Wikimedia Taiwan has a great news to share with all of you!
We are so happy to announced that the two of Taiwan's indigenous languages, the Atayal Wikipedia and Seediq Wikipedia are officially online!
In 2015, the Taiwan Ministry of Education launched the Indigenous languages Wikipedia project. Sakizaya Wikipedia was the first language release their Wikipedia in 2019. On April 15, 2021, Hitay-Payan and Lituk Teymu, who are another two languages Wikipedia project convener were happy to announce that Atayal Wikipedia and Seediq Wikipedia were online.
Since November 22, 2019, the release day of Sakizaya Wikipedia, there have been 1,840 clauses added. The Wikimedia Taiwan and the Center for aboriginal studies of NCCU joined the Sakizaya Wikipedia workshop hosted by Sakizaya language organization on March 11-12, 2021 at the Hualien City. During the workshop, we taught Sakizaya people how to migrate Chinese modules into Sakizaya, and they translated all of them into Sakizaya. There are 50 pictures from Wikimedia Commons was enhanced by Sakizaya and over 100 Wikidata item and properties were translated into Sakizaya. Moreover, the Sakizaya hashtag "szy" for other Wikipedia sister projects was ready as well.
Atayal Wikipedia and Seediq Wikipedia were released on March 16, 2021, including the previous Sakizaya language, these are the 3 languages which first included in Wikipedia, there are in total 16 indigenous languages recognized as aboriginal by the Council of Indigenous People, Taiwan. The new Wikimedia language hashtag for Atayal (tay) and Seediq (trv) not only expanded the usability within Wikipedia but also between other Wiki projects, such as Wikimedia Common and Wikidata.
We are happy to preserve, promote and reuse Taiwan's indigenous languages through the release of the Wikimedia project, this is an milestone for all of us. We hope to assist all Indigenous continue finding ways to preserve their legacy and bring their languages and culture to the world.