- 1 This subtitle is borrowed from one of the variants of the Teaching about the Earth (the Land) and i (...)
In memory of Jacques Barrau and Hal Conklin.
1This Volume II, celebrating the centennial of Revue de botanique appliquée, offers the opportunity to contrast the Culture of the people of the Cordillera in Northern Luzon with the people of Mindoro - Palawan - Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, the so called Sulu Bassin Culture, by Hal Conklin (1961).
2Since 1970, after a long experience of life with the Palawan, I choose to allude to some aspects of their material culture and life ways related to Hanunóo and to the Buid (Gibson 2015) but also to the Samal: the Sama Bihing living in villages, and the Sama Dilaut or Bajau Laut, the Sea Nomads (Nimmo 2001, Martenot 2005, Sather 1997).
3Long ago, land connected Borneo and Palawan to Mindoro and the Northern island of Luzon. Nowadays, a land-bridge rests on the Sunda Shelf between Sulu Sea, on the East, and South China Sea on the West, named in today context: West Philippine Sea.
4In Central Philippines, Palawan is made of a large chain of islets and on the Southern part of the main island lives a small rain forest society. (about 40.000 to 50.000 inhabitants).
5Pala’wan Highlanders’ identity is rooted in the landscape of the central mountain chain running from the southern tip of the main island to a break linking Abo-Abo to Quezon, thus making a physical and cultural partition. The neighboring cultural groups are the Tagbanuwa (Fox 1982) while further in the North are the smaller groups of Negritos, the Batak (Novellino 2011, 2019).
- 2 Major monographic books and many articles on pala’wan culture published since the seventies are pre (...)
6The present observations have been made facing Sulu Sea, in a long-lasting collaboration with pala’wan communities, on the progressive slopes to Mount Mantalingahan (2.085m, 149.193 hect. of forest, 10% of the totality of the main island, the watershed of five municipalities: Quezon, Rizal, Bataraza, Brooke’s Point, Española)2.
7My attempt is to give access to a lived presence in the world of this small society which, we think, could reveal several features of a reconstructed Austronesian world.
8The approach I favor consists of a biological, eco-techno-symbolical and ethical insight.
9It is based on the distinction between two notions elaborated initially by Joseph von Uexküll in his study on animals’ milieu, 1934:
‘Milieu’ (Umwelt) is the concrete reality for a given being (an animal, an insect, a bird, a plant, a human being) and the given components of the ‘natural environment’, ‘l’environnement brut’ (Umgebung).
10My presentation integrates also the later works of Tim Ingold and what he named an ‘Ecology of life’ but also the ‘Study of Human Milieux’ or ‘Mesology’ developped by Augustin Berque who has been inspired by a related concept elaborated by Watsuji: fûdosei 風土性, or ‘the structural moment of human existence’. It means that there is a dynamic coupling between the human being and his milieu, the two are inter-related, inter-connected, inter-dependent, (in French we would say: “l’entrelien”).
11Since a long time and up to now, the uplands are a place where the Katutubong Pala’wan live. They are hunters with blowpipe, foragers and upland rice and tubers cultivators. Their hamlets, rurungan, are scattered and uxori-locality is the rule of residence. Their social organization based on a bilateral kinship system (Macdonald 1977), is characterized by an absence of hierarchy, no private property of land, no political power, nor authority. This society rather functions on interpersonal relationships, while an ancestral Customary Law, Adat, constantly referred to in daily life, helps them to restore peace and harmony between the members of each hamlet or of an area of endogamy between two valleys (Macdonald 2011, 2018).
Figure 1 : Flying from Ladaq to Ransang valley, a hamlet in the Highlands
Photo. N. Revel, 1972
12The Highlanders way to live in this mountain, to relate to each other, is based on four fundamental values, namely: mutual help, tabang; sharing, bagi; exchanging in parity, gantiq; pity, compassion, feeling sympathy, empathy, ingasiq.
13In the phenomenal world they are part of, the values mentioned above do apply to four kinds of collective beings, namely:
- Taw Banar, the Genuine People, you and I;
- Taw Mänunga, the Good-Doers (in French: les Bienfaisants) among which the Taw ät Käbudbuluran, the People of the Mounts;
- Taw Märaqat, the Evil-Doers (in French: les Malfaisants) among which Taw ät Gäbaq, the People of the Forest;
- Taw ät Käkayuqan, the Trees People and Animals People.
