Becoming a Mumbaki: Ritual Change and Continuity in Contemporary Ifugao Society, North Luzon, Philippines

Title: Becoming a Mumbaki: Ritual Change and Continuity in Contemporary Ifugao Society, North Luzon, Philippines

Authors: Analyn V. Salvador-Amores, Marlon M. Martin

Publisher: Cordillera Studies Center, University of the Philippines Baguio, 2023

Description: Studies on the customary practices of the Ifugao, an ethnolinguistic group residing in northern Luzon, have received more attention compared to other ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines. However, there has been limited analysis on the current practices of both Ifugao male and female mumbaki (referring to "native priests" or ritual specialists), as well as their progression to a higher rank known as mumbagol.

This book examines the norms and protocols involved in becoming a ritual practitioner amidst changing social, economic, political, and religious circumstances within a contemporary society. The contemporary practice of Ifugao mumbaki provides insights into similar transformations occurring in indigenous religious practices globally.

About the authors:

Analyn V. Salvador-Amores is a professor of Anthropology and former Director of the Museo Kordilyera at the University of the Philippines Baguio. She is also the Project Leader of the Cordillera Textiles Project (CordiTex). She earned her masters and doctorate in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Oxford University, UK. Her research interest includes non-Western aesthetics, material culture, ethnographic museums and colonial photography in the Philippine Cordillera. Included in her work is the two-time award-winning book: Tapping Ink, Tattooing Identities: Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Kalinga Society published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2013 (National Book Development Award, 2013 and National Academy of Science and Technology, 2016). As a public service professor, she continues to engage indigenous communities in her work, and promoting indigenous knowledge in different platforms. She actively carries out anthropological fieldwork among the indigenous communities in Northern Luzon, and have published extensively on this subject.

Marlon M. Martin is an Ifugao and the Chief Operating Officer of the Save the Ifugao Rice Terraces Movement (SITMo). He is the founder of Ifugao Indigenous Peoples Education Center and Community Heritage Galleries in Kiangan, Ifugao. He passionately leads community-based initiatives focused on cultural advocacy and conservation. As a dedicated community organizer and cultural worker, he engages in extensive research, authoring publications that delve into Ifugao indigenous knowledge systems, rituals, and traditional resource management. Committed to passing on the cultural legacy, he actively collaborates with the academe. The recent one is the co-authored book with UCLA's Stephen Acabado, Indigenous Archaeology in the Philippines: Decolonizing Ifugao History (2022, University of Arizona Press and Ateneo de Naga university Press.)

Becoming a Mumbaki: Ritual Change and Continuity in Contemporary Ifugao Society, North Luzon, Philippines

Who Is Howard T. Fry

The following text is from the "About the Author" page for A History of the Mountain Province, a book written by Howard T. Fry:

Dr. Howard T. Fry was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge University, where he won an organ scholarship in 1938. His studies were interrupted by the Second World War, in which he served first in the army, and then as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Completing his studies in Cambridge after the war, he spent several years as a school-master, and, for a while, returned to the Royal Air Force as a flying instructor.

In 1963 he returned to Cambridge University to study for Ph.D., and his thesis (which was later published) on the notable eighteenth-century merchant and hydrographer of the English East India Company, Alexander Dalrymple, first awakened his interest in the Philippines; for Dalrymple tried hard to establish an English trading base in the Sulu archipelago, and his negotiations for a territorial cession (or lease) of North of Borneo to the East India Company has proved of political significance in our own time.

In 1968 Dr. Fry joined the history department of James Cook University of Queensland, Australia, where he was asked to organize a program of Southeast Asian historical studies. He there upon made the study of Philippine history one of his own fields of specialization, and James Cook University became the only university in Australia to make the study of Philippine history a top priority in its Southeast Asian program.

Dr. Fry, is married to a Filipina.

A History of the Mountain Province by Howard T. Fry

A History of the Mountain Province is a nonfiction / history book written by Howard T. Fry. 

About the Book / Synopsis / Preface

In this book, the history of the Mountain Province is seen to fall into three distinct periods. In the first of these, when the Republican Party controlled the Presidency of the United States, the emphasis was upon creating a form of mountain reservation for the "non-Christian tribes" of the Cordillera Central. After a series of adventurous expeditions had been undertaken in order to define the ethnology of the region, policy was directed toward developing roads and trails whereby to put an end to the intertribal feuding and headhunting, thus laying the foundations for the future civilization of these "wild men", as Dean C. Worcester was in the habit of describing these mountain peoples. This policy of creating mountain reservation inevitably lent itself to "divide and rule" tactics on the part of the imperial power. The second period was inaugurated by the incoming Democrats in 1913, when the idea of separating the mountain peoples from their lowland Christian neighbors was abandoned in favor of a policy aimed at achieving their integration in the body politic of the Philippine nation, and the emphasis shifted from the building of roads and trails to the provision of better and more widespread health and educational facilities. The third period, hastened by the events of the Second World War, saw the mountain peoples taking over the local control of their own affairs.

