Despite recent changes in the field of anthropology and a shift in government objectives, the Pingpu and Gaoshan labels in use today maintain the form given by the Qing to reflect indigenous' acculturation to Han culture.

[45] Beginning in the early 17th century, indigenous Taiwanese faced broad cultural change as the island became incorporated into the wider global economy by a succession of competing colonial regimes from Europe and Asia.

[51] During the Japanese and KMT periods centralized modernist government policies, rooted in ideas of Social Darwinism and culturalism, directed education, genealogical customs and other traditions toward ethnic assimilation.

Brown between "short-route" and "long-route"[55] The ethnic identity of assimilated Plains Aboriginals in the immediate vicinity of Tainan was still known since a pure Hoklo Taiwanese girl was warned by her mother to stay away from them.

Women did the sewing, cooking and farming, while the men hunted and prepared for military activity and securing enemy heads in headhunting raids, which was a common practice in early Taiwan.

As the Dutch began subjugating indigenous villages in the south and west of Taiwan, increasing numbers of Han immigrants looked to exploit areas that were fertile and rich in game.

He also gave them Ming gowns and caps while eating with their chiefs and gifting tobacco to indigenous people who were gathered in crowds to meet and welcome him as he visited their villages after he defeated the Dutch.

The attention paid by the Qing authorities to indigenous land rights was part of a larger administrative goal to maintain a level of peace on the turbulent Taiwan frontier, which was often marred by ethnic and regional conflict.

[142][page needed] Despite this, the vast majority of rebellions did not originate from indigenous peoples but the Han settlers, and the mountain aborigines were left to their own devices until the last 20 years of Qing rule.

This strong version of the "migration" theory has been largely discounted by contemporary research as the Gaoshan people demonstrate a physiology, material cultures and customs that have been adapted for life at higher elevations.

By the last years of Qing rule, most of the plains aborigines had been acculturated to Han culture, around 20–30% could speak their mother tongues, and gradually lost their land ownership and rent collection rights.

The resulting Japanese policy, published twenty years before the onset of their rule on Taiwan, cast Taiwanese indigenous as "vicious, violent and cruel" and concluded "this is a pitfall of the world; we must get rid of them all".

In the Musha Incident of 1930, for example, a Seediq group was decimated by artillery and supplanted by the Taroko (Truku), which had sustained periods of bombardment from naval ships and airplanes dropping mustard gas.

The Japanese "civilizing project", partially fueled by public demand in Japan to know more about the empire, would be used to benefit the Imperial government by consolidating administrative control over the entire island, opening up vast tracts of land for exploitation.

[201] To satisfy these needs, "the Japanese portrayed and catalogued Taiwan's indigenous peoples in a welter of statistical tables, magazine and newspaper articles, photograph albums for popular consumption".

[210] The KMT pursued highly centralized political and cultural policies rooted in the party's decades-long history of fighting warlordism in China and opposing competing concepts of a loose federation following the demise of the imperial Qing.

Hsiau noted that Taiwan's first democratically elected president, Li Teng-Hui, said in a famous interview: "In the period of Japanese colonialism a Taiwanese would be punished by being forced to kneel out in the sun for speaking Tai-yü."

[citation needed] During the period of political liberalization, which preceded the end of martial law, academic interest in the Plains indigenous surged as amateur and professional historians sought to rediscover Taiwan's past.

The opposition tang wai activists seized upon the new image of the Plains indigenous as a means to directly challenge the KMT's official narrative of Taiwan as a historical part of China, and the government's assertion that Taiwanese were "pure" Han Chinese.

Despite the politicized dramatization of the Plains indigenous, their "rediscovery" as a matter of public discourse has had a lasting effect on the increased socio-political reconceptualization of Taiwan—emerging from a Han Chinese-dominant perspective into a wider acceptance of Taiwan as a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic community.

Aboriginal Transitional Justice Alliance president Kumu Hacyo described the apology as "a political show that was put on in an extremely bureaucratic fashion" lacking in sincerity and evasive in nature.

[257] Hunting is a traditional way of life with cultural and religious significance to the indigenous Taiwanese, but the practice has been strictly regulated by the ROC government in the name of gun control and wildlife conservation.

The paper also suggest East Asian ancestry may have mixed with indigenous peoples in their southward expansion 4,000 years ago, which can lead to data that may be misinterpreted as recent Taiwanese Han-indigenous admixtures.

Recent laws governing the employment of laborers from Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines have also led to an increased atmosphere of xenophobia among urban indigenous, and encouraged the formulation of a pan-indigenous consciousness in the pursuit of political representation and protection.

[272] Before contact with Christian missionaries during both the Dutch and Qing periods, Taiwanese indigenous peoples held a variety of beliefs in spirits, gods, sacred symbols and myths that helped their societies find meaning and order.

Political activism and sizable public protests regarding the logging of the Chilan Formosan Cypress, as well as efforts by an Atayal member of the Legislative Yuan, "focused debate on natural resource management and specifically on the involvement of aboriginal people therein".

The Tao alleges that government sources at the time described the site as a "factory" or a "fish cannery", intended to bring "jobs [to the] home of the Tao/Yami, one of the least economically integrated areas in Taiwan".

[286] Due to the close proximity of indigenous land to the mountains, many communities have hoped to cash in on hot spring ventures and hotels, where they offer singing and dancing to add to the ambience.

[289] This came on the heels of a "New wave of Indigenous Pop",[290] as aboriginal artists, such as A-mei, Pur-dur and Samingad (Puyuma), Difang, A-Lin (Amis), Princess Ai 戴愛玲 (Paiwan), and Landy Wen (Atayal) became international pop-stars.

The government hopes the day will remind the public of the diverse ethnic groups in Taiwan by bringing greater respect for indigenous peoples' cultures and history and promoting their rights.