Articulating the Sinicization process in a Taiwan Paiwan Indigenous village: Vusam culture as a resilience pivot

This article examines how the Indigenous Paiwan community in Taiwan negotiates long-term Sinicization pressures through the Vusam system, a foundational cultural institution governing inheritance, authority, and familial continuity. Drawing on in-depth interviews and participant observation in a Vulculj Paiwan village, the study theorizes Vusam as a resilience pivot through which Paiwan families actively articulate, rather than merely resist or preserve, their cultural practices within a Han-dominated ethno-racial order. Despite sustained Han-centric governance and cultural hierarchies, Paiwan families maintain Indigenous naming practices, balance formal Sinicized education with intergenerational cultural transmission, and navigate between class-based matrimonial norms and individual romantic agency. Vusam individuals circulate between urban labour markets and village life, mediating economic and cultural obligations simultaneously. By foregrounding articulation and institutional resilience, this study addresses a scholarly gap that has privileged narratives of cultural loss or symbolic resistance, contributing to broader debates on Sinicization, ethno-racial privilege, and Indigenous agency within settler colonial contexts across Greater China.