Cultural Transmission of the Bunun People in Taiwan

Definition

The Bunun are one of the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan, traditionally known for their mountain agriculture and communal cooperation. The cultural transmission of the Bunun people refers to the intergenerational process through which knowledge, values, and beliefs are passed down via language, rituals, music, hunting ethics, and daily practices. This system not only sustains ethnic identity but also demonstrates cultural resilience. However, historical colonization, forced relocation, assimilation in education, and modernization have disrupted these pathways. In recent years, elders, cultural health stations, community universities, and schools have collaboratively promoted cultural revitalization through curriculum design, ritual restoration, and language teaching.

1. Overview

Bunun cultural transmission refers to the intergenerational transfer of ecological knowledge, ritual practice, governance norms, and communal ethics within one of Taiwan’s major Indigenous societies. Located primarily across the Central Mountain Range, the Bunun sustain cultural continuity through land-based practices such as polyphonic singing, millet agriculture, hunting ethics, and ritual calendars. These practices connect moral obligations, environmental stewardship, and social cooperation, making cultural knowledge inseparable from ecological engagement.

Cultural transmission plays a crucial role in sustaining the identity, resilience, and continuity of Indigenous communities worldwide. It involves the intergenerational transfer of language, knowledge, beliefs, and cultural practices, enabling communities to maintain their distinct worldviews and adapt to changing social environments.

Globally, many Indigenous communities face critical challenges to sustaining cultural transmission due to colonization, urbanization, and language loss. For example, in Australia, the rapid decline of Aboriginal languages—many of which are now critically endangered—has been identified by UNESCO as part of a global language loss crisis. In Canada, First Nations communities have developed digital archiving and community-based education programs to counteract the effects of forced assimilation. Similarly, the Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand have successfully advanced language revitalization through immersion schools (kura kaupapa Māori) and community broadcasting, providing powerful models for cultural resilience in postcolonial contexts. These cases reveal both the fragility and strength of Indigenous cultural systems worldwide [1,2,3]. Rather than suggesting equivalence across these Indigenous cases, the purpose of this comparison is to highlight how the Bunun uniquely integrate ecological knowledge and polyphonic vocal practices into cultural transmission, challenging language-centered assumptions that view revitalization primarily as a linguistic endeavor.

For the Bunun people, one of Taiwan’s Austronesian-speaking Indigenous groups, cultural transmission has historically taken place through oral traditions, communal agriculture, ritual practices, and collective governance systems. These practices not only reflect a close relationship with the natural environment but also embody core cultural values such as reciprocity, respect for ancestral wisdom, and communal responsibility.

Unlike many Indigenous communities in lowland or urban settings, the Bunun people have historically inhabited mountain regions, where their cultural transmission has been closely intertwined with ecological knowledge and the ritual singing tradition known as pasibutbut—a form of multipart chanting performed during millet rituals. Pasibutbut has been officially recognized by Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture as an important traditional performing art for its sophisticated overtone structure and its ceremonial role in expressing communal prayer. This ecological and artistic interconnection gives the Bunun case special significance in global Indigenous studies [4,5].

For over a century (since 1895), however, colonization, forced relocation, language assimilation, and modernization have disrupted these traditional pathways. For example, Japanese and later Nationalist government policies often relocated mountain Indigenous groups, severing them from ancestral lands and undermining subsistence practices [6]. Taiwan’s more recent Indigenous language and cultural revitalization policies—such as the Indigenous Languages Development Act passed in 2017—represent steps toward reversing language loss and restoring cultural transmission channels [7]. In response, Bunun communities and allied institutions have initiated efforts in ritual restoration, language curriculum development, and collaborative community education to renew their intergenerational linkages.

This focus on language and cultural revitalization aligns with global efforts to safeguard intangible cultural heritage and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially Goal 4 (Quality Education) and Goal 11 (Sustainable Communities). According to Moseley [8], as General Editor of the third edition of the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, the atlas has become a key tool for tracking threats to vulnerable languages worldwide, reminding us that many of the world’s languages are at serious risk of disappearance. This underscores the urgent need to support Indigenous communities in preserving and transmitting their linguistic and cultural heritage.

This entry offers a comprehensive overview of the concept, historical trajectory, and contemporary practices of cultural transmission among the Bunun people, highlighting challenges and possible pathways forward in sustaining Indigenous cultural continuity in Taiwan [9].

