Ongoing at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris until July 14 is the exhibit “Philippines: Archipel des échanges” (An Archipelago of Exchange), described as “the biggest in scope dedicated to the Philippines in Europe.” It is a comprehensive survey of the rich traditions of precolonial Filipino art—in sculptures, pottery, textiles and personal ornaments from the Cordillera, Palawan, Mindanao and Sulu—attesting to our Austronesian roots and rich maritime history prior to the arrival of the Spaniards.
Much has been written about the exhibit that opened on April 8, and mention has also been made of the side events featuring music, dance, cuisine, traditional martial arts, photos, cinema, and an exhibit of 22 Filipino artists in southern France.
There is, however, another side event that has not been reported: the Conference on Philippine Indigenous Cultural Communities held on April 25-26, also at the Musée du Quai Branly. Convened by a scientific committee composed of French anthropologist Charles Macdonald, exhibit curator and art historian Constance de Monbrison, and museum director (teaching and research department) Anne-Christine Taylor, the conference featured 14 Filipino and foreign speakers who presented papers complementary to the exhibit, discussing the ways of life, past and present living conditions, and prospects of Philippine indigenous cultural communities, with special attention to their rights and position in the national and global society.
‘Highland savage’
In Session 1 on “Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in the stream of history,” Southeast Asian historian Anthony Reid (founding director of the Asia Research Institute at the University of Singapore, and now back at the Australian National University) presented the keynote paper titled “The making of the ‘highland savage’ in Southeast Asia.” Reid posited that “in the evolution of Southeast Asian pluralities, the religious revolution of the long 16th century was a major turning point.” In consequence, homogeneities in the region were “eventually imposed on the natural diversity of spatially separate peoples by the twin forces of scriptural religion and bureaucratic states.” He cited environmental factors—climate and tectonic disasters—as informing the course of the integration between “civilized” lowlanders and “savage” highlanders, and the resultant rise of nation-states in the later centuries. He proposed a revision of early modern Southeast Asian history.
Also presented were two papers—by Thomas Gibson (University of Rochester) and Jean-Noel Sanchez (Université de Strasbourg).
Gibson has done fieldwork among the Buid of Mindoro and he looked into the steps taken in the past 50 years by the IPs there to demand recognition of their rights to their ancestral domain and to protest encroachments on their lands through various instrumentalities, especially IP organizations and outside allies (Filipino and foreign NGOs).
Sanchez presented a view of Spanish and American representation and practices toward Filipino Muslims, particularly through the study of the 17th-century works of Fr. Francisco Combés, SJ (especially an unpublished and unstudied work of the Spanish missionary). He looked at the Spanish colonial construction of categorizations for the indios and the Moros and the work of American writer Katherine Mayo, “The Isles of Fear,” for the US vision of Muslim ethnic groups. He presented interesting insights from his studies of Spanish colonial rule in the Americas.
Rituals as autonomy
Sessions 2 and 3 featured eight papers on “[IPs’] Material and Immaterial Culture” which discussed a variety of subjects: the persistence of ritual practices in Bontoc funerals as a mark of autonomy (Anna Maria Theresa Labrador, National Museum); pottery and ceramics, central to the Kalinga indigenous way of life, and their relation to other indigenous cultural forms such as body adornment or tattoo practice and design (batok), both of which make emergent social change visible (Analyn Salvador-Amores, University of the Philippines Baguio); and Agusan Manobo rituals addressed to spirits bound to nature and tutelary spirit guides, the former called in during mundane human actions such as planting, fishing, or traveling, the latter dealing with curing rituals that entail active spirit possession of the medium, leading to healing and social integration (Jose S. Buenconsejo, UP Diliman).
The other papers discussed three rituals among Palawan highlanders that illustrate the art of relating and revealing the efficacy of various symbolic exchanges uniting all beings (human and benevolent/malevolent) in the phenomenal world, with such experiences and practices present among other animist groups of Luzon, Mindanao and Sulu (Nicole Revel, CNRS-MNHS, Paris); new perspectives (revisionist “short history”) and methodological and typological issues (in the study of oral epics like the hudhud) for the study of the antiquity of the rice terraces that dominate the Ifugao landscape and which have become emblematic of Philippine cultural and environmental heritage (Maria V. Stanyukovich, Russian Academy of Science, St. Petersburg, and Stephen B. Acabado, University of Guam); the problematics of plastik tribal art created by contemporary indigenous Filipino artists and artisans from nontraditional materials of wood and rattan (Deirdre McKay, Keele University, United Kingdom); and an examination of the language-culture nexus in the Southern Cordillera (Patricia O. Afable, NMNH, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC).
Session 4 on “Indigenous Rights Advocacy and the Law” featured three papers by Mary Ann Manja M. Bayang of the National Union of Peoples Lawyers, and Alejandro Ciencia Jr. and Santos Jose O. Dacanay III, both of UP Baguio. The papers were concerned with the recognition and protection of the rights of IPs to evolve and practice their own laws and legal systems, customs and traditions mutually and equally with nonindigenous communities; with governance issues and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples; and with a sustainable future with regard to sustainable management of land and natural resources and the development of human and cultural resources based on indigenous systems and practices.
This conference was unique in that it was exclusively focused on the culture and way of life of some Philippine indigenous cultural communities, which form part of the political, cultural and historical reality of the state, and which all Filipinos need to know about. It is a conference that should be convened in the Philippines as well.
Using language, literature, ethnography, archaeology and all historical sources available, we can create a “total history” that will give coherence to the “collective destinies and splendid variety” of the Philippine nation.
Bernardita Reyes Churchill is the president of the Philippine National Historical Society and of the Philippine Studies Association.