Lily Mendoza's Theoretical Advances in Indigenization Studies for those who want to understand the discourse in the Philippine academe.

Tahanan-Aralan Para sa Babaylan (CFBS) Our annual planning retreats began in 2010 when we planned and organized the First International Babaylan Conference. In 2011, we  met to plan the August retreat/symposium, "Decolonization and Indigenization as a Path to the Sacred." In 2012, the theme of our planning retreat was "Strengthening Our Foundation"; the choice of this theme reflects our growth as a community that is now having to think about sustainability and  how we want to move towards the future in this time of great turning. This time of "great turning" refers to the transformation or shifts that we are experiencing at many levels: cosmic, planetary, climate, economic, cultural and social -- shifts that we experience in our personal lives. We believe that we are a resource-rich people as we recover and remember our connection to our ancestors and to the indigenous core values we still know and live in our bodies. As a Filipino community in the diaspora, CFBS exists to study and research Indigenous Filipino Knowledge Systems and Practices (IKSP) as well as to provide a container for our indigenous/babaylan-inspired projects and to participate and collaborate with other communities who share our vision. We are a community that is drawn together by our love for our Kapwa and the calling to share these gifts with our communities and the world at large. Our vision is inspired by the wisdom and power of the ancient babaylan to bring about well-being and wholeness to the communities s/he serves. At this year's retreat, we were inspired to call forth new names for the various levels of engagements within CFBS: Haligi ng Sinag/Pillars of Light -- refers to the seven core group members that meet regularly via conference calls to make decisions about CFBS events and projects in consultation with ... Banaag/Ray of light -- members who have worked closely with the core group for the past three years in organizing and implementing CFBS events and projects. Alaya/New Dawn -- members who volunteer their time and talent at various CFBS events and projects. So we invite you, our readers, to join us at these various levels. Please talk to us. During this weekend, we also worked on creating group norms that will guide us in our process of planning. We share them here as a work-in-progress:  We commit to uphold the beauty of Kapwa through playfulness, openness, respect, honesty, appreciation and affection, patience, and trusting. We commit to doing shadow work constructively and responsibly in service to ourselves and to our community. We commit to the sustainability of the organization through financial independence, resource generation, legacy planning, and alliance building. We commit to a process of indigenous-inspired decision-making that is based on modified consensus and is scalable. We commit to the centrality and importance of ritual. We are mindful that we are Kasinag to each other; each an expression of the individual rays of light that shine from the core of our Loob.  We commit to be discerning and wise regarding issues of information-sharing in the process of     decision making that impacts our community and our projects We commit to the research and compilation of archival materials of IKSP. We create a strong foundation by listening to each other's ancestral stories: our roots in the Philippines and the routes we took to arrive at this continent; the stories we carry in our hearts and minds about our love for our people and our homeland; our immediate families and communities that nurture us in the present. We spent Saturday evening passing the talking bowl relishing these stories. Our cultural, personal and ritual nurturance comes from such deep work and sharing...all of which helps us translate these into our "CFBS programs." We also set up a mural wall that we put up on our pantry door. At the center are the baybayin scripts for Tahanan-Aralan Para sa Babaylan (CFBS) . Each one was given a piece of paper that contained a phrase from our vision and mission statement. We were asked to meditate on this phrase and then the following morning to draw a visual representation on the mural.  As we moved throughout the weekend, this mural was our visual reminder of why CFBS exists, why we are engaged with it, and why the calling is strong and clear in each one of us. Some Alaya members joined us on Sunday for further planning of events for 2012-2013. Everyone was excited by the idea of having the second international babaylan conference in 2013. All roads lead to this conference from hereon. These are just some of the ideas that we are brewing together.          Music concerts: Grace Nono; Kulintang groups       Healer/s-in-Residence project       IKSP Healing Circles: Connecting to Filipino roots       Healing Grief Rituals       Kapwa Cafe and catering       Book projects      Video and media projects      Advocacy Projects in support of IPS in the Philippines       Weaving Threads, Weaving Tales: Indigenous Fashion and Folklore       Supporting Kapwa 3 conference in The Philippines Please ask us how you might participate and join us.  

