Tminun Pdsun, means wardrobe in Sediq language.
"Men hunt, women weave." In the Taiwanese aboriginal tribe, Seediq, it is customary to judge a woman’s social status according to her weaving skills and originality. Women inherited this value form their mothers, grandmothers, and all the ancestors live before them. They weave for their sons’ ceremonial outfits, for their daughters’ dowries, and for all the people they love. The process consists of planting ramie, extracting fibers, making linen thread, and weave. Wavers weave before the crack of dawn and after the family enter their dreamland, because those are the only two period of time when they can discharge themselves from daily tasks. It takes months of meticulous work to turn their one piece of appreciation into a piece of cloth through their loving hands. But what happen when the value they believe so much no longer means anything to the next generation? This heritage and value had been passing on generation after generation through mother-daughter coaching until modern days, until the time-consuming process was seen as nothingness. In 2009, Taiwanese aboriginal artist Labay Neyong and I started our research inside Seediq tribe in Wanrong town and interviewed eight weavers, whose average age is eighty five years old. The aim of our research is to share weavers’ lives with the outside world and to document this traditional value system before it vanishes completely. We documented their fabulous weaving technique and observed the tribal trading history through their weaving material in different decades. But sadly, we also listened to them expressing how those cloth mean nothing to their children, and which makes them doubt themselves as who they are. And when we returned in 2010, some of the weavers had already given up weaving because of their poor health condition. I thank all the weavers whom embrace us into their lives and share their stories with us. They are Bangay Mowna, Heyji Pisaw, Idu Danabima, Labi Ubus, Laknui Mango, Ribih Bedamq, Tami Wadis and Uli Danabima.