When Tribal Rituals Meet Sporting Events: An Analysis of the Traditional Meaning of the Malahodaigian Ritual of the Bunun Tribe

[[abstract]]This study used the case of the Malahodaigian Ritual of the Bunun Tribe combined with a Sports Event in the recent years to explore the development and influences of combining a traditional ritual with a sports event and provide some cultural introspection in this respect. This study found that when the Malahodaigian Ritual was combined with a sports event, the process of the ritual was under many constraints caused by the schedule arrangement of the sports event, making it difficult for the ritual to deliver the cultural messages. As a result, the traditional spirit of the Bunun Tribe wasn’t manifested or shown forth. The result of forcing to merge two activities of different forms, contents, and purposes was the cultural inheritance of the Malahodaigian Ritual becoming “out of focus” and its intention becoming vague. To ensure the cultural inheritance of the Malahodaigian Ritual and the manifestation of the traditional features of the tribe, this study suggested that the planning for integrating a tribe ritual with a sports event should be extra careful and detailed. 1、The overall creative plan of integrating the Malahodaigian Ritual with a sports event should be made with the Malahodaigian Ritual being the core cultural content (guiding principle) for the purpose of complete manifestation of the cultural content and the traditional spirit of the Bunun Tribe. 2、For the whole activity, the focus of resource allocation and schedule planning should be more on the ritual than the sports event, in order to rebuild the cultural attitude for the overall activity and improve community exchange. 3、The cultural features of the Bunun Tribe should be used as the core to improve the cultural tourism value of the festival activity instead of combining and mixing things without thorough planning