Bauki Angaw was born in 1956 in a fishing village near the Port of Hualien. He holds a Master's degree from the Graduate Institute of Studies in Documentary & Film Archiving, Tainan National University of the Arts. At the age of 37, he unexpectedly discovered that he was a descendant of the indigenous Kavalan people when filming a harvest festival at the Paterungan community in Hualien, which prompted he to trace his family history and explore the political as well as historical reasons of why the Kavalan were forced out of the Yilan Plain. From then on, he continued to film cultural aspects and issues of the Kavalan community, and became an active participant of the revitalisation movement of the Kavalan people. He is an assistant professor of the Department of Communication Studies at the Tzu Chi University, and the president of the Hualien County Kavalan Community Development Association.