okay uh my topic today is on the indigenous peoples of the philippines okay we have two objectives for this discussion today first is to identify the various indigenous peoples of the philippines and describe their cultures of course there are so many indigenous groups in the philippines i won't be able to describe all of them but i could lump them together into some groups that are more similar in terms of characteristics than others and secondly i think this is the most the more important part of the lecture is to infer on the pre-colonial way of life of filipinos by looking at prevailing cultural beliefs and practices of indigenous communities because we believe that many of the pre-colonial practices of filipinos are are those that reflect uh are are reflected in many of the practices of indigenous groups in the philippines who have maintained their traditional belief systems practices and knowledge um my starting point would be using ethno archaeology since i know this part of the lecture is on prehistory so ethno archaeology is the ethnographic study of peoples for archaeological reasons usually through the study of material remains of a society ethno-archaeology aids archaeologists in reconstructing ancient life ways by studying the material and non-material traditions of modern societies i know that in your first lecture there was someone who talked about human evolution looking at human paleontology as well as archaeology in reconstructing how it was in the past but we know for example even if we unearth certain artifacts from the past these artifacts do not speak for themselves for example if we are able to retrieve a particular stone artifact that artifact does not speak and say i am a stone tool i come from the paleolithic age i am used as a copying tool we have to interpret and one means of interpreting is by looking at existing societies today such as those of indigenous communities that still possess such types of tools or the same life ways as it was in the past so this is why we are going to talk about indigenous peoples of the philippines we know that uh the philippine ethnic landscape is a very diverse landscape because the philippines is an archipelago of 7500 islands there are so many ethnic groups in the country one estimate a very conservative one i would say comes from dr robert fox the former uh director of the national museum during the 1960s and he says that there are at least 106 ethnic groups in the philippines i said that this is a very conservative estimate because in terms of languages we have more than 106. the ethnologue published by the summer institute of linguistics mentions more than 180 languages in the philippines and we know language is a primary criterion for defining ethnicity in the philippines that is why we also refer to ethnic groups as ethno-linguistic groups if you speak a certain language such as you speak kapampangan therefore your ethnic identity is and we have diverse religious traditions as well and we know this also contributes to ethnic identity now looking at the 2000 census of population and house housing uh this was the uh the past central year because this is uh two to two census years ago we know that it is conducted every 10 years there are eight ethnic groups in the country that already comprise 82 percent of our population based on how big they are and how many speakers there there are of this particular languages so the tagalog is the biggest with 28 cebuano with 23 ilocano 9 three percent three point three kapampangan three percent and pangasinan less than two percent so if you add all of them only eight groups comprise 82 percent of the philippine population which makes uh the other hundreds of ethnic groups as uh minority groups they are called as such in the past but we we now call them as indigenous peoples so uh because there are more than 100 groups i will only focus on some more than others the more the more representative ones so what do we mean by indigenous peoples i will use two definitions one comes from anthropology and the other is the legal definition used by the philippine state based on the anthropological definition indigenous peoples refer to original inhabitants of particular territories so they were the first in this country so in the picture that you see this are uma umagat from uh aurora or rota province so they are a negrito group and we know that the negritos were the first to come to the philippine archipelago while the others came much later i will discuss that uh later so we also call them in other countries such as in australia they are referred to as the aborigines because they were the aboriginal people of this uh archipelago they are often descendants of tribes people who live on as culturally distinct colonized peoples many of whom aspire autonomy so now that we have a philippine state a philippine nation states uh they are pockets of communities found mainly in the hinterlands who have maintained their traditional practices because the eight biggest groups have been colonized and have adopted christianity and have adopted western culture uh in general so the rest have become distinct from these eight groups because they have maintained many of their traditional practices so when we say here that they aspire autonomy so they want their beliefs and practices to be respected and in in the philippine