Asenjo, Genevieve L

In Panay Island, the Western Visayas Region of the Philippines, two big rivers are snaking along mountains. They are the setting of myths and epics. Here lived a community of chanters, weavers, and farmers. Anthropologists have called them by different names: Sulodnon, Panay-Bukidnon, and Tumandok. What’s in a name? If “island is a method,” this presentation makes its first argument on the politics of territory and territoriality, that “tumandok,” the mother tongue of the “native” of the island, is the apt and inclusive term to name the political and social community Indigenous Peoples (IPs) in the island, and following Fernand de Varennes’ assertion, “Indigenous Peoples are not minorities.” The second argument is then: that the aspirations for self-determination of the IPs are not an “island” or isolated peripheral struggles. To illustrate, the presentation studies two recent award-winning knowledge productions titled, Tumandok, written in the mother tongue Hiligaynon: a 2020 novel by Jesus Insilada, a decorated writer and teacher who is a Tumandok himself, and a 2024 full-length film by Richard Salvadico and Arlie Sweet Sumagaysay. Both creative works locate the enduring poverty and displacement of two separate communities of Tumandok on the island due to the militarization and privatization of their mountains and rivers. The presentation converses with the nation’s geo-body by Tongchai Winichakul, Neferti Tadiar’s “The War to be Human/Becoming Human in a Time of War,” and Aihwa Ong’s “Global Assemblages.” In these ecologies of violence and resistance, the presentation is interested in the work of the imagination alongside social justice.