Throughout these three periods of political growth there has been a continuing search for the best means of achieving the economic growth of the region, both to enable the growing population to be fed, and to allow these mountain peoples to escape from the abject poverty which is the main barrier to their further advance in civilization. Increased food production has been sought through expansion into hitherto unsettled areas, in conjunction with the introduction of more efficient and scientific farming techniques. The search for the best means whereby to generate greater income has been a recurring quest for promising new marketable crops, with reiterated calls, over the years, for a revival of the coffee industry, and for perseverance in the attempts to develop a silk industry. As the mining industry has developed, so there have been calls for realizing the hydro-electric potentialities of these mountains, thus paving the way for the establishment of further industries, which in turn will provide more jobs for the local people. For present and future reference it has seemed worthwhile to record these various ideas and plans in some detail, as the problem is a continuing one, and it is wise to pay heed to what has been suggested and tried in the past.

In the preparation of this work I have been unable to trace one major primary source. With the enactment of the Jones Law in 1916, the system of submitting the reports of the Governors and Deputy Governors of the Mountain Province and its subprovinces clearly changed, and apart from a number of the reports of Governor Dosser, preserved in the Hayden papers, I have been unable to locate these reports after 1916. I am told that this disappearance of the provincial governors' reports after 1916 is not confined to the Mountain Province, and the fact is mentioned here in the hope that it may bring to light more information on this problem, or prompt a further research for this important series of missing documents.

Tribute: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Fiction (Edited by Timothy R. Montes and Cesar Ruiz Aquino)

Tribute: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Fiction is a book featuring a collection of stories by various Filipino authors. Published by Anvil Publishing in 2001, the book is a memorial anthology for Edilberto K. Tiempo. Tiempo was born on August 5, 1913 and died on September 19, 1996. The anthology was edited by Timothy R. Montes and Cesar Ruiz Aquino. The anthology contains 23 stories.

1. A Tall Woman from Leyte by Gina Apostol
2. Stories by Cesar Ruiz Aquino
3. Chinita by Carlos Ojeda Aureus
4. Ireland by Erwin E. Castillo
5. Vietnik by Carlos Cortes
6. In the Garden by Jose Y. Dalisay Jr.
7. The Other End by Maria Victoria Kapauan
8. The Edge of Innocence by Susan S. Lara
9. The Axolotl Colony by Jaime An Lim
10. Rhapsody in Khaki by Raymond Llorca
11. Ghost by C.J. Maraan
12. Of Fish, Flies, Dogs, and Women by Timothy R. Montes
13. Bearer of Swords by Charlson Ong
14. Carpe Diem by Kerima Polotan
15. In Transit by Danton Remoto
16. The Chieftest Mourner by Aida Rivera-Ford
17. The Naming of My Child by Eileen Tabios
18. The Cargo by Anthony Tan
19. Abide, Joshua by Edith L. Tiempo
20. The Fruit of the Vine by Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas
21.Suite Bergamasque by Bobby Flores Villasis
22. Valencia Drive: A Tribute to Dad by Ernesto Superal Yee
23. Big Street by Alfred A. Yuson

Preface

When Edilberto K, Tiempo died on September 19, 1996, many Filipino writers felt the passing of an old order. For more than 30 years, Dr. Tiempo had been sitting, Zeus-like, at the Silliman National Writers Summer Workshop, shooting bolts of lightning from his throne. Under the aegis of New Criticism, he enjoined young writers to take the writing craft seriously, to be more disciplined in their work, to exercise the labor of the file. Perhaps it was this obsession with "craft" that brought about a workshop finesse (or what disparaging critics consider "formalist self-consciousness") in the generation of writers from the '60s to the '90s. Indeed, even when one disregards Dr. Tiempo's novels, short story collections, and critical essays, his influence on Philippine writing through his teaching and literary admonitions in the workshops cannot be underestimated. The roster of Filipino fictionists who passed under the shadow of The Man reads like a who's who in Philippine contemporary literature. His commitment to and passion for literature was a source of inspiration to those who found it hard to imagine a "life of letters" in the Philippine setting. Here was a man who was able to convince students, lawyers, housewives, government workers, businessmen, bohemians - the ragtag of writers who flocked each year to the Silliman workshop - that the writing life, after the age of Samuel Johnson, was still worth living.

Books About Reading Experiments and Reading Stunts

The Shelf: Adventures in Extreme Reading by Phyllis Rose (2014) - Go to a library near you. Choose a bookshelf at random. Then read through all the books in that particular shelf. This is what Phyllis Rose (Woman of Letters) did. And she wrote about the experiment in this book. Rose had a career reading from syllabuses and writing about canonical books. It was clockwork and tiring. So Rose decided to read like an explorer. Just sail into an ocean of books and choose what to read in random. So she went to the New York Society Library, chose a shelf at random, and read her way through the books in that shelf.