Filipina Sets Sail Aboard Vaka Canoe For A Pacific Voyage To Represent Ancient Philippine Mariners San Diego, California, U.S.A. January, 24, 2012 Jocelyn "Joy" Ronquillo Ancheta, a Filipino American, will be sailing with the Vaka Pacific Voyagers to represent the Polynesian and Austronesia legacy of the ancestral Philippine mariners. Jocelyn Ancheta, is the sole Filipino to be selected as a crew member to join the prestigious Vaka. This will be the third leg of the Vaka Pacific Voyage. The flotilla of seven traditionally-based Polynesian deep sea canoes will be setting sail on Tuesday morning January 24, 2012 from Spanish Landing West, San Diego, California. The third leg South of the Vaka voyage will feature these destinations: Cabo San Lucas Mexico, the Cocos Islands of Costa Rica, the Galapagos islands, the Marquesas islands, and the islands of Tahiti. "I am so proud to be able to honor and represent my ancestors and their traditional ways of sailing and navigation as part of the Vaka" says Jocelyn Ancheta regarding her first voyage aboard the Vaka canoe. Jocelyn Ancheta has been receiving instruction on the ancient Philippine healing systems of Ablon and Pranic Energy Healing, as well as the Hawaiian healing massage art of Lomi Lomi. An active community organizer, Jocelyn volunteers for the Center for Babaylan Studies, a group dedicated to the indigenous spiritual knowledge systems of the pre-colonial Philippines. Ms. Ancheta was the Babaylan Pavilion director for the 20th Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture held on September 2011 at San Pedro, California. "My hope is to inspire other Filipinos to appreciate the great legacy of the ancient Bangka boat tradition." Joy continues, "...our ancestors were able to navigate huge stretches of ocean via traditional navigation, and by the power of the spiritual energy that emanates from the islands. One of the main goals of my voyage is to bring about awareness of critical environmental conditions that the oceans are in. I hope that Filipinos take pride in their ancestral connection with the oceans, and become responsible stewards of mother dagat (ocean)" Jocelyn Ancheta will be documenting her voyage via location call in posts, and journal blog entries. Joy beams, "I would love to see the Philippines reclaim its rightful place alongside the other Polynesian sailing vessels by building a proper traditional deep sea balangay canoe." The Vaka vessels have aboard representatives of several Polynesian peoples including, but not limited to the Cook Islands, Fiji, Maori of New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tahiti, and now the Philippines. Jocelyn will be sailing aboard the Pan-Pacific multi-national Vaka canoe. The goal of the Vaka Pacific Voyage is to bring about ecological awareness of the oceans, cultivate pride in the peoples of Austro and Polynesia, and honor the traditions of the original Pacific Voyagers. The Vaka Pacific Voyage started in Aotearoa, New Zealand on April 2011. After joining into a flotilla of seven canoes in Hawaii, the Vaka sailed all the way to North America, arriving in San Francisco, California. The Vaka proceeded down the coast of California visiting at Malibu, Cabrillo Beach, and finally docking in San Diego. After this current leg, the voyage continues from Tahiti back to their respective home islands. Jocelyn Ancheta is extremely excited to sail aboard a traditional styled canoe aspart of this epic Pacific Voyage. "Joy" will be using traditional navigation, sea currents, stars, and animals to guide her on her journey. The Vaka Pacific Voyagers are proud to have Jocelyn "Joy" Ancheta as part of their sailing crew. Contact info: Jocelyn "Joy" Ronquillo Ancheta Email: joypacificvoyager@gmail.com Vaka Pacific Voyagers http://www.pacificvoyagers.org/ Text provided to the Babaylan Files by Letecia Layson 24 January 2012.

