Zeus Salazar is one of the foremost scholars in the Indigeneity Movement of the Philippines. Speaking about the post/colonial Filipino consciousness in his article Pantayong Pananaw, Salazar (1989) makes a distinction among four different perspectives (pananaw). Each perspective explains the positions of the speaker in relation to the listener—whether they are in the group or out of the group: pantayong pananaw (speaker and listener both in the group), pansilang pananaw (speaker and listener both out of the group), pangkaming pananaw (speaker in the group, listener out of the group), pangkayong pananaw (speaker out of the group, listener in the group).This particular theory is important when considering how the intellectuals and scholars who concerned themselves with the question of nationhood through Philippine history thought about their audience. Salazar points out that the Filipino intellectuals in colonial history have been too busy trying to prove themselves as equals to the colonial powers using a pangkami perspective; always speaking to the colonizers about ourselves. This is a futile project because the Filipino is then always attempting to “catch up” to the standards of the colonial power.
Salazar then proposes that people who are interested in the project of nationhood should really be practicing how to use pantayong pananaw. This means we should be speaking to other people in our nation about ourselves and each other using our own meanings and knowledges. Within the context of decolonization and what Nishnaabe scholar Leanne Simpson (2011) would term “re-creation, resurgence and a new emergence” this is a process that draws on Indigenous Knowledges. But the centuries of being a colonized nation have dulled our language skills, our understanding of our indigenous consciousness, our ways of thinking. So, Philippine consciousness is shattered. To this day there is no coherent, shared, single worldview that encompasses the entire Philippine nation. But, as Salazar proposes, there is hope. Salazar argues that the ethnic groups, the indigenous groups of the Philippines—who have resisted colonization, continued to practice their native cultures—have retained the ability to use pantayong pananaw. "Sa madaling salita, ang namamayani sa panahong kolonyal ay ang pansila at pangkaming pananaw, samantalang nanatili ang pantayong pananaw sa loob ng mga grupong etniko, pananaw na hindi naisipang gamitin sa pangkabuuan, para sa kabuuan ng bansang itinatag." (Salazar, 1989, Ang Pantayong Pananaw sa Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas, last para.) In short, what has dominated in colonial times are the pansila and pangkami perspectives, while pantayong pananaw has remained within ethnic groups. It is a viewpoint that nobody had thought to use for the whole, for the entirety of the founded nation. [Translation mine] Salazar published Pantayong Pananaw more than twenty years ago, and in this particular instance does not delve too deeply into what that process of relearning a “pantayong pananaw” with the aid of Indigenous/ethnic groups would comprise. But his idea that the indigenous groups hold the key towards a project of nation-building is a timely issue. I bring up Salazar`s theory because it marks an important place where Filipino scholars interested in questions of nationhood constantly find themselves. Given the fact that the Philippines as we know it is a product of colonialism, how can Philippine nationhood be anything but always resisting, always a resistance? But if we reimagine or reconceptualise the Philippine project and move away from the act of struggle and resistance and into “re-creation, resurgence, and a new emergence” by reconnecting, as Salazar suggested, with Indigenous Knowledges, Systems and Practices (IKSPs), then how can we ensure that we do it in a way that is not itself a form of cognitive imperialism? These are twin issues that need to be answered together. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let us tarry for a moment on the idea that a deeper understanding of IKSPs is essential to the project of nation-building. I would like to explore this idea by using my own story as a case study. My reason for using an autoethnographic method to explore this question is two-fold. First is the idea put forth by Simpson (2011) that “storytelling is at its core decolonizing because it is a process of remembering, visioning, and creating a just reality” (p. 33). According to her, storytelling presents us with tools that allow us to reimagine our way out of “cognitive imperialism” and to create models and mirrors that allow us to “experience the spaces of freedom and justice” (p. 33). I am deeply interested in the project of a Philippine re-creation, resurgence, and a new-emergence, using a deeper understanding and connection to the Indigenous cultures in the Philippines. As expected, this is not a straightforward project and contains within it a whole set of problems and questions including those of authenticity, appropriation, essentializing, and so forth. These questions contain within them implicit criticisms against the act of creating; criticisms whose counter-arguments I will not be answering in this paper. Keeping in mind Simpsons’ warning that “We must not spend all of our time interrogating and criticizing. We need to spend an enormous amount of energy recovering and rebuilding at this point. Critique and revelation cannot in and of themselves create the kinds of magnificent change our people are looking for” (p. 55), I would like instead to spend more time on the creative process and in doing so contribute to the recovery and rebuilding projects. The second reason why I am interested in an autoethnographic method is that I have spent most of my adult life, some of it within academia, with reconnecting, rediscovering, and practicing aspects of indigenous culture and sharing it with my Filipino Canadian peers and family when I can. Part of this process includes a lot of traveling across the seas from Canada to the Philippines and the U.S.A. and reconnecting with family