This “tarpaulin” welcomes our team to the Tagbanua village of Marupo, 20 minutes to the east of Coron along the coastal road.
The people of Marupo had built this beautiful kubo specially for our visit. The materials cost less than $100 and the village provided all the labor.
It is a wonderful structure with a stunning view to the south, toward the sea. I wish I had had time to take a nap up here!
Before I take you deeper into Marupo: Who are the Tagbanua (Tagbanwa)? They are one of the tribes living in central and northern Palawan, and one of approximately 110 tribal peoples in the Philippines. The number is inexact because it’s impossible to make absolutely clear cut distinctions between tribes and their languages. The Tagbanua language is within the same Austronesian family as the main Filipino languages and has two or three major variants, depending on the source I consult. [This paper from 2007 claims 110 “major indigenous groups” in the Philippines, 112 ethnolinguistic groups and a total indigenous population of 12 million, a number that has surely soared. https://www.iapad.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/devera_ip_phl.pdf ]
One thing shared by all tribal peoples is that they are marginalized: looked down on as “less than” by the majority peoples of these islands, often exoticized for tourists but not respected for their unique cultures. (The Tagbanua are an ancient people with a script which came to them from southern India via Indonesia, and that was written on bamboo. The language is now written in the Roman alphabet.) At one time, the Tagbanua were reluctant to speak their language in town. That has shifted. We were told that they now proudly declare: I am Tagbanua!!
The land the tribes live on often has resources of great value which have been targeted and exploited by the same oligarchs and multinationals I wrote about here: https://orionblair.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/poverty-in-the-philippines/. Often tribal people have been moved off their land, even killed, by the rich and powerful. Does this sound at all familiar to a North American audience?!
However, the Tagbanua have something unique going for them: in 1998 and later in 2010, groups of Tagbanua received “Certificates of Ancestral Domain Title,” giving them exclusive rights to the land, sea and air on which they live. This is very similar to the sovereignty rights that tribal groups all over the world, including North America, have struggled for and sometimes obtained. According to the paper cited above, as of 2007, “only 41 Titles covering half a million hectares of land have been awarded to Indigenous Communities.” I’m not aware that much has changed since then.
[Some quick research tells me that in November, 2018, five indigenous communities, including the Aeta of Kanawan with whom Lina worked for years, have “declared” their land “indigenous communities conserved territories and areas” or ICCAs. There are now ten such ICCAs in the Philippines. All have status with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and with the UN, but I don’t believe they have the same level of protection from the Philippine government as an ancestral domain.]
This does not mean that Tagbanua lands are immune to threats, but they do have legal protection. It also means that we entered Marupo, and later the island and village of Tara, at their invitation. It was a privilege to be welcomed so warmly into their lives.
So now we’ll walk toward the sea along this dike between rice fields.
The rice has been harvested. Water drains from one paddy to the one below.
The paddy was plowed and harrowed with this bamboo harrow pulled by a carabao or water buffalo. We saw two carabao in the fields – communally owned, or shared? I don’t know.
Here is one of them, with a companion!
Here you see the kubo where we began, and coconut palms above the village.
The lattice of bamboo supports pole beans.
This woman is up to her knees in water, harvesting kangkong or “water morning glory,” Ipomoea aquatica,
well named as you can see! The tender tops are a great cooked vegetable.
The flower of the water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is beautiful, but the plant is a pest, spreading rapidly in any shallow water. I asked, and apparently the villagers don’t use this plant, even as pig food.
Only five minutes from the kubo is an inlet from the sea, protected by mangroves, a harbor for small bangkas which brought many people to Marupo for the medical clinic from as far as three hours away. Not everyone came by road.
Marupo has a varied and well stewarded resource base. I will show you more in the next post. Thank you, Lina, for taking these photos!!
Here are three posts, the first from September 2013 about the Aeta of Kanawan, the second and third from February 2018 about the T’boli people of Mindanao.
Journeys 