Ecumenical News International
Daily News Service
9 May 2011

By Kristine Greenaway

Taipei, Taiwan, 9 May (ENInews)--It is Saturday night in a mountain village in eastern Taiwan and the local church is rocking. Singers jump in time to the music of drums, guitar and keyboard. A crowd of young people wave their arms and sing along, their faces aglow.

The musicians and young people are members of Subus Presbyterian church, a parish in Taiwan's Central Mountain region that serves the Truku aboriginal community. They gather weekly as a "praise group" to sing, pray, and dance. But within a few months, some of the dancers will head for the big city, leaving a village that, increasingly, can't educate or employ them.

"Most young people eventually leave their home community for the city as there are few senior high schools in Taiwan's rural areas and little chance for employment," says Sing 'Olam, Associate General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, which helps aboriginal youth adjust to urban life.

It is estimated that up to two-thirds of the country's aboriginal peoples between 15 and 55 years of age have left their rural communities and migrated to urban centres. Many find work as labourers in industry or construction. They are underpaid, marginalized and poorly housed. Alone in the city, some succumb to alcoholism or prostitution to survive.

Sing said aboriginals in cities are subject to discrimination by members of the non-aboriginal Han majority. "They judge aboriginal people by their language, income and level of education," he said.

Sing, a member of the Amis people, tells aboriginal youth: "Some people will look down on you but don't ask why you were born in an aboriginal village. Rather thank God you were born there."

Taiwan's government recognizes fourteen aboriginal groups who together represent two percent of the country's population. The majority of Taiwan's 24 million citizens are Han who trace their roots to China. Thirteen percent arrived in the 1940's in the wake of the communist revolution.

Presbyterian churches support initiatives that provide advice on where to get jobs. Others offer space for "dialogue groups" that connect newcomers with aboriginal people who know the city and can share information about how to get job skills training and where to find low-cost housing.

The church also supports formal education institutions such as the Christian Tanjian High School in the capital, Taipei, where one-fifth of the students are aboriginals who pay reduced tuition fees. With financial support from the church, graduates have gone on to university studies in medicine, law and veterinary sciences.

The church has also been putting pressure on the Taiwanese government to respect aboriginal land claims, recognizing that the causes of the exodus of young people from the countryside lie in government policies on land ownership and development priorities.

"The objective is that people can return to their home communities and earn a living," Sing said. "It is important for the government to honour its election promise to grant autonomy and self-determination to aboriginal groups in their home regions."

The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan's members make up just over one percent of the Taiwanese population, which is primarily Buddhist. Eleven of the church's 23 presbyteries represent aboriginal congregations; the remaining 12 are Han or Hakka.

-- Kristine Greenaway, head of communication for the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), was in Taiwan at the invitation of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan.


ENI News Headlines and Featured Articles are now available by RSS feed.
See http://www.eni.ch/rss/

All articles (c) Ecumenical News International
Reproduction permitted only by media subscribers and
provided ENI is acknowledged as the source.

Ecumenical News International
PO Box 2100
CH - 1211 Geneva 2
Switzerland

Tel: (41-22) 791 6088 - 6111
Fax: (41-22) 788 7244
Email: eni@eni.ch