As a member of the Bunun Indigenous community in Taiwan, I have been actively engaged in cultural revitalization work since 2016. Over the past years, my involvement has included publishing picture books and monographs, organizing cultural exhibitions, designing and teaching community-based courses, hosting storytelling activities and art competitions, and developing educational tools such as board games. These initiatives have been rooted in the goal of sustaining intergenerational cultural transmission through creative, educational, and community-centered approaches. This long-term engagement not only shaped my research motivation but also provided a deep understanding of the cultural contexts, values, and aspirations of the Bunun people. It also positioned me as both a researcher and a cultural practitioner, bridging academic inquiry with lived community experience.

Since 2016, I have engaged in long-term participatory observation and collaboration with Bunun communities in Taiwan. My positionality as both a cultural practitioner and researcher shaped how I collected and interpreted data, emphasizing community meanings, relational knowledge, and lived cultural experiences.

This study is grounded in sustained participatory engagement, combining community-based cultural practice, field observation, and documentation of cultural revitalization activities. Data were generated through multiple strategies: (1) participant observation during rituals, festivals, language classes, and exhibitions; (2) semi-structured conversations and oral history interviews with elders, artisans, and youth leaders; (3) document review of local archives, community records, and policy documents; and (4) reflective journaling throughout the research process.

This blended approach reflects the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), which emphasize reciprocal relationships and shared ownership of knowledge [10,11]. The interpretation of cultural practices was informed by Indigenous methodological perspectives, recognizing knowledge as relational, embodied, and situated within community contexts [12,13]. Reflexivity was central to this process: my dual role required continuous negotiation between insider and outsider positions, ensuring that community meanings and protocols were respected while maintaining scholarly rigor. This methodological stance aligns with decolonizing research paradigms that center Indigenous epistemologies and agency [14].

2. Historical Background of Bunun Cultural Transmission

The Bunun are one of the major Indigenous peoples of Taiwan, historically located in the Central Mountain Range. Early settlement evidence indicates that ancestral communities originated in the highlands of present-day Nantou. Approximately 250–300 years ago, Bunun groups began migrating southward and eastward due to population expansion, ecological demands, and intercommunity mobility, gradually establishing settlements across Hualien, Taitung, Kaohsiung, and Pingtung.

The Bunun population consists of five generally recognized regional groups, each associated with distinct dialectal and cultural variations: Takbanuaz, Takituduh, Takipulan, Takibakah, and Isbukun. The Isbukun group—located primarily in the southern region and currently the most populous—forms the dominant reference for contemporary ritual revitalization, polyphonic singing practices, and ecological knowledge, especially in communities where government-supported cultural revitalization programs are active. The examples in this entry draw principally from Isbukun communities in southern and southeastern Taiwan, where ritual singing and land-based knowledge revival have been especially prominent.

Cultural transmission is broadly defined as the process through which cultural knowledge, values, skills, and social norms are passed from one generation to the next, ensuring the continuity of cultural systems over time. According to UNESCO [15], intangible cultural heritage—including language, oral traditions, rituals, and social practices—relies on intergenerational transmission to sustain community identity and cultural diversity.

Classical theories of cultural transmission further emphasize that this process is not merely the preservation of memory but an active mechanism of learning, adaptation, and social reproduction. It has been conceptualized as a dynamic process occurring through vertical (parent-to-child), horizontal (peer-to-peer), and oblique (institution-to-individual) pathways, shaping both individual behavior and collective identity [16]. Other theoretical perspectives highlight how cultural transmission operates as a key mechanism of cultural evolution, allowing communities to adapt to changing social and ecological environments while maintaining core values [17].

This perspective underscores cultural transmission as both a social learning system and a form of cultural resilience—empowering communities to transform traditional knowledge into lived practice rather than static heritage. For the Bunun people of Taiwan, cultural transmission manifests in multiple ceremonial and everyday practices. These include sacred hunting ethics, agricultural rhythms tied to lunar cycles, oral storytelling traditions, polyphonic singing, and collective celebrations such as the ear-shooting festival (Malahodaigian). Through these practices, knowledge is not only passed down but embodied—sustaining cosmology, identity, and communal responsibility across generations. Unlike Indigenous groups historically concentrated in coastal or plains settlements such as the Amis or Siraya, the Bunun maintained high-mountain land-based ritual practices well into the 20th century, shaping a transmission system closely tied to ecological participation.

