PILIPINO KA BA?

by Almira Astudillo Gilles

This month, I will start my ethnoastronomy research among the Ivatan people in Batanes. Batanes is the smallest and northernmost province of the Philippines and is composed of the main islands of Batan, Sabtang, and Itbayat. Only people of Ivatan lineage can reside there unless they are married to one. Batanes is unlike any other place in the Philippines because of its rolling hills, stone houses, and absence of fast-food chains. It also offers spectacular night sky viewing.

There has been no formal documentation of Ivatan knowledge and practice of astronomy. Our ancestors extracted meaning from our natural environment and they used symbols to communicate. An estimated 12-15 million indigenous people live in the Philippines (about 15% of the population), with approximately 170 different languages.  I am hoping the project will counter the negative attitudes of some Filipinos toward their ethnic brothers and sisters.  Furthermore, members of indigenous groups are often oppressed because they abide by their own system of beliefs which often clash with the dominant, Western-inspired structure of the Philippine government (fashioned during the U.S. colonial administration of the Philippines). As a Filipino American, I feel strongly about authenticity and would like to remedy the careless hybridization of Filipino traditions that sometimes happens in the United States. 

The general narrative that this study will tell is that our forefathers lived in a world that was largely mysterious. Whenever they could, they attempted to control their world by creating useful objects for daily survival and maintaining social relationships. They created myths and symbols to imbue their experiences with meaning, and their natural spheres included land, water, and air/wind. The sky is a special case. The only way they could experience it was by superimposing elements that they already knew from below, hoping that the sky would in turn reveal wisdom that they could use. They could not till it, they could not fish it, and they could not physically transport them. The nighttime sky intrigued them and stars, in particular, provided many visual opportunities for interpretation.

I will tell the story of what our first communities saw when they looked up at the night sky. I will show them, through star plots, the coconut tree that native people saw, and the spear trap used in hunting wild pigs. I will recite the indigenous names for what we know as Orion’s belt and the Southern Cross, and maybe learn from them that the Milky Way was perceived as a snake or dragon. I will tell the public that these celestial markers were not only used for direction but also as oracles for planting crops, catching fish, and hunting. I will respectfully tell the story of the origin of rice planting and why three stars are traveling in single file across the night sky. But more importantly, this project will examine how such stories have survived, disappeared, or changed through generations, through technological progress (satellites), and through the inevitable restructuring of social relationships.

I will eagerly share this experience on social media. Abangan ang First Skies: Ethnoastronomy in Batanes!

Almira Astudillo Gilles (almiragilles@gmail.com) describes her heart’s work as conservation in two areas: indigenous cultural heritage and natural resources. Her cultural heritage work includes a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant for Art and Anthropology Project: Portrait of the Object as Filipino, an international artist exchange. She was the founder of 10,000 Kwentos (“Stories”) at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, a model of direct community engagement with the museum’s Philippine ethnographic collection.


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