Renaissance of Bunun Millet Culture

On a clear day you can see forever from the top of Yushan, Taiwan’s tallest peak. Meanwhile, at the foot of the mountain, in the Heshe plant nursery of the Experimental Forest of the College of Bioresources and Agriculture of National Taiwan University (NTU), there is a small field beneath bird netting where golden ears of millet are heavy with grain. The millet sown in springtime is now ready for harvest!

“This variety of millet is called qunivalval,” says Nieqo Soqluman, leader of the Bunun community of Kalibuan in Nantou County’s Xinyi Township and a cultural instructor at Jiou Mei Primary School. He is holding a millet harvest festival here, and as he introduces millet varieties to the young Bunun in attendance, a 90-year-woman named Niun Isqaqavut joins in. Everyone is excited to be part of the transmission of tribal culture from old to young.

First Niun says a benediction over the millet field, after which everyone goes into the field to reap the crop, pass it along from hand to hand, and bind it into sheaves. Finally, holding a ritual vessel, the old woman delivers blessings over the heap of millet that has been stacked up by the side of the field. She prays for the millet and the millet spirit to bring warmth and cohesion to the clan after the crop is brought home, and this completes the harvest festival.

The cultural significance of millet

Millet was already present in Taiwan 4,000 years ago. Because it is resistant to diseases and insect pests, drought tolerant and generally resilient, and moreover is more nutritious than other grains like paddy rice or wheat, it was a major traditional crop grown by indigenous peoples. Consequently many festivals developed related to the various seasons of millet cultivation.

“For indigenous people, millet has both dietary and religious significance,” says Haisul Palalavi, associate professor in the Center for Teacher Education at National Taitung University. In dietary terms, it was the main staple food of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. In religious terms, under their animistic beliefs they held that everything has a spirit and spiritual power, and millet was no exception. Accordingly there were rituals to accompany everything from clearing fields for millet cultivation, sowing, and weeding to harvesting and storing the crop.

Especially for the Bunun people, seasonal rituals and millet were two sides of the same coin. There is a Bunun carved panel calendar of rituals related to millet cultivation, recording changes in plant development. The Bunun even created songs related to millet, including the renowned pasibubut, a prayer for a good millet harvest which is sung in eight-part polyphony after sowing. The Bunun believed that the happier the gods were, the better the harvest would be.

During the Bunun ritual of “shooting taro with arrows,” Bunun males shoot arrows at the stems of taro plants. This symbolizes an injection of energy in hopes of increasing the taro harvest.

Jiou Mei Primary School has integrated millet cultivation and its associated rituals into the curriculum so that students can learn about millet culture. (courtesy of Jiou Mei Primary School)

Bunun panel calendar

The Bunun have long inhabited areas high in the Central Mountain Range, and live at higher elevations than any other Taiwanese indigenous people. They are known as the “guardians of Yushan.” They were deeply aware that their survival depended on the mountains and grain, and that they should feel especially grateful for millet.

The panel calendar of seasonal rituals related to millet was made by combining a lunar calendar with pictographs. It includes ceremonies for everything from preparing virgin soil, sowing seeds, weeding, and chasing away birds to harvesting, grain storage, and the safekeeping of farm implements. The Bunun have the most complex and rigorous rituals of any indigenous people in Taiwan, which reflects the fact that they had greater knowledge of astronomy and calendars than the other peoples.

Tanpilic Balincinan, a mother tongue instructor at Jiou Mei Primary School, who is also a cultural activist, says that the Bunun people gave millet the same level of care and protection as a sweetheart. He surmises that this was because his ancestors lived deep in the mountains in old tribal communities with very harsh environments, and it was millet alone that enabled them to survive. As a result, the Bunun used rituals to express their humility and ­reverence towards millet. Underlying these rituals were the desire to summon up the millet spirit and hopes for a good harvest.

With the passage of time, the traditional millet culture of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples gradually went into decline. Haisul Palalavi notes that the policy of collective relocation implemented in the 1930s under Japanese colonial rule had a profound impact on the Bunun. Indigenous peoples were forced to migrate from their old tribal communities to places that were more convenient for the Japanese to govern, and the cultivation of millet as the main staple crop gradually gave way to paddy rice. In addition, the introduction of Christianity disrupted seasonal millet rituals. In later years, indigenous people virtually stopped growing millet altogether.

“We can say that there have long been no Bunun people cultivating large areas of land with millet,” says Nieqo Soq­luman. In Xinyi Township his family alone has continued to plant five strains of millet, which they have been doing for over 80 years now, whereas most other Bunun people long ago switched over to cash crops such as beefsteak tomatoes, green beans, and bell peppers.

The Bunun people cast millet wine lees into the air to symbolize gratitude to the spirits of the sky and the land, the desire for harmony between all people, and new beginnings.

Students and teachers from Jiou Mei Primary School line up to store recently harvested crops in a traditional Bunun house.

Millet renaissance

“Once people stopped growing millet, the panel calendar no longer had any significance,” says Savungaz Tanapima, principal of Jiou Mei Primary School. “We felt we had to cultivate millet in order to understand what the panel calendar was trying to convey.”

