Environmental Shift and Multiple Memories of Ritual Landscape: Boat Ritual as Making Culture Heritage for the Nangshi Amis

Abstract

The living environment of the Nangshi Amis group of eastern Taiwan has been modernized but marginalized by colonial pressure and nationalization. Rituals have changed due to the transition of landscape, species, and needed materials; tourism is one such impact. The “Boat Ritual (Palunan)” is an age-group initiation ritual of the Lidaw Tribe, and an intricate relationships between “Ritual Landscape” and “Cultural Heritage.” I ask three questions: How does Boat Ritual connect and reproduce the memories and landscape recognition of environmental resources? How do the ritual practices applying “multiple memories” and “historical events,” refer to legendary tales and creative myth and produce contemporary meaning? How do ritual rules and family politics affect the making of cultural heritage, and become the sub-text of collective memories? Infrastructure impacts the making and understanding of contemporary ritual, and meaning-making of cultural heritage. Through historical records and collective memories, documentation of ritual routes and social facts reveal the making of traditional culture in a modernized township. Although changes in the environment and land takings affect subsistence strategies, Palunan reveals its meaning through ritual networking of materials and the process of “renewing kinship.” “Environmental shift” views ritual transition through the dynamics of infrastructure connectivity and ritual networking. I conclude with the importance of knowing cultural heritage through collective but outsourced help from academic works.