Workshop Group Discussion Reports on the Theme 2

 

“Preservation and Promotion of the Cordillera Cultural Heritage and Addressing Prevailing Issues in Society”

Geraldine Ayban

Our topic was on the second recommendation: There should be continuing advocacy and promotion of the Igorot culture through conferences, symposia and other forms.”

After sharing our experiences, Ric Cuyob asked, “How can we advocate and promote our Igorot culture when we don’t even know what these are?”

So we answered this question and came up with the following recommendations:

1. We continue to advocate our Igorot culture. One example is to create meetings on the local level. For example, in Ireland, BIBAK Ireland can invite other organizations like those of the Ilocanos and Kapampangans. We can play the gongs to promote our culture.

Another example is through socialization like birthday parties. We invite people and play the gongs so people can see our tradition and practices.

2. We advertise our BIBAK organization through websites.

3. Continue to make researches and enhance our knowledge and skills so that we can become effective teachers to other people.

If we see people who dance our different dances and they are not doing it properly, we can give constructive criticism. We should teach them the proper way to dance our Igorot dances.

A big recommendation is the publication. We will make our research of different Igorot rituals of the Cordillera provinces. These could be on the life cycle like birth, marriage and death. We will look for commonalities and differences among the rituals. We will make a research and hopefully publish it. This will be for the next consultation.

There is a concrete proposal for the research. Each country organization will research on the Igorot rituals of a Cordillera province. Group members volunteered for their organization.

There was no volunteer for Abra so Yvonne (The Netherlands) did. She also volunteered Rhino Oblas of Germany.

The organization and the Cordillera province, whose rituals they will research on, are:

Igorot-UK                                      - Mountain Province

Cordi-Bel                                       - Ifugao

BIBAK Ireland                               - Benguet

Igorot-Austria                                - Kalinga

BIBAK Switzerland                       - Apayao

Germany and The Netherlands    - Abra

Someone raised a question, which was inaudible on the video recording.

Geraldine Ayban replied, “We are trying to make our own book, authoring and publishing our own book so we make our own research. We can also sell the book.”

Yvonne Belen added that the reason that we came up with this research was even we ourselves don’t know our Igorot culture. So, she proposed, “Why don’t we make our own research? It could come from primary or secondary sources. Then we find commonalities and differences. For example, even for the Mountain Province, there is eastern, central and western. So we find commonalities and differences in their rituals. We will do it for each province. The procedure is we make the concept paper of the research and refer it to our consultant and adviser, Dr. Caridad Fair-od. After she comments, she returns the paper to us and we start our research. Now, our proposal for the next consultation is for each country organization, which will make the research, to give a presentation. It does not have to be a lecture. It can be through singing, a skit or a power point presentation, as long as it’s a varied presentation so everybody.”

Members:

Agnes Abanag

Cristobal Agnaonao           

Geraldine Ayban                 Reporter

Judith Balangyao

Jane Batnag

Yvonne Belen

Brenia Calawen

Marivonne Cuyob

Ric Cuyob

Monica Donguez

Jane Gavino                       Recorder

Conchita Pooten                 Facilitator

Timothy Umayat