David Blundell

CH 2.--GEOMORPHOLOGY OF TAIWAN; CH 3.--ANTHROPOLOGY ORIENTATION; CH 4.--PREHISTORY OF TAIWAN; CH 5.--INDIGENOUS PEOPLES; CH 6.--(GUIDED TOUR) MUSEUM OF INSTITUTE OF ETHNOL...; CH 7.--REFLECTIONS ON FIELD TRIP; CH 9.--CONDUCTING ETHNOLOGY; CH 12.--REFLECTIONS AND DISCUSSION; CH 13.--HAKKA PEOPLE; CH 14.--PREPARATION FOR GROUP PRESENTATIONS; CH 15.--GROUP PRESENTATIONS & REFLECTIONS (1); CH 16.--GROUP PRESENTATIONS & REFLECTIONS (2)

As we are engaging in the Asia-Pacific, the position of Taiwan as an early linguistic factor in the dispersal of languages is important to observe. The region is seeking collaboration and partnership with its associates of heritage. Taiwan from Neolithic prehistory has ushered in the Austronesian languages that became about 1,200 in number spreading across ocean settlements. For most of the region of Island Southeast Asia and Oceania, the Austronesian speaking peoples have prevailed for several thousand years, extending from archaic origins, with examples found in Formosan languages, through the Malayo-Polynesian languages of the islands of Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Micronesia, Melanesia to Polynesia, and across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar. These languages are valuable, regardless of their extent, influence, or number of speakers, as part of the basic richness of humanity - a far-reaching legacy of communication and worldviews. 1

This paper looks at aesthetics as a cultural system. This is to say that a culture will be viewed in terms of a “worldview” and preferences in life that form an identity of people within a society. The case I am exploring comes from a heritage the Sinhala people have shared ...

This is a revisit to my fieldwork in Sri Lanka for the visual documentation of the autobiography of a Sinhalese Buddhist headmonk. My basis of research was grounded in the experimental film work of Ronald and Donald Rundstrom and Clinton Bergum on the serving of ...

Spatial humanities are a sub-discipline of digital humanities based on geographic information systems (GIS) and timelines providing an effective integrating and contextualizing function for geo-cultural attributes. As information systems from multiple sources and in multiple formats they create visual indexes for diverse cultural data. Spatiotemporal interfaces provide new methods of integrating primary source materials into web-based interactive and 3D visualizations. We are able to chart the extent of specific traits of cultural information via maps using GIS gazetteer style spreadsheets for collecting and curating datasets.

There has been a concerted effort to develop and effec-tively manage a definition of a “sense of place ” in Tai-wan. While history is the record of the past, heritage is what contnues from the past that influences our present lives. This paper looks at Taiwan’s attempts to explore and maintain heritage among the Amis of the east coast, and in museums based on the local archaeological re-cord. These ongoing projects are integrated in local community and national efforts. Heritage is what we have now from the past: The goods that we inherit from our parents, the residues of toxic wastes, memories and artifacts that we cherish and retain, our genetic inheritance, and such culture as we have absorbed and made our own. Included in our cultural, intellectual, and professional heritage are the historical narratives we know and we accept, and which help shape our sense of identity. (Buckland 2004) Over the past fifty years or so, in the Asia Pacific, there has been an effort to develop a “s...

This presentation is about reflections on what helps “shape our sense of identity” (Buckland 2004) and local integrity among the indigenous people in Taiwan and the Vanniyaletto (Vedda) of Sri Lanka (see examples, Barnes et al. 1995; see esp. Alliance of Taiwan Aborigines, I Chiang, Lava Kau; Hsieh 1987; Obeyesekere 2002). At the International Seminar on Biological and Cultural Diversity in South-Southeast Asia and the Development Consequence, of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata, November 21st-23rd, 2007, Bangladeshi and speakers of India declared that indigenous people don’t exist in their countries. South Asian governments have official designation for tribal groups and scheduled tribes, not for indigenous peoples. In Taiwan, there are two problems with the word used for indigenous groups is translated as “tribe” from the Mandarin Chinese “tzu.” First, the word “tzu” in Chinese stems from a reference to “lineage” or “descent of clan,” not tribe. Second the indigenous groups of Taiwan are not necessarily defined as tribal or tribe in terms of their social organization.

Heritage is what we have now from the past: The goods that we inherit from our parents, the residues of toxic wastes, memories and artifacts that we cherish and retain, our genetic inheritance, and such culture as we have absorbed and made our own. Included in our cultural, ...

This volume is dedicated to studies of the deformation of evaporite rocks in pillows and diapirs, and the surrounding sedimentary overburden rocks and sediments. Salt diapirs have become the focus of attention in the last forty years, because of their strategic importance ...

Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891-1956) rose from the dalit “undercaste” community (untouchables) in India. He educated himself in India and the West and became a national leader in India's struggle for equality and justice. Ambedkar framed the Indian constitution ...

This paper covers work using historical geographic information systems (GIS) by the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) 2 to trace early navigation in Monsoon Asia. To open a scholarly Web-based platform to a broader audience, the ECAI Austronesia Team is collaborating with the Maritime Buddhism project conceived by Lewis Lancaster. The Maritime Buddhism project is being developed to reach general audiences with a high level of interactivity and 3D visualizations featuring historic timelines, ships, trade routes and trade winds, travelling monks, life at ports, and stories. To allow the information to be more accessible, mobile phone apps and multi-media museum displays are being developed. Austronesian speaking peoples made navigation a way of life across the Indian and Pacific oceans spanning thousands of years. The goal of this integration of content and technology is to enable our understanding of Monsoon Asia, its diffusion of culture, and oceanic navigation to become a...

