Decolonizing the Diaspora Through the Center for Babaylan Studies

(Expanded version of the Talk given at: 500 Years of Christianity and the Global Filipin@: Postcolonial Perspectives” organized by the Berkley Centre for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University, USA, the Australian Institute of Theological Education, and the Theology and Religious Education Department of the De la Salle University).

Introduction and Land Acknowledgement

My name is Elenita Fe Luna Mendoza Strobel. I am Kapampangan from the Philippines. I left my homeland in 1982 and settled on Wappo, Southern Pomo, and Coast Miwok Lands. It took almost three decades to understand what settler colonialism and native genocide have done to the Land and the Peoples of the Lands I currently live with. With this realization, I acknowledge my own entanglement with this History and affirm my commitment to build relationships with the local indigenous communities so that with their permission, I may nurture and feed an indigenous future with them.

I begin with this land acknowledgement because colonialism is all about the Land. Dispossession of the Land led to the dispossession of our mind and bodies, our languages, our indigenous wisdom, knowledge and practices, and specially our indigenous spirituality.

This is what the violence of colonization has done to us as a people. National Artist for Literature NVM Gonzalez said we developed a type of cultural alzheimer’s disease. Filipino theologian Melba Maggay said we were culturally circumcised. Other scholars said we developed a split self and as a society there is now a great cultural divide between the masses and the educated elites. Vicente Rafael writes of white love — of Filipinos falling in love with their colonizers. Not only were we dispossessed of our Lands, we were dispossessed of our innate indigenous wisdom and knowledge that sustained us for thousands of years before the colonial era.

Our neocolonial educational system didn’t teach us to understand how colonialism works; how the modern paradigms of development and progress have tricked us into submission and we bought into the beliefs that the West, represented by the holy trinity of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) and World Trade Organization (WTO) would solve the problems of poverty, inequity and inequality, and injustice. Modernization programs via loans from the IMF and WB were poured to “developing” countries after WW2. By the 1980’s the structural adjustment programs that were imposed on “third world” countries resulted in loans that the local economies could not afford to repay, sinking them deeper into debt. In the Philippines, the Marcos government and succeeding leaders saw overseas Filipino workers as domestic assets that can be exported and their remittances would shore up the homeland economy and pay the interest on these loans. Fifty percent of the national budget goes into the interest payments of these loans.

I was in the Philippines doing research on the Babaylan tradition in the early 2000s when I watched televangelist Mike Velarde of the El Shaddai movement preach to his congregation at the Luneta park. He asked everyone to wave their white handkerchiefs if they have secured their visa to work overseas and fulfill the gospel’s “great commission.” He then asked those without visas yet to keep attending his church so that they may be equipped to serve God’s mission as domestic workers overseas.

Framing the export of Overseas Filipino Workers as fulfilling a Christian mission may be a salve for the pain of separation and leaving loved ones but it also bypasses structural analysis of the system of exploitation put in place by economic globalization. In this regard the religious movement doesn’t deem itself responsible for that need for analysis and critique.

Before I left the homeland, I was working for a multinational corporation and before this I worked for a World Bank-funded project. Young and miseducated, I didn’t know about the development paradigm that plunged the Philippines and the global south into unpayable debts and failed infrastructure projects (e.g., Bataan Nuclear plant) and the corruption schemes that lined the pockets of Marcos and his cronies.

I am from the generation who were taught instead to internalize what President McKinley said about colonizing us — that we are a people who needed to be uplifted and Christianized. Missionaries and Peace Corp Volunteers were part of this civilizing project along with Hollywood movies, textbooks, and popular American culture.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Millions of us have left our homeland in search of jobs to feed our families. In search of opportunities to better our lives. We acquired skills to fit into the global demand for caregiving, nursing, domestic work, construction, manufacturing, entertainment, etc. Rachel Parrenas, a Filipino American sociologist, calls us “the servants of globalization.”