Film Review of Busong Mykelle PacquingOct. 27, 2011 I recently watched Aureaus Solito’s latest film Busong (translated from Palawan as “fate”) at the ImagineNative film festival in Toronto.  I have never seen any of Solito’s work prior to Busong.  As well, all I knew of him was of what Katrin de Guia mentioned of him in her article contribution to Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous.  I called on some of my family to attend the film and it happened that my Tita and my two cousins—her two children—came with me.After the film, I felt overwhelmed—the film was intense.  I felt that my thoughts had been catapulted into the mountains, rivers, beaches, forests of Palawan (as the north wind began to bring in the cold weather outside the theatre)—as well as the challenges, realities, beauties, and gifts that the Palawan people bring in their spirituality and worldview that is so intrinsically tied to the land.  The implications of watching the film in Toronto at an Indigenous film festival which brought people of all colours to see the film had given me great comfort and hope for peace and understanding on this land.  It was the first time for me that friends from my Indigenous circles and my Filipino circles had come together on equal footing—we are beginning to see the interconnections of our stories.Oftentimes I get the sense that the Indigenous People of the land where I’ve made my home feel alienated from the peoples who arrive to their traditional lands because of the waves of colonization that have been pouring in from all over the world carrying their traumas and diseases—making them feel weary of the cultures that newcomers bring with them.  On the Filipino side, I get the sense that many Filipinos that live away from the Philippines believe that they are severed from their homeland and have no choice but to assimilate to the dominant culture in order to flourish—and with that that, the assimilation of the dominant culture’s behavior of suppressing Indigenous People.  It was for the first time that I felt that the two communities were open to each other.Despite my education in Indigenous ways, I could sense at the beginning of the film—when the viewer is forced into the Palawan pace of time in long drawn-out shots of the landscape—that my impatience with this pace revealed my modern city indoctrination.  At this point of the film, I had to let go of this need to process my thoughts as fast as I could simply for the sake of efficiency.  I had to let go of my city-mind—needed to navigate train lines, schedules and coordinate meeting places and pick-up locations—and suspend them to immerse myself into the film.  There caused a mental discomfort, but it felt like medicine afterwards.  It was necessary in order to see the film at the level that Solito presented.After the first sub-plot, it began to make sense how Solito was exposing the interconnections of the stories—the search for healing and for beauty—in the Palawan way.  It became clear how the struggle for that beauty is brought about by going through forced external interferences—a chainsaw that was used to cut indiscriminately, a white foreigner who imposed alien concepts of private property, and a Manilan who finds his Palawan spirit name and takes up his role as a balian.  The ending of the film encompasses all these struggles and the beauty that was borne from all the separate stories.I was saddened that my younger cousin did not understand the film, but this reminded me that understanding Indigenous ways is a privilege.  Indigenous ways are not relegated to the marginalized, the uneducated, the illiterate, and the economically disadvantaged as mainstream perception perceives it.  It takes a fair amount of experiential education and literacy of nature simply to understand Solito’s film—and I think this is one of the film’s weaknesses.  The reality is, if you grew up in the city in a Christian family, the richness of what Busong offers may not be accessible to you.What concerns me now is not so much if Busong can be understood in its film context, so much as if the Indigenous Thought implicated in the movie can still be accessed by non-Palawan city dwellers in a real-world context.  Can the concept of busong—as I understand it, the understanding of one’s story, which encompasses one’s fate (or what the Creator provides you), experiences, and actions—be understood and integrated into one’s worldview?  Can the intrinsic connection to spirit and the land be understood as crucial in maintaining balance in one’s life?  Can the innocence of a lifestyle gathering clams provide a shift in the modern consciousness that has been conditioned and industrialized to work the body full-time?Solito’s film would say that yes, that this can be done—as depicted by the Palawan who was born and raised in Manila and became immersed in his ancestors’ ways out of his desire to go back to Palawan and hear the ending of his uncle’s song that he recorded some time ago.It is my hope that this film fuels the desire of others to find the songs of their own busong and sing them, knowing that wherever they are, the land is listening.

