Amis remains Taiwan's biggest aboriginal tribe at 37.1% of total

Taipei, Feb. 15 (CNA) The Amis people remained Taiwan's biggest aboriginal tribe as of last year, accounting for 37.1 percent of the country's indigenous people, according to the Ministry of Interior.

The ministry said in a statement released Saturday that Taiwan's aboriginal residents totaled 540,023 as of 2014, up 1.2 percent from the previous year. They averaged 33.7 years old, much younger than the average of 39.8 years old for all Taiwanese.

The top three aboriginal tribes were the Amis with 200,604 people, or 37.1 percent of the total, followed by the Paiwan with 96,334 people (17.8 percent) and the Atayal with 85,888 people (15.9 percent), the statistics show.

By living areas, Hualien County had the most aboriginal residents of 91,675, accounting for 17 percent of the total number of indigenous inhabitants in Taiwan. Taitung County came in second with 14.7 percent and Taoyuan ranked third with 12.1 percent.

In terms of aboriginal people to overall population ratio in each county or city, Taitung County had the highest figure of 35.5 percent, followed by Hualien County with 27.5 percent and Pingtung County with 6.9 percent.

(By Hsieh Chia-chen and Jeffrey Wu)ENDITEM/J