Taiwan's half-million indigenous people - about 2 per cent of the population - are once again in the news. Two weeks ago, Aboriginal superstar singer A-mei dropped in with friends to the Taipei gay discotheque Funky, to the astonishment of the large Friday-night crowd.
Last week, Premier Frank Hsieh Chang-ting said 15 locations would be designated 'Aboriginal tribe attractions', probably in anticipation of a tourist flood from the mainland, expected once current policy changes are completed. And an International Aboriginal Education Conference opened in Taipei this week to study the preservation of indigenous languages and related schooling issues throughout the Pacific region.
When the Taiwanese Aboriginals are not down on their luck, they seem to be in relative clover. A-mei is said to earn NT$3 million ($695,000) for every appearance at a wei-ya party (given at the year's end by large companies to reward their hard-working staff), and Aboriginal music remains fashionable. On the other hand, unemployment is stubbornly high in indigenous districts, and the government last week announced a NT$6.12 billion package to create more job opportunities in these areas.
Meanwhile, Indigenous Writers in Taiwan, the first such book in English, was recently published to showcase these people's stories, essays and poems. Its pages reveal rarely seen glimpses of daily life: in the drifting snow on the slopes of Yu Shan - Taiwan's highest summit and the tallest peak in East Asia - an aged Aboriginal hunter with salt, betel nuts and rice wine in his backpack urges his coughing old motorbike along a mountain trail, followed in the silent mist by his faithful dog.
Significantly, everything in the book has been translated from Chinese. The editors quote one writer, Rimui Aki, a teacher of an Aboriginal language, as saying there is simply no audience for material written in her native tongue.
Although Taiwan's Aboriginals have been pushed, over the centuries, off the fertile, low-lying land, kinder philosophies are now at work. Subsidies are available, special schemes are in place, and if affirmative action is not yet on the cards, it may not be very far away.