For the Bunun people of Taiwan, cultural transmission manifests in multiple ceremonial and everyday practices. These include sacred hunting ethics, agricultural rhythms tied to lunar cycles, oral storytelling traditions, polyphonic singing, and collective celebrations such as the ear-shooting festival (Malahodaigian). Through these practices, knowledge is not only passed down but embodied—sustaining cosmology, identity, and communal responsibility across generations.

To clarify the conceptual landscape, it is important to distinguish three closely related but analytically distinct terms. Cultural transmission refers to the ongoing, intergenerational process through which knowledge, values, and practices are learned, negotiated, and reproduced in community life. In contrast, cultural revitalization denotes a responsive and intentional effort to reclaim and restore disrupted or marginalized cultural systems—often emerging in reaction to colonial displacement, assimilation, or language loss. Meanwhile, cultural resilience highlights the adaptive capacity of communities to sustain their cultural frameworks by transforming traditions in ways that remain meaningful under changing socio-political conditions. Rather than treating tradition as a static inheritance, this perspective emphasizes how communities selectively innovate, re-interpret, and re-contextualize cultural practices.

In the Bunun case, transmission, revitalization, and resilience intersect through ritual singing, ecological knowledge, and land-based educational programs that not only preserve heritage but actively reshape it. The performative and ecological dimensions of Bunun culture—such as ritual polyphony intertwined with agricultural cycles—demonstrate how cultural transmission is not merely restorative but generative, challenging conventional views that equate transmission with preservation alone. This case expands theoretical understandings by illustrating that transmission itself can be a creative, future-oriented cultural act.

Large-scale Indigenous urban migration in Taiwan accelerated during the 1970s and 1980s, driven by industrial growth, labor demands, and limited employment opportunities in mountain regions. This shift marked a change in Bunun cultural transmission: ritual knowledge and land-based practices became less accessible to younger generations who worked or studied in cities, while cultural participation increasingly occurred through short-term visits, seasonal rituals, or government-organized events. Consequently, urbanization affected not only residential patterns but also the rhythm and continuity of intergenerational learning. In addition to economically driven mobility, environmental crises have forcibly altered Bunun cultural transmission. After Typhoon Morakot in 2009, severe landslides led to large-scale relocation of communities in the Namasia, Taoyuan, and Jiaxian areas. The destruction of ancestral lands disrupted access to ritual sites, hunting areas, and terraces used for millet cultivation, prompting new forms of transmission mediated through schools, cultural centers, and church organizations. The shift made cultural knowledge increasingly institutionalized, rather than exclusively land-based, reshaping who could teach and where learning could occur.

3. Domains of Cultural Transmission Among the Bunun

Bunun cultural transmission was historically sustained through tight-knit community structures, ritual systems, and intergenerational teaching embedded in daily life. Traditional practices—such as communal agriculture, hunting, and polyphonic singing—were transmitted within close village networks and supported by the seasonal and ritual calendar. However, during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), state interventions significantly altered this landscape. Many Bunun communities were subjected to forced relocations, known as “group relocations” (shūdan idō), which moved highland populations into lower, more accessible areas. These relocations not only weakened kinship-based networks but also disrupted ritual cycles tied to ancestral lands [18].

During the Japanese era, certain ritual practices—including the Ear Shooting Festival (Malahodaigian) —were discouraged or regulated under assimilationist policies, constraining the full performance of traditional ceremonies. Some historical records suggest that officials monitored or intervened in ritual gatherings in remote areas to limit what was seen as potential dissent.

After 1945, under the governance of the Republic of China, the “mountains like the plains” (山地平地化) policy continued to reshape Indigenous life. This policy aimed to accelerate the assimilation of Indigenous peoples into mainstream Han cultural and linguistic frameworks. Schools enforced Mandarin as the sole language of instruction, prohibiting the use of Indigenous languages—a policy that led to intergenerational language loss and a decline in cultural immersion among youth. Displaced from their original terrain, women and children often encountered new roles: women took on more intensive labor in settlement agriculture or market economies, while children entered formal schooling in distant towns, reducing daily participation in traditional tasks and weakening the channels of cultural transmission. Urban migration further intensified after the 1970s, as economic pressures pushed many Bunun families to cities. For instance, some community members relocated from Hualien or Taitung to Taipei and Hsinchu, where their children had less exposure to rituals, farming cycles, and community song practice. This migration reduced opportunities for young people to participate in rituals, hunting, and agricultural cycles that once anchored cultural learning [19].

