House Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda on Saturday August 7 reiterated her call to protect the country’s cultural heritage, following reports on the controversy involving Whang-Od Oggay, the oldest living mambabatok (tatooist), and Nas Daily, a popular vlogger.
“Apo Whang-Od has dedicated her whole life as she continues the art form and stands as living archive holding memory and mastery of Kalinga's tattoo practice,’’ Legarda said.
The art of tattooing is an ancestral birthright of the community, the Butbut, of which 104-year-old Apo Whang-Od is a member.
Legarda, a former three-term Senator, maintained that Nas Daily should have gone through the process of seeking consent from the community, as stipulated under the Indigenous People's Rights Act (IPRA), considering that the art form is deemed a communal traditional knowledge.
Earlier, Senator Imee R. Marcos has reprised her call last year to create a law that protects IPs against the ‘’misappropriation of cultural heritage amid the controversy between Whang-Od and Nas Daily.
Marcos, who chairs the Senate committee on cultural communities, emphasized the importance of cultural sensitivity to IPs especially where self-promotion and commercial profit were involved.
“The problem is we have no legal definition of what constitutes cultural misappropriation. Until we do, our IPs will remain exposed to continual exploitation,” she said.
“Indigenous people have felt misrepresented, even robbed of their customs, traditions, and forms of expression which have spiritual value but are treated by city folk as mere objects of aesthetic appreciation or potential commodities,” Marcos added.
“This is not the first time that Apo Whang-Od seems to have been trivialized,” Marcos said, citing past complaints by the Kalinga Tourism Services for the New Era Cap Co.’s collection of Whang-Od t-shirts.
An advocate for the preservation of the country’s arts and culture, Legarda filed in the House of Representatives House Bill 7811, or An Act Safeguarding the Traditional Property Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which aims to create a comprehensive cultural archive and mandates the payment of royalties for the use of the cultural property of the IPs.
“To prevent possible abuses or the exploitation of our cultural heritage, this bill hopes to fill in the gaps and apply the conventional forms of intellectual property, like copyright, royalty, and ownership.
It has broader coverage for royalties that will compensate communities for their collective and individual creative expression and extends intellectual property rights past 50 years,” Legarda stated.
“Insensitive cultural appropriation or commodification of culture is currently caught and called out in social media, but we must ensure that legal protections and remedies are available and supported by the government through a clear system of registration easily accessible to indigenous peoples and communities,’’ she said.
This incident also serves as a reminder for all of us to always vet, be mindful and be respectful of the culture and community they wish to present in their materials,” she added.