By the time I arrived in the US in 1983, the prevailing condition among Filipinos in California was marked by the stark differences between the post 1965 Filipino immigrants and the earlier Manong generation, made up of mostly single, male, workers from rural areas in the Philippines. The newly arrived immigrants were educated, English speaking, and many came from the middle class and urban centers. The colonial mentality of new immigrants made them assimilate; discouraged their children from keeping their native languages; and led them to deny their ethnic roots and identities.

As a newly arrived immigrant, I came to realize that my neocolonial education made me identify with the U.S. but the U.S. didn’t identify with me. Thus began my journey of understanding why, after finally arriving to live in the white man’s house, I was still unhappy. I returned to school and I began to unpack, unlearn, and sought to undo the epistemic, psychic, and ontological violence of colonialism in my life.

In California, we joined a Presbyterian church and it became the site of my first experience of cultural and racial invisibility in the church. I felt othered’ exoticized, and racialized and there was no space in the mostly white, upper middle class, suburban congregation for the questions I posed. I eventually left. Today, when I am asked whether I am still a Christian my response is: I am who I am today because of all that I have been in the past and that includes being raised a Methodist. I have even reclaimed and honored the Catholic faith of my mother before she converted and married my dad. And I told my father, a Methodist pastor, as he lamented my being unchurched, that I am an even better person and Christian today than I ever was. I have also taught my university students that if they choose to be a Christian then they should be the best Christian they can be; be the best Muslim, be the best Buddhist, be the best agnostic and atheist they can be because at the heart of religion is the experience of wholeness, divine presence, and transcendental unity. This is what indigenous peoples mean when they talk about the sacred and holy in Nature, of God in nature. The Aetas say Lamuwan Kata to express this sacred wholeness. The indigenous peoples on Turtle Island have many different words for this experience as well. They embody this through their relationship with the Land and all the created beings — human and non human, visible and invisible.

Amidst this spiritual and cultural upheaval, I found the work of Virgilio Enriquez, the father of Filipino indigenous psychology. His framework and his articulation of Filipino indigenous core values: Kapwa, Pakikiramdam, Kagandahang Loob, Dangal, Paninindigan — stirred up something deep in my soul. I listened to this stirring and followed the trail that was set before me. Although there were earlier scholars and revolutionaries who wrote about Filipino national and cultural identity, it wasn’t until the 70s when a Filipino indigenous psychology was articulated as a part of the movement of “indigenization from within” in the social sciences. Zeus Salazar, a contemporary of Enriquez, also came up with his Pantayong Pananaw (“for us and by us” perspective) and historians came up with Filipinolohiya — all of these developments were part of indigenization that emerged from within the rubble of colonial constructions — the anthropologists, missionaries, linguists, historians who defined the Filipino through their own colonizing lenses. The indigenization-from-within discourses at first were attempts to critically respond to these outsider perspectives and then evolved to a de-centering of the imperial gaze and focus on the assertion of a Filipino indigenous cultural identity.

Although diasporic identity remains a contentious and challenging issue, the assertion of a decolonized and indigenized position has taken hold in certain sectors in the diaspora led by the Center for Babaylan Studies.

Formation of the Center for Babaylan Studies

I researched the cultural identity formation of post-1965 Filipino Americans and this work turned into my doctoral dissertation that offered a framework and process of decolonization for post-1965 Filipino Americans. I wrote, published, and started teaching at a public state university in California. Soon my first book, Coming Full Circle, was picked up as a textbook by other educators, culture-bearers, immigrants, mental health workers, and diasporic Filipinos who resonated with the framework of decolonization that I proposed. Listserves as online communities began to form to discuss this book and later to discuss the history of the babaylan tradition.

The babaylan has many names because there are over 170 linguistic communities and every community has a person who is recognized and acknowledged as having the power to mediate between the seen and unseen realms; is able to bring the lost soul home; propitiate the spirits; and heal the body. The work of Alicia Magos in The Enduring Ma-Aram Tradition, and Carolyn Brewer’s Holy Confrontations were key texts among others that drew my attention to the history of the babaylan along with conversations, conferences, and online discussions in the babaylan listserve on yahoo groups in the 90s.

