Rukai people
A Rukai village chief visiting Department of Anthropology in Tokyo Imperial University during the Japanese rule.
|
|
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (12,699 (2014)) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Taiwan | |
| Languages | |
| Rukai, Mandarin | |
| Religion | |
| Animism, Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Taiwanese Aborigines |
The Rukai (Chinese: 魯凱族; pinyin: Lǔkǎi zú) are one of Taiwan's aboriginal peoples. They consist of six subgroups residing in southern Taiwan (Budai, Labuan, Maga, Mantauran, Tanan, and Tona), each of which has its own dialect of the Rukai language. As of the year 2014, the Rukai numbered 12,699, and is the seventh-largest of the 13 officially recognized indigenous groups in Taiwan. The Rukai were called Tsarisen, which means "people living in the mountain".
The Rukai people honor the clouded leopard and the hundred pacer, which they believe to be the spirit of their ancestor.
The traditional dress of Rukai people has many similarities with that of the Paiwan people, probably due to the similarity of their geographical distribution and hereditary aristocratic social structure. The traditional dress and textile of the Rukai people also possesses original and distinctive qualities and characteristics. Rukai people’s dress include both ceremonial attire and casual wear. Men's ceremonial attire includes headwear with insignia, headscarves, tops, skirts, shawls, and leggings, while women wear garlands, headscarves, earrings, necklaces, lazurite necklaces, bead bracelets, arm rings, long gowns, skirts, girdles, leggings, and shoulder ornaments. In terms of casual wear, men wear leather headgear, headscarves, tops, shoulder straps, girdles, leather raincoats, deer hide coats, deer hide leggings, tobacco bags, and gunpowder bags, while women wear headscarves, long robes, skirts, leggings, gloves, mesh belts, leather raincoats, and cloth bags. Rukai social structure, hereditary aristocracy, is reflected in every facet of their lives, including attire. Generally, only the nobility are permitted to dress up and the commoners dress plainly and simply, although commoners can buy jewels from the nobility, usually bartering with pigs, millet, and pots. The nobility used to buy cotton, silk and woollen from the Han people to make clothes.
Like the traditional dress of all other indigenous groups in Taiwan, the traditional dress of Rukai people uses cloth made by the squared cloth system. The main tool is the horizontal loom and the traditional material of the Rukai dress is linen, but under the influence of the Han people they have also begun using cotton and wool. Rukai people make linen from flax and use a horizontal loom with a strap to weave the linen into exquisite and beautiful cloth, and then sew pieces of cloth together to make garments. Making cloth is a duty particular to women in Rukai society, and when women are making cloth in a little house, men cannot enter. The cloth is usually dyed red, yellow, brown, dark blue or green with dyes made from herbs or plants. The red colorant is extracted from the root of a specific vine by chopping the roots into pieces and soaking them in water. The yellow colorant usually comes from ginger root juice. The brown colorant comes from the Dioscorea matsudae, and is extracted with the same method used to make the red dye. The dark blue dye comes from the leaf juice of a plant called danadana, and the green colorant comes from the leaf juice of a plant called rasras.
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Wikipedia