The first time I heard the term “digital archives” was in 2008, just after I had completed by Master’s degree oral examination and, in the free time before I graduated and started looking for a job, carried out the “Sakizaya intangible culture survey” for my tribe, the Sakizaya. This was before I joined TELDAP as a member of staff; I had heard the term “digital archives” but, naively, thought it simply involved digital archiving of the results of field surveys, never thinking about archive quality and specifications. I was inspired to take on this difficult task by my own people, the Sakizaya.  
 
I became acquainted with a group of Sakizaya people who were involved in the Sakizaya tribal revival movement. They had earlier overcome a lot of difficulties to have their tribe officially recognized by the government. They didn’t understand why they existed but were not widely known about or accepted. They were saddened when they said “I am not an Amis, I am Sakizaya” and people didn’t know what a Sakizaya was. When, through the untiring determination of the Sakizaya, the tribe was at last recognized as “Taiwan’s 13th indigenous tribe,” the elders who had worked so hard to achieve this returned to their ancestors with a smile on their faces, but the tribe faced other pressing problems: How to separate Sakizaya culture from Amis culture? How could the “blank history” of the 100 years that the Sakizaya had been classed as Amis be filled?

The Sakizaya was only recognized by the Executive Yuan as Taiwan’s 13th indigenous tribe in 2007. Before that it had been classed as branch of the Amis, the Qilai Amis. The Sakizaya live on the Qilai Plain (Hualian). There are records of contact between the tribe and Dutch gold prospectors as long ago as Taiwan’ s Dutch period in the early to mid-17th Century. This tribe dominated the plain for many years until the Battle of Kabalan in 1878, after which they “disappeared” from historical records. To begin with I didn’t realize why some people were so keen to be recognized as separate tribe. What meaning did it have? Was it more important than real life? Does the acceptance of a social reality mean there are no regrets? In the process of interacting with the people I began to understand that the Sakizaya urgently needed to, using their own efforts and outside assistance, to reconstruct and preserve their culture as they faced a crisis in the form of hazy ethnic group identity and rapid loss of their own culture.  After the tribe won recognition I took on the Sakizaya Intangible Culture Survey Project, the first such project to be carried out, making it especially important.

For many private groups, funding is always the biggest problem and limitation when it comes to project implementation. The foundation had no funds to nurture full-time staff so a group of students including myself and members of the tribe who had full-time jobs had to do the survey work in our spare time. We were without a professional photographer and didn’t have the money to buy the best equipment but, as the saying goes “A newborn calf is not afraid of a tiger”, and we were driven by an enthusiastic desire to get close to the hearts of the people of the tribe. Using only the simplest of equipment, the survey was completed in around six months. In the process we also carried out a song collecting project. We weren’t afraid nor were we regretful and were inspired by the example of Kai Wan-lai, the man who did more than anyone to have the Kavalan tribe recognized, who sadly passed away on December 25, 2008. We were worried that we would do a bad job but were determined to leave something behind. If we didn’t do anything the tribe would once again disappear from the pages of history, just like a century ago. Being unrecorded, unknown is like not existing. How to allow Sakizaya culture to continue and develop in the 21st century was an issue that the members of the tribe had to face.

I joined TELDAP in August 2009 and only then did I understand the diversity of digital archives content. Searching for Sakizaya on TELDAP’s Digital Archives, all I found was very limited information. By 2010, due to the efforts of Taiwan Indigenous People Culture Park of the Executive Yuan’s Council of Indigenous Peoples and Taipei County Indigenous People’s Culture and Educational Association, 200 pieces of information about the Sakizaya could be found on the site. After the Sakizaya was recognized as a tribe by the government, this previously unfamiliar tribe became the subject of research and recording. The research viewpoints of outsiders and the efforts of the members of the tribe to retain a distinctive identity are the power that drives the Sakizaya forward.

In December 2009, I went to Pingdong to take part in the “Taiwan aborigine Digital archives seminar”. During the seminar National Taiwan Museum displayed results that were impressive both in terms of research quality and archive specification. Guided by other participants, I learned how to use free software to overcome funding limitations and how to use a blog if technology was lacking. Many aspects of different cultures are worth cherishing but not all things that are worth recording can be preserved in time. So, maybe, everyone should try to use their camera and PC to record the things around them they feel are important.

At the time, when I was taking photographs with my Fuji F40 digital camera I knew that my shots perhaps wouldn’t be up to the required quality standards, however, the photographs we provided are of value because they have cultural meaning and are close to the hearts of the people of the Sakizaya tribe. They will serve as records and ensure that the Sakizaya are no longer missing from the stage of history in the future.