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)
This film is adapted from The Eyes of the Savages
Courtesy of Indigenous Peoples Cultural Foundation