Who are the Igorots? | Inquirer News

BAGUIO CITY – Jane Cadalig was attending a seminar when she introduced herself as Igorot to one of her fellow participants. But the answer he received was the following: “Igorot ka? Hindi halata (Are you Igorot? Does not appear) “.

Cadalig, 39, an editor for a community newspaper in Baguio, said she would like to believe it was a compliment, but still found it “offensive.”

“I wanted to ask you to describe the Igorot you had in mind, but I let your comment pass,” shared Cadalig, a native of the city of Sagada, Mountain Province.

In other cases, the people of the Cordillera sometimes received the comment: “Taga bundok ka (are you from the mountains)?” according to Baguio professor at the University of the Philippines (UP), Ruth Molitas Tindaan, who teaches language arts, literature and the arts.

In his article, “Recreating Igorot Identity in the Diaspora,” published online by South East Asia Research on January 5, Tindaan studied modern “identity construction” and the “visual self-representation” of the indigenous Igorot of the Cordillera who have emigrated to the UK. He carried out the research from 2015 to 2017 within the framework of the UP System doctoral study program.

Discrimination, Tindaan said, has often been experienced by Igorots from other Filipino immigrants in the UK.

Recurring history

Citing his conversation with members of the Igorot-UK Organization (Igo-UK), Tindaan said a recurring story he heard was about the impression from other Filipinos that the Igorot were from the mountains.

He said a fellow Filipino from a “lowland” province asked an Igorot woman how she had adjusted to life in London, with the comment “Eh taga bundok ka pa naman (especially since you are from the mountains).”

With this, Tindaan said that the colleague implied that the Igorot woman “has less aptitude to face life in a cosmopolitan city because of her place of origin.”

And when another Igorot woman was told that she did not look like one, the statement further implied that the lowland colleague “forgave” what she perceived as the Igorot woman’s act of hiding “because apparently, she finds something wrong. in that true identity. “

England Exhibition

According to Tindaan, these perceptions reflected the descriptions in London newspapers in 1912 during the Shakespeare Exhibition in England that the Igorots were “barbarians of the mountainous district of the Philippine Islands.”

He said such incidents showed that lowland Filipinos in the UK viewed the Igorots as “set in the mountains and associated with certain ‘mountain features’ … even in their transfer to another country” .

Tindaan said that these perceptions were informed by the so-called indigenous paradigm, which views indigenous peoples as “a different race, unsuited to the conditions and sophistication of contemporary life.”

“In a contemporary mobile world, the Igorots are still perceived as a static group of people tied to the mountains of the Cordillera,” he wrote.

Resisted perceptions

Tindaan said members of Igo-UK resisted these prevailing perceptions by traveling the UK, bringing their ethnic attire and changing into it upon arrival at their destination to take “stylish pictures”.

“These photographs were subsequently posted on Facebook and generated threads of interactions between Igorots in the UK and other Igorots around the world,” he said.

Tindaan added: “These photographs declare that the Igorots are no longer or are no longer relegated to the mountains.”

These photographs could also be inspired by their desire to inform others how they, like Igorots in the UK, “have gone beyond the ‘barbarian’ images of their ancestors frozen in colonial photographs,” he said.

The late historian William Henry Scott said that Filipinos born in the Great Central Range were generally called Igorots.

But he said they could be accurately referred to by the names of six different ethnolinguistic groups: Isneg (Apayao), Kalinga, Bontoc, Ifugao, Kankanay (Kankanaey) and Ibaloy.

“But historically they all have one thing in common, whatever they are called: their ancestors resisted assimilation into the Spanish Empire for three centuries,” wrote Scott in the book, “The Discovery of the Igorots: Spanish Contacts with the Pagans of Northern Luzon. “

‘Wrong notions’

Recently, “incorrect and offensive” notions about the Igorots, which used to be part of old textbooks, have found their way into workbooks sent to students who have been taking lessons online, or through teaching programs. radio and television during the coronavirus pandemic, authorities said.

The representative of the province of Mountain, Máximo Dalog Jr., has criticized the Department of Education (DepEd) on the module of “self-study” that showed the Igorots with curly hair.

“I am diego. I am an Igorot … My black hair is very curly (I am Diego. I am an Igorot. My hair is black and curly) ”, read a passage from the exercise book written by Felicidad Remo and Avelina Espelita, and published by St. Mathew’s Publishing Corp.

But having curly hair is not the proper description of Igorots, which is one of the collective terms for the people of the Cordilleras, Dalog said.

“We wish to inform the [textbook authors] that physically, the Igorots are generally similar to the Filipino majority such as Dr. Remo and Ms. Espelita, ”he wrote in his February 4 letter to Education Secretary Leonor Briones.

Collective clamor

Dalog said his letter expressed a “collective cry” for the correction of book entries and learning materials that misrepresented Igorots.

He also urged the DepEd to conduct an investigation and punish those responsible for errors, especially when incorrect information had been taught to students attending online classes.

In a separate statement posted on DepEd’s official social media page, DepEd Cordillera director Estela Cariño said that Igorots’ misrepresentation in the textbooks should be corrected immediately.

“This can be accepted as true, so it is necessary to respond immediately,” he said, urging those responsible to make corrections immediately.

House resolution

“We are discouraged that these errors circulate across the country, but we hope that our collective efforts will change the misconceptions of indigenous peoples like us, especially in areas [where] The Igorots are not the majority, ”Cariño said.

Legislators from the Cordillera, led by Rep. Allen Jesse Mangaoang of Kalinga, introduced House Resolution No. 1522, asking DepEd to investigate and correct erroneous learning modules.

Mangaoang chairs the committee on indigenous cultural communities and indigenous peoples (IP).

The resolution said that it was the responsibility of DepEd to ensure that textbooks, instructional materials and learning modules “help eliminate prejudice and discrimination” and “promote tolerance, understanding and good relations” between communities. indigenous cultures and the public.

DepEd, he added, should help raise awareness of the identity and culture of indigenous peoples and “be part of the system that corrects misleading notions about IPs rather than perpetuating and ignoring them.”

In its Feb.9 statement, the education department said it was not tolerating discrimination based on race, gender, age, religion or sexual orientation.

It assured the public that there were “mechanisms in place to ensure this” and that complaints could be directed to its monitoring program called “DepEd Error Watch.”

Kharmin Yangot, a former youth representative from the Baguio City Council, said that the prevailing discrimination against the Igorots was “a systemic problem that DepEd alone cannot solve.”

“That [discrimination] it requires a total revision of the educational system, a revision of our current laws, a redefinition of who is indigenous, a correction of the diverse beliefs of societies, among others, ”Yangot said on his Facebook account.

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