Overcoming the Threat to

Indigenous Creative
Diversity

HUM081 Indigenous Creative Crafts

MBDNazario
From the Lecture of the NCCA Director
Intangible • ICH is the mainspring of cultural diversity and its maintenance a
Cultural guarantee for continuing cultural diversity. – UNESCO 2003 Convention
Heritage

https://steemit.com/humanities/@badet/ensuring-the-continuity-of-philippine-culture
Intangible Cultural Heritage
• The ff are the domains of ICH:
1. Oral traditions including languages
• 2. Performing arts (music, dance, theatre)
• 3. Social practices, festivals, rituals
• 4. Knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe.
• 5. Traditional craftmanship
 https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/02/world/early-humans-philippine-islands/index.html

• We are an old society. Ex. Homini tools found in Kalinga 709,000 yrs ago

Old Society:
• Hence, we developed a lot of languages at least 180. Very unified language from one family.
Anywhere we have core meaning-

Rich ICH Ex. BA- weight or gravity (tumba, giba, gaba –Cebuano, mataba),
ONG-enclosure (kabaong, silong, payong, kandong, kulong),
AW-wild, loose and free (singaw, alingawngaw, bugaw, araw)
Creative
Diversity • Striking quality of Filipino traditional cultures is its diversity and richness.
• From ritual vessels to hunting tools, textiles to pottery and epic poetry to
rhythmic dances.
• Ex lingling o, ancient gold crafts, bulul, Ifugao basket, Ifugao houses, Torogan in
Maranao, Ilokano abel
 Core Principle of
Philippine Ethnicity:
Shared Sense of Being

• Built upon shared or communal creativity.

• Communal creativity creates the great diversity of
Philippine traditional cultures.

Why? What makes a strong sense of

community foster creativity?
https://ph.asiatatler.com/life/weaving-the-threads-of-filipino-heritage
Answer:
• Closeness to others allows us to be more trusting,
open, and thus more freely expressive.
Bringing out your innermost thoughts and
feelings.
• Arts and crafts are richest, most creative and
diverse in communal cultures.
• Food is tastier, speech more melodic (punto) and
things of everyday life more colorful.

https://primer.com.ph/blog/2017/03/22/ph-is-72nd-happiest-country-world-happiness-report-2017/
 Problem:Threatened by the
homogenizing monoculture of
global consumerism.

Causes:
1. Mis education
2. Global consumerism
a. Competition rather than communalism
b. Consumerism rather than creativity
https://qrius.com/nothing-consumerism-new-cancer/

• A challenge to the principle of Philippine ethnicity

Problem:
1. (Mis)
education
Our education does not cater to the
creation but to analysis

https://www.bellvoices.org/season1/category/Season
How are we educated? (Mis education)
• Are we aware of these cultural strengths?
• Are there adequate programs to affirm, develop them further?
Does our education instill in us a strong sense of community and Filipino identity?
What happened to the strong, self-help cooperative efforts made possible by the
bayanihan spirit?
(now, people move/help for money)
• Do we know what kind of intelligences are involved in the exercises of these
capacities?
• Does our education weaken or run counter to our native genius?
What
points out
• Loss of indigenous creativity.
• Ex. Loss of extemporaneous speech- Balagtasan or balitaw is
to mis becoming extinct .

education?
Chanting traditions like laji of Ibatans is disappearing.
Contemporary education:
Byproduct of western culture
• Promoted by globalization
• By-product of industrialization
• Trains people for narrowly specialized skills or professions
• Division of labor
Every professional or skilled person will have nothing in common with others. (Thus, making it
harder to communicate.)
It will be extremely difficult to develop communal bonds.
Especially true for highly specialized fields. No communication, no communal bond.
Highly, technical narrow profession- ex. EENT. Now there is even a left eye and right eye
specialist.
https://www.bellvoices.org/season1/category/Season+1
 • Less and less creative
Result: There is • Becoming more and more of the consumer
diminution of Self, • Develops expertise and the professions but may
Professional ego. also breed selfishness, lack of social responsibility
and professional tribalism.
• Cult of professional ego: promoting one’s
profession at the expense of the public good.
https://www.indianfolk.com/responsible-consumer-edited/
Ex. In a professional advancement- you think only of
your own profession and not include others.
Thus, there are economists who formulate policies as if
people do not matter. They deal with numbers and
abstracts.
Scientists pursuing knowledge, but uninformed by
social considerations. (inventing weapons of mass
destruction)
artists who create for other artists and art experts
alone.
Politicians who ply party interest above all (Vaccine
jumping)
officials more worried about self-preservation than
their people’s well being.
• No social conscience because we are educated to specialize in certain
fields.
• Culture of power and wealth will prevail
indigenous method
Counterpoint to the narrowing of
consciousness in the
contemporary life.
Counterpoint to the Multiple roles create a string sense of community, expands self.
narrowing of In our traditional communities, every person is socially nurtured to
consciousness in the perform multiple roles.
contemporary life. Let A farmer could also be a house-builder, healer, craftsman artist, epic
us look at the chanter-poet-musician, trader and community leader.
indigenous method.
Thus, every person can easily identify with others.
Multiple roles:
- make it easy for identities to overlap
- promotes expanded selves and strong feelings of community
- establishes the basic condition for creativity to flourish
In particular, the
practice of art is not
confined to a specialist
alone but as an art for
everyone in communal
village cultures Life Tradition Cycle
Muhammad Johan Harith
 In particular, the practice of art is • The practice of art and functional creativity is for everyone
not confined to a specialist alone
but as an art for everyone in • Artistic and other creative activities occur wherever and whenever
communal village cultures
there is human activity.
• In the indigenous culture everybody is an artist, that is why there is
no word for art because everything is art. (Like ancient civilization, art
was not yet invented)
• Since art is for everyone, we then have a vast resource pool of
practitioners of arts and crafts which encourages creativity:
https://steemit.com/traditional/@lapilipinas/philippines-ethnic-art-and-crafts - farmers become expert house builders
- housewives become accomplished weavers
- a barber an excellent lute payer.
 Problem: 2.
Consumerist,
market-
driven society https://cathedral.org.sg/courier-online/single/how-should-a-christian-respond-office-politics

• People lead separate lives

• Work is highly compartmentalized
• Employees are usually isolated, inducing insecurity and fear (kasi nag iingitan), the
anathema of creativity.(hence the necessity of team building)
In contrast,
rituals affirm shared
values

• Many rituals that our indigenous folk peoples observe as a way of affirming shared
values.
- feasts of devotion to a patron saint
- communal weaving of mats
- group pilgrimages to sacred sites
- praying together for a bountiful harvest.
• Promote an expanded or an inclusive sense of self, thus a concern for the common
good, generosity and extemporaneous creativity. Ex, weaving inside the cave in Samar.
Communal creativity ex, kanya kanyang luto ng sinigang, adobo etc.
The
academe
holds higher
regard to • Ex. A GAMABA awardee cannot teach his expertise in the university

research
setting if he is not a college grad. But people wo used him for their
dissertation can
and theories
rather than
actual
experience.
Are Creativity and academe incompatible?

Masters will flourish better in At the very least a guild type of

the non-formal and informal apprenticeship and training will
leaning context of communal produce better artists, than an
societies or village cultures. academic set-up.
Philippine Response

NCCA ESTABLISHED SCHOOLS FOR LIVING CREATED GAMABA(RA 7355, 1992)

TRADITIONS
 Is this
enough?
• https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/02/world/early-humans-philippine-islands/index.html
• https://dameandedimarmockingjay.wordpress.com/