We give thanks and pay our respects to the Yolŋu people of the North East Arnhem Land, the Paiwan people and the Amis People with whom this work has been created, and on whose Country this work has been created.

There's a cultural bond through song and dance that has been building for the best part of seven years, though from a foundation laid millennia ago. An unexpected connection has been strengthened despite a distance of thousands of kilometres between peoples.

The Yolŋu mob that live on North East Arnhem Land and the original Austronesian peoples of Taiwan have found more commonality than differences through a relationship that First Nations performer Rachael Wallis has carefully fostered.

The Bangarra Dance Theatre choreographer and Artistic Director for Miku Performing Arts first developed a relationship with Taiwanese Indigenous artists when she was given a residency via Artback NT for the Australian Performing Arts Market.

The Yolŋu woman, who was raised in Sydney but relocated later to Nhulunbuy, spent around six weeks discussing each of their cultural stories while living in the traditional mountain villages – before returning to Taiwan twice more in recent years.

"We built a strong relationship, creating some strong work together from it," Wallis said.

"We thought it would be really good if we could connect our families to do even bigger work to tell our stories."

These stories became the basis for performances which earlier this year captivated theatre audiences in Naarm/Melbourne.

"What we all chose to share was our strengths and the beauty of our cultures, and both of our celebrations of the cultures," Wallis said.

Taiwan's patchwork of tribes dates back 15,000 years and, like Aboriginal Australians, are among some of the oldest continuous cultures in the Austronesian-Pacific sphere - and the world - who share deep historical, linguistic, genetic, and cultural ties with other Pasifika peoples.

The majority of the Austronesian-speaking people eventually split into the Amis and Paiwan tribes, the two most populous 'Aborigine' Taiwanese groups, which account for about 55 per cent of the nation's 600,000 Indigenous people in the present day.

Indigenous Taiwanese built sophisticated trade networks across Southeast Asia including with the Macassans of Sulawesi – an Indonesian people with whom Australian First Nations mobs traded centuries before British colonisation – long before the first of the ethnic Han Chinese settlers had arrived on the once-named (by the Portuguese) Formosa in the 17th century.

The second wave of Han people came as many fled mainland China at the end of 1949 following the loss of the Nationalists in the civil war to the Communists; the Kuomintang declaring Taiwan the new 'Republic of China' while attempting to assimilate Indigenous custodians of the island.

It all sounded too familiar to Wallis and became the subject of the joint production.

"That's when we started talking about similarities with our struggles, other people taking over our lands, the struggles of some of our tribes losing language, and also losing their ways from invasion," Wallis said.

For centuries, both groups of Indigenous people fought hard to practice their cultures amid a backdrop of colonial powers.

Not only did the Han Chinese subjugate the seafaring Indigenous peoples of Taiwan, but in between their two reigns there was the Dutch, the Spanish and the Japanese that landed.

That history is reflected and culminated in a cross-cultural collaboration of the Asia Topa production of Gapu Nupan – Chasing the Rainbow, a rekindling of ancestral connections and traditions.

It weaved together Yolŋu songlines with the storytelling from Paiwan and Amis artists in a rare glimpse into ancient cultures forging their own future vision.

"There is respect for each other's cultures that is really strong," Wallis said.

"When you work with them, you feel empowered to continue in our work because we hit a lot of barriers at times.

"We have issues with governments not completely understanding or, really, nowhere near completely understanding our cultural ways."

Multi-award winning Amis singer-songwriter, Suming Rapi, who is also the founder of Taiwan's largest Indigenous music festival, brought a matriarchal ritual of rich song and dance to the process.

Yolŋu cultural knowledge was provided by its mob custodian, Banula Marika, a respected artist and one-time Bangara Dance Theatre and Youth Yindi band member, who passed down his oral history to perform.

The producers were adamant about supporting cultural protocols in what, Wallis said, was a "slow burn", but a relationship-building development exercise.

"We didn't write a storyline and go, 'Right, let's put the people into that show and see how it all goes'," Wallis said.

"It evolved and it unravelled as we went along, and the more meetings we had, the more knowledge we gathered together.

"That is how we worked out what would put into the performance piece to share."

For the songwoman, the making of the production proved enlightening.

It also said a lot for preserving ancient knowledge through performance within a modern, contemporary society.

"I discovered a lot more, and I think we don't have it in writing or songlines, anything of our actual connections back through history," Wallis added.

"We just don't have that, but we just worked on our relationships and how we felt when we worked together when we're around each other.

"I know we also have similar beliefs: our spiritual beliefs, our ceremonial beliefs – they're a bit different, but I'd say quite similar enough."