Road trips to communities
Our city lives keep us in a vacuum — a limited space filled with activities, media, social gatherings and all the other things that fill our days. It is only when we unplug from this and go off to another place that the great contrast is seen... like black against white or should I say gray (with all the pollution and smog of the city) against green (as my eco-culture trip showed me). It is the contrast of a dominant global or metropolitan culture versus an ancient tribal culture. Of economies progressing versus the fight for survival of communities. How do we bridge such opposing points?
Because of ECHOstore, my partners and I have been traveling the roads of the country as we meet community groups and help mentor their livelihood directions. In the works is a special pioneering partnership agreement which ECHOstore will finalize and sign with the Peace and Equity Foundation (PEF) and the Partner Access Centers Cooperative Inc. (PACCI). This partnership will open branded retail space in key provinces of the country where PACCI groups are located. ECHOstore will create a general brand called ECHO Village Stores, inspired by the company’s philosophy to sell items by the PACCI communities around the country. This partnership will empower village enterprises by providing access to suitable markets for innovative, traditional and ethnic products and in the process establish a strong network of village enterprises with full access to stable and growing markets. Priority provincial areas include Baguio, Bacolod, General Santos, Palawan, Bohol and Albay.
And so we have been burning miles through road-trips, seeing wonderful views of pristine nature, from mountains to valleys to water villages. We’ve been to Baguio, to Negros Occidental, General Santos and Southern Mindanao... and so many more mentoring trips planned. So it was also no big surprise that Pilipinas Shell called us to pose as poster girls for this project as every road trip was powered by Shell fuels that offer great mileage. We were using Shell Super Unleaded E10 which is formulated with 10 percent bioethanol that allowed us to go to all these places while contributing to the environment. This is Shell’s alternative fuel generally recommended for fuel-injected vehicles and it’s good for the environment because it has ethanol, which is a cleaner burning, renewable component that helps to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
A recent visit to South Cotabato in Southern Mindanao brought me face to face with two of our indigenous cultural communities: the T’boli and the B’laan tribes.
One of UNESCO’s declaration is that cultural heritage must be preserved at all costs. Be it tangible, through documentation into archival form; or the intangible heritage of dances, music, ritual, skills and artistry of traditional forms such as weaving and brass making. The intangible heritage must be taught by the elders to the next generation to ensure continuity of traditions.
In the country, the School of Living Tradition (SLT) is our government’s program of keeping intangible heritage alive in our ethno-linguistic communities. Where there is a master craftsperson called the “Culture Bearer,” the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) gives SLT grants to ensure the transmission of heritage within the group.
What are immediately arresting about the two cultural communities I visited are: first, the gentleness of the people; and second, their exceptionally remarkable colorful beaded outfits and woven basketry. Masters of the embellished fabrics, the B’laan women painstakingly embroidered beads and seeds onto their traditional garments. Their baskets are remarkably sophisticated in their simplicity of design. The T’boli’s are known for their penchant for adorning themselves with necklaces, rings, earrings, bracelets, belts, brass bells. Their ikat designs on dyed tinalak abaca fibers woven in the traditional process are exquisite fabrics that encode motifs from dreams that they weave as ways to tell the story of their people. I marveled at the painstaking work these women were doing, the B’laan women embroidering as some played music and others weaving tinalak cloths.
While the SLT supports the preservation of tradition, the indigenous people find themselves marginalized when their skills are limited to farming and craft making. Their ancestral lands are taken over for commerce by other people, and their crafts not given the correct value. Worst, commercialism has negated their unique stories. Arts and crafts have become mere commodities in a marketplace resulting in the indigenous people’s fight for survival. What is key is supporting livelihood initiatives while being culturally sensitive to the people’s tradition. It was in this spirit that the Mahintana Foundation brought ECHOstore to see what we can do to create neo-traditional design and product development. It will be a long uphill battle, but each small step with this advocacy from the private sector is surely welcome help. We cannot let culture die. We need to help our communities. We each need to help its preservation by either educating people about our indigenous peoples, buying their arts and crafts, offering sustainable livelihood and fair trade practices.