This paper addresses potential folk life cultural heritage in Sri Lanka as a continuum in a country of magnificent UNESCO listed sites. If the Vedda (Vanniyaletto) of Sri Lanka are the heirs of an existence dating back to the Mesolithic of Southern Asia to the present, then this community represents a sphere of cultural expression that requires world attention in conserving a folk diver-sity that is rapidly disappearing. These Vanniyaletto, continue living in a land of significant ancient world heritage, are struggling for years to have a museum or community center dedicated to their existence. While some critics proclaim they don’t exist as a people, I ar-gue the Vedda are not a primitive or non-existent ‘tribe’; they are an important heritage community in Sri Lanka laying a foundation, in part, for a plural nation (Blundell 2008). They are a people wrapped in the ma-trix of the Sinhala and Tamil communities from earliest times, yet since the 19th century relegated as a fringe people, curiosities at best, without acknowledgement as significant contributors in today’s ‘national program’.

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the potential of intangible folk life as a continuum amounting to world heritage in a country of magnificent UNESCO listed sites. If the indigenous Vedda (Vanniyaletto) of Sri Lanka are the heirs of an existence dating back to the Mesolithic of ...

1 © David Blundell. Paper presented at the First Conference on Language Development, Language Revitalization, and Multilingual Education in Minority Communities in Asia, 6th-8th November, 2003, Bangkok. I am grateful to National Chengchi University for a grant to ...

I am member of the international collaborative – Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI)
Austronesia Team and Project on Maritime Buddhism. My purpose here is to explore information
and research on the transport networks of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, documentation
of Buddhist pilgrims, ethnology of boat technology, navigation, and historic climate change.
ECAI supports mapping of Maritime Buddhist sites for constructing a method to integrate data
into an interactive map interface.
My contribution and research goal is to explore the physical feasibilities of the stitched
sea craft ‘oru’ and its variations across the Buddhist Maritime Silk Road: a navigation network of
staged voyaging across the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. Destinations
were to seats of kingdoms and trade centers where the word of the dharma and its faith developed
in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly congenial environment of
Southeast Asia. I trace the earliest evidence of trans-ocean sailing craft across Monsoon Asia.
ECAI is contributing to the UN Millennium Goals by reaffirming the indispensable
common house (United Nations) of the human family, “through which we will seek to realize our
universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development. We therefore pledge our unstinting
support for these common objectives and our determination to achieve them.”1 Our project is reexamining
Buddhist transmission and its contribution to humanity and general welfare.
The outcome is a multi-dimensional interactive Web-based visual anthropology/cultural
atlas of indigenous peoples with vibrant ethnographic portraits serving as a local community
bulletin board for scholarly exchange.

Abstract This paper covers work using historical geographic information
systems (GIS) by the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI)2 to trace
early navigation in Monsoon Asia. To open a scholarly Web-based platform
to a broader audience, the ECAI Austronesia Team is collaborating with
the Maritime Buddhism project conceived by Lewis Lancaster. The Maritime
Buddhism project is being developed to reach general audiences with a high level
of interactivity and 3D visualizations featuring historic timelines, ships, trade
routes and trade winds, travelling monks, life at ports, and stories. To allow the
information to be more accessible, mobile phone apps and multi-media museum
displays are being developed. Austronesian speaking peoples made navigation a
way of life across the Indian and Pacific oceans spanning thousands of years. The
goal of this integration of content and technology is to enable our understanding
of Monsoon Asia, its diffusion of culture, and oceanic navigation to become alive
and accessible.
Keywords: Maritime Buddhism, history, geographic information systems
(GIS), Monsoon Asia, Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI), Austronesia,
interactive museum displays, 3D, ALiVE – Applied Laboratory for Interactive
Visualization Embodiment

Taiwan (Formosa) is a nation rife with contradictions. The people of Taiwan face the often difficult task of balancing their deep, traditional cultural influences with their roles as citizens in a modern liberal-and advanced technological-society. Thus the question of the Taiwanese identity continues to be an elusive one. Their Chinese heritage looms great in the minds of the Taiwanese, and Daoism historically advises commune with nature. Yet in today's world, the 'built and virtual' are taking over the ecology of the mind, situating nature at a distance rather than as something in which we are immersed. In the midst of this trend, Taiwanese people are normalizing electronics and media in their lifestyles, which risks distracting them from the imperative to confront how their identities are bound up with nature. Nevertheless, in Taiwan nature beckons from the mountains, valleys, plains, shores, and neighbouring islands. Indigenous peoples have been inspired by these landscapes and over the past four centuries this understanding of the environment was transmitted and blended as folk beliefs with emigrant populations from China. Today, this orientation of knowledge could be passed on to generations to come or it could be forgotten. This study has sought to give examples of how Taiwanese have either failed to conserve their heritage or how they have developed the processes by which to select ecological resources and integrate them into their local cultural repertoire. Later in this chapter, I will propose revisiting a continuance of knowledge by using technologies applied to museums of ethnology encouraging the current generation of App users to make sense of their heritage for themselves. Such strategies may enhance local public awareness, education, and heritage conservation.