By the time the Center for Babaylan Studies was created in 2009, the decolonization path was already well paved by our ancestors, by our indigenous kapwa, by babaylans, by Katipuneros, by peasant revolutionaries, by our grandmothers and grandfathers, our aunties, and uncles. But their stories were often not told or barely included in the neocolonial American patterned educational system.

In 2005, at a Filipina Women’s Network Conference at New York University, Sister Mary John Mananzan, our keynote speaker, challenged us to organize an international Babaylan conference. Between 2005 and 2009, I spent summers in the Philippines attending Babaylan Conferences and Kapwa Conferences and, together with another colleague, I brought two groups of teachers to Mindanao on Fulbright Hays Grants that immersed us in K-12 schools, indigenous communities, and schools of living tradition in Mindanao. In these sojourns, Fr. Albert Alejo, our Fulbright host, introduced us to “modern babaylans” and culture-bearers from various indigenous communities in Mindanao.

The dream of organizing an international Babaylan Conference was born in 2006 at a Kapwa Conference at the University of the Philippines in Iloilo organized by the Heritage and Arts Academies led by Kidlat Tahimik and Katrin de Guia. At the heart of this conference was the circle of indigenous elders who shared their dreams and visions for the future. The conference attendees were also encouraged to form circles and “dream” together. The handful of diasporic Filipinos from the U.S. gathered and the question that emerged was: how do we bring this gathering to the U.S.? Thus, began the dream of the Center for Babaylan Studies.

In 2010, the first Babaylan Conference was held at my institution, Sonoma State University. We expected that maybe a hundred people would register. On the day of the conference, 250 showed up. We presented keynote talks on Kapwa psychology, indigenous healing arts, indigenous oral traditions, and culture-bearing practices among social justice, mental health, cultural arts, and political activists and practitioners. Ritual and ceremony provided platforms for diasporic Filipinos who practiced hilot, traditional tattooing, kulintang music, Maranao dances, etc. Apo Reyna Yolanda, a babaylan from Cagayan and Celyo Rizal, and her entourage of five, came and did ritual and ceremony with us. After the conference, Reyna Yolanda, following directions from her spirit guides, traveled to the other sites in the Bay Area, New York, and Alaska to perform rituals and offer prayers to the Lands and the peoples she visited with support from the attendees of the Babaylan conference.

In 2011, we organized a symposium/retreat on “Decolonization as a Sacred Path” with Felipe De Leon, Jr, then Commissioner of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) as key resource person. This was an invitation-only retreat to participants from the first conference to deepen our knowledge of Filipino indigenous knowledge systems and practices and to build relationships with each other that will soon form the core leadership of the Center for Babaylan Studies.

In 2008 and 2012, Filipinos from Canada and the U.S. attended the Kapwa Conferences at UP Iloilo and UP Baguio organized by Heritage and Arts Academies of the Philippines led by Katrin de Guia and Kidlat Tahimik. These conferences centered the sharing of knowledge and practices from the indigenous communities who were represented (Cordillera, Panay Bukidnon, Talaandig, T’boli, Manobo, Aeta, and others). At these conferences, we started to build relationships with indigenous communities, elders, and youth. Many diasporic folks from the U.S. and Canada have been maintaining these connections since then through the Center for Babaylan Studies or through their own initiatives.

Storytelling is central to the indigenous tradition. In 2013, the second Babaylan conference focused on the “Power of Mythic Story” and we invited indigenous filmmakers Kidlat Tahimik and Kanakan Balintagos and Grace Nono as our key resource speakers, along with the Tribal Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Greg Sarris, who is part Filipino and teller of the creation stories of the Pomo and Coast Miwok peoples, the land on which the conference was held. Our vision was to strengthen the foundation of Filipino Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices in the diaspora. Kapwa psychology, mythic Stories, dream work, rituals and ceremony continued to shape our vision.

