THERE is very little understanding about the plight of Mindanao.
These days, the barking for war has been seemingly popular, and much worse is that it has driven an incredibly dangerous language. The message isn’t even veiled anymore, the latest offerings have been an us versus them, Muslims versus all other faiths, Filipinos versus Moros, and what is horrific is that it has casually pedaled many lies, the fiction of the Filipino, and a the myth of a united history.
When we look back at our common understanding of nation book, we need to re-evaluate our personal history, and the system that tries to educate the values of nation and “nationality.” The centrifuge of Philippine history, dare I say, has not been completely representative, when we look at the history books of this country, and one that ever Filipino child grows up learning, we are only looking at the history of what transpired in one part of the country, and though admittedly pivotal, I believe it has crafted an incomplete image of what it means to be Filipino.
These are what I would call, the shortcomings of our imperial education, where our educational system has systematically advertised only one version of history, that for the rest of the thousand islands, time stopped, and we didn’t have virtues, or values, that before that time, we were barbarous and uncivilized.
Very few people know about Mindanao's rich dark history, very few people understand how we got here, Do Filipinos know the Bud Dajo Massacre? Are we aware of the Jabidah Massacre? Are we are of the historical oppression that has happened here before historians set foot and declared these relevant to our cultural understanding? If you aren’t in a specialized field, or you don’t inherit a culture that shares these stories, you’ll never know, and so most Filipinos don’t know.
As a nation we may very well remember the teachings of Rizal, adore the bravery of Bonifacio, marvel at the intelligence of Mabini, but how many celebrate Dagohoy? Sultan Bantilan? Sultan Kudarat? Datu Malinug? How many ascribe good virtues to the Cebuanos, to the Boholanos, to the Tausugs, to the Maranaos?
When we look back at the figures our history paints as heroes we can only ascribe that they all come from a similar land, that’s why it’s been incredibly difficult to move the discourse to see cultural and ethnic minorities in a better light, because they have been excluded from history, and yet we hear people claim we live in one nation, and one country.
Adolf Hitlers prosecution of the Jews in WWII went to the extent that he intended to not only kill every last one of them, but erased their very existence in history, that no trace of their way of life could ever be found, We should find it prudent to prevent this slow extinguishing of our history and culture, more than living, it is the only way to communicate the meaningfulness of our peoples existence, there is something insidious about forgetting the past, because it prevents us from being in the future.