Cordilleras tattoo tradition featured in US-backed research
By Roy Mabasa
The United States government is set to complete next month a research and documentation project on traditional tattooing among the seven major ethnolinguistic groups in the mountainous region of the Cordilleras.
Under the $21,000 (roughly P1 million) grant, the project involves an in-depth study of tattooing practices among the seven major ethnolinguistic groups in Bontoc, Ifugao, Ibaloy and Kankanaey, Tinguian, Isneg, and Kalinga – all in the Cordillera Administrative Region.
The Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines, which awarded the grant said the project, will conduct extensive archival research on traditional tattoos as documented by the early travelers to the Cordilleras at the turn of the last century, and will digitally repatriate these archival collections to source communities and academic institutions in the Philippines.
It will also document the narratives of the remaining tattooed elders in the Cordilleras through anthropological research and fieldwork. Discussions on the different rituals performed before the actual tattooing, the profiles of the culture bearers (i.e., tattooed elders), and current and planned efforts to revive the practice will be included.
An output in the form of a manuscript, which, among other anthropological interests, will examine the various and changing meanings ascribed to tattoos in the context of ethnic and Filipino identity formation, and determine how tourism and modernity has influenced local cultures, particularly the younger generations of “Igorots.” “Batek,” the generic word for a tattoo in the Cordillera region, was common practice among the Bontok, Ifugao and Kalinga people in the pre-Hispanic and early colonial period.
In early studies, varying reasons were given why some tattoos were taken by certain individuals during those days: symbols of valor earned by individuals or groups after a successful headhunting; increased sex appeal and desirability of individuals and were taken to be signs of fertility, especially when found among females; markers of economic prestige that were earned after hosting huge community feasts such as canaos; curative powers, especially against certain illness; protective powers against some malevolent ancestral spirits or anitos; rites of passage from one status of life to another; aesthetic devices to complement the clothing and jewelry of the people, and as proprietary markers that identified the owners and their marked livestock.