ESG News

There are 14 Atayal tribal villages scattered along the Da’an River that separates Taichung from Miaoli. After 1999's Jiji Earthquake, tribal members who worked away from home returned to their home villages to participate in the reconstruction work and build shared kitchens. Based on the Atayal idea of "eating together and working together", services such as shared meals, meal delivery, community care, and medical transportation were promoted.

Three unique characteristics of Atayal culture are woven fabrics, mouth harps, and facial tattoos. Through the detailed explanation of the instructor and getting to touch actual objects, the visually-impaired students learned the difference between traditional hand-woven fabrics and modern machine-made fabrics, and understood the significance of facial tattooing culture to the Atayal people. In addition to the educational tour, the tribal village kitchen also prepared a wide variety of local ingredients to give the visually-impaired students a chance to try make bamboo tube-cooked rice, Taiwan white pine steamed buns, and Atayal cakes themselves.

In order to make the bamboo tube-cooked rice, the volunteers accompanied the visually impaired students to the bamboo forest halfway up the mountain. Through the guidance of the young Indigenous instructor, the students learned how to choose bamboo suited to making bamboo tube-cooked rice, and then sawed the bamboo to the required length. For the students, they were quite excited about using a saw for the first time. Once the Novatek volunteers' guidance was done, the students suggested that they could also help the volunteers to cut their bamboo. After cutting the bamboo, they filled the bamboo tubes with rice and made Taiwan White Pine steamed buns. The students were fully focused while carrying out the work. One said, "I will make delicious bamboo tube-cooked rice, and bring it home for my parents to eat."

The instructor also explained that the concept of the tribal village kitchen is to share, and told the students that if possible, they could share the homemade steamed buns with the elders in the tribe. After knowing this, the students replied: "We will make a lot of small steamed buns for our grandfathers and grandmothers; they can only eat them if they're small".

After visiting the Tmavun kitchen, and with the encouragement and help of Novatek volunteers, the visually impaired students from Changhua by not only gained knowledge of traditional Atayal culture, but also experienced sawing bamboo to make bamboo tube-cooked rice. They used traditional wooden mortars and pestles to make Atayal cakes, learned how to prepare traditional tribal food, and experienced the unique culture of the Atayal Indigenous people.