Since its establishment in 1979, UCA News has been reporting news about and of interest to the local Churches in Asia. Most UCAN reports are stories about specific events or developing trends in Asia, but seldom deal with general context of the various peoples of Asia -- the realities that constitute their identity as distinctive groups of people.
The Children in Asia series is designed to provide some of what has been missing in the flow of UCAN reports. This series aims to tell more fundamental stories about Asia's peoples and to share basic information that is only minimally reflected in routine news reports.
By observing how children grow and develop in Asia, one can learn much about the history, values, structures and traditions of their respective cultural groups. The Children in Asia series does not focus on a single major Asian people but on many small groups: the tribal, indigenous, people of Southeast Asia.
Facts concerning the massive migrations of people from South China and Australia who journeyed over continents, stopping and starting, settling and unsettling, until they arrived where they are today can only be guessed at by social scientists. But there are stories that elders have passed on to younger generations, who in turn passed them on to their own children, down through the centuries. These stories may seem to contain only fragments of memories, but together they are a living memory through which person interprets its self identity.
There are also new stories, new fragments of a story, arising out of the unprecedented pace of change in the modern world. The newest of these are the stories of tribal children, who are their people's future. It is important that these stories, which are of the past, the present and the future, be heard. Only then do they stand a chance of being remembered.
The images and words presented here are offered in the spirit of a popular Philippine proverb that says: "People who forget where they came from never arrive at where they are going."