constitution of 1986 uh it mentions that uh an autonomous region in the cordillera as well as in muslim mindanao should be established unfortunately up to now there is no autonomous region in the cordillera only an administrative region but we have an autonomous region in the south this was formerly called as the autonomous region in muslim indiana now called the bangsamoro autonomous region in muslim indiana or barn but the other definition comes from a law enacted in 1997 this is the indigenous people's rights act or otherwise the republic act 8371 or ipra according to ipra indigenous people peoples because it's a plurality of different groups refer to a group of people who through resistance to political social and cultural inroads of colonization non-indigenous religions and cultures became historically differentiated from the majority of filipinos so the eight biggest groups majority of them are roman catholics but the other groups uh some of them yes they have embraced uh christianity at the in terms of formal affiliation but in terms of practices they have maintained their animist or pre-hispanic practices and we shall see that uh later now when ipra talks about non-indigenous religions it talks about both christianity and islam because both are not indigenous to the philippines that is why for one government agency in charge of indigenous peoples this is the national commission for indigenous peoples they exclude muslim groups of mindanao as part of indigenous peoples but uh for for me and for this lecture i have included uh the bangsamoro because we are talking about pre-colonial pre-hispanic practices and upon the arrival of the spanish there are many groups from tawitawi in the south all the way to pangasinan in the north that have practiced islam so the indigenous peoples resisted colonialism and there are different uh expressions of this resistance one form of resistance is outright warfare versus the colonizers as exemplified by the bangsamoro people in what the spanish called as moral wars as well as igorot raids in northern luzon so the spanish were less successful in colonizing these groups the americans however were more successful in colonizing these peoples the bangsamoro people uh made several facts with the american colonizers but because of this pact certain practices have been guaranteed by the americans but the other form of resistance is through retreat to the hinterlands and this was practiced by the mangans of mindoro the remontados of risal quezon and aurora so for the mangyan for example early spanish accounts said that the may be found in the coastal areas of mindoro but during the time of spanish colonization they were pushed into the hinterlands because for the manyans oh you want land okay i'll give you this land anyway there's still so many pieces of land in the mountains but right now they cannot do that anymore because land is already very limited even in the hinterlands no dire montado is a very interesting group because they were previously tagalogs are just like modern day tagalogs who refuse colonization they do not want to be taxed by the spanish so they retreated into the mountains that is why they were called remontado from the spanish word montagna or mountain so they went into the mountains of risal aurora and quezon and intermarried with negrito groups in the area so they speak an old tagalog dialect called sina una which means archaic tagalog now how many indigenous peoples are there in the philippines we know there are more than 100 groups but in terms of population there is some debate the 2010 census going back to the 2010 census indicated that indigenous peoples accounted to only five percent of the total population of the country or approximately four million filipinos so that's a very small number but remember they excluded muslim groups so if we add muslim groups the population will be higher but the national commission on indigenous peoples which is mandated to take care of the welfare of indigenous peoples of the philippines estimate that the population of indigenous peoples is higher at 12 million uh people now because of this discrepancy unfortunately uh the uh in the mid census year of uh uh 2015 uh the population of indigenous peoples was no longer counted we hope that could presume in the 2020 census so concretely what are these groups i clustered the several 100 and soul groups into distinct uh groupings based on similarities so that it would be easier for us to discuss about their characteristics so they are the negrito i'll discuss them one by one later the peoples of the cordillera region groups in kagayan valley the mangyan of mindoro groups in palawan groups in the visayas the lumad peoples or lumad known of linda now and as i mentioned i included the bangsamoro even if the ncip does not recognize that they are indigenous people simply because they have adopted islam so let me go to them one by one first is the negrito the term negrito comes from the spanish word negrito which means little black people negro meaning black negrito small black so this is a picture of negritos upon the uh during the turn of the century in the 1900s in central luzon and uh the negritos are the aboriginal peoples of the philippines they are believed to have come to the philippines from mainland asia approximately 30 000 years ago so in the upper