The Sakizaya people. Screen capture from Youtube. In November 2019, Wikipedia editors who are native speakers of the Sakizaya language of Taiwan got the perfect gift — a Wikipedia for their own language. There are 299 active Wikipedias in 299 different languages. The Sakizaya Wikipitiya, as it is called in Sakizaya language, currently has 1,759 articles written by around 40 active volunteer editors. Like all Wikipedias, it is open to all for reading and contributions. Wikipedia editing largely involves creating new encyclopedic content, editing existing articles, and translating existing content from other languages on Wikipedia. The Taiwan government only recognized Sakizaya people as a distinct ethnic group from 2007. For 129 years prior to that, the group had been classified as Amis in ethnic classifications. This was because people belonging to the Sakizaya group began to intentionally hide their ethnic identity after a devastating battle with Qing invaders in the late 19th Century which is referred to by the Sakizaya as the “Takubuwan Battle”. Currently the indigenous community is based mostly in the cities of Keelung, Taoyuan City, New Taipei, and Hualien County. The official population of the community was 985 as of January 2020. Below is a short video on the history of Sakizaya people produced by The Council of Indigenous Peoples: To learn more about the development of Sakizaya Wikipedia and the digital activism efforts behind it, Rising Voices reached out to Lami Tsai-Wei Hung, one of the active editors of the Wikipedia and a PhD scholar in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at the National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan. Lami has also helped to run the Sakizaya mentor-apprentice program funded by Taiwan government. What is the current state of the Sakizaya language and how is it used in everyday life, education and media? : Along with six other indigenous languages in Taiwan, Sakizaya is classified as “critically endangered” by UNESCO. For its vitality, Ethnologue, a guide on living languages of the world, classifies the language as “institutional,” meaning the language has been developed to the point that it is used and sustained by institutions beyond home and community settings. However, Ethnologue’s assessment may not reflect actual status. Though the 2020 statistics suggests that there are about 985 registered members of Sakizaya, the number of actual speakers could be as low as 590 as it hasn’t been fully passed down to the younger generation. Many Sakizaya elders above 55 might be fluent, yet urban dwellers and youths might not be. While there’s no designated TV channel or radio station in Sakizaya, the Taiwan Indigenous TV (TITV) and the FM96.3 Alian Radio broadcast in local indigenous languages including Sakizaya. However, the lead anchors are in their sixties and therefore [lack] young audiences. The government has become more aware of the [need to use] indigenous languages along with Mandarin for public announcements. While it has made policies more indigenous-friendly and brought more subsidies to language revitalization programs, this has not helped much in raising public interest. : Can you elaborate more about the use of Sakizaya in education? : So we have this mandatory “native language curriculum” for everyone till 9th grade, which takes place one hour per week. Students can enroll in any preferred language as long as the school has a teacher for it. And if a student intends to learn Sakizaya, the school is obliged to find them a teacher for the language. At the moment, there are about 15 teachers and 60 students for Sakizaya in elementary schools and junior high schools across the country. : Wikipedia in a new language is always a huge challenge for the community as there is a need for published resources like noted newspapers, journals, books, etc. What resources have you provided to bring Sakizaya Wikipedia live? : Some contributors built on existing entries in (traditional) Chinese and English Wikipedia by translating them into Sakizaya. This makes the job easier because they can use the references already cited in the related entries. Meanwhile, some referred encyclopedias when making entries on indigenous herbs. These are two practices that we recommended to our community as they save time. Some went further and did additional research on Google, YouTube, newspapers and academic publications for entries that weren’t covered yet in Wikipedia. Some even wrote about basketball players, comics books, American TV series and anything that interests them. Of course, elders with in-depth knowledge concerning the Sakizaya people, their history and their places of heritage usually work on [articles] on their own, with maybe some technical assistance from young people.