How did your activities and research for this International Schools CyberFair project support content standards, required coursework and curriculum requirements?

“I-Li-Sin ～ The Harvest Festival of Jia-Li ” is our subject for this Cyberfair. We mainly study the formation and development of Harvest Festival, the legend transformation of Harvest Festival, costume of Amis, dance and song of Amis etc.; we learn from daily life and combine rural teaching with life in a natural way to exert a subtle influence, which can serve to preserve aboriginal culture. Since Jia-Li Elementary School set up “Aboriginal Dancing Team” in 2002, during the Grade 1-9 Curriculums, performance arts that fall into the categories of arts and humanities became one of the features of our school. Our school promotes “aboriginal textile culture” at the same time, making aboriginal culture the course subject. Apart from folk language teaching and practice of dancing every week, performance arts of aborigines was included in our school’s courses including “arts and humanities”,“Chinese”, “health and sports”, “general activities” etc. for implementation, in order to develop the feature courses of our school. Our school also hired several aboriginal teachers of Jiali Village to teach aboriginal language, song and dance. The purpose is to get tribe culture rooted in the campus and let us get closer to our own culture, and better understand our birthplace.

practice of dancing

What information tools and technologies did you use to complete your International Schools CyberFair project?

 In what ways did your students act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your International Schools CyberFair project both on-line and in person?

      Apart from attending the curriculum arranged by the school, we also walk out of the campus to demonstrate our study results before community residents and social members. We competed in the dancing contest of Hualien County Aborigines with “Jiali Harvest Festival” dance and won the Excellency Award; we also attended the Old People’s Meeting of Hsincheng Township at the Double Ninth Festival, letting villagers of Jiali Village understand our study. Besides, at the sports game jointly held by Jiali Village and Jia-Li Elementary School, we specially showed Amis dance we practiced, and demonstrated our aboriginal textile work at music classroom, so that community residents can learn more about the efforts we made to inherit tribe culture. In addition, ET Yoyo TV station paid a special visit to our school to shoot the practicing process of aboriginal dance for their Children Program. On that occasion, we strenuously showed off our efforts, hoping that our peers nationwide can learn more about the cultural features of the Amis. In the future, after this project is completed, we plan to get our study results compiled into Jia-Li Elementary School Native Studies by our teachers, put the contents onto the website, thus preserving precious materials on the one hand and letting more people understand the history of the Amis and the complete profile of Harvest Festival through internet on the others. Although in no way can we brand the contents of the website impeccable, for learners who would like to learn about the history of the Amis and the complete profile of Harvest Festival, we wish that the research work we presented this time could serve as the stepping-stone by which people outside and our schoolmates can have a deeper understanding about Jia-Li Harvest Festival.

Attending dance contest	Visiting the elders at the Double Ninth Festival	Dance practice

 What has been or will be the impact of your project on your community?

      As saying goes “One Step at a Time”, while participating in the special research plan, we not only had more knowledge about Harvest Festival, but also wished to make our tiny contribution to the inheritance of community culture. Through research plan, we together delved into the history and value of the Amis Harvest Festival , further understanding the difficulty of maintaining a traditional culture. Too many people have misunderstandings about aborigines of different degrees, and they even ignore the very existence of aborigines. Through our contact with outstanding aborigines by following our teachers, we truly learned that there is a group of people who are struggling to preserve and recover the tradition and history they are proud of. Perhaps learning how to tolerate and appreciate the beauty of different cultures is the quest we need to conquer. We are surprised to see that so many fervent people who are making contribution to the maintenance of traditional culture in silence. We also feel the responsibility on our shoulder.

Intellectual property rights

★  Literal material: 
      Every word on [Jiali - ilisin] special webpage was collected, processed, verified and discussed. In the process of interview, we specially asked interviewees if some materials are insufficient? For example, when visiting aborigine museum, we made special inquiry about the possibility of putting processed photos and materials on internet. If not, we only reserve materials that can be publicized, in which case source of quotation was specified.

★  Visual materials:
      Visual materials in the project were mostly recorded with digital camera or DV by Pu-Tong Amis members. Among those are video and photos regarding Harvest Festival. These were obtained from joint Harvest Festival with Hualien County and Aborigines’ Song and Dance Contest. Remaining photo materials were excerpted from related books and their sources were specified.

      Harvest Festival is the important celebration held annually by villagers of Jiali Village. But after investigation, we found that for younger generation, even parents in Jiali Village, their knowledge about Harvest Festival is limited to hilarious song and dance and exhilarating atmosphere. We learned much knowledge about culture and history that we have never known after investigation, interview and exploration.

      During this research, we found that it is easy to devastate a culture. But it is a great challenge to recover and reserve the culture after the damage. Neither Amis tribe nor some young aboriginal students in the village are willing to learn realize their own culture. Without the self-identity of that, they even don’t want to learn their mother tongue earnestly.

      On the other hand, through multiple visiting of cultural inheritors, children came to realize that there is a group of people who are contributing in silence to their own culture. Another important achievement of this research is the human quality and compassion on local culture inside them formed during the process. In the future when we attend Harvest Festival activity, we will no longer be the onlookers who are sharing the fun, but rather, a witness of Amis culture, and more precisely, a promoter and preserver of Harvest Festival. This is a precious lesson for teachers and children.