THE advent of content creation and monetization via social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook gave rise to ordinary people becoming influencers and vloggers. In fact, this medium is very popular nowadays that even celebrities and famous personalities have also started creating their own channels. The pandemic, which has caused closures and downsizing of production companies and networks, is also one of the main reasons why vlogging has taken the world by storm.
The recent controversies involving Nas Daily and the Whang Od Academy must teach us all a lesson. While we Filipinos crave international attention to the point of making issues and events so that we will be featured internationally, we have to know who are the right people to trust, especially when there is money involved.
According Arab Israeli video blogger Nuseir Yassin as found in the YouTube profile of Nas Daily, his mission is "to show the most incredible humans on planet Earth." Well, he is now a very influential personality because of his videos, but we have to think about the motivation of Nas Daily to engage Whang Od in the first place.
According to Grace Palicas, grandniece of Whang Od, Nas Academy is a "scam" because her grandmother did not sign any contract to do the course. While this FB post was deleted, it raised concerns among authorities and government such as the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples or NCIP which said its Regional Office in Cordillera Autonomous Region shall review the alleged contract between Nas Daily and Whang Od.
NCIP CAR Regional Director Marlon Bosantog posted in the NCIP CAR's social page, "bandying on social media a contract is not a proof of compliance. The NCIP will make our review and onsite validation and interview, whether the free, prior, and informed consent process should have been implemented on this incident. Attempts to monetize without consent, diminish, and demean such practices and even its peoples will be dealt with harshly by appropriate penal laws."
Dealing with the indigenous community requires a careful and thorough understanding of their culture and tradition. In my experience working with the IP community, IP elders need to be consulted and engaged with anything that will be conducted within their ancestral domain. IP members do not put high value to money, but they put a higher respect for their culture and practices. To prove this point, our IP Education Focal Person shared one time that in an IP community in Pampanga, he asked why they only fish for their needs and not get more fish and sell them. The IP member replied that if they take more than what they need, and sell them or use for commercial purposes, that will destroy the ecological balance in their domain.
This is why we need to be vigilant in this case against Nas Daily. We know how much money they make with just a single view of their videos. Instead of supporting these foreign vloggers, why don't we support Pinoy vloggers and encourage newbies to promote our own culture and heritage through this new online platform.