Taiwan's Siraya People Reclaim Their Indigenous Identity After 350 Years

In September 2017, a photographer captured the Talavan family at Green Valley Siraya Park in Tainan. The family stood together on a simple floating bridge made from water pipes and bamboo that stretched across a pond. When each person stepped on it, the bridge sank slightly, making the crossing feel a little dangerous. Cheng-hiong Talavan, who was 85 years old at the time, agreed immediately when asked if the family could be photographed on the bridge. His daughter Uma led the way, followed by grandchildren and grandparents, all holding hands for the picture. Three generations of the Talavan family were working together toward the same goal: bringing back their Siraya culture.

Nine years later, on July 30, 2026, something important happened. The Siraya people of Taiwan became the island's 17th officially recognized Indigenous group. This was the first time a plains Indigenous people—known as Pingpu—had received this official status. Taiwan's Premier Cho Jung-tai approved the recognition, which gave the Siraya important legal rights just before Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples' Day on August 1. The recognition came through a new law that Parliament had passed in October 2025.

The journey to this moment took many decades. The Siraya belonged to the Austronesian family of peoples and spoke a language called Sinckan. Dutch missionaries recorded this language using a special writing system during the Dutch colonial period from 1624 to 1662. Like other Indigenous groups in Taiwan, Siraya society was matriarchal, meaning women held important leadership roles. Interestingly, the word "Taiwan" itself comes from the Siraya language—early Dutch explorers anchored their ships at a place called Dayuan, which is a form of "Taiwan" from the Siraya tongue.

However, centuries of colonial rule nearly destroyed all of this. After the Qing Dynasty from China took control of the Siraya area in 1683, the Sinckan language slowly disappeared from everyday use. During the Qing period, the government forced Siraya people to stop speaking their own language, adopt Chinese names and customs, and follow Manchu rules. Later, during the Japanese colonial period from 1895 to 1945, Japanese administrators divided the Austronesian Indigenous peoples into two groups: the plains Indigenous or Pingpu peoples, who were treated as assimilated with Chinese settlers, and the mountain Indigenous or Takasago peoples, which included nine different ethnic groups.

The Pingpu were seen as "well assimilated" with Chinese culture and were denied official Indigenous status, legal protections, and government resources. The government said that Pingpu peoples had mixed with Chinese through marriage and that recognizing them would give too many people access to special benefits that Indigenous peoples receive, such as reserved seats in the legislature and educational advantages.

The opportunity for Pingpu to fight for recognition came only after Taiwan began to become more democratic in the early 1990s. Indigenous rights movements brought important changes. In 1994, the government stopped using the insulting term "mountain compatriots" and used "Indigenous peoples" instead. In 1995, the system that forced people to use Chinese names was dropped. A government office for Indigenous affairs was created in 1996, and Indigenous peoples' rights to education and collective rights were officially recognized in 1997 and 1998. However, Pingpu descendants' request for Indigenous status was delayed because their ancestral lands were flat areas that could be developed for business.

The real change came through the courts. After Siraya groups lost several court cases, Taiwan's Constitutional Court ruled in November 2022 that it was wrong for the government to exclude Pingpu communities from official Indigenous status. The court told the legislature to write a law about this within three years. Parliament finally passed the law in October 2025, and nine months later the government officially recognized the Siraya.

The story of how Siraya culture came back to life centers on the Talavan family, whose work has lasted three generations. Cheng-hiong Talavan started the Tainan Pepo Siraya Culture Association in 1999 to rebuild Siraya history and keep their culture alive by collecting stories and objects from the past. He spent his whole life encouraging Pingpu descendants to remember who they were.

Bringing back the Sinckan language depended on old documents. In 2006, researchers at Taiwan's Academia Sinica announced that they had understood about 80 percent of 187 old Sinckan manuscripts from the 17th and 18th centuries. These documents were written in the Siraya language using a romanized writing system that Dutch missionaries had created. The missionaries had learned the Siraya language in order to teach Christianity, and they translated the New Testament into Sirayan. Copies of their translation of the Gospel of Matthew have survived, and some manuscripts show both Sirayan and Chinese versions side by side.

Cheng-hiong's daughter Uma Talavan and her husband Edgar Macapili, who comes from the Bisaya Indigenous people in the Philippines, decided to decode the Sinckan language. They translated a Sirayan version of the Gospel of Matthew word by word into English, Dutch, and Bisayan, a language similar to Sinckan. Macapili was originally a musician, but he taught himself to be a language expert. He compared texts in Dutch, English, Sirayan, and Bisayan word by word, but he faced a big problem: when the Dutch wrote down the Siraya language in the 17th century, their spelling system was not yet standardized, so it was almost impossible to know how the words actually sounded.

