Tao people

The Tao people (Yami: Tao no pongso) are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the tiny outlying Orchid Island of Taiwan. They have a maritime culture, with great ritual and spiritual significance placed on boat-building and fishing. Their ways of life have been threatened by the continued emigration to the mainland of Taiwan in search of jobs and education. As a result, the continuation of past traditions has been hindered. Despite being linked to both other Taiwanese indigenous peoples and Batanic indigenous Filipino populations, the Tao people remain unique in their customs and cultural practices.

The Tao people have been more commonly recorded under the exonym "Yami people" by official documents and academic literature, following Japanese anthropologist Torii Ryuzo's coining of the name in 1897. However, as a collective, these Orchid Island inhabitants typically prefer "Tao people" as their group identifier. Recently, they have successfully petitioned the Council of Indigenous Peoples of the Taiwanese government to use the name "Tao" in place of "Yami".

Citing threats to their culture and health, the Tao people have protested against the nuclear waste plant constructed on their island by the government in 1982 and advocated for its removal.

The Tao people are Austronesians, like other Taiwanese indigenous peoples. However, it is still unknown how they settled Orchid Island and from where. Unlike other indigenous Taiwanese groups, they speak a Western Malayo-Polynesian language and are presumed to be more closely related to the ethnic groups of the Philippines, particularly the Ivatan people. A common theory tracing their ancestry posits that their ancestors left the Batanes Archipelago in the Philippines, and settled Orchid Island approximately 800 years ago. This reasoning is based primarily on the language similarities of the Ivatan and the Tao people. Also, it appears that these two groups traded goats, pigs, weapons, and gold until about 300 years ago due to continuous warfare.

A 2011 genetic study found that the Tao people are more genetically closely related to the other Taiwanese indigenous peoples in the Taiwanese mainland than to the Ivatan people of the Philippines. However, the Tao and the Ivatan both speak closely related Western Malayo-Polynesian languages, and there is evidence of limited gene flow between the groups. The authors concluded that Orchid Island was settled independently from Taiwan during the early period of the Austronesian expansion (approximately 4000 BP), and not from the Batanes Islands as previously believed. Long-term trade contacts and limited intermarriage resulted in strong cultural and linguistic exchanges between the groups in subsequent millennia.

In addition to the Tao people of Orchid Island, there is a growing population of ethnic Chinese/Han Taiwanese individuals. This adds approximately 1,000 people to the number of inhabitants on the island.

The word Tao simply means "person"/"human" in the language of the Tao people. The word Yami (meaning "north") originated from Japanese ethnologist Torii Ryūzō. He used the term to refer to the culture and language of the Tao people. In recent years, some Tao people have rejected the name, but opinion remains divided. While this indigenous group identifies collectively by the name Tao or Yami, individual communities on the island affiliate with unique names tied to their locality.

The language of the Tao people can be referred to simply as Tao or Yami. Natively, it is referred to as ciriciring no tao ("speech of human beings"). It is a Malayo-Polynesian language, a subgroup of Austronesian languages. More specifically, it is considered a Western Malayo-Polynesian language, one of two primary branches in the Austronesian subgroup—the other being Central-Eastern Malayo-Polynesian. The Tao language is a member of the Batanic languages and is grouped together with the Ivatan and Itbayat languages of the Philippines. As of 1994, there were a total of 3,000 speakers, and 3,255 individuals deemed ethnically Tao.