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In the 1980s, under the impact of the indigenous civil rights movement, many aboriginal people gradually started awaring the importance of reviving traditional culture. Along with the intervention from the government, many indigenous tribes began to hold traditional rituals. Under this larger context, due to the increasing consciousness of reviving the tribal culture, the traditional rituals of Bunun have being held in every villages.The traditional rituals of the Bunun people crystalize their ethnic history and culture, but from the Japanese colonization period to the time in postwar, because of the external influences resulted from the official policies, Han culture and foreign religion, the traditional rituals of the Bunun people gradually witnessed a process of transformation and decline, which in turn diminished the Bunun people’s self-dignity and idenity toward their own culture. With the indigenous movement of cultural revitalization, the bodily performance of traditional rituals has become the symbol of ethnic culture. Therefore, this study aims to examine how the contemporary Bunun people understand their own culture through the bodily performance and practices of traditional rituals given that the members of ethnic group find no ways to learn traditional culture in the livelihood of their family and in the classrooms. This study will show that, by doing so, they have been able to distinguish us from others and, thereafter, recognize and identify themselves as the Bunun people. Based on the oral interviews of the Bunun residents in the Kanahcian village, this study intends to explore the ways in which the contemporary Bunun people reconstructed their ethnic identity by reviving their traditional rituals and bodily practices. It demonstrates that the process of reviving traditional rituals and of reconstructing etnhnic identity has involved and entangled complexing factors in various dimensions of culture, psychology, economy and politics. Therefore, there exists a dialectical relationship between the interviewees and their tradition culture because they would actively look for their past culture and history because of the demand in the present. In other words, in the mutual interaction of the ethnic group, individual identity is greatly impacted by the external environment, and, more importantly, the cultural elements distinguishing us from others would become significant only if they are identified by the individual actor. Therefore, in the process of making ethnic identity, when the individual awares different or unequal treatment in culture, one will be eager to understand and reconsider his or her traditional culture so that appearing the sense of belonging to the member of the ethnic group and showing their thought, attitude, sentiment and behaviors with regard to one’s ethnic identity in the forms of cultural knowledge and ritual practice. As a result, the sense of identity comes into being. The contemporary ritual performance is the way in which an ethnic group demonstrates and strengthens its identity through certain cultural and symbolic signs, which is content and essence of ethnic identity. Thus, in order to understand the making of ethnic identity, one has to look into a person’s life experience, environment and psychology. In the modernized and ever-changing society, when the indigenous people encounter the dilemma in which their traditional culture have been overwhelming by the dominant culture, they would nurture the mind of the members of ethnic group with cultural values by the means of holding ritual performance and make them the shared experiences and historical memory for the people of the tribe. This is a significant process by which one understands his or her identity of being a Bunun and the foundation on which one identifies himself or herself of belonging to an ethnic group. In other words, the continuity of the Bunun people’s ritual performance enables the members of an ethnic group to awake and interact with the history so that represent and strengthen their ethnic identity. Thus, a strong sense of belonging comes into being creates the foundation of making ethnic identity. |