It took Macapili more than seven years of hard work to finish his Siraya Glossary based on the Gospel of Matthew, which contains more than 3,000 Sirayan words. Macapili said about Sinckan: "This language is like the mother or older sister of the Bisayan language—they have a family relationship. What's more, Sirayan is purer, having not been impacted by too many foreign terms." Only after Macapili finished his glossary could textbooks, children's books, and audiobooks be created. Teachers were trained, and in 2016, Sirayan language classes finally started in schools.

With the language partly recovered, the Talavan family began making educational materials. They wrote children's books and songs in Sinckan, teaching new generations the words that Macapili had worked so hard to find. The third generation, sisters Euphony and Lici Talavan, learned both Taiwanese and Sirayan from childhood and have worked hard to bring back Siraya culture. Cheng-hiong led the younger generation in singing an old Siraya song, a moment that was recorded and later shared online, helping Siraya descendants reconnect with their heritage.

Since 1999, the Tainan Pepo Siraya Culture Association has done many projects. One important activity is poetry writing, with most poems in Mandarin or Taiwanese Hokkien but including Siraya words, which helps children learn about the language.

The path to recognition was not easy. Siraya groups opposed a plan to create a separate legal category called "Pingpu Indigenous," because they worried this would give them fewer rights and protections than other officially recognized Indigenous peoples. The stakes were high. Some estimates say there are about 980,000 Pingpu people, which is around 4 percent of Taiwan's population. Over 10,000 people in Tainan County had already said they were Siraya and were waiting for official recognition.

Starting in mid-August 2026, thousands of eligible descendants in southern Taiwan could finally register their true ethnic identity on their national identification cards. A mother and daughter in Tainan became the first people to complete their official registration as Siraya. The mother, Mai Fang-chi, and daughter, Shih Ya-hsin, registered at the government office, and their names now officially appear as Siraya on their identification cards—something that would have been impossible just weeks earlier.

To register as Siraya, applicants or their direct ancestors had to have been registered as "Plains" Indigenous people under Japanese rule and had to have lived in Siraya regions at that time. The near-disappearance of the Siraya identity was not because of biological mixing, but because of deliberate government policies across multiple colonial periods.

One Talavan family member explained the importance of the recognition in a post online, writing in English: "The recognition of the Siraya's Indigenous status is not intended to exclude anyone or create division, but rather to ensure that the names once obscured by history can finally be seen again. I also hope that, through this identity restoration, more people will be willing to learn about the true history of Taiwan, understand the paths the Pingpu peoples have walked, comprehend why their languages and cultures have disappeared, and realize that these peoples did not suddenly appear — they have always been here. Even though I now live abroad, I will still proudly tell those around me: I am from Taiwan, and I am Siraya. This is not for any benefits, nor is it for any label — it is simply because this has always been my name."

However, experts warn that legal recognition is only the beginning. Jolan Hsieh, an Indigenous studies scholar at National Dong Hwa University, said that the impact of the recognition "could be profound, but recognition itself is only the beginning." She explained that official recognition is mainly about restoring the relationship between the government and a people whose identity had been erased.

The Sakizaya, recognized as Taiwan's 13th Indigenous group in 2007, show a cautionary example. Although the Sakizaya claimed 15,000 members when they gained recognition, fewer than 900 had actually registered by the end of 2015. This gap suggests that official recognition does not automatically mean that all eligible people will register, and the Siraya may face similar challenges.

The Siraya are not alone. Nine other Pingpu groups—including Kavalan, Ketagalan, Taokas, Pazeh, Papora, Babuza, Hoanya, and Makatau—are also working to gain official Indigenous status. Eight other Pingpu groups currently have applications waiting to be reviewed.

The legal recognition is already bringing important cultural and educational changes. The National Museum of Taiwan History has announced special exhibitions planned for 2027 to show how Siraya culture is being brought back to life. President Lai Ching-te, who supported the Siraya's push for recognition when he was Tainan's mayor and vice president, called the moment historic. On August 1, Taiwan's Indigenous Peoples' Day, he wrote on Facebook that the recognition was "an important milestone in the pursuit of historical and transitional justice for Indigenous peoples."

Today, in classrooms across Tainan, children learn Sinckan alongside Mandarin and Taiwanese. The textbooks that Macapili's glossary made possible are on the shelves, and teachers trained by the Talavan family help students learn pronunciation and grammar. For the first time in more than a century, Sinckan is not just a historical language preserved in old Dutch documents—it is a living subject taught in schools to children who carry Siraya heritage and are learning to claim it as their own.