members and scholars who are interested in the same project. While this process has coincided with my own research and while I have been fortunate to find the means to channel my interests in the Philippines into my academic work, this journey remains for a me a very personal one. The autoethnographic process is a way for me to not only share my story but also to analyze and to put some order in it. It is my hope that exploring my story in this two-part way could aid other Filipinos in the diaspora who hunger to find a deeper connection to themselves, their families, and their ancestry through a journey of rediscovery and reconnection to the Philippines. Learning about Indigenous Knowledges in a deep way is productive in the sense that the scholars who write about this topic embody similar struggles for recreation and resurgence that people like Salazar speak about. To approach the decolonizing project in a personal way is to approach it in a constructive, rather than deconstructive, perspective. As Simpson noted, “Indigenous thought can only be learned through the personal; this is because our greatest influence is on ourselves, and because living in a good way is an incredible disruption of the colonial meta-narrative in and of itself” (p. 41). To begin talking about ourselves is not always an easy process, especially if we are talking about ourselves within the academic context. But the power of narrative is not to be underestimated. Simpson said that “storytelling at its core is decolonizing” (p. 33) because it is “an important process for visioning, imagining, critiquing the social space around us, and ultimately challenging the colonial norms fraught in our daily lives” (p. 34). I would like to begin my story by looking at my relationship with the educational institution and how it has allowed me to carve out my own worldview and had provided me with the tools to negotiate my multiple identities. Inherent in the academia is a structure of power wherein our roles are either subjects or creators of knowledge. I am an immigrant, queer Filipino woman. Seemingly as far away from the white, heterosexual, male founders of academia as possible. But I have been educated in the institutions of Western universities and I have benefitted from its theories. It is a place where I have gained power even as I have struggled against this power. And my access to this power has always been mediated or helped by my teachers and professors. I am a subject as well as producer of knowledge. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. My parents are working class immigrants and I migrated with them to Canada when I was fourteen. There would have been no reason for me to consider attending an American university save for the fact that years ago, my mother’s oldest sister, my godmother, had immigrated to the U.S. and lived there, teaching the Filipino language at the University. She was the one who financed my education and invited me to study in Michigan. She, in turn, was a benefactor of the Philippine government’s state-building policies in the 1960s. The Philippine government sent its brightest students to study in American universities, with the intent that they return to the Philippines and take leadership roles in its various institutions. But life intervened. My godmother met her American husband while studying in Ann Arbor. She did not return to live in the Philippines, but instead settled in Michigan. There she got a position as a Filipino language teacher and became a leader in the Filipino community. Part of her self-assigned role is to host and provide shelter and community to scholars and other Filipinos who visited Ann Arbor. Another part of that is to push for a Philippine Studies program at the University of Michigan, and while I was there I believe that I benefited from her efforts. It is thanks partly to her efforts that different Phililppinist scholars were available to teach me. My education is partly comprised of her guidance and encouragement to take certain classes, and later on, partly comprised of my own mission to seek out professors who could teach me Filipino topics. I originally intended to graduate with a Biology degree, and took a lot of classes in the Sciences. But I also took classes in Asian Studies, including Filipino Level 4, where I had my first tantalizing encounter with Zeus Salazar and other scholars writing in Filipino about the Philippine nation. And in my third year after some soul-searching I switched to an Asian Studies degree with a focus on Southeast Asian studies. As I learned more about Filipino history, culture, and language, spoke to my professors in and out of the classroom, spent time interviewing graduate students in Asian American history, I realized the immense project of reclamation, nation-building, and re-creation that faced post/colonial, diasporic Filipinos. More than that, I realized that I could play a role in this immense project. It is a personal project that has repercussions beyond myself. And as the handful of graduate students, professors, and instructors demonstrated by being there, it is definitely a viable option for life work. They were my first encounter with Filipinos outside of the archipelago in important position. My role models. Philippines as a nation-state is a product of the colonial enterprise. First colonized in the 1500s by Spanish conquistadors, the Philippines remained a Spanish colony until 1898, when it was then sold to the United States for two million dollars in the Treaty of Paris. The Americans stayed in the Philippines until 1946, but many scholars problematize the idea of the Philippines as a truly post/colonial state due to the fact that it retains close economic and military ties to the United States. For the modern Filipinos, colonialism and post/colonialism is all we have known. But there are pockets of the Philippines where the long hand of colonialism had not reached in too deeply. There are Indigenous peoples in the Philippines whose cultures and way of live have remained intact. And currently, there is an ongoing movement by