Let’s Learn Sirayan!—Taiwan’s First Siraya Elementary School

During summer vacation of 2017, on the campus of ­Koupi Elementary School, children stand in front of the teaching wall, clearly in high spirits, pointing to the words aka­kul (“crested serpent eagle”), ha­li­bang­bang (“butterfly”) and atu­ra­tu­raw (“owl”) as they vie to show off their Si­ra­yan language skills, and are unintimidated no matter how long or difficult the words. This is the result of one academic year of promoting the Si­ra­yan language.

On August 1 of 2016, ­Koupi Elementary School in Tai­nan City’s Xin­hua District became the first Si­ra­yan primary school in modern-day Taiwan.

The transformation of Koupi Elementary

Koupi Elementary School was founded almost a century ago, in 1920. Several years back, for a time it was in danger of being absorbed into another school because there were too few children. When Wang Chao-tse took over as principal at ­Koupi three years ago, there were only 30 or so students. “The people in the community were deeply concerned and had a sense of crisis, because they wanted the school to be preserved.” Thus Wang was faced with the challenge of giving the school some special character that would attract students.

Tainan City was the first local government to recognize the status of the Siraya indigenous people. The city government felt that this recognition should also be reflected on the educational front.

“The Siraya are a very special group in Taiwan,” says Wang Chao-tse. “In the 17th century, during the Age of Discovery, they were the first people to have contact with outsiders, and they were the first window on the international scene for Taiwan, having the deepest interactions with the outside world.” Having been posted to ­Koupi Ele­ment­ary by the Tai­nan City Bureau of Education, Wang set about promoting a transformation of the school. But in fact, a few years earlier ­Koupi had already begun teaching the Si­ra­yan language, in the form of an after-school club with students divided into two mixed-age groups.

“We were determined to make Si­ra­yan a formal class for two reasons,” explains Wang. “The first was to give a positive response to activists who had long been working to revive Si­ra­yan culture. The second was to make the Si­ra­yan curriculum part of the school system, because only with systemization can language education be comprehensively planned, from instructional goals and curriculum design to curriculum evaluation. Only in this way could the revival of the Si­ra­yan language develop and flourish.” This is why, after communicating with parents and the community, he arranged for one compulsory class in Si­ra­yan each week. Teaching the class using Romanization—that is, writing Sirayan with the Latin alphabet—has the side benefit of reducing the sense of strangeness students will later feel when they begin studying English.

Students are still a little unclear about recognition of their indigenous identity, but through games their interest can be sparked and cultural seeds planted. On campus, Wang Chao-tse will occasionally interact with the students using Si­ra­yan words like tabe (“how are you”), ma­ri­yang­wagi (“have a good day”), la­lu­lug (“thank you”), and ma­hanlu (“goodbye”), so that learning and using the language becomes a natural part of daily life.

Teachers of Si­ra­yan in Tai­nan City are mostly trained by the Siraya Culture Association (SCA). There are currently about ten language instructors working in 17 primary and middle schools across Tai­nan. Wang Chao-tse is dedicated to working with the SCA. He believes that education is a driver of cultural revival, and that the SCA is making the revival of Si­ra­yan more comprehensive and systematic, and also making it easier for the written form of the language to become established. This will broaden the impact of efforts to promote Sirayan.

An important starting point for the renaissance of the Sirayan language is this Gospel of St. Matthew, written in Sirayan using the Latin alphabet. It was only after Edgar Macapili researched it as the basis for a Sirayan glossary that textbooks, illustrated books, and pocket books were produced in this language.

Starting a language at age 50

“May 14 of 2009 was my Si­raya birthday,” says Si­ra­yan language teacher Haar Ta­vali happily. When looking over some household registrations of her family from the Japanese era (1895‡1945), she saw the term juku (referring to assimilated indigenous people) in the data, and she became sure of her identity as a member of the Si­raya tribe.

Haar Ta­vali laughs somewhat bashfully when admitting that she only began studying Si­ra­yan herself after age 50. When she was younger the purpose of studying languages was to score higher grades, but right from the start her study of Si­ra­yan was about embracing her identity. She discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that many words that she was familiar with as a child still survived in the daily conversation of Si­raya people. It’s just that most ­Si­raya thought these were Taiwanese dialect words, and this experience gave her an even greater sense of purpose.

Ily, born in 1965, is another teacher of Sirayan. She only discovered her identity as a ­Pingpu (plains) Aborigine after leaving school and entering the world of work.

Reading family genealogies, Ily discovered that both her parents were of Si­rayan blood. She laughs as she says she is completely “assimilated,” not just halfway or even most of the way.

When the SCA began promoting a language revival back in 2006, Ily started studying Si­ra­yan from scratch. She says modestly that she has not learned much, and so can teach even less, but in her first class she always begins by outlining Sirayan culture to the children.

What is her motivation for becoming a Sirayan language teacher? “If you want to pass a language along, you have to have someone to teach it. If no one speaks it, then it really will be dead and buried,” she says.

The younger generation takes the baton

SCA chairwoman Uma Ta­la­van says, “What’s interesting is that in the past indigenous languages were mostly kept alive by the elderly, but we have quite a few young people getting involved.”

Members of the younger generation including Daki Do­mok, Wagi Ta­la­van, Oni Ta­la­van, and Euphony Ta­la­van came into contact with the Si­ra­yan language as children through songs, and when they got to high school they studied Si­ra­yan grammar and sentence structure in depth, so that today they are in the front line of teachers and assistants promoting the revival of Sirayan.

Twenty-three-year-old Wagi Ta­la­van says he feels fortunate to be living in an era when Si­ra­yan is going from being an endangered language to a renaissance. Twenty-nine-year-old Daki Do­mok has just completed his first full year as a Si­ra­yan language teacher, and he teaches at schools that include Koupi Elementary and ­Jheng Sin Elementary. The two of them share similarities in how they grew up, both being in contact with the Si­ra­yan language for 20 years. Today they use the same methods through which they learned Si­ra­yan as children, teaching the younger generation through songs and dance, because this process gives them a greater sense of “belonging” in the Si­ra­yan cultural world, and makes them all the more willing to take on responsibility for the young.

On the campus of ­Koupi Elementary School, a group of children are singing the Si­ra­yan “Song of Sowing Seeds.” Twisting their behinds, they accompany the music by stretching their arms upwards as if to climb. It is reminiscent of the ritual in the Japanese cartoon My Neighbor To­toro in which the characters pray for their seedlings to grow quickly. The lyrics say: “Sow one seed, sow two seeds, one drop of rain falls, two drops of rain fall, then one flower can bloom, two flowers can bloom.” Let us hope that the revival of the Si­ra­yan language is like the words of this song—after the seeds are sown, with sunlight and the moisture of rain they can gradually produce a robust rebirth.                  

The Sirayan language is to be found everywhere you look on the campus of Koupi Elementary School, integrated into daily life.

Haar Tavali only began studying Sirayan in her fifties, while Wagi Talavan and Daki Domok have been around the language since childhood. But all three are committed teachers who have devoted themselves to transmitting Sirayan to younger generations.

Haar Tavali only began studying Sirayan in her fifties, while Wagi Talavan (wearing glasses) and Daki Domok have been around the language since childhood. But all three are committed teachers who have devoted themselves to transmitting Sirayan to younger generations.

Wang Chao-tse hopes to use lively teaching approaches to spark children’s interest in learning the Sirayan language and to plant some cultural seeds.