The Ministry of Education bestowed awards under the Youth Community Participation and Action 2.0—Changemaker Project to teams that transmit Indigenous Puyuma women’s agricultural and cultural knowledge, highlighting tribal women’s unique roles and next-generation creativity and participation in local development.
According to the MOE, the Lijia team established a tribal women’s association in eastern Taiwan’s Taitung County in 2022. In 2023, the group and association members interviewed elders to produce a tribal calendar, which compiled knowledge of traditional crops’ growing seasons, millet farming, rituals and gendered labor division, the ministry said.
A Taitung-based team called Musaura Ta, researched the recipe for kisiw, a Puyuma dish of chicken cooked with various kinds of herbs and rice wine, the MOE said. The team consulted female elders to find the correct herbs for the recipe, made on-site investigations into the herbs’ processing, visited areas where the plants grew, drew a distribution map and worked with tribeswomen to replant herb gardens.
Lijia and Musaura Ta were both MOE Youth Development Administration Youth Community Participation and Action 2.0—Changemaker Project award winners of 2023. The project was first launched by the YDA in 2006 to encourage youth participation in the revitalization and development of local communities. From 2018, the project’s second version encouraged young professionals aged 18-35 to implement community change, the ministry added. (YCH-E)
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from Taiwan Today – Top News