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This thesis primarily studied the works by SaySiyat writer Itih a TaoS. To achieve this objective, the following three research approaches were adopted. First, the researcher traced Itih's path to becoming a writer and engagement in cultural revitalization through written communications with him, his phone conversations with his son, and media interviews. Second, three cogitations, namely, Slavoj Žižek’s post-traumatic sufferers, Cathy Caruth’s collective trauma, and Jeffrey C. Alexander’s cultural trauma, were applied to examine how Itih wrote about ethnic trauma. Third, the concepts of articulation, translation, and performance proposed by James Clifford were employed to analyze how Itih sought the path toward cultural integrity through literature.The researcher utilized the aforementioned research methods, in combination with research materials on the SaySiyat people from anthropologists and religious scholars, to open a dialogue with the texts created by Itih. Through textual analysis, the study obtained an understanding of how this contemporary indigenous writer connected up with the SaySiyat ethnic group through literature. The researcher gathered and collated Itih’s works from the Taiwan Indigenous Voice Bimonthly (TIVB), the Indigenous Literature Awards hosted by TIVB, the Awards for Literary Creations in Aboriginal Languages organized by the Ministry of Education, and the Miaoli County Meng-Hua Literary Awards. The analysis focused on his works created between 1998 and 2019, which included novels – The Thunder Goddess, A Pilgrimage to the Mountains, Water Stains on House Walls, Ancestral Spirits: As if in the Far Distance, Groaning in the Cracks, Spiritual Leader, A Giggling Tribe, and Ma’alo’ (Thank You); prose – Mountains, Garments: Two Decades, Dialogues Between Nature and Ta’ay, Endlessly Haunting Sadness – PaSta’ay, Perilous Precipice and Dangerous Shoal, and Endless Nightmare; new poems – Song of the Tribe, Circle of Life, PaSta’ay and Unreachable Edge;Reportage –Xiang Tian Lake of PaSta’ay. The thesis comprises three sections: author profile, writing about trauma, and cultural articulation. Influenced by the rise of indigenous movements worldwide, indigenous literature emerged in Taiwan after 1980. The Hunter Culture Magazine established by Walis Nokan awakened indigenous awareness in Itih, and the TIVB founded by Ta-Chuan Sun provided a space for his writings. Itih has progressively secured a position as a “writer” across a range of indigenous literature awards hosted by the TIVB. He addressed past traditions through literature, specifically, connecting the spirit of the SaySiyat culture handed down from their ancestors with modern society through reinterpretation and retranslation, and writing about the agonies inflicted by imperialism and the national government. Through literature, Itih reviewed the history of their ethnic group, created collective consciousness based on shared memories to understand their pains, and thereby healed their ethnic traumas. Itih did not retrace the bygone cultures and wounds to return to the past, but to sustain and stride forward amidst adversity.
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