right portion i'm showing a map of the philippines and its connections to mainland asia during the pleistocene period so the philippines water bodies receded and certain islands of the philippines became connected to mainland asia that is why it was possible for early settlers to come into the philippines during that time here is the distribution of various negritos populations in the philippines they are called by various names although phenotypically they look similar with one another they have their own distinct identities they are called the ad in eastern the song that is from kagayan province all the way down to sorsogon in bicol they are called dumagat in eastern central luzon they are called mamanwa in mindanao they are called bata in palawan ati in the visayas and ipa in central the sun what is uh similar will be uh their uh phenotypic appearance so uh we see here two pictures uh the picture above and the picture below of two different uh negrito groups the picture above is umirai dumagat and the picture below is padanan abda in the sabbath the picture in the middle is uh the house a typical house called lin 2 of the agta also in pallan and isabella sophie's philo typically they are darker skinned compared to the rest of filipinos they have kinky to wavy hair and their stature is relatively short that is why the spanish clustered them as negritos but actually they speak different languages their languages are not intelligible with one another traditionally they engaged in hunting and gathering now the adta of northern chiara madre this is in isabella costa isabella are still nomadic while the rest in the country are now semi-nomadic or semi-sedentary now this is very interesting for anthropologists because we know for millions of years humans were hunters and gatherers now in the world there are very few remaining hunting and gathering societies one of them is the adta of palanan isabella and it's uh nearby municipalities such as the villa and makona so their house you could see here is the lean too whenever it is raining they carry the house and bring it towards the forest if it is sunny the house is brought to near the shore and based on ethnographic studies at the average every three weeks they move about their uh residents following game animals such as wild boar and deer so they are still nomadic and we want to study them so that we can learn as to what were the practices of humans uh when they were still hunters and gatherers as i mentioned they speak different languages but they have already lost their original languages and now speak the languages borrowed from neighboring populations for example the agta of palan and isabela speak pahanan which is a dialect of another of a language known as paran spoken by none attack populations in the pinatubo area so they speak sambal which is the language of non negritos in sambanese area as well so one means of adapting to the culture of the majority populations around them is to borrow the languages of neighboring groups some groups have developed a another form of language previously a mixture of borrowed languages as well as their native languages so the group in mindanao is called the mamanwa and one study that i did related to their relationship with the environment mentions that the mamanwa respect the physical environment they are not indiscriminate in extracting resources from the environment because they believe in environmental spirits or diwatas they have a fear in offending this spirit when they go about their sweetening hunting fishing and foraging activities so look at this term duwatta it is borrowed from a sanskrit word devata which refers to spirits deva meaning god devata god like so the mamanwa believe that there are spirits in nature and therefore they do not just cut trees because this might offend the experience we could infer on early practices of tagalog and many tagalog still practice this when they go to certain areas they say pablita bito which means excuse me please because they don't want to offend the spirits in nature now let's go to one other group this is the cordillera people of the cordillera administrative region so this is a map showing the philippines and the location of carr found in northern luzon the peoples in this area inhabit the biggest mountain range in the country called the grand cordillera central actually three mountain ranges combined they come from different indigenous communities with different cultures distinct uh languages they are called zabon talk in the mountain province the ibaloy in bengal ifugao in ifagaal province is this is where i did my field work in kalinga province and kankana in western mountain province and northern bengal so in this pictures you see the rice terraces because it is a mountain area they have established rice terraces for their agriculture uh you see for those of you who have visited banawe so these are old women at the madawi rice terraces the houses are also a fuga houses in mayawi ifagao and the person above uh is a kalinga man with tattoos depicting that he was a warrior during his younger days so what is the culture of the peoples of the cordillera the cordillera consists of autonomous villages called ely the elders sit as a council in in this villages so we have a council of elders they are all men and they are older men because it is believed that