Journey of the Grain Treasure: Becoming Masters of Their Own in the Daniao Tribe's Reconstruction
After Typhoon Morakot (the August 8th disaster), the Daniao tribe in Taitung, with the assistance of World Vision Taiwan, began industrial reconstruction work that involved returning fallow farmland to cultivation and practicing communal farming. Considering the possible food crisis that extreme climate conditions could cause, the Daniao tribe also began this year to try collecting from tribal elders the increasingly scarce seeds still kept within the tribe, in order to preserve seeds that are flood-tolerant, drought-tolerant, and strongly resilient, so that if the tribe's connecting road is cut off, the tribe will still have enough food for its people.
While searching for seeds and learning how the tribe uses and eats its crops, they happened to get to know He Qiming, a traditional Chinese medicine doctor in Taichung, and discovered that in recent years Dr. He has often made good use of the nutritional elements of foods themselves when treating patients, suggesting that patients replace drug therapy with food therapy. Dr. He had also mostly learned the medicinal functions of foods from his exchanges with elders in various tribes over the past few years, so World Vision Taiwan invited Dr. He to the Daniao tribe to share with the tribal people the food therapy wisdom he had heard in other tribes over the years and his experience in using foods.
Dr. He said he began looking for tribes that could help grow grain crops because five or six years earlier, when treating a patient in his thirties, that patient had developed severe osteoporosis after surgery and steroid injections, and many doctors suggested the patient have an artificial joint installed. During consultation, Dr. He found that rice sprouts could be used for treatment, and in order to find this rice, he thus began his journey through Taiwan searching for the "grain treasure."
While visiting tribes, Dr. He often brought more than a dozen kinds of millet to exchange with tribal people, and the tribal elders would always generously point out among the many kinds of millet which ones were the grains they ate in the past when sick or during postpartum confinement.
For example, an elderly woman in Xiabinlang, Taitung, shared that in the past, when tribal women were in postpartum confinement, they ate specifically a kind of short-haired, branched yellow millet. Dr. He said that from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, this kind of millet pointed out by the woman is a very good crop for gynecological health. People of the Taigang tribe in Hsinchu said that the roots of the black tree bean trees planted by the tribe have very good curative effects on women's menstrual pain, everyday muscle and bone soreness, and bruises and injuries.
In addition, in many places there is also the food wisdom of using rakkyo (Allium chinense) to detoxify. For example, many local residents mention that in places where conventional farming is practiced, if a puppy is about to die after eating pesticide, it will recover after eating rakkyo, and farmers also go back and eat rakkyo after spraying pesticide.
Dr. He said that when searching for Taiwan's unique medicinal crops, he often borrows local people's wisdom, shares the food therapy knowledge passed down from their ancestors, and then combines it with traditional Chinese medicine.
Photo source / Dr. He Qiming
Dr. He also shared his experience in applying these foods. Dr. He said he found in the Shuanglong tribe of Xinyi Township a variety of upland rice that is greatly beneficial to the human kidneys. He said that this variety is currently used on dialysis patients who cannot urinate and has produced significant improvement. Although these patients still need dialysis after eating this upland rice, they have regained urination. In addition, mung beans grown on Lala Mountain also have a significant detoxifying effect when applied to some conditions involving aftereffects left by anesthesia.
When a Daniao woman saw a photo of one of the shared grains, she was very excited. She said that was a very ancient crop of the tribe, very fragrant and delicious to eat, and now it is almost impossible to find
Dr. He said that many crops with medicinal functions may have been eliminated and gradually disappeared in the process of crop commercialization because of poor taste or lower yield. However, these crops are very likely to have better effects on human health. Therefore, in recent years he began cooperating with various tribes. Besides searching for crops that can be used medicinally, he also cooperates with tribes to plant them, and gradually has gathered complete information on grains that strengthen the human internal organs.
After listening to Dr. He's sharing, the people of the Daniao tribe were all very excited. Besides being curious about and looking forward to planting those seeds the tribe had never seen, they were also very excited about some crops that appeared in the presentation. Everyone pointed at certain grains and said those were very ancient crops of the tribe, very fragrant and delicious, but the tribe could no longer find them, and they hoped to ask Dr. He for some seeds.
After the meeting, Cutjuy Patjajimuk, a young person who had worked away from home for many years and returned to serve the tribe in recent years, talked with Dr. He about why he returned to the tribe. Cutjuy said that a car accident many years ago left him severely injured, and in that car accident he reconsidered whether a life of working away from home and making money for others was worthwhile, and therefore he decided to return to his hometown to serve his tribe.
Dr. He's talk gave Cutjuy even more expectations for the farmland that everyone was now co-farming. He hoped this land could give priority to the needs of the tribal people, let the food on the farm become a support for tribal members living away from home, give them safe and healthy food, and at the same time allow the second generation of tribal members living long-term in the city to make the farm the first step in getting to know the tribe when they return home.
Mung beans grown by the Daniao tribe in cooperation with Dr. He
During Typhoon Morakot, when residents relied on airdropped supplies and ate instant noodles every day, Saljeljeng Suljaip shared that they began to realize at that time the importance of farming for food self-sufficiency during disasters. Therefore, after the disaster, Saljeljeng picked up a hoe and began a life of half farming and half something else.
Looking back on this path of post-Morakot industrial reconstruction, what should perhaps be reconstructed is not the crop types and planting methods that were solely market-led before the disaster; what should be reconstructed is the tribe's ability to respond to its internal needs, so that the wisdom of the ancestors and the tribe's culture can have soil in which to continue and grow, and so that the land and seeds that can feed the tribe and heal the tribe can all continue to exist within the tribe.