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Anthropological and linguistic studies place the first settlement of Austronesian speaking Taiwanese (AN_Tw) in the mid-Holocene era. However, geneticists have revealed exclusive diversity among the Bunun indigenous people, implying that their ancestral origin needs further study. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) polymorphism of the Bunun shows a homogeneous relationship with other AN_Tw. However, the Y-chromosome polymorphism shows two major haplogroups, O1a2-M50 (60.7%), also seen to a lesser extent among the Northern AN_Tw, and O1b1a1a1a1a1-M88 (37.5%), scarce among all other AN and non-AN groups in Taiwan, but prevailing in Southeast Asia (SEA) and Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA). While the present-day mtDNA profile of the Bunun typifies the long-term demographic standard for all AN_Tw since the Neolithic era, their Y-chromosome profile suggests an arrival of male settlers in the last two to three millennia from SEA or MSEA, who mixed exclusively with the Bunun indigenous people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, Indigenous ecological knowledge has been receiving increased attention due to its potential to help address the devastating impacts of climate change and environmental degradation. Indigenous peoples in various contexts have become engaged in collaborative research projects with scientists and other experts to build environmentally sustainable societies. Environmental education has been another site for incorporation of Indigenous knowledge systems and ways of knowing. This paper presents one such programme designed by the Bunun Indigenous group in Taiwan to support environmental learning and reconnection with the natural world of their group as well as other Indigenous and non‐Indigenous individuals willing to participate. While the programme's objective is learning with and from the natural environment (the lessons that can be adopted by non‐Indigenous groups), its other objectives include re‐building and strengthening Indigenous identities, cultures and ways of life, and potentially contributing to decolonisation of settler societies and reconciliation between groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examined the protectors of post-disaster adaption in indigenous adolescent survivors of a devastating typhoon in Taiwan. In total, 152 adolescent participants were recruited from two mountainous districts that were the most severely destroyed by Typhoon Morakot (August 7, 2009). A self-reported questionnaire with five major sections including: (1) sociodemographic information and previous traumatic experience; (2) the adolescent-family inventory of life events and changes; (3) the Family APGAR Index; (4) the Family Satisfaction Scale; and (5) the WHO Quality of Life Scale was administered to the adolescents. Multiple regression was performed to analyze the collected data. Gender, religion, and perceptions of overall life changes, family functioning, and satisfaction with family were found to significantly affected post-disaster life adaptation in indigenous adolescents. The findings suggest that clinicians should be more sensitive to gender differences, strengthen adolescents' beliefs and family systems, and minimize transitional post-disaster experience in order to assist indigenous survivors with coping with disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to understand the meanings and impact of the reconstruction of tradition and the objectification of culture among the Bunun, an Austronesian-speaking indigenous people of Taiwan. It situates the revival of tradition in the contexts of state appropriation and the development of ethnic tourism, and shows how the Bunun attempt to control their relationship with the state and the dominant society by reconstituting tradition in the present. The culturally specific ways in which the Bunun sustain local identity and sociality by reproducing their concept of personhood are highlighted. In doing so, I seek to move the analysis beyond the use of reified tradition as a political and identity symbol to address the broader theoretical concern of understanding tradition as a culturally specific mode of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Alcohol intoxication is a serious health issue among Taiwan's indigenous Malayo-Polynesian groups. No published studies address the drinking perceptions and behaviors of Bunun women. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe the drinking perceptions and behaviors of Bunun women in Taiwan. Methods: This study used an ethnographic approach to study the residents of one township located in eastern Taiwan. Researchers used semistructured, in-depth interviews to collect data from 10 Bunun women in 2006. Results: Researchers identified six key culture themes from the data. These were (a) drinking to help make friends, (b) drinking to help solve emotional problems, (c) interpreting the meaning of drinking, (d) hurting the body due to alcohol abuse, (e) decreasing the bond of convention for drinking, and (f) establishing mechanisms to control drinking. Conclusions/Implication for Practice: The results of this study may help one to understand the alcohol use behavior and attitudes of indigenous women in Taiwan and contribute to better cross-cultural nursing clinical practice. This study is expected to enhance the quality of nursing care provided to Taiwan's indigenous people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christianity functions as a significant identity marker for the Bunun, an Austronesian-speaking indigenous people of Taiwan. However, identity construction and boundary maintenance are not given by them as immediate reasons for conversion. Instead, the continuity between Bunun traditional beliefs and Christianity is commonly viewed as the most important reason why the latter took strong hold among the Bunun. This article aims to explain why this is so, and to illustrate how the Bunun have transformed Christianity from a foreign religion into something that is familiar, indigenous, and of their own. Among the local Christians, theology is downplayed in favor of piety, which is cultivated and expressed through practical activities. Healing, in particular, is seen as a demonstration of the power of the Christian God and constitutes the Bunun experience of Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Culture is always regarded as a useful concept to distinguish the differences among ethnic peoples. When the definition of culture is hazy, those whose definitions of the content of a culture become dominant will have the power to decide ethnic boundaries. These cultural discourses can also produce new forms of differentiation and separation within an ethnic group. There are many studies of the Bunun Cultural and Educational Foundation focusing on cultural industries and internal colonization. This paper attempts to explain transformations in the Bunun's concept of power when the state apparatus interferes in the ethnic affairs. State intervention has restricted the development of the foundation and the revival of the Bunun's traditions of plural competition, capability-oriented spirit, and connection without union. It also explains why the Bunun find it hard to agree upon a single identity. As an aboriginal association, the Bunun Cultural and Educational Foundation has to be strategic in what they say, to whom they say it, and where they say it. The foundation, by influencing the dominant class, awakens their consciousness about their place among Taiwan's ethnic groups and their rights to recompense for historical wrongs. On the other hand, most of elites in the tribe rebuild their own identity and image by criticizing the foundation's conduct. When the Bunun reexamine their culture, different discourses feature in the process. The Bunun have developed diverse kinds of social adaptation under different governors. This case study will help us to understand the process of cultural reconstruction and the arguments that emerge when an ethnic group faces competition among different culture interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates indigenous healing practices among the Bunun, an Austronesian-speaking aboriginal people of Taiwan. Etiology, classification of illness, the procedures of healing rituals, and their efficacy are examined in relation to Bunun concepts of personhood. Previous studies of Bunun spirit mediumship and ritual healing treat them as a bounded, isolated system and ignore socio-cultural processes and contexts. At the same time, these studies provide static and at times fragmentary descriptions but little analysis. Thus, this article not only aims to illuminate Bunun cultural notions concerning illness and its cure, but also to situate Bunun spirit mediumship in the context of social change. The article illustrates how external political and religious forces influence and redefine Bunun healing traditions, as well as how the Bunun understand and respond to these forces. It is suggested that Bunun spirit mediumship is not only a way of dealing with spirits and curing ailments, but also a way of contemplating their own position in the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a recent theoretical shift to view the state as a powerful site of symbolic and cultural production that is in itself always culturally represented and understood in particular ways, this article is concerned with how the Bunun, an Austronesian-speaking indigenous people of Taiwan, perceive and imagine the state. I point out that the Bunun use their own idioms of kinship and political leadership to understand and construct their relationship with the state, in order to transform the state from an external and potentially dangerous force into a positive and benevolent provider. In attempting to oblige the state to deliver material and social goods, the Bunun place emphasis on their compliance rather than their resistance to the state. However, I argue that compliance, rather than being passive accommodation, can be a kind of `quite effective agency' in Ortner's (1997: 148) terms, and challenge the recent theoretical preoccupation with resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]