I stumbled across a huge collection of online galleries featuring photos of Igorots in the Philippines and abroad. This is courtesy of the Igorot Galleries in sagada.com. My wife and I took a good hour or so going over the photos. From a remote mountainous region in northwestern Philippines, the Igorots sure have come a long way. Here’s a sampling of the more than 7000+ pictures in the gallery showing Igorot gatherings in Seattle, British Columbia, Tokyo, Australia, Switzerland, and Washington, D.C.
I visited a gathering of several BIBBAK groups in Texas while I was there on a project during the fall of 2004. (BIBBAK stands for Bontoc, Ifugao, Benguet, Baguio, Apayao / Abra, Kalinga) I noticed that there was a lady who was in charge of meeting with the children and talking to them about the Igorot culture. Majority of the children were born in the US, and most likely never set foot in the place where the Igorots come from – and that’s in the Cordillera Mountains of Northern Philippines. Still, as most people of every culture has done in history, the parents of these children would like them to learn about who they are. So it is very common amongst migrating Igorots to meet together, and pass on the Igorot heritage to the younger generation.
Teaching children how to play the gong and participate in Igorot dances are effective and fun ways to keep the practice alive. For someone like me who is a very awkward dancer / gong player, it is difficult to teach something I could not even be decent at. (I blushed and huffed my way through an Igorot dance during my wedding day – a terrible memory, really.) But my inabilities shouldn’t pose a problem. There will always be groups of Igorots wherever you are, and most of them will likely be good dancers.
There is a family picnic for BIBBAK – ILLINOIS on Saturday, Aug 23, 2008 at Des Plaines. I’ll be bringing the boys over and we’ll be looking forward to the Cultural Presentation and Native Dance Rehearsal in the afternoon. I will also be posting some pictures in this blog after the event.
My youngest, at 2, playing with a gong in Maryland.
After a month long hiatus, I'm back and blogging. :-) July is an extremely busy month - what with our 10th wedding anniversary, and the summer hours of playground / swimming pool / tennis court to enjoy. For someone in the Chicago area, summer months are to be savored - like that rare delicacy. But now, July is gone and August is here - the 2nd to the last month of summer before the dreaded 6-month cold season starts. Let's not go there yet though... I'll deal with the cold when its there.
Three things to start the month with:
1. BLOG RE-DESIGN. This blog has been re-designed, woo-hoo! I finally found a template that suits the blog. To my dear visitors, feel free to post any feedback on the blog layout. Of course, suggestions are always welcome. Some caution though - I've tested this layout on latest versions of FIREFOX and INTERNET EXPLORER and it works on both. I did try to access the blog using the IE6.0 browser at the office, and it takes 10 minutes to load the widgets from Picassa and YouTube. Small problem but I always think that browsers need to be updated to fully enjoy the Internet.
2. I finally got PAGERANK! And its not zero. PageRank, that funny measurement of how Google views the importance of a page, has been provided to both this blog and SaGaDa-iGoRoT.com. Apparently, calculating a PageRank involves a complex algorithm that Google will not divulge and includes factors such as # of external links, content, etc... A page with a higher PageRank is supposed to get higher traffic since it is displayed first in Google search results. I don't think it is that simple though - SaGaDa-iGoRoT.com for example was ranking between 5 - 8 on the search term "sagada" when it didn't have a PageRank. Now that it has, I don't see any marked improvement on its search results ranking. It maybe too early to tell.
3. Spike in IGOROT searches. I use Google Webmaster Tools to get statistics on my site. If their figures are accurate (and I believe they are), then, the month of July has seen increased searches on the word "igorot". As can be seen from the chart (click on the image above), my site is listed on both the top 10 search results on "igorot" and "sagada". Comparing the percentage of queries that my site appeared on for the months of May and June, the search for the word "igorot" increased from 13% to 31%; while that of the "sagada" decreased from 63% to 38%. Now, if only Google can tell me why this trend is occurring.
The parents of my maternal grandmother were known as Kudat and Lingayo. Before my grandparents married, there was an altercation between Kudat and Pednga-en (my grandfather’s father). One morning, they met together at a particular place while going on their respective business. Later that same day, they again crossed each other’s paths at exactly the same place. Kudat who must have been a jolly fellow made a funny comment to Pednga-en about this meeting at the same place in one day. Pednga-en, who were amongst Sagada’s leaders didn’t find the same comment funny and proceeded to bring the matter to court against Kudat. (I’ve never met such a guy!) I don’t know what happened next, but because of this dispute, when their children eventually married each other, Kudat and Pednga-en had to perform a ritual that indicated there is no remaining ill will between the two despite a prior dispute.
Moral of the story? Don’t fight against anyone. Your child may end up marrying that person’s child.
The children of Kudat and Lingayo were Conyap Ag-a, Madungit Gayagay, Carmen Nadnaden (my grandmother), and Eduardo Toyoken who settled in Tabuk, Kalinga. There is an interesting story where one of their grandchildren, an orphaned boy, was about to be brought to a Sagada orphanage because of poverty. While the surviving parent was on the way to the orphanage with the little boy, a crow hovered continuosly on their path seemingly trying to prevent the boy from being brought to the orphanage. The parent took this as an omen, and decided to raise the little boy instead. The boy grew up and eventually taught at the Saint Mary’s School in Sagada. His son, my 2nd cousin, was a batchmate during my elementary years, and a ka-barkada during my college years.
Moral of the story? If you’re contemplating a major decision and a crow seemingly stops your decided course of action, listen to it.
Listening to my mother talk about my ancestry is like reading a book such as The Hundred Years of Solitude. I thought our family tree would be uncomplicated, but I now know it isn’t. Quite common is a male relative with multiple families. An uncle left Mindanao ahead and left a wife and 2 children. When he relocated, the wife and children did not follow immediately; so my uncle married another woman and had several children. (Now it wasn’t that simple but I cant talk about things I don’t know about.) I know all the children of the second family, but I never met any one from the first family. I reckon that they must be in their early forties by now. They’re the only 1st cousins from both mother and father’s side that I haven't met.
A brother of my maternal grandfather had at least 3 known wives. One of his children became a student of my mother when she was teaching at an elementary school in Lepanto, Benguet. She has apparently married an American and is now settled in the US. I googled her name and was surprised to find a high school class photo that included her. (See picture below) She would be my 2nd cousin. It would be nice to find her number one day and be able to call her. I imagine the conversation will start with – "Hi, you’ve never met me but we are cousins… "
The same brother had another son who in turn had 2 families. These two families retained 2 different family names – Pednga-en and Moting. My mother’s family used Nadnaden, and as is the practice in the Philippines, this also became my middle name.
I'm a Filipino Igorot from Sagada, Philippines based in Chicago, Illinois. This is a place to share my thoughts, memories, and experiences of my town, my people, and my life in general. Enjoy your visit. Don't forget to leave a comment in the guestbook so I know you visited. Click here for my ABOUT ME post.
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