14These various collective beings have specific components (corporal, emotional, intellectual, spiritual) and distinct proper names (Revel 1990-1992, 1998, 2017). They manifest themselves, express themselves and speak in different ways, languages and styles.
- 3 Philippe Descola (2015) has described the notion of ‘Collectifs’: they consist of stabilized associ (...)
15Pala’wan animist ontology reveals that, although the four types of collective beings are characterized by distinct visible and invisible features – I mean to say, they have a respective physicality and interiority – all of them are, ‘persons’3, taw.
16Some do communicate and inter-relate with the genuine people taw banar, by touch, voice and a specific spoken style, or express themselves by way of effluences and smells like the Trees people, Taw ät Käkayuqan.
17Living in the same space, these collective beings are in constant interaction, which is ruled by a socio-cosmic order resting on two basic principles regulating inexorably their mutual actions and motions: bagi, sharing and gantiq, exchanging in parity.
18Hence visible and invisible beings inhabit the world, do hunt, fish, cultivate rice and demand the right to eat viands, isdaqan, as well. All these peoples, taw, are in a constant interaction with the genuine human beings, taw banar, you and I. So, we have to live in their very presence, to co-exist with them, to share with them, to communicate with them by addressing them and listening to what they have to say. An empathy, ingasiq, a fluidity integrates all beings in the various realms of the Living and the necessary parity uniting them is associated with a shamanistic view and related curing practices.
19This mysterious relationship is expressed by the Highlanders by way of real dialogues, short and long narratives (myths, tuturan; tales, sudsugid; epics, tultul), while rituals and artistic symbolic expressions (music, poetry) set their interpretations of life and death into motion.
20Ämpuq, the Master, is the supreme Deity and the world is conceived as a pile of disks or ‘plates’, rayaq, in twice seven levels, above and below the earth, dunyaq.
21Ämpuq, has his abode on the 7th realm, the Empyrean, Anduwanän.
22Grand-Father Thunder, Upuq Kuyäw, evolves in the clouds and by way of lightning and diluvian rain, strikes the genuine people dwelling on earth.
23We are then caught in a vise between seven levels above, as Upuq Kuyäw speaks loud and strikes with lightnings and seven levels below, as the Fish-Dragon, Tandayag, evolves in the Abyss, Basad, provoking geysers, deluges and tsunamis.
24All these threats are turning real when in their life on earth, people are in the wrong, when misconduct prevails and Adat is not carefully respected.
Figure 2 : Mt. Mantalingayan from the eastern side
Photo. N. Revel, 1988.
25Käbätangan, < [Kä-bätang-an]: plural of bätang, “trunk” means: Trees’ trunks, Trees’ boles. It is the name given by the Highlanders to Mount Mantalingahan and refers to the bägtik tree (Agathis philippinensis Warb. or Agathis dammara). It provides the precious almaciga resin to make lacquers, paintings and varnishes, a forest product the Highlanders own from generation to generation, highly valorized as a product they can collect and sell.
Figure 3 : “Trees’ Trunk” forest, Käbätangan
Photo. Norli Colili, 2017 ; Drawing by Jacqueline Lemeux, MNHN. (Revel 1990-1992, v. 1 : 211)
26It refers also to the various huge Dipterocarpaceae like Ginuqu or Mangis (Koompassia excelsa Taub.), Saläng (Canarium aspersum Bentham) etc., present in the rain forest, rupaq and gäbaq (Figure 4).
Figure 4 : The various strata of the tropical rain forest
© Dpt of Geography and Environmental Science, CUNY
27In this inhabited world, the Highlanders lived experience takes place. This is where their subjectivities – senses, intelligence and imagination – evolve since childhood (Revel et al. 2017); during all their life, they accumulate an empirical knowledge by evolving in the phenomenal world, their oral/aural memory and lived experiments is shared from eldest to youngsters the Teaching of their Ancestors, Tuturan ät Kägunggurangan, reveals a very peculiar interpretative presence, a co-presence with all that is.
28Listening to speech acts, discourses as well as elaborated composed narratives within their socio-cultural, their eco-symbolic frame of reference, reveals some of their fundamental attitude towards life, gives us access to Meaning, to the meaning they give to this mountain, their dwelling place, their home, the place they belong to and whose trees belong to them.
29As a matter of fact, Meaning is at the very core of ‘all that is’, the seven golden threads that have been woven precisely by Nägsalad, ‘the Weaver’ as the myth of the earth explains the context, the spatio-temporal frame in which the Taw banar inter-act, move, think and behave respecting – or breaking – the rules involving the many collectives in presence.
