“GAWIS ta wada kayo,” Congressman Maximo Dalog Sr. said on the occasion of the 13th Lang-ay Festival.
I first heard that warm brotherly acknowledgement several years ago from Apo Thomas Killip, when he was then municipal mayor of Sagada.
As a native son of the place but migrated outside with my parents, Apo Killip has always been an inspiration in my quest to stay my roots in Sagada, in spirit. The expression, “gawis ta wad ka,” in English means “it is good, you are here.” It is family speech warmly embracing a member home.
Congressman Dalog used the same expression as a warm gesture to welcome all visitors to the Lang-ay Festival. You see, when you are welcomed this way in Mountain Province, it means you are somebody to the people – you are more than a friend. You are family.
The festivals of the people in the Cordillera highlands revolve around a man or woman’s cycle of life and the agricultural seasons.
In Mountain Province, a family, clan, and tribe celebrate special occasions in a person’s life. Community celebrations revolved around agricultural events and civic or common causes. Both celebrations involving a man or woman’s life and as a community always served to keep the people together. The celebrations were primarily observed by the family and community harking on their senses of brothers and sisters together in their joys and tears.
Birth celebrations, are limited to the immediate family members and close relatives. As a person grows, he soon participates in community events and rituals. On certain occasions, a wedding becomes more than a community or village affair, especially when almost everyone participates in serving and welcoming visitors that may include other tribes invited far and wide, who are usually, ka-pechen. You know, this discussion can become too complicated but I am trying to keep it simple.
Pechen is a brotherly pact between tribes to keep their peace together, to co-exist and support each other’s cause, to have trade and economic relations. The number of pechen a tribe has and manages well with other tribes can also make that same tribe powerful among the rest.
Like wedding celebrations, death is also a community event that may draw people from other tribes to the village. Sometimes the children of a dead person have intermarried with other tribes. In a person’s lifetime, relations with in-laws and “kailians” can be too close.
In death, all come to celebrate the dead person whose death draws this fellowship together. Here, the living will learn so much about the ways of life as demonstrated by the dead person in his journey in this world.
The endless songs, chants, and stories of the people who came for this “adog” or wake make the event both happy and solemn.
There are all kinds of family and community rituals that celebrate life, if not offered as a plea to the gods to sustain or preserve life, among the tribes in Mountain Province. There are about seven indigenous groups living in Mountain Province. The rest are migrant groups, Ilokano, Pangasinenses, and Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and others, whose off springs are now Igorots’ in blood and spirit.
Among the spectacular community rituals in my mind, are the Manerwap of Bontoc and Begnas in Sagada.
The marwap is an extended ritual that pleads for rain, involving men in a series of rituals and chants as they climb Mt. Kalawitan where they will perform more rituals to the anitos or ancestral spirits and to Lumawig, the chief of the gods. On their way back, they are met by women folks bearing food. If the rains do not come, a tengao or more rituals is declared until the rains come.
The Begnas are both observed in Bauko and Sagada.
In Sagada, it is generally held to mark the different agricultural cycle—pre-planting or land preparation, and planting and harvest. It is loosely performed in March, June and November.
The ritual starts with a group of men in a single file going to the rice fields and on to a sacred ground called patpatayan usually marked by a huge or old tree to offer a sacrificial animal to the gods and anitos (ancestral spirits). As this is on-going, the other males in the dap-ay will perform their traditional dances and other ritual performances until the men who went to offer and butcher the ritual animal(s) return, in single file, carrying the meat to be shared by the community after the dances.
I have seen and the rest I heard, these rituals performed by the old folks. They inspire a man to take courage, persevere, even make dead men who were violated or murdered to return and take revenge.
However, these festivals were done the people do it as one, as family and friends, to share their lives to each other. It symbolizes their desires and aspirations to share their joys and difficulties together as family. Such is life here in our highlands.
From Mountain Province, Happy Lang-ay Cordillera!