The erosion of traditional hunting practices—once a core mechanism for transmitting ecological knowledge and spiritual ethics—also contributed to cultural discontinuities. After the 1989 Wildlife Conservation Act came into effect, legal restrictions under wildlife protection laws, combined with shifting land use patterns and protected area regulations, limited younger generations’ ability to engage with ancestral ecological practices [20]. These overlapping colonial and postcolonial interventions have produced what some scholars describe as “fragmented cultural continuity” [21], where cultural knowledge persists but is often decoupled from its original ecological and social context. To clarify how these disruptions unfolded, the following timeline outlines the major historical and policy events that shaped Bunun cultural transmission. As shown in Table 1, the timeline highlights how colonial governance, assimilation policies, ecological regulations, and contemporary revitalization efforts have redefined who can transmit cultural knowledge, what knowledge is retained, and under what social and legal conditions transmission occurs.

Table 1. Timeline Box. Historical Disruptions Affecting Bunun Cultural Transmission.

Period/Year	Historical/Policy Event	Impact on Cultural Transmission
1895–1945 (Japanese colonial rule)	Forced relocation (shūdan idō); regulation of rituals and hunting	Disrupted ancestral-land teaching; ritual performance monitored; weakened kinship-based transmission
1910s–1930s	Suppression or surveillance of millet festivals and communal rituals	Restricted ritual training; reduced youth participation in Pasibutbut and ceremonial knowledge
Post-1945 (ROC governance)	“Plains-to-Mountains Assimilation Policy” + Mandarin-only education	Accelerated language shift; reduced household and communal learning; elders’ authority weakened
1970s–1990s	Urban migration of Indigenous families	Everyday ecological and ritual learning diminished; increasing generational separation
1989	Wildlife Conservation Act enacted	Traditional hunting restricted; sacred knowledge (ethical rules, taboos) no longer obtained through practice
2000s	Rise in community cultural movements and heritage legislation	Ritual reconstruction; cultural knowledge taught through institutions rather than exclusively through families
2017	Indigenous Languages Development Act	Culturally grounded bilingual education revived; language authority partially returned to community elders
Present	Cultural Health Stations, youth organizations, and university–community collaborations	Shared/negotiated authority structure for transmission; hybrid education forms (formal, familial, ritual, digital)

This trajectory shows that cultural transmission for the Bunun has shifted from land-based family systems to increasingly institutional, negotiated, and hybrid forms across generations.

Nevertheless, contemporary Bunun communities are actively negotiating ways to restore and revitalize cultural knowledge, including ritual reconstruction, community language programs, and intergenerational cultural events. These efforts reveal how tradition is not a fixed artifact but a living, adaptive process shaped by historical experience and policy environments.

Building on this historical trajectory, this study frames Bunun cultural transmission within a broader postcolonial and cultural sustainability perspective. Cultural revitalization is not merely a technical process of preservation but a political and epistemic act of reclaiming cultural agency in the face of historical marginalization [22]. From a postcolonial standpoint, language loss, ritual disruption, and displacement are understood as consequences of power asymmetries embedded in colonial and assimilationist state structures, rather than inevitable cultural decline. At the same time, the concept of cultural sustainability emphasizes that Indigenous cultural transmission is a future-oriented process in which communities actively adapt, reinterpret, and reproduce cultural practices to ensure their continuity [23]. This dual framework highlights that cultural transmission involves both resistance to structural inequalities and the creative assertion of cultural self-determination.

4. Mechanisms and Actors of Transmission

In recent years, the Bunun have actively engaged in diverse cultural revitalization efforts that emphasize language, ritual, land-based knowledge, and intergenerational participation. One important strategy has been the implementation of bilingual education programs and culturally grounded teaching materials, such as Bunun–Mandarin picture books and community-based language learning activities, which aim to strengthen linguistic continuity and cultural identity among younger generations [24].

