 6-1 Becoming Eastern Rukai: Millet Growing as Cultural Identity Practices /Hsiu-yen Yeh
Panel 6-1 Becoming Eastern Rukai: Millet Growing as Cultural Identity Practices /Hsiu-yen Yeh
Joyce Hsiu-yen Yeh
Professor, Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan
This paper emphasizes that food and foodways as a cultural identity and edible heritage and are always embedded in wider social, cultural, and political contexts. This on-going project examines how the Eastern Rukai Taomak people construct and perform their indigeneity through cross-generational teaching, learning and millet-growing as ways of being Eastern Rukai – one of the Austronesian indigenous peoples in Taitung, Taiwan. Eastern Rukai peoples have developed a variety of relationships with millet that forms their socio-cultural and ecological knowledges. Millet is perceived and practiced by the Eastern Rukai women as culturally and spiritually valuable. It is a source of life and way of education, and a sacred site of knowledge of being Eastern Rukai Women.
Using qualitative methods, this study explores the Eastern Rukai ontology and their cultural subjectivity which is different from the rest of Rukai peoples who have settled in Southern part of Taiwan. Employing a “becoming indigenous” framework opens up a window for examining the role of collective and individual identities as an on-going relationally connecting, and translating process that is always being performed both consciously and unconsciously.
In this paper I present the example of millet-growing as intergenerational and cultural learning experiences among indigenous elders and young Eastern Rukai women to reinforce their food heritage and cultural identity. Through an examination of this project, I explore how millet planting as a cultural practice, as a means of differentiation, as an ideology, and as a display of ethnic identity. I stress the importance of indigenous women, using cultural knowledge, culinary traditions and local regional agricultural resources to develop indigenous identity and to exercise and implement their rights to promote indigenous food heritage and bring people back to their lands.
Keywords: Taromak, Rukai Studies, millet culture, food heritage, food and gender
Professor, Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan
This paper emphasizes that food and foodways as a cultural identity and edible heritage and are always embedded in wider social, cultural, and political contexts. This on-going project examines how the Eastern Rukai Taomak people construct and perform their indigeneity through cross-generational teaching, learning and millet-growing as ways of being Eastern Rukai – one of the Austronesian indigenous peoples in Taitung, Taiwan. Eastern Rukai peoples have developed a variety of relationships with millet that forms their socio-cultural and ecological knowledges. Millet is perceived and practiced by the Eastern Rukai women as culturally and spiritually valuable. It is a source of life and way of education, and a sacred site of knowledge of being Eastern Rukai Women.
Using qualitative methods, this study explores the Eastern Rukai ontology and their cultural subjectivity which is different from the rest of Rukai peoples who have settled in Southern part of Taiwan. Employing a “becoming indigenous” framework opens up a window for examining the role of collective and individual identities as an on-going relationally connecting, and translating process that is always being performed both consciously and unconsciously.
In this paper I present the example of millet-growing as intergenerational and cultural learning experiences among indigenous elders and young Eastern Rukai women to reinforce their food heritage and cultural identity. Through an examination of this project, I explore how millet planting as a cultural practice, as a means of differentiation, as an ideology, and as a display of ethnic identity. I stress the importance of indigenous women, using cultural knowledge, culinary traditions and local regional agricultural resources to develop indigenous identity and to exercise and implement their rights to promote indigenous food heritage and bring people back to their lands.
Keywords: Taromak, Rukai Studies, millet culture, food heritage, food and gender