By JEEU CHRISTOPHER GONZALES 

They attacked the rival tribe swiftly, without warning, taking them by surprise. The moment an enemy fell to the ground, a headhunter hacked at his neck with his axe, decapitating his head. An ancient tradition practiced by early Bontoc Igorot, headhunting was done to avenge their brothers or to accept a war challenge posed by a rival tribe. Back home, their trophies served as emblems of their courage and fierceness.

Dog-Eat-Dog World 

The Bontoc Igorot of the Mountain Province are one of the numerous ethnolinguistic groups collectively known as Igorot who occupy the Cordillera region. Little was known about them before the coming of Spanish colonizers in 1521. Early Spanish records show that, in 1663, a military expedition only managed to penetrate southern Benguet, which is part of the present-day Mountain Province, due to an unfamiliar and dangerous terrain and fierce resistance by the natives. Coupled with defiance from other ethnolinguistic groups, the Spanish assumed that all Filipinos were barbaric and, thus, in need of “civilization” through colonization. This Western mentality to take responsibility for supposedly civilizing foreign peoples was eventually called the “white man’s burden.”

Explorers, colonizers, and conquistadores often had missionaries accompanying them to learn the culture and customs of a society. This made it easier for them to forge pacts with datus and chieftains, and consequently use the divide-and-conquer tactic by exploiting tribal wars. This practice of studying the origins, behavior, and cultural practices of humans later became known as anthropology. Missionaries were among the first to practice a primitive form of anthropology to penetrate other societies. The discipline has developed into a social science in the wake of widespread colonization.

By the turn of the 19th century, American colonizers occupied the country, and the fierce Bontoc Igorot tribe had been subdued after their defeat in the Filipino-American War. The Americans used an emerging form of Western anthropology known as ethnography to document different tribes in the country and to find ways to quell their rebellion.

Having taken three years to undertake, the first ethnographic study of the Bontoc Igorot was concluded by American colonizers in 1906. Ethnography entails “living with and living like” the group an ethnographer is studying. Ethnography has paved the way for the recognition of the Bontoc Igorot as an ethnolinguistic group, regardless of their existence centuries before the study was conducted. Thus, the Bontoc Igorot were only legitimized as a distinct ethnolinguistic group when Western anthropologists came to study them.

In 1904, scores of the Bontoc Igorot were brought to the United States, to be showcased at the St. Louis World Fair. The place where they stayed was called Dogtown, so named supposedly because of their appetite for dog meat that amused and disgusted Americans. Along with 50 other ethnolinguistic tribes from 45 nations all over the world, the Bontoc Igorot were sent to the US to celebrate the centennial of the purchase of Louisiana from France. Here, they were the most popular tribe because of their skimpy outfits, constant dancing and, again, taste for dog meat.

This exhibition supported the rather simplistic notion that ethnography as a scientific method could provide an adequate cultural description of ethnic groups based on a writer’s first-hand experience with a strange group of people. It was perceived as a breakthrough in anthropological research because it meant data gathering in the actual communities of the group being studied. Despite its lofty goals, ethnography became another vehicle for projecting Western supremacy over “other” cultures due to the power of Western academe.

Because only Western academicians were endowed with the training and expertise, then, to conduct ethnographic studies, they used their own “superior” culture as a standard for being civilized. For example, American anthropologists described the Igorot in terms of their clothing, which evolved from simple handwoven cloths to shirts and blouses from the Second World War. This emulation of Western fashion and customs was seen as a form of modernization.

The Tail Wagging the Dog

Today, this modernization is framed in terms of the concept of globalization, the campaign to achieve a homogeneous international community. In this setting, the boundaries between cultures rapidly blur, and small societies and their culture are in danger of extinction.

In the name of modernization, international financial lending institutions have contributed money to build dams on all the major tributaries of the Cordillera River. This has caused not only the displacement of the Bontoc Igorot from their ancestral lands, but also the death of their livelihood as they can no longer fish from the waters stagnated by the dams.

Anthropologists have a crucial role in legitimizing globalization’s forced homogenization of the world’s cultures. Ethnography has evolved from simply being an instructive form of travel writing to a more political branch of anthropology, following the Western model wherein the legitimacy of such a study is based on the approval of leading scientific and educational institutions, mostly public-funded.

Ethnographers may be commissioned by such government agencies as the Department of Energy that could, then, use the study’s data for dubious purposes. For example, the dam projects’ prospective benefits, such as the generation of electricity for more households, could be highlighted while their detrimental effects on indigenous peoples could be suppressed.

Gone to the Dogs

In contrast to this dominant method of research, the current campaign of progressive anthropologists is ethnography as participatory research. Researchers can then collaborate with a group of people from marginalized sectors, such as indigenous communities, to gather information about their locale and use this for their own development.

As opposed to most mainstream research methods, which hide under the facade of objectivity and are therefore detached from the subject, participatory research aims to pass the tools for analysis to the group being studied. Because it advocates the causes of marginalized sectors, participatory research recognizes the contradictions, as well as inequalities in the class and cultural structure, and can be used to pave the way for much-needed social reforms.

Numerous organizations such as the Cordillera People’s Alliance have employed such methods to empower local indigenous groups and advance their cause through mass campaigns and demonstrations, film documentaries, academic papers, websites and pamphlets and primers. In Pangasinan, indigenous people were at the forefront of the project to halt the construction of the San Roque dam. Subsequent ethnographic studies on this campaign not only delved into the construction phase itself, but deeper into the social, economic, and cultural dangers it posed.

Despite the attempts of ethnographers to hand tools for analysis to members of indigenous groups themselves, participatory research remains marginal. Those done by alternative organizations and institutions are deemed subversive because their content can empower the group participating in, not only being subjected to, the study.

Although many such studies have managed to shatter the absurd representation of indigenous peoples as exotic, uncivilized, and barbaric, participatory research’s liberating potential is yet untapped in academia. Until they can gain wider recognition, and oppressive academic metrics and methods are dismantled, the Bontoc Igorot will continue to be seen as headhunters and dog-eaters. ●

Published in print in the Collegian’s August 20, 2004 issue, with the headline “Dog-Eaters.” Jeeu Christopher Gonzales was the publication’s Kultura editor from 2006 to 2007.