primalamerica: Festivals and Events - New Forms of Cultural Tourism

Rukai Meets Korea

This Fall (9/28-10/6) Rukai Indigenous Peoples from Taiwan meet Korea. Invitations from the Jeonju Sori International Music Festival and ICLEI Incheon Future of Cities World Congress brought a team of 16 Rukai performers to this country.

The Rukai are a small indigenous tribe in Taiwan with a population of less than 10,000 people. They are unique in costume, language, and history. They are very famous in Taiwan for their singing, dancing and costume, three inseparable elements of their intangible cultural heritage. The Rukai Cultural Arts Performance Team offers the most authentic and representative combination of song, dance and costume. Although there are other professional indigenous performance groups in Taiwan, they usually mix the tradition and costume of any of the 14 recognized tribes on the island into a single performance thus diluting or distorting the true cultural context from which these elements of song, dance and costume come. Instead, the Taiwan Rukai Indigenous Peoples Performance Group offer only the pure musical tradition of the Rukai people in warm and emotional performance with the strength of tribe and history in their voices and movements. The music they sing has been handed down from generation to generation.

The Rukai team met organizers and performers from Korea, Jamaica, France, China, Cambodia and other World People. They sampled Korean hospitality and saw some of the sights during their free time between performances. Festivals and events are playing an increasingly important role in the facilitation of egalitarian cultural tourism. In other words, cultural tourism that does not favor the rich in their pursuit of the culturally authentic, but works to provide opportunities for people of diverse cultural backgrounds to come together and exchange traditions.

In this sense the Festival and the Congress were venues where cultural exchange and issues concerning cultural sustainability were brought to the attention of world dignitaries and common citizens alike. Cultural tourism should work to raise the consciousness of global human diversity and human rights while strengthening forms of local culture such as traditional song, dance, costume and art.

The Rukai Cultural Arts Performance Team overcame the odds to get to Korea. On September 19 a major typhoon dropped a meter of rain on their mountain home in Taiwan, destroying roads and bridges. To come to Korea they had to literally walk down the mountain, an arduous day-long climb. But the sacrifice was worth it as they return home happy and proud of their culture and with the discovery of imagined world cultures made real.

Men who made the event possible (from Left) Director ICLEI Korea Office Mr. Chin Daeshik, Rusamukane, Dr David Teng Director General Taipei County Environmental Protection Bureau