Beyond their symbolic and educational significance, these initiatives have produced measurable impacts on community engagement and language revitalization. Since 2018, more than 45 Bunun–Mandarin bilingual storytelling and language workshops have been organized, reaching over 1200 participants, including children, parents, and elders. Youth cultural camps and weaving workshops regularly attract 50–80 participants each year, many of whom express stronger cultural identification and willingness to return to their communities for future events. In millet sowing and harvest rituals, participation has grown from fewer than 100 people in early initiatives to more than 300 in recent years, with noticeable increases in the involvement of younger generations. Elders have also reported greater intergenerational interaction, particularly in singing rituals and oral storytelling, suggesting that cultural transmission is not only being symbolically celebrated but also practically reactivated in daily communal life.

Agricultural and ritual revival has also emerged as a key area of practice. The reintroduction of millet cultivation and harvest festivals in Bunun villages has helped restore ritual calendars and strengthen ties between communities and ancestral lands [20]. For example, in the Zhuoxi area of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan, the millet sowing festival has attracted nearly 300 participants who take part in traditional sowing, storytelling, and cooperative ritual song chanting, integrating cultural education with community tourism [25].

To move beyond general descriptions of cultural practices, it is necessary to identify what specific knowledge is being transmitted, who assumes responsibility for its transmission, and how its cultural significance is negotiated. In the Bunun context, different forms of transmission—ritual, ecological, artistic, and governance-related—share a common emphasis on relational learning, communal accountability, and culturally authorized forms of knowledge exchange. Rather than simply replicating inherited customs, these practices actively shape how knowledge is validated, who is permitted to teach it, and which aspects of culture are selectively retained, creatively transformed, appropriately restricted, or discontinued in contemporary contexts. Elders often serve as custodians of ritual and ecological knowledge, while Cultural Health Stations and youth organizations increasingly facilitate transmission through structured programs, creating hybrid systems in which cultural authority is shared and negotiated across generations. To illustrate how these dynamics are perceived by community members themselves, interview and observational data reveal differing priorities across generations. During a field conversation in 2023, an elder instructor emphasized, “You cannot learn our songs from books. You must first learn the land.” By contrast, a youth organizer involved in cultural events explained, “We try to learn from elders, but our contribution is planning and recording because we cannot farm or hunt every day.” These complementary roles demonstrate how cultural transmission is increasingly co-produced through lived practice and mediated engagement.

The following Table 2 provides illustrative examples of Bunun cultural transmission discussed above.

Table 2. Key Domains of Bunun Cultural Transmission.

Transmission Domain	Knowledge Transmitted	Social/Cultural Function	Primary Custodians & Decision Makers
Ritual singing (Pasibutbut)	Multipart chants; ritual protocols tied to millet cycles	Spiritual cohesion; reinforces communal reciprocity and interdependence	Elders as ritual authorities; supported by cultural heritage offices and community choirs
Millet cultivation & seasonal rituals	Agricultural timing, lunar cycles, offering rules	Embeds ecological ethics and collective labor	Elders and clan leaders; revitalization coordinated by Cultural Health Stations and township offices
Hunting ethics & land stewardship	Spiritual restrictions, species rules, sharing obligations, taboo zones	Moral regulation; sustains human–nature balance	Senior hunters and customary leaders; negotiated with local governments under wildlife laws
Polyphonic storytelling & oral history	Migration stories, ancestral deeds, genealogies	Negotiates identity and belonging; transmits moral norms	Elders, storytellers, and family units; youth groups document and reinterpret
Weaving & craft arts	Symbolic motifs, gendered knowledge, material techniques	Represents status, kinship, and collective memory through art	Women elders as custodians; adapted by youth makers for markets and exhibitions
Communal governance practices	Decision-making traditions, dispute resolution, clan cooperation	Reproduces social ethics, responsibility, and reciprocity	Clan councils; adapted by community committees and tribal associations

These examples show that cultural transmission in the Bunun community is not passive inheritance but a negotiated process that determines which cultural elements are revitalized, transformed, or restricted in response to ecological shifts, legal constraints, and intergenerational priorities.

Youth-led initiatives further contribute to cultural sustainability. The Taitung Bunun Youth organization, for example, has organized weaving workshops, farming practices, cultural summer camps, and intergenerational storytelling sessions to reinforce community engagement and identity [26]. In 2025 the Haiduan Township hosted a two-day youth cultural camp, inviting tribal elders as instructors and participants to join the millet harvest ritual, where students assisted in ritual preparation (e.g., packing rice, distributing offerings) and participated in ritual chants and storytelling under elder guidance [27].

