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Reviving traditional Atayal weaving, dyeing and textiles |
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26 November 2007 |
"The only thing we keep in our minds right now, is trying to preserve every aspect of our culture, seeing to it that it does not vanish again. If it does, the roots of Taiwan’s aborigines will be lost forever, and the identity of the Formosan indigenous people will be obscured in the tides of time, leaving a breed of faceless natives.”
Fifteen years ago, Yuma Taru (尤瑪‧達陸) spearheaded the launch of the Atayal Textiles Research Center, and started to preserve the heirlooms of Atayal dyeing and textiles, a task she was able to undertake thanks to the loving tutelage of her grandmother and grandaunt. Then, step-by-step, she transformed a community of the Atayal people along the Daan River basin in mid-western Taiwan into a stronghold of textile dyeing and weaving, renewing the traditional Atayal heritage.
The Atayal Textiles Research Center (泰雅織物研究中心), run by Yuma, houses a ramie farm, a battery of designers, and several women who work together to display and sell textile handicrafts and accept orders from government agencies to promote the beauty of Atayal textile workmanship. The Center currently employs a total of eleven personnel, ranging from 16 to 67 years of age, all of whom come from the Atayal community along the Daan River.
Yuma’s greatest aspiration and vision are: “to race against time and pass on the lifeblood and culture of the Atayal people; to do everything within my power to preserve the ancient yet timeless civilization of the aborigines; and finally, to fashion the Atayal tribes in the Daan River basin into a textile dyeing citadel.”
Yuma Taru’s Chinese name is Huang Yali (黃亞莉). Her father comes from Hunan Province in China and her mother is member of the Atayal tribe. Yuma appointed herself to revive the dust-laden Atayal textile dyeing culture, an ancient art form that has been neglected for half a century, and became the hand behind the Atayal Textiles Research Center. She started out with no special expertise, and for over a decade she has toiled and struggled to learn how to grow ramie, extract and de-gum fiber, study types of dyes, and sew.
Yuma found her calling after a fortuitous class on the "costume and accessories of the Chinese ethnic minorities” in college. Suddenly she realized her destiny and her deep connection with the traditional Atayal culture.
Her sense of duty, her love for her hometown and her strong identification with Atayal culture spurred her to call an end to a secure tenure as a civil servant in 1992. She returned home to Xiang Bi village (象鼻村) in Miaoli County (苗栗縣) and asked her maternal grandmother to teach her the art of weaving. She started promoting the traditional art form in her home village, and resolved to carry on and preserve the Atayal legacies and artisanship. With the assistance of her husband Baunay, whose Chinese name is Lin Weidao (林為道), she opened up a small ramie farm and a flower nursery for coloring the processed ramie.
Xiang Bi village was severely damaged during Taiwan’s 921 Earthquake in 1999. At that time, the livelihood of many families was threatened due to the sudden deaths of bread-winners. Yuma and her husband set up a classroom decorated with a tinge of Atayal culture on a parcel of land donated by her uncle. They began to educate troubled tribeswomen, training them to plait aesthetic textile items by hand in the comfort of their own homes, and sell the handicrafts to support their families.
Starting the same year as the earthquake, a community renewal project took place in the village, kicking off a succession of arts and crafts training. The training adhered to the ancient Atayal practice of fabric production, and opened up an Atayal textile demonstration cultural park in 2001, with the Atayal Textiles Research Center as the centerpiece, to expand the aboriginal fabric dyeing craft in an attempt to spread the cultural legacy.
In the Atayal community, it is customary to judge a woman’s social status according to her cloth weaving skills and originality. According to Atayal tradition, the umbilical cord of the baby girl is kept carefully by her mother in her sewing and weaving kit. As the girl grows and matures, the mother imparts gaga (traditional customs and conventions) and her self-developed weaving patterns, techniques, forms and color arrangements to her daughter through the spinning and twisting of every fiber according to time-honored cloth-weaving songs. The heritage is passed on generation after generation, through loving hands.
In addition to the mother-to-daughter coaching, the Atayal textile techniques can be carried on through the more worldly custom of bartering. Budding apprentices are required to prepare wine, rice cakes, money or other goods in order to purchase knitting techniques and patterning skills from seasoned craftsmen.
The mentor’s tutelage does not usually include the principles of the textile art. She often places two sets of threads or yarns on the loom and orders the apprentice to copy mechanically without questioning. The artist instantly stops weaving as soon as strangers approach the loom, to prevent their original decorative designs from being copied.