scholars, artists, and culture bearers in the Philippines and the U.S. to reacquaint themselves in a deep way with IKSPs. These are the scholars, artists, and culture bearers associated with the Center for Babaylan Studies. There is a quote from one scholar in the Philippines, Dr. Rhoda Galanco, head teacher of the School of Teacher Education at the University of Baguio, who encapsulates the philosophy of this group. In the website for the Kapwa 3 conference organized by the same people from the Center for Babaylan Studies: Now, more than ever, we should not ignore the importance of having a cultural identity. We are living in a multicultural society where we eventually become acculturated with diverse cultures and consequently lose track of our own identity. In my classrooms, I encounter several students suffering from a cultural identity crisis. They do not know their roots. They do not know their heritage. Their parents are partly responsible because they did not pass on to their children their culture. The schools are partly responsible because we failed to re-acquaint our students with their roots. These talks on cultural identity and IKSP should be disseminated to a wider audience, and if possible, to students in the academe. (Galanco, 2010, Conference Objectives section, 2nd para.) Galanco's statement is parallel with a similar call for resistance and resurgence by Nishnaabe writer Simpson (2011): In essence, we need to figure out who we are; we need to re-establish the processes by which we live who we are within the context we find ourselves. We do not need funding to do this. We do not need a friendly colonial political climate to do this. We need our Elders, our languages, our lands, along with vision, intent, commitment, community and ultimately, action. We must move ourselves beyond resistance and survival, to flourishment and mino bimaadiziwin [the good life]. (p. 17) --- It was during my undergraduate years at the University of Michigan that I became accidentally acquainted with kulintang music. A friend of mine, a first generation Filipino American, invited me to take a mini-course with him. I agreed reluctantly. Kulintang music, which until now remains an integral part of the lives of Maguindanaoan, Maranao, and T’boli peoples in Southern Philippines, was not something that I originally had an affinity for nor problematized. It just was not part of my life until then. But when I graduated from university, my ability to play the instrument would serve to be an important factor in my growth. When I joined a Philippine arts and culture centre in Toronto, it gave me an edge over my Filipino Canadian peers who were in the same project of reconnecting and re-creating. And I was a founding member of Santa Guerrilla, a group of Filipino Canadian musicians based in Toronto who played kulintang instruments in our music. And, because I have continued to imbibe in academic theories even as I have honed my skills at playing this music, I have come to develop an uneasy relationship with this music form. In February 2009 Santa Guerilla, a played for the first time in public at SuperSkillz, a talent show whose contestants were mostly other Filipino Canadian bands. What made us unique was that while the other bands were playing Western music, we were using kulintang ensemble instruments in a non-traditional way. We had singers, a rapper, and even two dancers. Kulintang music is not usually played with vocals. But we were not playing traditional music. We could not even if we wanted to. It was not an instrument that we grew up with. But kulintang instrument was something that brought all six of us together, even as we come from different backgrounds and familiarity with Philippine culture. And when we stood up at that talent show where no other bands were playing the kulintang instrument, we represented something radical, almost subversive. We relished in the kind of confusion and awe that we thought we presented to our peers. Because we were playing music that came from the homeland. Because we embodied the Philippines in a new way. But kulintang music over the years has become for me the embodiment of the twin problems I described earlier: that of using Indigenous Knowledges, Systems, and Practices (IKSPs) in the name of the nation-building project for Post/colonial Philippines, even as I am neither Indigenous nor have ties to the Indigenous people whose lives revolve around this art form. The latter problem is summarized by the idea of appropriation. We are tribeless and all tribes are ours. We are homeless and all homes are ours. We are nameless and all names are ours. -Eman Lacaba (1986), Philippine poet and revolutionary Excerpt from “Open Letter to Filipino Artists” (p.221) There are two main critiques that the academic institution directs towards scholars involved in the project of identity formation within a decolonizing context: essentialism and appropriation. Yet, incredibly, IKSP provides within itself a means to solve this problem. The first one is the idea that similar to First Nations, Filipinos are people who have lived and struggled to survive colonialism. And many of the experiences of destruction experienced by First Nations people in Canada are shared by Filipinos. Yet it is true that there are indigenous people in the Philippines who continue to experience their own oppression and marginalization by the Philippine state. This is a fact that adds another level of complication to the matter of decolonization, and which is beyond the scope of this paper. But it is important to pause for a bit on the point of identification between Filipinos and First Nations as post/colonial peoples. In recognizing that shared oppression between Filipinos and First Nations, possibilities for learning from each other, and for alliance building are opened up. This is an important lesson and one that could lead to constructive work. The charge of appropriation and essentializiation of Indigenous People in the Philippines should not be used as an argument against or obstacle towards First Nations and Filipino peoples’ meeting together in their project for decolonization, re-creation, and resurgence. This is not to say that the rights of Indigenous People in the Philippines are secondary or not as important. Rather it is helpful to think about the need for Filipinos to decolonize themselves, to rediscover themselves in ways that are not dictated by their colonial history. Also, it is important to note that the Philippines being an archipelago, there are numerous ethno-linguistic communities that exist. These ethno-linguistic communities in precolonial times were Indigenous peoples themselves and some were slowly absorbed into the Philippine nation-state, a nation-state which as I described earlier was a result of colonialism. This is another fact that might be considered when we begin to theorize about Filipinos and Indigenous People. As Marie Battiste and James Sa’ke’j Youngblood Henderson (2000) point out, “It is not always clear whether a particular group is a minority or an Indigenous people, and the difference is largely a matter of perspective and degree” (p. 61). What would it mean for Filipinos who have been absorbed into the nation-state to begin considering themselves as once Indigenous People who over time have been disconnected from their Indigeneity? What kinds of possibilities for resurgence would be afforded by that kind of identification? How would that dictate their responsibilities towards the Indigenous peoples in their own nation state? The second day of our three-day quest to learn from Danny Kalanduyan. It is Spring of 2010. We had travelled all the way from Toronto to meet this Maguindanaoan master kulintang player who is now based in San Francisco. I have been playing the kulintang for five years, one year of which was with the band Santa Guerrilla, who like me had no real connection to the peoples to whom these instruments belong. We arranged the sarunay practice gongs on the floor and began repeating the same patterns Guro Danny showed us. Another friend videotaped the whole lesson. For A and I this was our first encounter with a kulintang musician who grew up with this music and who had been playing this music since he was a child. I was very careful not to make mistakes, but still it was difficult for me to follow the teacher. I have learned this music in university from ethnomusicologists, scholars who have transcribed the notes on paper so that I could follow it on my own time. This oral tradition way of playing, where the master plays and you play after him was hard for me to get used to. But when he played the other instruments of the ensemble, not the main melody of the kulintang, I found that I was much better playing the same rhythm over and over again. Part of me struggled to learn the rhythms at the moment, and part of me was concerned about documenting it properly for future use. But a running thought in my head, which was impossible to ask, is what he thought of A and I playing this music in a non-traditional way, music we did not grow up with. We played kulintang music in our band in front of hundreds of Filipinos and Canadians. The issue of representation is for me, the elephant in the room. We simply did not have the proper teachers and access to the knowledge that Guro Danny had in our part of the world. We knew this, but we strove on. Our need to play these instruments fulfilled a hunger for a connection to the motherland that we struggled to fulfill. Guro Danny has taught numerous students who have gone off to start their own traditional kulintang ensembles all over the world. People who have studied it for years. Finally after two hours of music playing, we finished our lesson. Guro Danny told us that he once heard of a kulintang ensemble in another part of the U.S. They didn’t play the instruments traditionally either. “But that’s OK,” he said, “as long as you play together.” He only said this in passing, but it is something I need to hear. Some sort of validation from this person I looked up to, some indication that our own project of playing kulintang music for our peers were relevant in its own way. In Chapter 7 of her book, Leanne Simpson notes, “I have no role models in my family or my community for what I am trying to accomplish.” And for many of my peers and for myself, this reconnecting and rediscovering of the Indigenous for the very personal and yet community-oriented projects of re-creation, resurgence, and new emergence is something that is new. Perhaps for anyone who embarks upon this personal project it will be always new. It will be new because it is different from what we would have been raised to see, know, and believe about the world. But in the book, Leanne Simpson seeks out stories, conversations, and meanings from Elders. As Filipinos, our Elders may or may not have the knowledge that could connect us to our Indigenous past. The project to reconnect will be a lifelong process. And more and more in our search, as diasporic people, we are realizing that our Indigenous peoples might be able to help us in this process. It is time that we seek them in our conversations and humbly go to them in our quest to find ourselves. Resources: Battiste, Marie and James Sa’ke’j Youngblood Henderson. (2000.) Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage.Saskatoon: Purich Publishing Ltd. Galanco, Rhoda. (n.d.). Kapwa 3 conference: Indigenous knowledge in the academe bridging local and global paradigms, Center for Babaylan Studies. Retrieved from http://kapwa3.blogspot.ca/p/about.html Lacaba, Eman. (1986). Salvaged Poems. Manila: Salinlahi Publishing House. Salazar, Zeus. (1997). Pantayong pananaw: Isang paliwanag. Retrieved from http://www.filipiniana.net/publication/pantayong-pananaw-isang-paliwanag/12791881608498/1/0 Simpson, Leanne. (2011). Dancing on our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence and a new emergence. Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing.
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Words, images, & fripperies by Christine Balmes unless otherwise stated. Archives
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