Historical Markers on Filipino Women’s Sexuality During Spanish Colonial Times By Gloria Esguerra Melencio The intention of this research paper is to compile data about the Filipino women’s activities, rituals and customs related to sexuality and mark its historical markers along the way from the 16th up to 17th centuries. The paper asks the following questions: What did the Spanish colonizers find out when they first saw the women? How did the Spanish colonizers view the Filipino women through time? What were the Filipino women’s activities, rituals and customs that pertain to sexuality? How did they express their sexual desires? Why were polygamy, concubinage and abortion practiced ? How did the Spanish colonizers wield the Christian Doctrine to conquer the so-called Evils that plague the Filipino women? What was the perception of the Filipino women of the Spanish colonizers? Why sexuality? Why Historical Markers? First, the researcher chooses the sexuality aspect of women as a topic because most of the materials gathered about womanhod focus on chastity, modesty, virginity, relationship with men and everything related to her being a woman that involves conception, childbearing, giving birth or failing to give birth. Sexuality here as the Webster’s Dictionary defines is the “possession of the structural and functional differentia of sex.” Second, the researcher sees putting historical markers on the important events related to women’s sexuality using the historical process of Spanish colonization as a backdrop while putting forth forward the social issues that have arisen as past and present-day problems. Third, the researcher categorizes the historical markers as nodal points in the meeting of two different peoples and cultures – the paganistic native Filipinos and the Christian Hispanics – and discovers along the way a metamorphosed culture where can be threshed out specific issues of Filipino women related to sexuality. The periodization, as the researcher discerns, is fluid. It means the event or symbolical object had begun or surfaced when the Spanish colonizers set foot on the islands in the 16th century and continued until the 17th century. Or may have been continuing up until the present time. Further study on the periods that are marked as nodal points in women’s sexuality is a must in the future because it will provide explanations and clarifications as to what had transpired in the past that led the way to where the women are now in history. Full Link posted 17 September 2009 on Philippine History and provided to the Babaylan Files by Letecia Layson

Why is decolonization and indigenization important to Filipinos today? One of the reasons is that it helps Filipinos become more integrated in their own cultural identity. It also helps them become strengthened as a collective of people who are of the archipelago called the Philippines or whose ancestry hails from there. Why do Filipinos have some sort of cultural identity crisis? Maybe this can help you find answers: Here is the intro to a booklist called Curing Colonial Stupor, at amazon.com: When an imperial power comes and colonizes indigenous people, takes away their culture and language and teaches native people to become eurocentric and to look down upon their own kind... a human sickness sets in that is called colonial mentality. This is a systemic and traumatic kind of educational and programming of minds. It is a set of dysfunctional human beings, with a superiority complex, teaching with brutal methods, another set of human beings how to have an inferiority complex and how to be innately dysfunctional as a human being.This dysfunction, this colonial mentality and colonizers mentality can be cured.How to find healing?First, get very angry. The first book listed here will help you do that and is called The Forbidden Book for a reason. Who among the U.S. imperial forces want the little people, among those they colonized and in their own country, to understand the demented thinking they have that justifies their colonization of people who seek their own independence and ways of life?Next, figure out that this whole Life thing and how people think is all a Game of sorts. The illusions that people project upon us, that we agree to uphold can be shattered.Next, find ways to rid yourself of programmed thinking that you unconsciously began to subscribe to throughout your life. Aha! That's the catch---it takes years to deprogram. But a personal practice of meditation and self-reflection can help you achieve that.Return to your roots.Unsubscribe from belief systems that were constructed to benefit one people and take away from another.Find healing, wholeness, Clarity.This booklist includes titles such as: Forbidden Book, by Abe Ignacio, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, Helen Toribio  Waking Up In Time: Finding Inner Peace In Times of Accelerating Change by Peter Russell Coming Full Circle, by Leny Strobel If Life is a Game These are the Rules by Chérie Carter-Scott How to See Yourself as You Really Are... by by Dalai Lama See the amazon booklist on "Curing colonial stupor" here

Towards a 'Kapwa' Theory of Art: Multiplicity in Integrative Contemporary Practices by Margarity Certeza Garcia Presented at: Bahaus University Weimar Masters in Public Arts and New Artistic Strategies 21 February 2011 Excerpt (What)…is the large percentage of the population of the world who could be categorized as 'Other,' to do when attempting to enter the bastions of the art world, other then, at least for women who might be perceived as desirable, take off their clothes; as Guerilla Girls' sardonically suggested in a series of poster placed in the New York City arts scene in the 1980s. That question, sans the mocking response, (which is both humorous and painful in its stark reality), forms the crux of this paper. What are additional ways for an artist from the non-dominant modality to position themselves and their work? What additional examples exist for coherent practice that acknowledge the multiple possibilities and hybrid and shifting positions of contemporary life? Where do I, as a hybrid Filipino Artist studying in Europe stand in relation to this debate? This essay neither intends to establish a definitive answer to these questions nor to privilege any artistic theory as a response to them. Instead, it represents an examination of the problem itself, followed by a brief expiration of the possibility of multiplicity using alternative theories. Full text link provided by Leny Strobel

Popular Spirituality as Cultural Energy by Albert E. Alejo, SJ This paper was delivered during the Spirituality Forum III on August 5,2003 at University of Sto. Tomas CME Auditorium, Manila, Philippines. This article was previously published in Lecture Series 3 on Spirituality, 2004. Excerpt Spirituality has always been difficult to define. At the heart of the notion of spirituality, however, is the people’s search for the sacred, for a transcendent dimension to life, for something that gives people meaning in their lives, something that ennobles them to think of and be concerned about a higher cause, something that offers them inner connection and deeper purpose in life, something that helps them celebrate life and existence. From the data of my experience---I would not claim empirical precision here---I discern at least four spiritual dimensions of our cultural religious practices. I call them spirituality of the body, spirituality of the many, spirituality of celebration and spirituality of negotiation. There is no claim here of exhaustive listing. Let me not waste time being apologetic for my observation. Full text link provided by Leny Strobel Leny writes: This essay by Paring Bert Alejo is refreshing in the way it articulates and clarifies, for me, the language of popular spirituality among the Filipinos especially of the masa/common folks. I find it interesting that the official church (Catholic) often deems this language as mere resistance against the church's dominant practices when in fact, as Fr. Alejo says, it is cultural energy that challenges our vocabularies of power. Full text on Leny's blog, Kathang Pinay 2.

