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Mother's Tongue, Daughter's Voice--the Conversation between Taiwanese Indigenous Artists Liglav A-Wu and A-Bao

The recent political changes in Taiwan seem to create a greater space for growing visibility of Indigenous cultures on the island. However, the unresolved colonial imaginaries and their collateral damage, naturalized as the sustaining components of a Han-Chinese centered history, sttill influence and shape the daily reality of the Indigenous peoples today. In this event, we are honored to invite two significant Paiwan women artists, Abao (Aljenljeng Tjaluvie) and Liglav A-wu, to share their experiences and reflections. Despite the distinct media characteristics of music and literature, through which their arts are contextualized respectively, Aljenljeng and A-wu’s works express a mutual concern over the resilience and renewal of Indigenous traditions, seeking to explore and delineate the contemporary sensibility of the Indigenous peoples. Through their conversation, we hope to address the imperative to rethink the colonial histories in Taiwan and reimagine the potentiality for multi-ethnic collaboration that is to take shape at present.

Featured Speakers:

Abao (Aljenljeng Tjaluvie)

A Paiwan pop music singer-songwriter, whose latest work was named the 2020 Golden Melody Award’s “Album of the Year” among other accolades. Outside of pop music scenes, her activities also extend to documentaries of traditional ritual singing practice and television hosting.

Liglav A-wu

A writer of Paiwan and mainland Chinese descent in Taiwan. A-wu has long endeavored to promote the Indigenous rights and Indigenous women’s activism in Taiwan since the 1990s. Written in a genuine, personal voice as an Indigenous woman, A-wu’s works consist mostly of autobiographical prose about family and childhood memories, Indigenous cultures, and the Indigenous peoples’ felt experience of the contemporary society in Taiwan.

Hosted by UCHRI Working Group: Memory, Agency and Posthumanity in Taiwanese Literature, Visual Culture and Performative Body.

Nov 13, 2020 07:30 AM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)