In 2015, we realized that we needed to address the relationship between indigenous spirituality and Christianity and we did this at the symposium/retreat in Ohio with Fr. Albert Alejo as our keynote speaker. He talked about the apologies of the various orders of the Catholic Church to the indigenous peoples they colonized. He also encouraged the attendees to nurture their indigenous spirituality even while practicing their faith traditions. At this gathering, Methodist clergy Carmen Scheuerman, also gave a talk about Aeta spirituality and what she learned from the Aeta community that made her aware of the colonizing aspects of missionary work. Other speakers like Natividad Delson and Grace Nono talked about how they question, reflect on, and integrate their Catholic devotion with indigenous spirituality. We also supported the building of a traditional Ifugao Healing Hut led by Ifugao mombaki, Mamerto Tindongan.This Ifugao Hut has since moved to Santa Fe, NM and is on the land under the indigenously-informed stewardship of Carol Gamiao Wallace.

In 2016, the third Babaylan Conference was co-hosted by Kathara Society in the unceded Coast Salish territory in British Columbia. At this conference we engaged with the native communities for the first time as we realized the importance of revitalizing indigenous traditions on lands where diasporic Filipinos are settlers. We were welcomed and hosted by the Chief of the Squamish peoples. At this conference, our invited Babaylan from the Manobo tribe was possessed by spirits during a ceremony. Ifugao mombaki Mamerto Tindongan and other helpers talked with the spirits and asked for dispensation and requested the spirits to leave the conference in peace. This teachable moment was a turning point in many ways for CfBS. This is the first time that CfBS raised the question of what it means to identify not as immigrants but as settlers. Settler colonialism made us aware of the violence of native genocide and the ongoing trauma of dispossession. The spirit realm, as the source of indigenous spirituality, was present and at this gathering we recognized the need for us to learn how to integrate the seen and unseen realms. We became cognizant of the violence of the civilizing process that disconnected us from the spirit world. Looking at settler colonialism provided a different lens that felt more resonant with our decolonization practices.

In 2019, the fourth Babaylan conference focused on the conundrums of doing Indigenous work in fractured settings. We asked ourselves how we might learn from the Land and unlearn Empire; how do we reclaim our indigenous mind; how can we learn how to dwell in Place; how can we develop allyship and kinship with our indigenous Kapwa on Turtle Island. Kapwa Collective, our local partners on the ground, co-hosted the conference with us in the Wahta Kanien’keha:ka Territory, also known as Toronto. The theme of this gathering emerged from the critique of the use of the term “babaylan” and “indigenous” in diasporic communities as being merely symbolic and therefore further contributes to the silencing and marginalization of the living babaylans in the homeland. We continue to wrestle with these “call outs” and one of our elders, Lily Mendoza, has published a response that articulates thus:

The question of what is honorable and mutually empowering in regard to relating to our Indigenous Kapwa is multilayered and complex even for our fellow Filipinos in the homeland. How much more so then for those of us in the diaspora? The work itself is fraught — one that we’re having to do on other peoples’ stolen land and all while we’re enveloped in highly-technologized environments with only fragments of memory and extant stories from our family lineages and those of others as clues to lead us. We do what we can to learn and listen. We wrestle with the complexity. We build accountable relationships.

It is crucial not to approach this sacred work with rigid missionary certainty — which kills the Indigenous Spirit in the very attempt to champion it. In reflecting on the “inevitable human problem of tribalism and the tragic results of ethnocentricity,” Martin Prechtel warns us of the dangers of a preoccupation with purity. He writes, “[A] people’s deep attachment to their homeland and customs is necessary, wonderful and life-giving, but should never be allowed to fuel a destructive chauvinism that excludes the rest of the world’s love for its own life and land.” Indigenous recovery requires Indigenous largesse of spirit in the very act of pursuing such a love.

In our decade-long engagement, we sowed the seeds of decolonization and later our decolonial practices. We learned how to embody Kapwa. We are reconnecting with our ancestors and ancestral wisdom. We are learning how to Dwell in Place. Greg Sarris and other indigenous scholars say that we can become indigenous to a place if we learn the history of the lands and the peoples where we have settled; when we learn to live in mutual respect with All the beings that live with the Land. For me as a settler this has meant learning about the history of native genocide in California and in the US…and how this genocide connects to the colonization of my homeland.

