Tag Archives: Europeans

A Cordillera Sojourn, Day 4: An Igorot Origin Story

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, Historical, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

September 22, 2024, Manila- The wooden Ibaloi warrior sat in my crafts souvenir bag, keeping watch over the bus, and me-like Little Bear, in “The Indian in the Cupboard”. I would not have been surprised, had he come to life and begun murmuring fiercely in the Ibaloi dialect of the time. The history of the indigenous people of the vast Malay archipelago: East Malaysia, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Timor L’Este and the Philippines mirrors that of the First Nations of the Americas. Indeed, they were all subjugated by the same European conquerors-and their successor cultures.

Mabel Cook Cole provides us with this account of the origin of the Igorot nations

“The Creation

Igorot

In the beginning there were no people on the earth.

Lumawig, the Great Spirit, came down from the sky and cut many reeds. He divided these into pairs which he placed in different parts of the world, and then he said to them, “You must speak.”

Immediately the reeds became people, and in each place was a man and a woman who could talk, but the language of each couple differed from that of the others.

Then Lumawig commanded each man and woman to marry, which they did. By and by there were many children, all speaking the same language as their parents. These, in turn, married and had many children. In this way there came to be many people on the earth.

Now Lumawig saw that there were several things which the people on the earth needed to use, so he set to work to supply them. He created salt, and told the inhabitants of one place to boil it down and sell it to their neighbors. But these people could not understand the directions of the Great Spirit, and the next time he visited them, they had not touched the salt.

Then he took it away from them and gave it to the people of a place called Mayinit. These did as he directed, and because of this he told them that they should always be owners of the salt, and that the other peoples must buy of them.

Then Lumawig went to the people of Bontoc and told them to get clay and make pots. They got the clay, but they did not understand the molding, and the jars were not well shaped. Because of their failure, Lumawig told them that they would always have to buy their jars, and he removed the pottery to Samoki. When he told the people there what to do, they did just as he said, and their jars were well shaped and beautiful. Then the Great Spirit saw that they were fit owners of the pottery, and he told them that they should always make many jars to sell.

In this way Lumawig taught the people and brought to them all the things which they now have.”-Source: Mabel Cook Cole, Philippine Folk Tales (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company, 1916), pp. 99-101.

The First Nations of the Malay Archipelago, including the Philippines, have much the same richness in their cultures and in their societies, as have the First Nations of the Americas-and in fact, all the First Nations, across the globe. It was all too easy for Europeans and their settler descendants to have lost sight of this, because no sooner had a wave of Eurasian nomads come across from the steppes of the landmass’s center and settled down (the Celts, the Aryans, the Teutonic tribes, the Huns, Avars and Turks), than another wave of nomads, the Mongols being the last, came thundering across the plains, to conquer and disrupt society. Each successive wave of settlers disdained those they found in place. So did the ethos of conquest become ingrained in the European mindset-and in many ways, the wisdom of the indigenous people was discounted and overlooked.

I am grateful to have had a small amount of time with the Idaloi. I will be back, possibly as early as next month.

I came back to the capital, this afternoon. The return trip was made the way the average Filipino makes it-via a local bus, that stopped in four different depots and two rest areas. The bus picked up roadside passengers in the countryside between Baguio and Sison, which was the first rest area. We continued through small cities, like Urdaneta and Moncada, stopped at a second rest area, in Angeles, and still got to Pasay Victory Line Terminal in five hours. Now, there are four days to regroup and replenish, before going to Palawan, the “frontier” of the Philippines, in the southwest.

Here, as a bonus, is a collection of Igorot legends.

Click to access 07_A%20Collection%20of%20Igorot%20Legends.pdf

When “Clean” Becomes Filthy

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Posted by on in collaborating, Hiking and Nature, impediments, Personal Values, Striving

May 17, 2020-

I used to live in central Maine.  On weekends, I would go either north or east, as a rule, exploring the further segments of New England’s largest state.  One area that always impressed me was the North Woods- one of the largest stretches of unbroken forest, east of the Mississippi River.  Even when I lived there, a small group of people, mainly Europeans, who didn’t understand why we “needed” so many trees, were agitating to cut down many of the trees and build something “useful” in the region-like second homes for people from more congested areas.  We would hear how, in Europe, there was not this obsession with keeping the land “empty”. and people were just happy with less wilderness. (I did not get this feeling, when I visited some western European countries , in 2014, but there we are.)

So, it doesn’t surpise me to learn that a Spanish-owned company, Central Maine Power, is going to court, to force a clear-cut of a 53-mile swath, through the North Woods, for the purpose of building a “Clean Energy” transmission line, from the St. Lawrence River, in Quebec, to Massachusetts. The total line would run 145 miles, so a third of it would go through the North Woods.  The width of the cleared path would be 300 feet across.

The Woods are owned by a timber company, which permits a wide variety of recreational uses throughout its property.  The forest products industry stands to lose a fair amount of resource material, through the clear cut-even if CMP’s Spanish parent company pays a decent sum for its trouble.  The loss to the environment would be even greater, with unknown damage to the lakes and rivers of the area.

Thus does another “New Age” company find itself in the position of being inimical to the very environment it purports to protect.  Rather than bull their way through North America’s largest remaining temperate forest, the Spaniards may find it better to explore some truly clean means of providing power to southern New England.

https://environmentmaine.org/feature/mee/protect-north-woods-stop-transmission-line

Tremors

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Posted by on in Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Spiritual, Striving

July 9, 2017, Wilmette-

To reiterate, as I am drastically revamping the earlier version of this post:  I will recap the past several, enjoyable days, July 5-8, in my next several posts.

For now:

I was somewhat relieved, and gratified, to actually meet a person who had been rather skittish, with regard to such a handshake.  Turns out, she does seem overbooked.  It is either sink or swim, for most of us, so she is swimming, furiously.

I am still frightened by people who pretend to be friends, and exhort the rest of us, with intense, challenging inspirational rhetoric.  Someone posted online, about Mother Teresa.  I remember her as a rather somber, sad woman, not so comfortable with the adulation of an unskeptical public.  I mention this, because we do tend to move in on people who look shiny, on the surface.  Europeans look at Americans, and are stunned by the glad-handing and false promises that occupy many of us, who are out to get a leg up.  So, motivational speakers and preachers get caught with their pants down, some of them literally so.  That’s the thing that frightens me most:  Not traffic, not thugs, but the duplicitous.

I feel much better, this afternoon, having had an extended conversation with my online friend- far from duplicitous, and the epitome of real.  It could not have ended, any other way.  I look forward to continually learning from her, and other correspondents.  This is about purification, and strengthening- a process that lasts a lifetime.

Some tremors are necessary in life.