BY DR. JOSE MA. EDUARDO P. DACUDAO
“THE ELDERS of the Cherokee Nation (a native American people) have declared that the priority of our Nation is to teach the Cherokee language to the younger generations, in order to save our Nation from extinction.”
(This is a summary of a newspaper article that I read years ago. Substitute Ilonggo Nation for Cherokee Nation, and the Ilonggo reader should find this summary as applicable in Iloilo as it is in North America.)
Since coming to Butuan almost 20 years ago, I have had the opportunity to come into contact with numerous indigenous ethnic peoples of Northern Mindanao, including Butuanons, Surigaonons, Manobos, Higaonons, Mamanwas, and so on.
The largest indigenous inland ethnic people of the Agusan provinces are probably the Manobos. The native speakers of the Manobo language only number a mere 40,000 or so according to SIL surveys in the 1990s. Such low numbers are not viable for a stable self-sustaining population in today’s Philippines; by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) standards the Manobos, and dozens of other ethnic peoples of the Philippines are moribund, meaning that they will soon die out without official government recognition of their languages.
One would think that the Manobos would be aware of their plight and would be taking countermeasures that would prevent the extinction of their people. I was shocked to find out that even their officially recognized datus and Manobo officials of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) in Butuan are not even aware that they are dying out. How could these so-called leaders save their people if they do not even know that their people are going extinct?
How did I come to this conclusion, that the Manobos in leadership positions, best placed to take measures that could save the Manobo people, are not aware of or do not care that their people are in fact dying?
As with the typical hypothesis based on inductive reasoning, this is supported by factual observations, typical of which are some that I shall enumerate below:
1. One of my patients with migraine headache was a Manobo-speaking official of the NCIP. When I proposed to him that the Manobos seem to be dying, he right away started explaining that lowlanders were in effect taking over their ancestral lands. I pointed out that that I was talking about the Manobo speakers themselves, that the younger generation was losing the ability to speak in Manobo, and that Manobo should be taught in the schools of the traditional territory of the Manobos. He just stared at me uncomprehendingly. His concern for Manobos seemed solely focused on land ownership.
Even when I told him forthrightly that the Manobos could not possibly save their ancestral lands when there are no Manobos left to do the saving, the idea seemed novel to him. For him the economic assets accruing to the ownership of land was more important than the survival of the Manobo ethnic identity, carried by the Manobo language.
2. I found the same attitude in a Manobo datu that I befriended in a conference. When I pressed the point, that there were so few Manobo speakers left on earth, he told me in a matter of fact manner that if one were to dress in traditional Manobo garb and claim that you were Manobo, you are a Manobo. I asked him if he could speak Manobo. He could not.
My indigent, dirt-poor patients who would dress in normal civilian attire and had no title of ‘datu’ attached to their names, but who could still speak Manobo fluently as their first tongue were certainly truer Manobos than this datu. As with the NCIP official, he seemed more interested in using his status as a so-called ‘Manobo’ in order to acquire land for himself or his particular interests.
3. One of my patients who was a real Manobo, that is one able to speak Manobo, proudly told me that her daughter is an NCIP Manobo scholar in Urios College Butuan. I then asked the teenaged daughter if she could speak Manobo. The daughter could not. Naturally, she did not personally regard herself as a Manobo, in the same manner that her parents, who were fluent Manobo speakers, did.
4. One of my good friends and colleague, a doctor like myself, was funded by the NCIP as a Manobo scholar during her med school days. Unlike her parents, she could not speak Manobo anymore. Naturally, no one in Butuan society regards her as a real Manobo. Moreover, she married a Tagalog migrant, yet never taught him the Visayan language, and would even talk to her children in Tagalog. These children would grow up in Butuan, a traditionally Butuanon, Cebuano Visayan, and Manobo speaking territory as Tagalogs, and their loyalty would be not to the peoples of Mindanao but to the Tagalog ethnic people of Imperial Manila. It does not take an idiot to see that a flood of children that Butuanon residents would raise as Tagalogs right in Butuan would naturally mean the end of Butuan’s rich cultural history as the homeland of Butuanons, Manobos, and Visayans.
I could go on and on, but these observations should suffice. What makes things worse is that these people are NORMAL people by Philippine society standards. They see nothing wrong with their behavior. In general they conduct their lives in an upright manner, and I am actually friends with them.
In contrast, the Cherokee, which was one of the largest ethnic peoples of pre-Columbian North Eastern America, are obviously very much aware that the survival of their ethnic identity depends on the survival of their language. It is clear that they know that pronouncements on saving the ancestral lands of their people have no relevancy once their very people cease to exist with the death of the Cherokee language. It is clear that they know that their language has no price that can be compared to any piece of land. Pieces of land can be sold and bought, but not the language of a people, for once that is dead, so is the people that speaks it forever./PN