In addition, root-seeking expeditions have become meaningful avenues for reconnecting with ancestral landscapes. These initiatives combine archaeological fieldwork, GIS mapping, and oral histories shared by elders, fostering deeper ecological and cultural knowledge among younger community members [28]. Community-based cultural health stations have also played a significant role in supporting cultural activities, from traditional craft workshops to ritual practice, enhancing both elder participation and intergenerational transmission [29].

Another vivid example is the Andaza harvest-storage ceremony in Dongpu Bunun village, where family units (often 30–50 people) participate in moving the year’s millet harvest into communal granaries and sharing ritual soup and elder prayers [30].

These multiple initiatives align with Taiwan’s broader Indigenous cultural revitalization policies—such as bilingual education promotion, heritage preservation programs, and community cultural development—illustrating how the Bunun are not merely preserving their heritage but actively re-contextualizing it in contemporary social and political landscapes.

5. Intergenerational Negotiation and Contemporary Challenges

Bunun cultural transmission is not only challenged by demographic changes but also shaped by intergenerational negotiation over who can teach, innovate, and modify cultural knowledge. Elders often emphasize the moral integrity and ritual completeness of traditions, arguing that practices such as hunting, chant performance, or millet cultivation must follow ancestral procedures to retain their ethical meaning. As one elder educator explained during a millet festival workshop, “If the chant is sung without the land, it loses its spirit.” This perspective ties cultural authority to lived experience and ecological reciprocity rather than to formal instruction alone.

By contrast, younger Bunun practitioners frequently engage with culture through mediated forms such as documentation, tourism programs, or digital platforms. While many youth express a desire to participate in ritual practice, their efforts are constrained by urban migration, lack of access to ancestral lands, and hunting restrictions under environmental legislation [31]. A youth organizer in Haiduan noted, “We want to help, but we cannot hunt or farm as our grandparents did, so we learn by managing events and recording stories instead”. As a result, younger generations increasingly act as cultural facilitators and interpreters, while elders remain primary knowledge custodians. The resulting transmission system is therefore neither hierarchical nor seamless, but negotiated, producing hybrid forms of cultural continuity shaped by legal, ecological, and generational realities.

Despite increasing attention to Bunun cultural revitalization, several challenges persist. Urban migration and the shrinking of Indigenous language domains have reduced opportunities for young people to engage in everyday cultural learning. These demographic and linguistic shifts, combined with assimilationist legacies, have weakened intergenerational transmission of ritual knowledge, songs, and ecological vocabulary. Furthermore, current revitalization initiatives often face resource shortages and fragmented policy support, limiting their sustainability and reach.

One of the most critical challenges to Bunun cultural transmission is the physical and emotional detachment from ancestral landscapes. Large-scale relocations and changes in land use in the Inner Mountains have made it difficult for many Indigenous communities to return to their homelands. As a result, “modern-day Indigenous communities rarely have the chance to visit their ancestral lands, their settlements in the mountains are collapsed, and their memories are fading”. This geographic disconnection has weakened intergenerational storytelling, place-based learning, and ritual practice—key components of cultural transmission. As younger Bunun people move to urban areas for education and work, the spatial and cultural environments that once nurtured Indigenous identity are increasingly fragmented, making it essential to develop innovative strategies to sustain cultural memory and knowledge transmission.

To address these challenges, community-led innovation has become increasingly important. Digital platforms and multimedia documentation—such as online archives, podcasts, and interactive language tools—can extend cultural learning beyond geographic boundaries, enabling youth living in cities to maintain connections with ancestral knowledge systems [32]. As noted in recent Bunun revitalization initiatives, cultural transmission must adapt to contemporary contexts by integrating new technologies, education, and intergenerational exchange models [33]. These approaches not only help safeguard traditional knowledge but also ensure that cultural practices remain dynamic and relevant for future generations. In addition to language revitalization and educational programs, technological collaborations have opened new possibilities for cultural transmission. For example, archaeologists working with Bunun communities have used GIS, GPS, and remote sensing to document ancestral settlements and landscapes. “Such collaboration between archaeologists and the local community has elevated our understanding of Bunun heritages and their value” [34].

In the global context, some Indigenous communities have embraced advanced digital and AI technologies as part of their cultural revitalization strategies. For instance, in Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Hiku Media developed an automatic speech recognition model for te reo Māori, achieving ~92% transcription accuracy, to make Māori language content more accessible and usable [35]. Such innovations show how Indigenous-led AI tools can support language revitalization while preserving data sovereignty.