the older generation possess a lot of knowledge about their culture so for example in enforcing customary laws the elders have to invoke on how conflicts were resolved in the past by their parents or grandparents traditionally there was endemic warfare in the area because of the practice of head taking or head hunting so they attack enemy villages and take the heads as trophies now of course this is no longer practiced because of course the americans have discouraged the practice of head taking during the early american occupation but aside from endemic warfare there is also a system of peace pact between villages it is called uh badong uh the ilocanized version of it but sometimes called petchen pudon so these are bilateral piece pads between and among villages so it's a series of war and peace now why do i call them as autonomous villages because even up to now even if there is a barangay in a particular village if there are conflicts usually conflicts are resolved through customary laws and the indigenous people's rights act recognizes this as legal it is only when the conflict is between an insider and an outsider that when i say outsider someone who is not indigenous to the area that is when conflicts are resolved through the barangay or the court system so practically two systems of uh political institutions exist in the cordillera that imposed by the philippine state and the customary laws imposed by the council of elders now in kalinga there are different systems of land ownership so it will be an oversimplification if we say that lands are only private and only communal in kalinda for example rice terraces are family owned while the sweden fields are all through use of fraud that means if you're still using it cultivating the plot that's yours if you abandon it and transfer elsewhere it's no longer you uh yours so it's right of use or use of raw woodlands are owned by the extended game group not just by the family but also your near relatives forests are communally old they belong to the entire community burial grounds are owned by the spirits they are not even owned by humans while residential areas are privately owned so these are different types of ownership coexisting within the same village the picture that you see is in the nano kalinga this is exactly the village where i did my uh my phd dissertation on the politics of ethnic identity now these are examples of cordillera material culture because i mentioned that uh artifacts uh originally start as material culture but when they are abandoned and retrieved through archaeological means they become archaeological artifacts so this are unique material culture found in the cordillera and of course they are of interest to museum practitioners such as the bullon of the ifugao so these are rice granary gods and usually they are in a pear a man and a woman they are kept in a rice granary so that to guard the rice against intruders the picture on the right is a kalinga skirt uh you will see the intricate design but what is interesting it it is ornamented by seashells these are mother of pearl uh shells but kalinga as well as cordillera is a landlocked region so that means the people of the cordillera traded with lowlanders in order to acquire this prestige items such as shells okay let's proceed to cagayan valley there are uh so that's a map of kagayan valley in northeastern duson and what is interesting there are so many indigenous communities in the area such as the book a lot formerly called ilongwa the gaddang the ibanag the ibatan is i cannot describe all of them what is important is the ibatan and the ivatan are two different groups the ibatan found in babuyan islands ivatan found in batanes but their languages are related to one another they they are part of the ibanagic group of languages the kalinga of isabella is different from the kalinga where i did my study in the cordillera the term kalinga actually means enemy it is an iban it's a goddamn word which means enemy so the gadang called them enemies even the kalingas they were called enemies by the gadan but eventually the kalingas embrace the term to refer to their identity so the common characteristic of these kagayan valley groups is their languages are part of a subgroup called ibanagic languages from the term ibanag which is one of the languages in the cagayan and isabella provinces uh right now they are dominantly christian so this raises questions as to uh differentiation of groups according to religion in the past that was possible but right now many of so-called indigenous peoples have also embraced christianity and islam so although they embrace it much later than the eight dominant groups so there is a relatively high degree of acculturation that means embracing of western culture the picture below shows an ivatan house in batanes so it is a sturdy house made of stone and the roofs are very thick kogan grass roofs so it is an adaptation to typhoons that frequently pass in batanes however this house was not prehispanic it was a product of contact between the spanish and the ivatans the original houses of the ivatans prior to the coming of the spanish were log houses but the spanish introduced stone houses the picture above shows uh elongates uh in their head hunting ritual dance uh usually when uh there is the uh the flowering of a particular tree and the flowers turn