Bagobo Success Story

Actually this is the only article i got from the internet about a bagobo person who bacame popular in their tribe for his affiliation and his in-depth study about Bagobo tribe. But as I continuously surf in the internet I cannot find other articles describing this person. In fact, what is written in this article is that this person is stated to be photographer so that's why I publish this post. The article is this.!!!! Bagobo Life: A Photo Exhibit at the Davao MuseumGermelina A. Lacorte / MindaNews / 18 May 2003 DAVAO CITY – An exhibit of some two dozen vintage photographs featuring glimpses of Bagobo life as far back as a century ago has been opened at the Davao Museum by a Bagobo artist-photographer who is deep into the history of Mindanao's ethnic tribes. Datu Miguelito Bangkas, who studied photography in Japan and has launched exhibits and lectures about the tribe in different parts of the country, said the three-month exhibit---to end June 15---gives the public some perspective on the different experiences the Bagobos went through from the coming of the American colonizers a century ago, to the Japanese and the abaca boom in the 1930s and the tribe’s diaspora at present. Among those displayed at the Davao Museum is a vintage photograph of the first Bagobos who set foot on St. Louis, Missouri, USA in 1904. The picture, culled from the old postcard collection of American writer Jonathan Best, showed a group of Bagobos who were among the 1,100 Filipinos featured as "live anthropological display" of the Philippine village at the St. Louis World Exposition that year, organized to convince the American people on the need for the US colonial war against Filipinos. The sepia photograph showed a Bagobo house looming in the background. Bagobos had to carry the materials of their house all the way to the US and assembled them for the exhibit. Viewed from the backdrop of advanced technology, the Philippine village reportedly changed the opinions of Americans initially opposed to the US colonial war in the Philippines. Since it featured the Filipinos as a 'savage' race that needed to be 'civilized,' the exhibit convinced the average American of the necessity of colonial occupation and cast a long lasting bias against the Filipino as a people. "What you see of the Bagobos now are mere remnants of the past," Datu Bangkas said, explaining that Western influence had totally pervaded the Bagobos' way of life so that their own culture has been erased. "When the Americans came in about a century ago, the Bagobos were forced to assimilate through the subtle use of education. At first, the Bagobo resisted gestures to entice them to schools but later on, colonizers were able to recruit even Bagobos to teach The exhibit features a sepia 1930 portrait picture of Laidan Bagobo, the first Bagobo licensed by the American colonial government to teach Bagobo natives. This was the height of the abaca boom in Davao, captured in another picture entitled "Bolante" which shows two Bagobos deep into their work with the spinning machine. Davao was known as “Little Tokyo” before the second world war because of the presence of a large number of Japanese working in abaca plantations in the area. A sepia photograph captured a memorable encounter between a group of Bagobos and the Japanese during the building of the Bagobo-Japanese road. The first Bagobos who set foot in St. Louis, Missouri, USA in 1904. Datu Bangkas said the Japanese found it easier to relate to the Bagobo's animistic belief, because it was similar to their own. A photo captioned Nit To, Bagobo word for ‘spirit,’ showed a collection of wooden sculptures carved after the shape of human faces, representing the spirit of each family member in each Bagobo house. Every time a family member gets sick, the Bagobo family would to talk to the spirit represented by the wood, not to the sick person. Close relationship between the Bagobos and the Japanese resulted to intermarriages captured in the 1930 photograph of a Japanese-Bagobo wedding. The photograph shows a Japanese groom flanked by the entire Bagobo family of the bride. After the war, the US Congress passed the Enemy Property Act allowing USAFFE (United States Air Force in the Far East) and Filipino guerillas to confiscate land owned by the Japanese. The confiscation reportedly affected some ancestral lands owned by the Bagobos, who were accused as Japanese 'dummies.' To air their grievance, the Bagobos went to see lawyer Pedro Quitain, who asked Congressman Salipida Pendatun to arrange a Malacanang meeting with President Manuel Roxas. Thus, the 1947 picture of Bagobo Chieftain Datu Masaglang with President Roxas. Datu Magsalang had asked the President to stop the law’s implementation but it was too late for Roxas to intervene because most of the ancestral lands of the Bagobos were already taken. Other interesting photographs include the 1900 US Governor's office, the seat of the US government which is now the engineering department of the University of Mindanao; a sepia 1936 portrait of Datu Betil, the brave Bagobo warrior killed by the Japanese for refusing to let them use his horse for the war; "The Dentist" shows a Bagobo mother, sharpening the teeth of her son with a bamboo reed (also from the collection of Jonathan Best), a 1910 picture entitled Payang Boloy, the house owned by a Bagobo Datu the size and design of which could no longer be found in Bagobo land; and the 1930 portrait of the artist's grandfather Datu Botow Bangkas, the first Bagobo Tagabawa to marry a Bagobo Guiangan that led to the peace pact among the two warring Bagobo groups. The marriage purportedly stopped the Nga Yow (tribal war) which had been going on between the Bagobo-Guiangan and the Bagobo-Tagabawa for some time. Some of the photographs displayed were culled from the collections outside of the country, including the "kabil" or Bagobo backpack, culled from the Smithsonian Institution Museum in Washington D.C. Datu Bangkas used to serve as acting chief of the cultural affairs section of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP). He had been doing photo exhibits on the tribal peoples of Mindanao at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and had been to folklife festival of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and a cultural gathering at the New York Museum of Natural History Philippine Center.

-pinalabi-