Christian Indigenous Peoples in Taipei : An Ethnographical Survey on the Catholic Amis Community and Yuan Zhu Min Theology

According to the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan's Executive Yuan in September 2011, Austronesian indigenous peoples, Yuan Zhu Min, make up about 2 percent (518,218 people) of the 23-million strong population of Taiwan. Since World War II, about 80 percent of the 14 ethnic groups of Yuan Zhu Min have accepted Christianity. When the Kuomintang's rule over Taiwan began, Taiwan-born people, so-called "Taiwanese," were placed under martial law and deprived of political freedom. In the 1960s, when a democratic consciousness gradually grew among Taiwanese, Christian Churches began to search for new mission goals. Taiwanese Presbyterian theologians such as Chiong Hui Hwang and C. S. Song in particular soon proclaimed Ben Tu theology. Ben Tu, often translated as "contextualization" or "inculturation" in English, is a theological concept that allows Christian beliefs to take root in the local Taiwanese context. In the 1980s, in the early period of the Yuan Zhu Min movement, the slow on-going social movement to promote indigenous rights and dignity, indigenous theologians started to advocate Yuan Zhu Min theology. This was coined by Ben Tu theology, and encouraged the church to pursue justice for indigenous people. This article focuses on pastoral work among indigenous Amis Catholic communities in the Taipei area and attempts to explore its role for the Amis. Although the Catholic Church has rarely been mentioned within the study of indigenous peoples as much as the Presbyterian Church, it is clear that they have actively struggled with Ben Tu theology within the various social changes that have occurred. At the end of the 1960s, when about half of the indigenous peoples immigrated to the cities, a French Catholic priest working for a church in one of the Amis villages in the east county started regular visits to Amis church members in Taipei. Later, his work resulted in building up a lay organization, forming 8 Amis Catholic communities. By conducting intermissive fieldwork from 2008 to 2011, two major roles of pastoral work in the communities were found: 1. each community provides the Amis with beneficial information for their urban lives; and 2. Amis people acquire and maintain their self-determination of being "Amis," "Christian," and "Catholic," rather than just being referred to as "Urban Indigenous." This more or less shows that Yuan Zhu Min theology has been successfully practiced in Catholic Churches. However, if the theology aims to take root in the indigenous peoples' context, we should reexamine how indigenous peoples themselves comprehend it.