Voices of the mountain

Taiwan's Bentu (of this land) movement shared attributes common to events described in nineteenth and twentieth century writings about Native Americans by English speaking white scholars and popular writers. This era featured many insightful works about Native American tribal life, but few of these were written by Native American authors. Consequently, the field of Native American studies suffered from a lack of what Wu called "local subjectivity." With the growth of internet dissemination of minority views and with the emergence of more sympathetic publishers like Serenity, native writers everywhere have a promising future. Those of us familiar with North American developments, however, caution that a mature American indigenous literary movement will take generations to free itself of past restraints. We hope this will not be the case for Taiwanese native writers.