The Museo de Oro at the Xavier University (Ateneo de Cagayan), a repertoire of prehistoric archaeological finds, historical relics, artifacts and ethnological information on northern Mindanao tribes, was one interesting stop we had during a familiarization tour in Cagayan de Oro.
The University museum, run on the guidelines set by its former director – the late Fr. Francisco Demetrio, SJ – illustrated the cultural anthropology and folk traditions of northern Mindanao.
Exhibit room A showcased a brown tapestry of the indigenous cultures of the Higaonon, Subanen and Talaandig tribes as depicted in their boat coffins, weaponry, furniture, kitchen utensils, ritual paraphernalia, and the like.
As I got a feel of the grain in each burial boat, bangkaw (spear), and kalasag (shield), these tools of human workmanship have amazingly connected me with the lives of those brown people of the ancient world.
In every burial boat come animistic rituals that pray for the good voyage of souls back to Bathala, and their acceptance into “the higher dimension.”
At a corner of room A, inside a glass casing, my attention was arrested by the sight of a tribal accessory – a bracelet of which I’m used to wearing was actually an instrument in the ritual of healing/exorcism.
Various sizes and shapes of coconut blossoms, seashells and pebbles were strung to form a garland of amulets.
Every artifact in exhibit room A – from unearthed Neanderthal skulls to amulets to spears and shields – helps achieve to its full bloom this adoration I have for tribal wisdom and this admiration for the thread of ethnic unity that comes splendidly amid cultural multiplicity in this country.
Moving on to exhibit room B was very much like entering into a page of the late 1800s to the early 1900s. The room featured a replica of the Katipunan flag with the letter “K” represented by its equivalent in the baybayin script (alibata) – the old alphabet system the Filipinos used long before the Spanish cartilla was introduced here.
Other precious collections are a booklet on the Pact of Biak na Bato written by Pedro Paterno, a ticket issued during the declaration of Philippine Independence in Kawit, Cavite signed by former President Emilio Aguinaldo, and tools, implements, and habiliments used during the Spanish regime.
Exhibit room C wowed me with a showcase of tribal costumes and accessories. You can just imagine how I drool at the thought of bringing into my collection those anklets and trinkets worn by tribal people that I am so fond of. I was salivating at the thought of wearing a Higaonon vest with demonetized coins sewn onto it in lieu of sequins. Ogle at the tribe’s sense of fashion!
It would be very difficult to hide my eyes green with envy at northern Mindanao’s communities of cultural minorities because in the first place, though I am passionate about tribal culture, I never came to live or know of any tribal people in Cebu still existing to this day.
Though there may be those advocates who share the same passion in the preservation and promotion of baybayin, as well as of the Sinugbuwano tongue and music, I’m still at a loss on the identity and makeup of the “lumad Sugbuwanon.” The absence of a tribal community, I believe, only shows that we have long given up our cultural identity to western influence. Traditional tribal cultures here must have dissolved as a result of the confrontation with a variety of influences. This gives weigh to the observation that the national culture of the Philippines is strongly influenced by western civvy, and that many modern Filipinos have grown up with the view of having no other cultural past other than a colonial one.
The Museo tour with Nonoy, the assistant curator, affirmed of a great need for the development of a national cultural identity in the Philippines as this would mean that once knowledge on cultural traditions becomes embedded in the nation’s psyche, our one love for the “katutubos” and their lifestyle follows in line. This love would transpire into the founding of a school of living traditions, perhaps, where our children would find it enriching to interconnect with their distant past and emulate the values and systems that strengthened tribes.
Museo de Oro also offered a view of the intensification of research and educational work for the cultural minorities of northern Mindanao to strengthen the pride of Filipinos in terms of cultural multiplicity.
As I was drooling at the artifacts at the Museo, I whispered to my co-writer, “there’s plenty to write about CDO alone. I just hope our teleserye writers would take on some brains in bringing into television an ancient culture that is of our people, and not just burn brows by “tagalizing” Korean telenovelas.”. – Maria Eleanor E. Valeros
