The Rukai (Rukai: ; Mandarin: 魯凱族; pinyin: Lǔkǎi zú) are one of the indigenous people of Taiwan. They consist of six communities residing in southern Taiwan (Budai, Labuan, Tanan, Maga, Mantauran, and Tona), each of which has its own dialect of the Rukai language. As of the year 2014, the Rukai numbered 12,699, and is the seventh-largest of the 13 officially recognized indigenous groups in Taiwan. The Rukai were formerly called Tsarisen or Tsalisen, which means "people living in the mountain".

The Rukai people honored the clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) and the hundred pacer (Deinagkistrodon acutus), which they believe to be the spirit of their ancestor.

Traditional dress and textile

thumb|Taiwan in 1901, with the Rukai marked as "Tsalisen Group of Savages" in the southern part of the island.

The traditional dress of Rukai people has many similarities with that of the Paiwan people, probably due to the similarity of their geographical distribution and hereditary aristocratic social structure. The traditional dress and textile of the Rukai people also possesses original and distinctive qualities and characteristics. Rukai people's dress include both ceremonial attire and casual wear. Men's ceremonial attire includes headwear with insignia, headscarves, tops, skirts, shawls, and leggings, while women wear garlands, headscarves, earrings, necklaces, lazurite necklaces, bead bracelets, arm rings, long gowns, skirts, girdles, leggings, and shoulder ornaments. The main tool is the horizontal loom and the traditional material of the Rukai dress is linen, but under the influence of the Han people they have also begun using cotton and wool. Making cloth is a duty particular to women in Rukai society, and when women are making cloth in a little house, men cannot enter.

There are four essential manufacturing techniques:

  1. Inlay. Inlay is a technique that using different colors of linens as weft to knit through the other linens as warp in order to create geometry patterns in the cloth.
  2. Stitch embroidery. Traditionally, Rukai people use needles made of bamboo for stitch embroidery, but since the Han people introduced the metal needles into Taiwan, like the other indigenous people in Taiwan, Rukai people use metal needles instead.
  3. Patch embroidery. Rukai people usually cut the black cloth in a particular pattern and then sew it onto the white or blue cloth; or cut the white cloth in a particular pattern and then sew it onto the black cloth. The rhombus pattern, which Rukai people regard as the symbol of the hundred pacer, is usually made with satin stitch embroidery. This mandated move threatened Rukai culture and prompted Rukai groups to begin community-based conservation programs to help local Rukai communities assert sovereignty over traditional lands.