The Walis Nokan Archive

In 1961, Walis Nokan was born in the native Atayal tribe, Mihu, in the southern part of Xueshan (literally “Snow Mountain”) in north-central Taiwan (For sure, he didn’t know he would become a writer under Han Chinese discipline in the future). Not until the age of 12 did Walis Nokan start his Han education in a small Hakka town—Dongshi, where he needed to study books of “civilization” in a racist environment (otherwise, he would be regarded as a “bad” student). Walis Nokan gave up the flamboyant and arty style in creating poetry after he met Wu Sheng in 1979, a poet from a poem club in Taichung, who surprised Walis Nokan and made him realize that plain words are also able to evoke the power of land. He then met the poet Lin Huazhou, who wrote about the Atayal in Nan’ao of eastern Taiwan, when he went to teach in Hualien, also of eastern Taiwan in 1983. In 1984, he met laohungmao, literally “old red hat,” referring to the elder communists in Taiwan, and read a lot of magazines published by Chinatide Magazine, an association focusing on democracy and people. In 1990, he conducted field work in aboriginal tribes in mountains for two years for the magazine he established, which depicts aboriginal Hunter Culture Magazine. All these experiences help Walis Nokan shape his later literary style of postcolonialism and decolonization. ——Walis Nokan (translation by Fran Lee)

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Keywords

Aboriginal literaturePostcolonial literature Eco- LiteratureTaiwan literature Ethnic literature


About Us

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影音資料

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About

Established in 2016, Walis Nokan Digital Archive was funded by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and constructed by the digital team at the National Chung Hsing University. With an introduction written by the writer himself, the archive presents the aboriginal writer Walis Nokan’s life and literature development with the technique of Timeline JS and contains detailed information, foreign translations, online reading of his works as well as related audio, video and research sources, showing the significance of the writer’s historical data and digital curating of Taiwanese literature. For online reading, the archive provides both the English and Chinese versions of the works “Ino’s Second Survey on the Spot,” “Atayal,” and “Journey of Mist” with the writer’s oral reading to enrich multi-media interpreting experience.

We would like to express gratitude to the following people who helped construct this archive: Taipei Chinese PEN, Embassy of the Republic of China in Nicaragua, Taiwan Cultural Center in Paris, Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation, Tzu Chi Culture and Communication Foundation, Professor Tu Kuo-ching (UC Santa Barbara, USA) Professor Maghiel van Crevel ( Chinese Language and Literature Department, Leiden University, Netherlands), Dr. Wei Yi–Chun ( Department of Sinophone Literatures, National Dong Hwa University) English translators Fran Lee Chieh-Hsi and Howard Shih Hsiung-hao, Mr. Chen Che-Wei, and Mr. Cheng Sheng-Yi. The digital team at NCHU includes Dr. Chiu Kuei-fen, digital assistant Hung Chien-mei, and the web chief-editor Hsu Kuo-ming, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chinese Literature at NCHU .

All ownership rights, copyright and intellectual property in the materials on this website, including the content, words, sounds, and images, belong to or have been legally approved for use by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL). Those seeking to download, copy, change, distribute, publicly release or use the material in any other way must first acquire the consent of NMTL. NMTL reserves all legal rights for unauthorized use.

Meet the team
Director:Chiu Kuei-fen
Consultant: Walis Nokan
Web content editor: Hsu Kuo-ming
Web designer: Yoong Jun-yao , and Hung Chien-mei
English website translator: Fran Lee Chieh-Hsi and Howard Shih Hsiung-hao