Jacob Maentz

the cordillera

the cordillera

The Cordillera mountains in central Luzon is the highest mountain range in the Philippines covering a massive geographic area. The indigenous peoples of this region are often collectively referred to as the Igorots, meaning “mountain people” from the Tagalog root word “golot” or mountain. In truth, they are not a single ethnic group, and do not typically refer to themselves by this name. Just as the mountains of the Cordilleras each create their own incredibly unique micro-ecologies of endemic species, they have also brought forth a diverse array of indigenous human communities. The major ethnolinguistic groups that are considered to be Igorot are the the Bontoc, the Ibaloy, the Itneg or Apayao, Kankanaey and the Ifugaos. Thanks to their successful resistance against the Spanish colonisers they were largely able to keep their culture and traditions alive, and yet inversely their later exposure to English-language education during the American period empowered them to organise and represent themselves in the country’s contemporary political sphere.

Marlon looking for fish in the Abra river.

Everyone has a garden full of food in Sagada.

Women cutting and preparing vegetables for a traditional Kankanaey wedding. The whole community is invited to the four-day celebration.

The Kankanaey still depend on the forests to provide themselves with meat. Wild pigs, deer, and birds are still commonly caught by hunters accompanied by hunting dogs. Without a trained dog to help with the hunt, it would be very difficult to catch anything in the forest.

The Kankanaey believe that death separates the soul of a person, the anito, from the body. They hang the coffins in high places such as mountain cliffs in order to help the anito more easily join the domain of the ancestral spirits.

Visitors from Manila watch as Siegrid from Sagada Pottery demonstrates how to make a clay jar. Sagada Pottery is one of many artisanal establishments that draw tourists to Mountain Province.

Children run after a passing jeep as it climbs up the steep passes of the Cordilleras.

Farmers prepare the terraces for rice planting the traditional way: plowing the fields with a water buffalo. The Kalinga are the most extensive rice cultivators of the Cordilleras, practicing both wet and dry rice farming.

The community prepares meat from two carabaos for a Pusipus ritual, which is a thanksgiving celebration of a person towards the end of their life.

A community gathers for a political meeting. A unique aspect of life in the Cordilleras is that each village is a self-contained society, running all aspects of life from businesses to politics. Any disputes are usually settled by an informal council of the village’s most respected figures.

A tattooed Kalinga woman from the village of Buscalan, home of the famous tattoo master artist, Whang-Od. The patterns represent various aspects of Kalinga life and culture, from the rice terraces they tend to the lizards and birds they hunt to the values and lore they hold sacred.

Food being cooked in large woks for a traditional wedding. Marriage is usually a strategic and social decision, and involves a series of exchanges of food, animal sacrifices, and religious rituals.

A child is baptised at an Episcopal church at the same time as his parents are wedded. The Kankanaey, like other indigenous people in the Cordilleras, often include both Christian and indigenous rituals in their important celebrations.

No celebration in the Mountain Province is complete without the playing of ganza or gongs and much dancing. Anyone can pick up a gong and get a spontaneous dance started.

The punnuk ritual is a tug-of-war game using two sturdy branches bound together, or a pakid, instead of a rope, and held in a river that flows through the rice terraces. With water so essential to their floodplain crop, various figurines are offered to the river in thanksgiving, and the ritual is believed to cleanse the souls and spirits of the Ifugao.

The vast rice terraces of Mayawyaw. Deeply understanding the relationship between the forests and their fields, as well as the importance of the water table, the Ifugao maintain muyong, or forested micro-watersheds on the hilltops above the rice terraces, which provide nutrients and water to the rain-fed terraces and prevent soil erosion.

The punnuk ritual is a tug-of-war game using two sturdy branches bound together, or a pakid, instead of a rope, and held in a river that flows through the rice terraces. With water so essential to their floodplain crop, various figurines are offered to the river in thanksgiving, and the ritual is believed to cleanse the souls and spirits of the Ifugao.

An Ifugao woman helps in the communal harvesting. Since most Ifugao communities harvest only one crop of rice every year, harvest time marks the end of the Ifugao agricultural year.

One crucial element of a traditional Kankanaey wedding is the small cash presents that each wedding guest is expected to offer to the new couple. Once you give your gift, your name is written down, the money placed in a large basket, and you are given a token of appreciation.

A woman from Lubuagan peers out from her sari-sari store. Like many indigenous groups, today, most Kalinga wear modern clothing; still, they have preserved their own distinct style of weaving, which incorporates such textural elements as mother-of-pearl fragments and the twill-weave technique.

Eating and socializing is an important time each day for people to talk and build relationships.

To read more about my time spent in some of these communities please see the following post:

People of the Mountains – Igorots of the Cordillera