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It was a
minifair compared with the grand bacchanalia that is the
Kadayawan Festival that
Davao City has come to
be known for.
A bamboo
enclosure surrounding a collection of huts in a corner of
Davao’s Magsaysay Park—at first glance, this was all there
was to the cultural affair that the Department of Tourism,
with support from the National Commission for Culture and
the Arts (NCCA), had organized and conducted in this city
from November 17 to 25.
But as
those who were able to chance upon the affair would
testify, the Kalimudan was a deep immersion and a rare
peek—compared with the shallow straightforward food and
culture trip that is the Kadayawan Festival—into the
lifestyle and very heart and soul of those to whom much of
mainstream Davao and Mindanao society owes its cultural
identity: the Lumad, otherwise known as the indigenous
peoples of this, the country’s second-largest and
southernmost island.
Lumads
represent one of two kinds of indigenous or native peoples
in Mindanao and Sulu. The other kind are the Moros, those
who became Muslim with the spread of Islam in Mindanao and
Sulu starting in the 13th century. There are nine major
Islamized ethnic groups in the Mindanao-Sulu area. These
are the Maranaw, Maguindanao, Tausug, Yakan, Sama/Samal,
Sangil, Iranun, Kalibugan and Kalagan.
The Lumad,
or non-Moro or non-Muslim indigenous peoples, for their
part, are a complex patchwork of indigenous groups.
Depending on how groups are identified, the number of
Lumad groups varies. The International Work Group on
Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) pegs indigenous-people groups
in Mindanao as numbering from 15 to 21. These may be
clustered into the Manobo cluster, the
Bagobo-B’laan-T’boli-Tiruray cluster, the Mandaya-Mansaka
cluster, the Subanen and the Mamanwa.
According
to IWGIA, there is much interpenetration among the groups,
especially between the Manobo, Bagobo and Mandaya. For the
most part, the indigenous peoples in Mindanao basically
subsist through swidden and wet-rice cultivation, hunting,
fishing, gathering and the trade in locally manufactured
items.
Kalimudan
is Lumad for “gathering,” and that was what the weeklong
affair in Davao City was, exactly—a gathering of
indigenous culture bearers and exposition of indigenous
wisdom. From the coasts of Davao del Sur and Davao
Oriental to the hinterlands of Sulu and Zamboanga del Sur,
they came, with names that sound like the lyrical gongs
and their rhythmic drums: Ata, Manobo, Dibabawon, Mansaka,
Subanen, Mandaya, Banwaon, Bagobo, Tagbanwa, Mangguwangan,
K’lagan, Sama, Sangil, Bukidnon, Higaonon, Tagakaolo,
Teduray, Ubo.
Days
before the Kalimudan, the tribes came, with bamboo,
timber, bark, grass, leaf and twine to build the
Kalimudan’s main component: a showcase of vernacular
architecture, a collection of huts representing the
building styles of every Lumad and Moro group that came to
the gathering. For a while there, a corner of Magsaysay
Park had turned into some village in remote Arakan Valley
of North Cotabato or the hinterlands of Tipo-Tipo in
Basilan.
As each
tribal structure was built, the air was filled with ritual
music and chants as Lumad shamans danced and burned
offerings to their animistic gods while Muslim imams
prayed for Allah to bless the activity.
Most of
the Lumad houses looked alike from a distance. A closer
inspection would reveal subtle differences, such as the
use of rattan instead of bamboo twine to tie poles and
posts together, the use of grass instead of anahaw leaf
for roofing, or the way windows were put up or down. The
T’boli, for instance, had windows that opened from the
sill than from the eave. Manobos use bamboo slats for
wallings while Mamanwas and Mansakas use tree barks. For
the most part, the main building material consists of
bamboo, prompting poet and NCCA commissioner Rio Alma to
write a poem in praise of the bamboo and its many
practical uses, particularly to the tribes of
Mindanao.
Visitors
to the Kalimudan, many of whom were students of schools
and universities in the city, were greeted by this
installation that offers Rio Alma’s work “Kawayan ng Lahi”
for all to read before entering the village of vernacular
architecture. Wrote the poet in part:
Kawayan, kawayan ng aming sanlaksang pangangailangan/pagkain
kung labong/alkansya kung bumbong/kanyon kung bagong taon.
Ang himaymay pwedeng lubid/o sawali ng kamalig/o sapin ng
bagong basket. Singtigas ng bakal kung tulay/ Balsa, dulos,
pabitin, palosebo, singkaban, baso, silya, muwebles,
longgong, lutuan. Kawayan, kawayan/ipinaglihi’t ipinaghele
sa amihan.
Metaphor
for survival
The
bamboo, indeed, is as much the tree of life for the
indigenous peoples of Mindanao as it is a metaphor for the
way they have tried to survive the threats to their
culture and very existence posed by creeping modernization
and the increasing demand for living space from the
lowlands.
