Magandang hapon, umaga sa inyong lahat, good afternoon or good morning, wherever you are. And in Australia, we say g'day. I was given the task of, first, I want to acknowledge the traditional owner of the land where I am now, past and present, the Aboriginal people. And second, I would like to congratulate PSSP and DOFA for organizing this.
Napakaganda. It is so wonderful to hear. our three panelists from DOFA and Tonton and Atoy, and to be able to be here and join this important occasion. Can I just say that I have bragging rights because PSSP is celebrating 45 years since its foundation or establishment. And may I say that I was part of the first national conference on Psikologian Pilipino.
45 years ago, kasama na ako. So that establishes me perhaps as the oldest in the panel of this webinar. And I'm happy to say that and being able to see how Psikologi ang Pilipino progressed and being able to participate as well in promoting it internationally. Now, I'm meant to talk about the academic and scholarly development. and link it to international development as well.
And I would like to take off from what Ton said about why are we still in the margin or periphery after 45 years? But actually, I beg to disagree. We are not in the periphery. We are not in the margin. And I guess that it has something to do with how you define the margin and what you define as mainstream.
I had this experience about, I think it was six or seven years ago, when I went to New Zealand to be a visiting researcher. And everyone was so excited about having me. There was this university where I went, and they were so excited.
It's like, you know, they are welcoming a movie star or something. I said, what have I done? And it turned out that Filipino psychology was very popular and still is. like the idol of indigenous psychologists in New Zealand.
And when we look at the other developments, what Dr. David said earlier about an East Asia bias in terms of international indigenous psychology, there's also, I mean, in Asian American psychology, there is also such a bias internationally. So mostly it's... when they talk about indigenous psychology, they acknowledge Chinese and Indian psychology.
Even if the advance in Filipino psychology is way, way ahead, it is not as recognized. But I can say that in recent years, because of publication, because our participation in international dialogue, it is already gaining some stature. So I beg to disagree that it is marginal or peripheral.
It has done a lot of advances thanks to, in fact, the present generation of Indigenous psychologists in the Philippines and a lot of the work that is being done by PSSP. You talk about the Tom mentioned curriculum, which is very much important in terms of the academic development of Indigenous psychology. But I think that with its continuous training. of teachers who can teach Psikologian Pilipino or give an indigenous perspective in their teaching of psychology, it is seeing a lot of prospects for the future.
And the reason why I want to also ask, what is mainstream? Why do we worry so much about not taking our place, not being in that position where we are considered mainstream? Let's face it, it's a very diverse area and it also... can hinge on some of the information or knowledge or expertise that people would have to give up. And why would they give up?
It is something they value, just as we value Indigenous psychology or Psikologin Pilipino. So I think that... In terms of getting ahead, I don't think we should try to always worry too much about getting the blessing of the majority. As long as we continue here, as long as we do the right thing and we know this is the relevant thing, it is very important for us to just focus on our work. I have a few points that in my experience I have seen to be very important in terms of moving this forward.
We have mentioned conferences. PSSP has not missed the conference. I think this would be the only year that it missed a conference, but it is being replaced by webinars like this. One is the conferences. That is very, very important.
And second is the publication. I have retired, but when I was... after I retired an article came up but written by a very famous cross-cultural psychologist spelling gloom and doom again about indigenous psychology.
I refused to read that article because I don't want to be rattled because at that time I was editing a two-volume book, the handbook of Filipino psychology, may I promote it, two volumes. And this is consisting of 100 articles of the important and relevant developments in psychology and Filipino. And it's not just Kapwa Psychology.
It has shown developments in different areas, even in the areas of health and clinical psychology among others. So I would like to say that publication is very important. So anytime someone would try to downgrade the... indigenous psychology or Philippinex scholarship, you can always show the publication.
Another thing is inclusivity. Ton hinted at this when he asked how inclusive has ESPI been in terms of regional development and so on. The only answer to that is let's keep doing it. That's it. Let's keep doing it.
Another thing also is mentoring, which was mentioned by someone, that we are able to mentor others in order to take up the challenge of developing indigenous psychology. It's the only way. And one other idea I would like to share is the idea of cross-indigenization.
This has been promoted by Enriquez and some of us. in terms of the idea that eventually indigenous psychology's goal is to become known outside the Philippines. And I think that the inroads to it being promoted in America is seeing its fruits in the inclusion of DOFA here and the developments that they talk about. And we may not be aware, not only in New Zealand, but in Indonesia. Malaysia and other places, they look up to Philippine indigenous psychology.
Why do I say that? Sometimes we feel that it is not important to be known internationally. We should focus just on the Philippines. But the reality is they go hand in hand.
Some recognition from outside the Philippines adds to our own recognition within the Philippines. So cross-indigenization is basically the concept of... working together to find out whether the indigenous concepts we are working on have parallel or similarity with other indigenous psychology. And even if they have differences, the idea is that the indigenous psychologists would come together and share and probably work collaboratively, do some research together in order to come up with a more universal psychology than is what is. than what is being offered or recognized at present, which we all know is not universal at all. So cross-indigenization will work academically in terms of that collaboration with other indigenous psychologists in other areas.
Within the country itself, cross-indigenization will come in the form of different regional psychologists working together. In America, it would simply mean different... DOFA members working together as well. I think that because of time limit, that's all I could share.
But one thing I want to say is that we need to be active also in debating or putting forward what we have known. Sometimes we are too modest in terms of what we have achieved. It's time to be forward and claim our name in terms of... our achievement in the area not only nationally but internationally that's it