red this is the fire tree that is when they organize head baking activities in order to kill uh enemies let's go to a south of the main island of luzon this is mindoro the generic term of the people of mindoro is the term mangyan literally means human being however that is a generic term and there are actually various mangan groups in mindoro with their own languages so this is a map of mindoro so the hinterlands excluding the coastal areas are where various mangan groups are found i know the labels are not too clear they are the alangan bangon gohit gubat non hanono omangyan irayamanyan ratagnun tajawan so some of the terms such as buhit it just means mountain ha no no mangan it means a real human being irayamanian it means people of the upstream so uh they they do not understand the languages of other magnian groups and they have to use tagalog as their lingua franca in order to understand one another their lifestyle was uh traditionally based on sweden agriculture also called shifting agriculture slash and burn agriculture supplemented by hunting and gathering they were semi-nomadic in the past because if you practice slash and burn so you have to stay in a particular area for a certain period of time in order to watch over your crops but once you abandon that farmland you move to another area just like the mamanwa they have a very strong attachment to the physical environment they also believe in environmental spirits and one study by the anthropologist harold conklin showed that for the hanono mangyan they generally practice sustainable subsistence agriculture such as the practice of a long fallow period so conclude observed that it took a hanun 25 years to go back to the original farm lot that he abandoned because he allowed that uh the soil in that area to replenish its nutrients before coming back there was also a propagation of biodiversity because not one crop is valued more than others but within the same field several crops are pre-planted uh vegetables together with rice some of this aimed at protecting the crops from from pests others as a soil erosion protection plants etc so these are some pictures of the mangan and their culture so the picture uh on the left are hana no mangan distinguished by the blue blouses the blue in the color comes from a natural dye an indigo dye found in the the crops in the area teeth blackening was a form of beautification of mangyangs in the past although right now you only see them this among elderly people so you see also bid work and this uh the picture below are long houses by the buhit mangan so it is an extended family group living together and they have a syllabic script uh in the past uh the spanish observes that filipinos have their own syllabic script that means a writing based on syllables and not on letters this has disappeared in uh many areas of the philippines except among the mangyan and groups in palawan so this still continues among the so this is an example of banyan literature uh sorry again the the picture isn't too clear but it's a piece of bamboo where it was uh etched using a knife as a stylus to write a form of literature called ambahan so the text on the left is uh the ambahan script it's based on uh exact number of syllables simple syllables just like the haiku and that's the rough translation at the right so they use this type of writing mainly to write love letters to their dear ones in palawan that's south of mindoro we also have several uh indigenous groups such as the agutainen the kuyunon or cuyunan kagayanan katnay palakwan they live in caves in that area in quezon just like the munyans their subsistence patterns are based on slash and burn agriculture uh protection of the environment uh respect for biodiversity etc so these are some pictures depicting palawan culture drinking of rice wine in the same earthenware jar as a form of rick wall where they use bamboo straws this is uh in one particular village among the palak one where we did field work together with my students the picture at the right is a paddiwata with wall performed by a shaman a bailan where the shaman is possessed and through possession he is able to cure people from their ailments so this is practiced by the tagbanwa groups of palawan in the visayas region we have very few uh groups that are indigenous to the area such as the aklanon boholano also called suludnon the eskaya in bohol and the magahat in negro so these are pictures of uh suludnon in panay they traditionally live in interior upland areas of the visayas and they engage in dry rice farming so it was non-irrigated rice in this mountainous areas now one particular group in bohol called the eskaya has this type of writing called the eskaya script however i believe that it is not prehispanic but a product of contact between spain and the indigenous community my basis for this is among the letters in their alphabet there are some that are of spanish origin such as which are spanish lepers but that is still interesting to understand because contact with the spanish and later the americans triggered a change in the culture of many communities in the philippines so even the eight biggest groups the tagalogs the cebuanos uh when i say they have been westernized it's not really adopting a totally western culture but more of an interface between western culture and traditional culture let's go to