When Indigenous Peoples Begin to Read the Mother-tongue Bibles:
Speaking from Sediq’s Perspective

The relationship between the Bible and the Indigenous Peoples can be described as simultaneously “friend and foe”. We must not forget how the Bible, with its mix of colonial and aggressive incentives has empowered and legitimised the cultural, spiritual, land, social, environmental subjugation of the Indigenous Peoples. Nor can we dismiss the innumerous humanitarian and medical efforts of missionaries based on the “Word of God”. Situated in the context of Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples, I contend that the publication and popularisation of the Mother-tongue Bibles is both a new opportunity and a confrontation. In this short presentation, I will briefly describe the relationship between Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples and Christianity and the situation of the mother-tongue Bible translation projects. Several guiding questions will be addressed: What new reading horizons of biblical interpretation emerge when the mother-tongue is accepted and embraced? What new theological critiques and spaces of dialogue can be generated from these biblical reading horizons? And what social, cultural, and political counternarratives can they bring about? A few of the interpretative practices from my Sediq mother-tongue Bibles will be my illustrations to these questions.