My Life as Adoga

The Pingpu aborigines keep running up against hard brick walls in their attempts at becoming an officially recognized tribe. But hats off to them as they keep trying anyway. The first official snub came in June 2009, when the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) rejected their application. Currently, the Taiwan government-level council only recognizes 14 "indigenous groups," or tribes. The council said that the Pingpu do not meet the criteria to be officially recognized as Aborigines according to the Aboriginal Identity Act (原住民身分法), and that the then-Provincial Government of Taiwan did not make any mistakes in its call for Aborigines to register their identity in the 1950s and 1960s, “so, the Pingpu cannot legally be granted Aboriginal status.” The Pingpu claim they never heard about the registration at the time; they had either failed to be notified by mail, or did not understand that the call for registration applied to them because the government at the time use