mindanao and the indigenous people of mindanao are called are called the term lumad actually is a visayan word which means native therefore it is an outsider's term or exonine for the indigenous people of india now traditionally they are the non-christian non-muslim groups of mindanao i have placed the term traditionally because right now many of them are already christians or muslims traditionally also their villages were led by headmen or chieftains called datu which is similar with a malay word so these are different lumad groups in mindanao the bagobo plan booked by among others will notice that uh their their traditional costumes or dress are very colorful uh so the picture above are tiboli and you can see from their clothes made of abbaka which is called tinala which is very unique to the area okay so this is an example of so that inaudib are called dreamweavers because the design of their textiles are based on their dreams and the pictures on the right are wear items made through a lost wax method this is a method that is again pre-colonial pre-hispanic but now they produce certain brass wear such as belts with hanging bells and this human-like items which are mainly sold to tourists now the last group that i'm going to discuss is the bangsamoro now found in the bangsamoro region in southwestern philippines and you could see that in the red areas in the map they are the islamized groups of mindanao sulu and southern polar now prior to the coming of the spanish and upon the coming of the spanish there were muslim sultanates in the area in sulu the sultanate was established in 1450 and in maginda now in 1511. as i mentioned a while ago islam was practiced from tawitawi that's near malaysia all the way to pangasinan in northern busan upon the coming of the spanish that's why many of the practices of muslim groups have been borrowed by many groups in the philippines such as the practice of male circumcision for example or saying salamat to thank people which comes from salam which means peace or to call the olden days aspana mahoma or in the time of muhammad so this are uh muslim practices prior to the coming of the spanish even manila was ruled by spanish chiefs they were not sultans they were distinct chiefs in particular places such as tondo in pasig in the santa ana area of manila so uh this was what the spanish witness upon their arrival so there are many indigenous groups comprising the bangsamoro bangsa by the way means nation so they are the moral nation the word moro comes from the moors of southern spain because for the spanish they practice they observe that they practice islam just like the moors of southern spain and morocco so they are called the bajao iran sama and yakan so the picture above are maginda noun women in parang maginda now you can see their skirts made of ma long this is a single tubular skirt piece of cloth and the picture below are tau soups uh it's an old picture of taosu nobility from uh sulu so these are examples of their material culture such as the taosu greece this is a sword it's a curved sword the tagalogs called it kalis but in the south it's called kris the maranao of uh the lake area of mindanao of llano lake uh have this traditional house called torogan literally meaning sleeping quarters again it is ornately uh designed with naga motifs or symbolizing dragons based on and very early hindu influence okay now the second part i hope i still have time talks about understanding the past of philippine society by looking at indigenous cultures our knowledge about philippine prehistory or proto-history is mainly based on archival which is usually spanish and archaeological sources since archival sources are mainly written from the perspective of the colonizers there may be problems brought about by ethnocentric biases by the writer stereotyping by the spanish friars or mere misinterpret in misinterpretation of facts on the other hand archaeological artifacts as i mentioned a while ago do not speak for themselves and therefore they need to be interpreted thus the ethnographic data from indigenous cultures may help us understand the past so let me give you examples from spanish accounts antonio de morga 1609 mentioned that tattooing was practiced in early philippines according to him to the southern part of this islands like the visayan islands called the lands of the tattooed people or the pintados which are many and well populated are and earning [Music] island of negros cebu panay cuyo and the calamianes they differ in the way they wear their hair and their design and their bodies are tattooed with many designs with the exception of the face so this is a the picture on the left is a picture from the boxer codex dated 1595 showing two pintadors of the visayas so their body are painted with tattoos except for the face now the picture on the right is a kalinga warrior taken only in 2010 uh in the field area where i did my research so there is tattoo on the chest and the arms indicating that this person is a warrior so we could not understand how tattooing was done because we don't have uh informants anymore coming from the pintados however we have informants from the kalinga and let me show you uh this uh uh clip from kalinga foreign foreign good [Music] [Music] hello [Music] so that was uh one odd famous uh tattoo artist from buscalan village in kalinga