Our publications — Coming Full Circle, Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous, Back from the Crocodile’s Belly; Between the Homeland and the Diaspora — resonate with many readers to this day. Coming Full Circle became a textbook in ethnic studies courses; the Babaylan book brought together culture-bearing and indigenous storytellers from the homeland and the U.S; the Crocodile book, co edited with Lily Mendoza, followed up with a focus on the importance of the indigenous paradigm in speaking back to the colonizing logic of modernity. Lily Mendoza’s book, Between the Homeland and the Diaspora, historicizes and bridges the discourses on Filipino identity in these two places.

Today, there is a visible decolonization movement in the diaspora — in the Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Vancouver. The use of social media by second and third generation Filipino Americans, Filipino Canadians and other diasporic Filipinos elsewhere who are reconnecting with their indigenous roots and ethnic heritage — is fueling the movement. Indigenous practices like Batok, baybayin, laga weaving, kulintang, kali and martial arts, plant medicine, hilot, and other indigenous-inspired healing practices are flourishing. It remains to be seen whether the related social and economic entrepreneurship emerging from this cultural resurgence in the diaspora is going to be transformative in the sense of connection, engagement, and support for indigenous concerns and communities in the homeland. I’m aware that it is not enough for young people in the diaspora to be interested in indigenous forms and practices although this is usually an entry point as they begin to reconnect with their Filipino heritage. Sometimes this reconnection is critiqued as nostalgic and romantic, even appropriative and extractive — and such critiques are necessary in order to deepen and sharpen our discernment as we decolonize and re-indigenize.

This is what I call the indigenous turn in our decolonization movement in the diaspora.

These practices, in the form of indigenous-themed cultural productions and revival and reclamation of indigenous practices, signal a movement that points to our native brilliance and intelligence. Today social media facilitates conversations between homeland and diasporic communities; they discuss precolonial and indigenous beliefs; there’s a growing interest in mythic storytelling and revitalization of languages. Many are using podcasts and webinars to deepen connections and build virtual communities. But it is on the ground, in local and placed-based practices of dwelling and community building where Kapwa and Ginhawa thrives.

CfBS has, mindfully, been working to model sustainable relationships with indigenous communities in the homeland; for decades we’ve nurtured our connections to the Heritage and Arts Academies of the Philippines (HAPI), Tao Foundation, Balay Patawili (Panay Bukidnon), LASIWWAI (T’boli weavers), and others. What we need at this time is to document our learnings in these collaborations and develop an archive that can be passed on to the younger generation.

In closing: the decolonization movement in the diaspora is located in the cracks of a civilization that is beginning to crumble under the weight of its own world view that desacralized the Earth. We are struggling to make sense of the five centuries of christianization and how this is complicit in the perpetuation of white supremacy and racism. We are recovering our indigenous spirituality that is embedded in our cultural DNA — this spirituality that comes alive as we root ourselves in Lands that were stolen by empire and where the history of genocide haunts us. We are trying to remember the indigenous roots of the Christian tradition itself. I see a younger generation of diasporic Filipinos reaching out for a sense of belonging to a homeland where the memories of the homeland are only remembered in fragments and glimpses of stories and practices. They are also wanting to learn how to be indigenous to the places where they have settled on Turtle Island. We join a global movement of spiritual refugees seeking sanctuary; learning what it means to build an indigenous future.

Fr. Albert Alejo once told me: Leny, do not worry about indigenous peoples disappearing; all it takes is for one of them to have a dream and everything becomes alive again.

We are still dreaming. In languaging the aspiration to build an indigenous future, we turn to our mythic stories to inspire our creative imagination. In Herminia’s Coben, Verbal Arts of Philippine Indigenous Communities, I was able to cull fragments of the story of Mungan, the first Babaylan of the Manobo peoples in the Agyu epic. I meditated on this story and asked Spirit to tell me what the message might be for someone like me. I then wrote a piece and shared her story with other young Filipino American artists/culture bearers and posted it on medium.com. The story of Mungan has traveled outside of the homeland. Stories are alive and when they enter our bodies, we are made alive anew. Since then, her story has inspired a children’s book, a dance creation (dance as medicine, dance as embodiment) . I would like to close my talk with her story:

Dear Mungan,

To the people of Bukidnon, you are the first babaylan. You are the true heroine of their beloved epic, Ulaging, even though the honor goes to Agyu and his brothers.

