IN a region where 90 percent of the population is made up of ethnic groups, a celebration of Indigenous Month in the Cordillera region is truly festive.
After all, tribal cultures are known for their ornate fineries—their dances, music and arts.
A highlight of the month’s celebration was the event to close Indigenous Month on October 30, with the celebration carrying the theme “Indigenous People’s Empowerment towards Peace, Unity and Development.”
Baguio Convention Center reverberated with the vibrant sounds of gongs, and young and elders alike came in their tribal outfits for a whole day of dancing their native dances.
It was a joint celebration of the 19th year of the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (Ipra) and the Gong Festival on its fourth year.
The Gong Festival started as a spontaneous walk by the cast and crew of the film Kanana Kanu in 2012. Wearing their G-strings and holding their spears and shields, they walked along the main streets of the city to promote the film.
The following year, also in October, more daring people came to walk with them in their G-strings, or bahag, for a Wanes Walk Oneness Walk to celebrate Indigenous Month. Thus, the first Gong Festival, and the group Indigenous People’s Education for Arts, Culture and Empowerment Inc. (IPEACE) was formed.
While commonly played now in cultural shows, in ancient times the gong was really a sacred instrument, touched and played only by anointed hands and for very specific purposes, such as community gatherings and dances, ranging from festive occasions and from everything, like rain dances, vengeance and to transport a village medium, or shaman, to the world of the supernatural for healing or other ritual purposes.
But every tribe and subtribe have their particular beats that give the rhythm of dance steps. Dances that imitate the movements of nature and their cultural practices—hunting, river fishing, planting and harvesting. Animal movements also influence the dances, such as the renditions of the mountain eagle, wild chickens and the monkey.
With the diverse ethnic groups represented in the event, there were the dances called ballangbang, balliwes, tontak or takitak (Eagle), Ifugao dinuyya, pattong, apayao, balangao, tadok, chuno, tayao, bendiyan (vengeance) sakpaya, segseg, Abra, Benguet and Rain Dance, among a myriad performances, all accompanied by the beating of gongs.
The Gong Festival aims to root the young to their own cultures, so that the vanishing traditions do not die, and if participation in the October 30 event can be a gauge, IPEACE is making headway in that direction. Young people, together with their families, swamped the expansive red carpet in their G-strings—another symbol of pride of culture—and in their indigenous apparels—dancing, chanting, tumbling around in playing their indigenous games.
Independent filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik took heart in seeing the young people comfortable in their bahag, without a brief or underwear to camouflage their bareness. The filmmaker himself proudly wears the G-string on significant days as a way of showing his respect for the Igorot culture.
Elders are also now encouraging the young to play the gongs as a way of remembering and reclaiming the wisdom of ancestors and so that they may play the gongs properly.
Beyond that, the Gong Festival is eliciting a tourism potential. Cordillera Tourism Director Venus Tan said during the occasion, “As we sound messages that we would want our gongs and this festival to amplify, we hope these could be included among those we would want the world to know.”
From the ranks of tourism, Tan said she would only want to emphasize the concept of sustainable tourism. “A sustainable approach to tourism means that neither the natural environment nor the sociocultural fabric of the host communities will be impaired by the arrival of tourists.”
On the contrary, the natural environment and the local communities should benefit from tourism, she added. Tan also stressed the benefits that can be derived from cultural tourism if and when the Gong Festival becomes an annual festival drawing tourists to it.
She said the gong can become an instrument for economic development for communities, where tourists experience the different ways of life of other people gaining firsthand understanding of their customs, traditions and physical environment. The Gong Festival can be part of the tourism initiative called Rev-Bloom—the rev-up, revive, revisit and revitalize concept for the whole Cordillera region.
But many sectors of ethnic groups question the exploitative side of commercializing their sacred traditions and the issue is ever present in the staging of cultural events, shows and parades.
The beating of gongs was a call for the need of diverse ethnic groups to unite and have a common stand on very pressing concerns—such as the issue on Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), where should be given by communities where development projects are concerned, where many groups claim is being circumvented by divide-and-conquer strategies of corporations.
The region is still replete with decades-old issues on energy projects, such as dams and geothermal projects; mining and accompanying militarization; and illegal logging.
Cordillera National Commission for Indigenous People (NCIP) Regional Director Roland Calde said it must be remembered 90 percent of the region is covered by ancestral domains that are privately owned. Calde said securing these domains is a priority concern of his agency.
But Calde said for next year, the regional office only has a measly budget of a little over P1 million for delineation and titling of these ancestral domains. He said there is a silver lining in that the present administration also has allocated over P2 billion as pipe funds to address the concerns of indigenous people.
Very prominently brought out in the celebration of the Indigenous Month is the region’s bid for autonomy in the light of the federalism thrust of the new administration. The right to self-determination has always been a running thread of assertion of indigenous people, which the Philippine Constitution clearly supports. With the campaign for a shift to a federal form of government, the autonomy campaign has taken on several faces—to be autonomous within a federal state or to be an independent autonomous state.
The call for unity on the autonomy issue is also represented by the playing of gongs in a gong relay to celebrate Cordillera Day every July. Here, the father of the province, the governor or congressman receives and passes on the gong from one municipal station to the next.
Rep. Mark O. Go of Baguio City, while in the forefront of the autonomy issue, chose to dwell on achievers among the katutubo who should be celebrated, singling out for example Police Chief Inspector Kimberly Molitas, a native of Baguio and a full-blooded Igorot who currently heads the National Capital Regional Police Office Public Information Affairs of the Philippine National Police. Molitas is one of the 12 Emerging Leaders of Asia and among her achievements is having initiated scholarship programs for indigenous children in the Cordillera region.
“Coming from a country where most people think that Igorots like me are uneducated, I told myself that I should be an inspiration for the younger Igorots to excel,” Molitas said. Go said this is to show every indigenous person can contribute in their own way to the struggles and aspirations of the indigenous people.
He also agreed with Tan that the preservation of traditional ways—the songs and dances, arts and traditions—and the trademarks that the katutubo that “we can forever be proud of” is a way of empowering the indigenous people.
Tan said tribal arts is a very effective way of letting the world know about the Cordillera culture without necessarily forcing the issue, but able to leave a lingering message and experience to whoever is touched by the art. She said art has the power to illuminate, educate and inspire. Art is truth without violence.
The rhythm of beats may differ from tribe to tribe. But the resonance is constant—evoking the dignity and time immemorial wisdom of indigenous people and that it’s time the world listens to them.