frequented by many tourists wanting a traditional type of tattoo what she used were organic dye coming from plants and the sharp object being used to puncture the wounds on the person comes from a certain type of uh the thorns of a particular plant uh this is uh i don't know the english word for it's a type of citrus tree so we could infer on how tattoos were made during that time and as one odd mentioned it was the designs were reserved for waters in terms of writing this comes from morgan throughout the islands writing is well developed through certain characters or signs resembling the greek or arabic numbering 15 signs in all three of which are vowels which serve in you of our five vowels the consonants are 12. with this and certain points or signs and commas everything one desires to say can be expressed and spoken fully and easily that so that was 16th century now this document on the left is doctrina christiana the first published document in the philippines published by the spanish it's a book of prayers but written in the tagalog script called by bayern so this is the lord's prayer in early tagalog script this is uh now very few are familiar with the baibain but there's a movement right now to revive this the surat mangyan still exists and this picture was taken in 2012 so it's a piece of bamboo tube and uh some a woman is inscribing the ambahan poetry in that particular tube burial practices 16th third century they buried their dead in their own houses keeping their bodies and bones for a long time in boxes and venerating their skulls as if they were living in their presence so uh in kalinga up to now how are the the the graves of the dead ancestors are buried underneath the houses there was no separate cemetery because the kalinga people revered them as ancestor spirits now this is a picture from infogal where the skull is being kept as a trophy of this particular shaman or mumbai beetle not chewing in the 16th century it is a habit among well-to-do natives as a show of greatness and luxury to carry with them when they go out of their houses their brassware service and sets of boyo or dettol the boya rolls being placed on the containers apart from the loose leaves the bunga or knots and the wet line this sets curiously made of brass and other materials and substances include separate containers containers for sea source or cutters and other utensils for handling this delicacy so this is uh among the maranao this is the bittle knot container made of brass as mentioned by morga in the 16th century and this is ifugao beetle nut bag in ifugao now made of plastic no longer brass so you see the leaves that's it the beetle nut or bunga and the lime uh together in chewing beetle now so it was practiced all over the archipelago and also including the aborigines of taiwan now um let me end with this uh slide because uh it's almost time there are various threats right right now to our indigenous peoples one threat is the commercialization of culture a various bastardization of culture of those who are not familiar with the culture so it is a challenge to us to understand the context of certain material culture for example is it proper to to exhibit as a wall decoration a death blanket of cordillera people of course it is not because it is offensive to to the indigenous people but for textiles that they use for ordinary purposes then it is possible to display them at your homes another threat is the conversion to non-indigenous religions such as christianity and islam i know for those who are religious among you you will say well there's nothing wrong about that the problem however is the tendency is to throw away everything that is indigenous to them for example when i did my field work among the of isabella i asked them whether they still use medicinal plants they said no we don't use medicinal plants anymore i asked them why because we are now christians and the practice of medicinal plants is very pagan i don't subscribe to that because we could become christians but still maintaining our indigenous practices the third uh threat is displacement of indigenous peoples due to large-scale extractive projects within their ex ancestral domains so the map on the right shows several mining projects in the country and many of them are located in ancestral domains of indigenous peoples and therefore the people there being displeased and lastly militarization in these areas because of armed conflict between the philippine military and rebel groups and usually the indigenous people are caught in the crossfire therefore posing a threat to their security so my concluding remarks there is an urgent need to document the indigenous cultures of the philippines before they change drastically due to acculturation and modernization processes it is important to make the public aware about the richness of indigenous cultures and to value cultural diversity while heritage preservation is indeed important it is the right of indigenous peoples to determine which aspects of their culture they would want to preserve and which ones they would want to change so with this uh thank you very much i know there will be a question and answer forum but if you don't have much time here is my email auntiecasterone at up.edu.ph and you could email me anytime if you want to consult me about indigenous peoples and indigenous cultures