This custom is one of the reasons why Atayal fabric production techniques are so highly revered and acclaimed among Taiwan’s aboriginal tribes.
Yuma said the distinguishing feature of Atayal weaving is that it employs one of the oldest and largest types of loom found in any of the Pacific and Austronesian cultures. This particular loom consists of a few shafts and a shuttle; the weaver is bound to the loom to make intricate, gorgeous designs. The simpler the loom, the more complicated the weaver’s workmanship has to be, she says.
Traditionally, the lives of aboriginal tribeswomen in traditional communities were intricately intertwined with cloth weaving. From birth, through adolescence, to becoming a wife a mother, until the day she passes away, every phase of life is defined by a piece of cloth.
Because of the near total loss of the art, its connection to aboriginal life has wasted away and the unique cultural value of the weaving has been whittled down to nothingness.
Yuma always makes sure she teaches trainees who come to the Center that “they are part of the loom… the loom they work with is inextricably tied to their physical being.” She says: “You need to operate the loom according to your own physical rhythm, infuse it with your personality. The loom possesses elasticity and tensile strengths that renders it a beautifully full circle. I often get the impression that their work is laden with every ounce of their energy… they weave the juice of their labor into the fabrics, and they in turn treasure the finished works very much.”
In 1994, Yuma was successfully admitted into the Graduate Department of Textiles and Clothing at Fu Jen Catholic University (輔仁大學). A little over 3 years later, she was awarded a Master’s degree following her thesis on “A Study Traditional Atayal Textiles Production.”
Yuma says she enrolled in graduate school so as to be a respectful mouthpiece for her people, and empower her role as a spokeswoman with professional finesse.
"As much as we have put into our administrative work, we are still the elements at the bottom of the food chain compared to experts or scholars retained by some sort of organization.”
Every Tuesday night, in an old house at Yaki Giwas of Xiang Bi Village, a couple of young women assemble on a small tatami mat and attentively listen to Yuma’s lecture on cloth patterns and designs.
Yuma knows that tribeswomen who have stayed in the village are more or less penniless; even scrounging up some petty cash for buying threads and needles can be quite a burden. So she saves up all the remuneration she gets from teaching traditional fabric making at Xiang Bi Primary School to buy sewing kits and other materials for women in the cloth-weaving class free of charge.
"I hope to create a conducive learning environment,” Yuma remarks. The classroom is replete with information, technology support, tools and materials necessary for the women to weave and think at ease, and freely look for inspiration. They are also reminded that technology and handicraft are not necessarily at the opposite ends of a spectrum; with the appropriate stimulus and attitude, the two actually complement each other nicely, sparking unexpected inspirations; an antagonistic and competitive atmosphere is to be avoided at all cost.
Yuma understands that in order to bring about the renaissance of Atayal art, she has to facilitate its revival with skillful know-how, well-rounded design ideas, thoroughly planned-out production details, and a vision toward sustainable operations. Otherwise all her endeavors would just be another batch of mass-produced, highly homogeneous products of uniformly tailored fabrics, without any aboriginal personality. In other words, the restoration of the Atayal textiles dyeing art will just become a short-lived industry that would be weeded out just as quickly as it rises to stardom, following the footsteps of Taiwan’s textiles and plastics businesses, now sunset industries.
She points out that any genre of folk craft without ethnic essence and individuality would be short-lived, and a sure-fire way to extinguish the seeds and hopes of traditional handicraft so painstakingly cultivated; so Yuma is in no hurry to turn up any impressive results.
Yuma also thinks that it would be best to combine conventional cultural touches with modern operation proficiency, defining it with the versatilities of “traditions” and "modernity.”
"Modernized ethnic styles” are oriented on an integration of fashion and the urging of artistic textile creations. Diversities and variations are tried out at the already vibrant Atayal textile workmanship, developing dresses and accessories that can be used day in and day out, in order to expand marketability.
An annual customary festival is scheduled to encourage tribesmen’s interest in wearing the Atayal costumes to spur internal demands. In addition to affording these keepers of tradition an esteemed place in the tribe, some of the profits are channeled to the hands of the weavers so they can be self-sufficient.
Yuma’s visions are not just the pipe dreams of an individual; rather, they are the consolidation of brainstorming effects and executions of several tribespeople and trainees at the Research Center, who hope to products and jointly devote their resources to research and development, creative work and production.
Written by Perry Hsieh for culture.tw
Photos by Perry Hsieh
Translated by Shannon Hu
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Last Updated ( 03 December 2007 )
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