wfn.org | Standing up for Aboriginal Women's Rights in Taiwan

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Taiwan Church News 2734, 19-25 July 2004
Reported by Yang Shu-hao. Translated and Rewritten by David Alexander

Last week the Women's Ministries Committee of the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT) held a symposium on Aboriginal Women's
Rights. The Rev. Lin Niling, programme secretary for Women's Ministries, said
that the meeting aimed to examine the background, current situation and
future
needs for development of Taiwan's Aboriginal women in the areas of education,
health, organization and gender equality.  These, she said, are areas that
the
church must take seriously in the future.

She said that Aboriginal villages and neighborhoods lack educational
resources
and the women there take on the majority of the suffering caused by community
problems with alcohol addiction. There may be a will to participate in
movements and social actions, but there is a deficiency of organizing
ability,
so those with activist spirits feel isolated.

The principal speaker was the Aboriginal Clergywoman Wuhwa Ba-aliyosi, she
spoke from the lament found in Psalm 137 and compared it to Taiwan's history
of outside domination as seen by this nation's indigenous peoples.  The
inequalities that Aborigines have suffered under this outside pressure have
been, she said, similar to those of the Old Testament people of Israel in
Babylonian exile. Aboriginal life is still passed in a bitter sea.

An international note was sounded by Donna E. Loft, a Canadian Aboriginal.
She
calls on indigenous peoples around the world to bravely lift their voices for
the sake of equal rights in social media. Today's Aboriginal peoples in the
main are among the lower classes in their societies. They live in misery. She
calls upon governments to enact protective regulations.  Today's aborigines
in
Canada, for example, are exempt from various taxes and enjoy equal welfare
and
rights with that nation's majority population.

For more information: Lin Ni-ling  niling@mail.pct.org.tw

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