In recent years there has been a cultural renaissance movement among Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, and they have begun by reviving cultivation of millet in conjunction with the culture and rituals associated with this crop.

Jiou Mei Primary School is an experimental school for ethnic minorities with students drawn from the Bunun and Tsou indigenous peoples. Five years ago millet was planted in the school garden and seasonal rituals were incorporated into the curriculum design, with a series of themed classes being developed.

In the summer holiday, the school holds the thanksgiving ritual that is unique to the Takitudu community of the Bunun people, an activity which has proven to have great instructional value. Early in the day, the ceremony begins with prayers from village elders, after which Tanpilic Balincinan leads the way in the “storage ritual.” The children line up in single file to carry recently harvested crops including millet, corn, green beans, and papaya into a traditional Bunun dwelling house built on the school campus for storage, symbolizing an abundant harvest.

Next a fire is lit and a pig slaughtered. The pig’s blood is daubed on door lintels to symbolize protection of the residents against evil and disease. Later the participants divide into groups to undertake various tasks: The women and girls filter the lees from the millet wine. Meanwhile some of the men and boys, intoning the pasibubut song of prayer for a good harvest, go into the taro fields to ­ceremonially shoot arrows into taro stems, while others cook millet congee, prepare food, and carve up the pig for roasting.

Finally, everyone gathers together and they throw the wine lees into the air while loudly proclaiming “Vis!” This symbolizes gratitude to the spirits of the sky, the land, and all things in the world, as well as harmony between people and new beginnings or the start of a new year. As the ritual ends, elders intone heartfelt exhortations before they finally serve up the pork and everyone eats together, reliving their community lifestyle of days gone by.

Slaughtering a pig is an indispensible part of celebrations of important days by the Bunun people. After the pork is cut up and cooked, it is eaten collectively, which illustrates their culture of sharing.

The Bunun people brew millet wine for worshipping heaven and expressing thanks. The millet wine lees are used in a ritual in which they are cast into the air as an offering.

Good response to the Garden Program

Nieqo Soqluman launched the “Garden Program.” It calls on young Bunun people to cultivate 28 strains of millet collected in Xinyi Township in the 1970s by the American scholar Wayne Hazen Fogg (1940–2021) and brought back to Taiwan in 2011 by Professor Warren H.J. Kuo of NTU’s Department of Agronomy. Nieqo also offers classes to guide Bunun people to better understand millet culture and ceremonies.

In the first year, 2022, the program attracted more than 30 participants, and this year a shared field is being used to collectively cultivate the qunivalval variety of millet in the NTU Experimental Forest. Two Han Chinese from Tai­chung and Miaoli have also joined the project.

As millet has returned to indigenous communities, interpersonal interactions have also been undergoing a change. Nieqo observes that elders in these communities have begun to chat about their memories of millet and enthusiastically offer instruction on how to cultivate it. Some of the parents of young people who have returned to their communities have also set aside plots of land specially to grow millet.

Last year Baki Takislinian returned home to the Bunun community of Tungpu Daigaz to take part in the Garden Program. He planted millet in his family’s vegetable garden, after which his maternal grandfather, with whom he had rarely spent quality time, walked 20 kilometers every day to see how the millet was growing and converse with his grandson about millet farming.

This year Baki Takislinian borrowed some land to expand the area on which he planted millet, but he under­estimated the threat from birds and rainfall. “Half of the grain went in bird tax, and the other half went in natural precipitation tax,” he quips.

Baki Takislinian says wryly: “It’s not that I didn’t chase away the birds from my land, it’s that birds from other places all flew over to my millet fields.” But he also says with emotion that he is lucky to have learned about millet now: “Being able to eat millet makes me happy, and I’m confident that next year I will grow it even better.”

Cooking millet slowly over a wood fire while turning it to achieve a sticky texture is how it was traditionally eaten in Taiwan, and this method gives it the most authentic original flavor.

A solution to environmental change

Given the steady disappearance of millet culture, Nieqo Soqluman often thinks about how to highlight the uniqueness of the Bunun people in Taiwan society, which was another motivation behind the Garden Program. “Even if it’s just a single plant pot or a small patch of land, so long as people are growing millet and can consume at least one meal’s worth of it each year, then the program is a success! At the very least we will have preserved its value.” The spirit behind the resumption of millet cultivation by indigenous people has inspired positive responses from a number of non-­governmental organizations, who have taken the initiative to promote and grow millet.

Millet can thrive in dry soil and is an ideal solution for countries trying to raise their food self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on imported grains in response to climate change. In fact, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has declared 2023 the International Year of Millets, with the aim of inspiring the whole world to rediscover the potential of this plant.

Over thousands of years, indigenous peoples have used seed selection to develop strains of millet unique to each indigenous community. This provides a precious supplement to global efforts to preserve the biodiversity of millet germplasm. Today, millet is no longer simply an ethnic crop of indigenous peoples, it is also imbued with the mission of transmitting life wisdom and culture as well as being a solution to environmental challenges. Reviving the cultivation of millet has become a collective global objective and action.

Nieqo Soqluman is working with the NTU Experimental Forest to promote millet cultivation in the Heshe plant nursery and is appealing to all Bunun people to join in the revival of this crop.