The
bamboo, it is said, is hard to uproot during storms for it
sways with the strong wind instead of resisting it. For
Fr. Albert Alejo, SJ, executive director of the Ateneo de
Davao University-based Mindanawon Center for Cultural
Dialogue, this is as much a description of the way the
indigenous peoples of Mindanao have assumed multiple
identities to allow them to adopt to or cope with any of
the multitude of challenges now facing them in the rest of
Mindanao society’s march toward progress and development.
Speaking
before a Kalimudan public forum on issues confronting
indigenous peoples, Paring Bert, as the Jesuit priest is
popularly known in Davao, stated that indigenous peoples
assume several strategic identities depending on the
development scenarios that confront them and how they
reckon they could survive or at least profit from such
scenarios. Such identities, Alejo said, include being
Filipino, katutubo (indigenous), Mindanawon (native of
Mindanao), Lumad (different from Muslims and Christians),
ethnolinguistic (Manobo, Bagobo, etc.), ancestral-domain
claimant, members of a community hosting development
projects such as mining, members of a clan, or simply as
individuals.
Alejo
presented a matrix that he developed to help external
agencies such as government units and non-government
organizations identify the appropriate type of assistance
(“form of solidarity”) that they need to extend to
indigenous peoples in pursuit of their needs (“forms of
struggle”) based on the “effective symbols” of their
assumed strategic identities. For instance, if members of
an indigenous peoples’ group identify themselves as
Filipino, Alejo said the effective symbol of this is the
cedula (residence certificate) or birth certificate that
external agencies can help the indigenous peoples get
through their inclusion in the census, and beyond these,
their registration as voters and their inclusion in
government budgeting. Part of the Alejo matrix is
presented in the table below.
In a
separate interview, Fr. Alejo lauded and welcomed the
Kalimudan as a way of educating city dwellers about the
culture of the indigenous peoples around the region.
“What’s
happening is that in every city, especially the new ones
here in Mindanao, there are cultural presentations
depicting that city’s self-image, which derives much from
indigenous cultures,” Alejo pointed out. “There is
something very wrong here [when] a city becomes alive when
indigenous peoples dance in the streets, when all the
hotels are fully booked and everyone benefits except the
indigenous peoples themselves who remain poor,” he said.
Fr. Alejo
called on Filipinos not to regard indigenous peoples
simply as cultural communities. “They are also political,
engaged in economic, spiritual, as well as ecological
struggle. Don’t reduce them to being mere performers in
the arts because they are peoples who are also in deep
struggle. They hunger and they are being killed. Let this
forum be an awakening for the city dwellers that we have a
responsibility to the survival of indigenous culture. If
we allow the indigenous peoples to die of hunger, then,
actually, we are poisoning our own wealth.”
It was
precisely because of concerns such as these that were
voiced out by Fr. Alejo that the NCCA decided to fund the
holding of Kalimudan 2007, a brainchild of Davao cultural
worker Nestor Horfilla, executive director of the
city-based Kaliwat Theater Collective.
According
to NCCA executive director Cecille Guidote Alvarez, who
graced a fashion showcase of tribally inspired creations
of designer Rene Salud at Davao City’s Royal Mandaya
Hotel, Kalimudan 2007 is part of the NCCA’s task to
mainstream indigenous arts and culture in line with the
United Nations-declared Decade of the Indigenous Peoples
and as a way of correcting the centuries-old
marginalization, bias and prejudice of mainstream society
against indigenous Filipinos.
Gatherings
such as the Kalimudan, Alvarez pointed out, are important
because these “allow you to appreciate the social
significations of indigenous peoples, as they wish to
transmit them and not how we interpret such significations
to be.” The Kalimudan, Alvarez stressed, is one way of
reminding Filipinos of their roots. “We need them
[indigenous peoples] for the memory of our nation. We need
them because they have so much to give in terms of forming
our cultural identity.”
In terms
of its potential for tourism, Sonia Garcia, Department of
Tourism director for Region XI, said Kalimudan 2007 is a
welcome addition to the region’s tourism assets. “The
cultural diversity of
Mindanao is the No. 1 asset of all
Mindanao.
I mean, it’s a given. These days, people in Europe, the
United States and just about everywhere are looking to
discover cultural destinations. The trend now is for
ecocultural tourism.”
Garcia
said the Department of Tourism, which managed Kalimudan
2007 for the NCCA, plans to institutionalize the Kalimudan
gathering and will leverage Davao City’s positioning as a
travel gateway to do this. At the end of the Kalimudan
affair on November 25, the indigenous architectural
showcase was turned over to the city government, which
will now maintain and make it an essential part of Davao
City tourism.
“We will
be incorporating Kalimudan in our ecotourism package,”
said Davao City tourism officer Gerri Angeles-Duran. “We
are very proud of the fact that our city is a melting pot
of the different tribes of Mindanao and the Philippines,”
she added, stressing that Kalimudan 2007 was another
evidence of this fact. |