Your husband shunned you because of your leprosy but your brothers-in-law were kind to you.

They took turns carrying you on their backs on the long journey from the sea to the mountain top of Mt. Kitanglad.

Conflict has come to the shore so your people had to flee to the mountains.

One day you told them that you didn’t want to slow them down anymore.

So they built you a hut and went on their journeys, returning on occasion to bring you food and gifts.

In truth, they returned for instructions from you because you alone knew where they should go and how they can find food for their bodies and souls.

You taught them the virtue of sharing food. You told them that even if the meat is no bigger than a baby’s fingernail, that they must share it.

You taught them that they can achieve immortality without first experiencing death.

You taught them that they can attain the highest state of spirituality by abstaining from material wants and sustenance.

You taught them that they will lose their fear of famine and starvation.

You taught them that their bodies will shine like gold in the end carried on a magic flying ship to the world beyond the skies.

One day, just before dawn, you began to beat your gong. Slowly at first, then building up to a rhythmic trance.

It soon became light and just before the sun rose, you looked up with amazement…

The sky in the east looked like polished metal

You kept on beating your gong but never took your eyes off the Sun

Gazing at it without blinking.

You were amazed that the sound of the gong now sounds like laughter and it became so loud

When you took your gaze off the sun to look around you, all the weeds and wild plants around your hut have turned to gold

And the leprosy slowly left your body.

The Sun — source of magical power

The blinding light heals the leprous body of the gong-playing maiden

Your eyes became the conduit for the energy that would humanize the gong with the gift of laughter

Having conquered disease and death, now your scabs have turned into mountain rice birds; they flew away but one of the birds returned to you with a vial of coconut oil, a gold striped betel nut, and pinipig from the first harvest.

Mungan, all around you shines with golden light.

In rapture and spiritual ecstasy, your body is radiant with transcendent light.

To Lena, the first brother, you gave the first betel nut of immortality

And as he chewed, his speech became different

He began to speak in the words of ancient poetry

Dear Mungan, your quest for a safe homeland for your people

In the time of war and violence

Your desire to lead them to paradise

To found a new community

To lead people in times of trouble

Is hiding in the words of the ancient epic

In these millennial dreams

At the heart of it is the desire for Oneness

People of all creeds, ethnicities belong to one extended family

Who will attain immortality without passing thru death

Dear Mungan,

I beseech you now to shine your light upon us

Teach us how to gaze at the Sun without blinking

So, too, may our bodies shine like gold

So, too, may everything around us shine like gold

We are your descendants in the here and now

Flying ships carried us not quite to the world beyond the skies

But to this continent

Where we are tracing your steps

Where we are building our huts

Where we are forging Oneness

Where we are forging Wholeness

Shine your light upon us, Mungan.

Shine your light upon us.

The story of Mungan lives among the Talaandig, Matigsalugs, Kirintekens, Ilianen-Manobo, Kulamanen, Bukidnons, Higaunon, Livunganen-Arumanen Manobo of Central, Northern and parts of Western Mindanao. Her story lives within the bigger story of Agyu, the epic’s hero. As a sacred chant, the ulahing is believed to be never ending as long as there are storytellers and singers/chanters. I want to keep Mungan alive in each of us.

In 2018, I stepped down from the leadership of CfBS and continuing as an elder, I have been focusing on walking my talk — if becoming indigenous again means reconnecting with the Land, it has made me want to focus on learning how to dwell in place — on Wappo, Pomo, Coast Miwok lands…I am currently facilitating three small ongoing cohorts of folks who are working on apology and forgiveness, healing and repair of the trauma caused by native genocide in California and Turtle Island. We join a growing movement around the world of decolonizing, decolonial practice, resurgence of indigenous ways of being and knowing…in the midst of what they call the great turning, the sixth extinction, etc…

It’s all about the Land…

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