Other initiatives—such as FirstVoices in Canada—provide communities with web platforms to archive and teach their languages via audio, text, games, and user-generated content, all under community control [36]. These platforms enable speakers and learners to interact with cultural material in accessible ways, thus bridging the gap between remote homelands and urban diasporas.

From the policy perspective, governments can strengthen cultural transmission by establishing stable funding mechanisms, integrating Indigenous languages into school curricula, and supporting community-driven cultural enterprises. Legislation can recognize the rights of Indigenous communities to manage their cultural heritage and digital data [37,38].

Looking ahead, the future of cultural transmission lies in translocal and cross-community collaboration. By forming networks across regions and Indigenous groups, communities can share digital tools, methodologies, and archival resources. This “cultural federation” approach allows smaller groups like the Bunun to participate in global Indigenous networks, enhancing visibility, capacity, and mutual support.

To make these strategies more sustainable, policy support is essential. First, governments could establish long-term grant schemes for tribal digital language archives and oral heritage projects, ensuring stable funding for community-controlled knowledge preservation. Second, targeted “Youth Return and Cultural Action Grants” could incentivize young Bunun people to lead place-based cultural projects in their home communities, bridging urban–tribal gaps. Third, integrating Indigenous language and cultural education into formal and informal learning systems—including schools, community centers, and cultural health stations—would strengthen intergenerational transmission. Finally, policy frameworks should prioritize Indigenous data sovereignty and support collaborative governance structures, allowing communities to control how their cultural and linguistic resources are stored, shared, and revitalized.

6. Conclusions

An important yet often overlooked dimension of Bunun cultural transmission lies in the interplay between ecological knowledge and artistic expression. Ritual polyphony, particularly pasibutbut, is not merely a musical performance but a form of ecological communication that synchronizes communal labor, seasonal timing, and spiritual accountability. The multipart chant is traditionally performed during key stages of millet cultivation, such as sowing and harvest, and its vocal structure symbolically mirrors the collaborative interdependence needed for successful agricultural work. The act of singing together embodies the ethical principles of reciprocity, humility, and restraint that govern relations with the land. Elders emphasize that the complexity of the chant cannot be taught independently from agricultural practice, as its polyphony is rooted in soil knowledge, lunar rhythms, and taboo zones that regulate hunting and planting. In this way, the aesthetic dimension of Bunun culture functions as an ecological pedagogy, transmitting environmental stewardship through embodied sound rather than formal instruction.

This ecological–aesthetic transmission challenges conventional revitalization models that prioritize language as the central medium of Indigenous continuity. In the Bunun case, cultural resilience emerges not primarily from codified linguistic preservation, but from the lived synchronization of sound, labor, environment, and ritual ethics. Tradition is therefore sustained not by repetition alone, but through the creative enactment of ecological knowledge in artistic forms that remain inseparable from the land.

The cultural transmission of the Bunun people embodies both remarkable resilience and persistent vulnerability. For generations, rituals, language, songs, and ecological knowledge have been passed down through communal life, sustaining identity and belonging. Yet, colonial histories, assimilation policies, and urban migration have disrupted these transmission pathways. In this context, revitalization is not merely a nostalgic act of preservation, but a dynamic process of cultural renewal, negotiation, and adaptation.

Cultural transmission is ultimately an active and collective endeavor. It involves not only the remembrance of ancestral knowledge but also its reinterpretation and re-creation in response to contemporary realities. Rituals, songs, and languages are carried forward when communities act—when elders teach, youth participate, and institutions create enabling environments for these exchanges to thrive.

Recognizing and supporting these processes is essential to sustaining Indigenous knowledge systems in a rapidly changing society. Community-driven initiatives, intergenerational learning, and digital archiving are creating new spaces where traditional wisdom and contemporary realities meet. These initiatives are not peripheral activities but central cultural actions that sustain identity, strengthen social bonds, and affirm the rights of Indigenous peoples to define their own cultural futures.

For Taiwan and the global Indigenous context alike, the Bunun experience underscores that cultural survival depends not only on safeguarding the past, but on empowering communities to shape their own cultural futures. This includes valuing cultural transmission as a foundation for social justice, cultural diversity, and intergenerational responsibility.

This dual role reflects a core belief: that cultural transmission is not only an academic subject but also a lived, ongoing responsibility—one that calls for creativity, empathy, and collaboration across generations.