Indigenous and Cultural Psychology: Understanding People in Context Uichol Kim, Kuo-Shu Yang and Kwang-Kuo Hwang, eds. Springer, 2006, ISBN 978-0-387-28661-7 (Print) 978-0-387-28662-4 (Online) DOI: 10.1007/0-387-28662-4 From the Preface The development of indigenous psychology as a field has a short history. Its emergence has been stimulated by leading psychologists in various parts of the world. Virgilio Enriquez was a charismatic leader, championing Sikolohiyang Pilipino (Filipino psychology), which became a national movement in the Philippines (Enriquez, 1992; Pe-pua, Chapter 5, this volume). Durgan and Sinha was critical of “carbon copying” Western psychology and was a vocal advocate of indigenizing psychology. There were other scholars who stressed the importance of indigenous knowledge: Yoshi Kashima in Australia; Bame Nsamenang in Cameroon; John Berry and John Adair in Canada; Reuben Ardila in Columbia; Denise Jodelet inFrance; James Georgas in Greece; Michael Bond, Fanny Cheung, David Ho, Henry Kao, Kwok Leung, and Chung-Fang Yang in Hong Kong; R. K. Naidu, J. B. P. Sinha, R. C. Tripathi, Ramesh Mishra, and Girishwar Misra in India; Hiroshi Azuma, Akira Hoshino, and Susumu Yamaguchi in Japan; Sang-Chin Choi, Uichol Kim, and Young-Shin Park in Korea; Rogelio Diaz-Guerrero and Rolando Diaz-Loving in Mexico; Michael Durojaiye in Nigeria; Alfred Lagmay and Rogelia Pe-pua in the Philippines; Leo Marai of Papua New Guinea; Pawel Boski in Poland; Boris Lomov in Russia; Carl Martin Allwood in Sweden; Pierre Dasen in Switzerland; Kuo-Shu Yang and Kwang-Kuo Hwang in Taiwan; Cigdem Kâgitçibasi in Turkey; Padmal de Silva and Rom Harré in the United Kingdom; Fathali Moghaddam, Carolyn Pope, and Joseph Trimble in the United States; and José Miguel Salazar in Venezuela. They represented individual voices, with differing perspective and emphasis... To bring together diverse viewpoints, approaches, and perspectives in indigenous psychology around the world, an international workshop entitled Scientific Advances in Indigenous Psychologies: Philosophical, Cultural and Empirical Contributions was held in Taipei, Taiwan, October 29-November 1, 2001. The purpose of the three-day workshop was to bring together leading scholars to document the scientific advances in indigenous psychology and to discuss possible integration of the field. The workshop provided an opportunity for participants to present their views and findings and to discuss the basis for integration and collaboration. If we had to identify a weakness in the present volume, it is the lack of representation of psychologists representing indigenous peoples. The volume focuses on modern nations, and we could not fully represent scholarly work on indigenous peoples. We hope that a volume that focuses on the indigenous psychology of indigenous peoples will be published in the near future... Submitted by Leny Strobel