Doors to Diplomacy Participants

Yuan-An Primary School (2005 CyberFair Project ID 3747)
Taiwan, Luye Township Taitung County
Official Status: Final Project: Ready for Judging
Teacher:
Category: 4. Local Specialties

We estimate 9 student(s) from 10 to 11 will work on this entry.

Description of Our Community: Yuanchang Village is located at the eastern side of the Gaotai Plateau in Luye Township, Taitung County. Neighboring to the Hsinwulue River and Coastal Mountains, Yuanchang Village is a community belonging to administrative district of Yuanan Village of Luye Township. Ethnically, most people are descendants of the Hengchun branch of Amis. They have populated along eastern Taiwan in Hualien, Taitung, and in Pingtung County at Hengchun. Because the natural environment and resources vary in different localities, the Amis ancestors must adapt themselves by learning to utilize natural resources to meet physical and spiritual demands. Thus, the Amis had the impetus to be empowered with the knowledge of local plants

Project Description: Indigenous people live in the ways that follow nature, the provider of their daily supplies. They must use their intelligence to satisfy the basic needs by making the best use of what a locality provides. For the past decades, while the people were adapting themselves to modern culture, the spring of living wisdom, passing down from the ancestors, has been gradually drying away into oblivion as the elders of knowledge continue to dwindle in numbers. It is our greatest hope that by our efforts spent on this project, we will rediscover the value of the natural plants used by ancestors in their daily living, and learn to respect the power and gifts of nature. The knowledge will provide us a foundation for future researches into finding new uses for those plants. We will be able to share an edge from ancestral wisdom and experience by passing down to new lives with modern research.

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