30We have attempted to penetrate the intimacy of the system of thought the Pala’wan Highlanders live on within the given milieu surrounding them, to capture the way they relate to all things of the phenomenal world: trees, forests, wilderness, animals, upland fields associating cultivated grains and tubers, creeks and rivers ways, under bushes paths, and open sea, soundscapes, winds and rains, sky and reckoning stars, but also with hamlets, nuclear family ‘homes’, bänwa and the ‘large meeting house’, kälang bänwa.
- 4 This part was inspired by the article of A. Berque (1992). A motive of the art of dwelling, that by (...)
31I order to do so, I choosed to focus on bamboo4 as an eco-symbol, the recurrent raw material and multifaceted motif of the Highlanders’ dwellings and crafts.
32We know seven species of erected bamboos (the archetype being käwayan, Bambusa blumeana Roxb.) and six vine bamboo (the archetype being Pawaq, Cephalostachyum mindorense Gamble). They are needed and highly valorized in domestic daily life. These Gramineae, grow by vegetative reproduction. As a raw material, they are associated with six sagu palms and five areca palms but also with twelve rattans, nawi (Palmaceae), for tying.
33Wood can be used for roof's beams and posts, and bamboos and woven palms’ leaves alternate with kugun (Imperata subsp. koenigii (Retz.) Tzvelev. for roofing). However, bamboo remains the basic material used for making houses.
34All these raw materials are non-timber forest products used in the making of the various objects, tools and containers: a delicate blowpipe, sapukan (two long bamboos inserted in a third one ornamented by pyro-graved spirals) a quiver, kärbang, (two types of arrows in a single big internode with some glue fixing magic spells on the top of its covert); spoons and a braker of fibers, papalu, (for sagu preparation, natäk) two or three internodes water container, sagäb (the configuration of three stars aligned: Alshaïr-Altaïr-Tarazeb in the constellation of Aquila), they observe in the night sky as a sign for planting, a smoking set, aläp (a red jasper fire stone, a piece of iron, santikan and amadoo, lublub, to light a cigaret); a knife, balwis, to mince dried tobacco leaves or severing the umbilical cord of a baby, as well as scrappers, and four music instruments, a tiny ring flute, bäbäräk and a longer leap flute, suling, a jew’s harp, äruding and a tubular zither, pagang. (See Drawings by Anna Fer in N. Revel (1990-1992, vol I and vol. III).
35Quite abundant in many varieties, in the lowland, napan, the coastal plain, daranasan, the foothills, tikäd, and the upland, dayaq, käwayan (Dendrocalamus merrilliana Elmer or Bambusa blumeana Roxb.), täring (Bambusa vulgaris Schrader ex Wendl.) sumbiling (Schizostachyum lumanpas Merrill), bungbung (Schizostachyum brachicladum Kurz), all these bamboos are a strong erected, noble raw material, however perishable when attacked by a pest, bukbuk for instance.
- 5 H. Xhauflair (2014), “Bamboo Knife Manufacture” on the operating chain described in her PHD Thesis, (...)
36The bamboo culm is cut cross-wise to the fibers, an internode or more is then selected, snicked with a bolo, tukäw, twined, split in two, rough out to obtain smaller split segments, slivered, stripped, woven or shaped into a blade or an arrow (Figure 5)5.
Figure 5 : Bamboo knife Manufacture
In : Xhauflair et al. 2020
Figure 6 : Bamboos, palm and rattan used for making daily objects
Hermine Xhauflair
37Bamboo allows to make temporary and renewable shelters, fresh and ventilated houses for a nuclear family. From green when freshly cut, it turns slowly dry and golden under the sun’s rays. (Figures 7, 8, 9)
Figure 7 : Shelters along the Mäkägwaq river
Photo N. Revel 1971
Figure 8 : Bänwa Nuclear family house, Malia
Photo Norli Colili, 2015
Figure 9 : Mäkägwaq: Antonita Bibas and her handmade winnowers, niq-nigu. House’s walls made of wooden frames and woven bamboo, sawali
Photo N. Revel, 1996
38It allows to make partitions, dingding, side-platforms, särimbar, floors, datag, but also snares and traps, bawäg to hunt boars, capture birds and small rodents, as well as lines, kahit, to fish with hooks, in the river and the many strips slivered by women to weave baskets and winnowers, tabig, tingkäp, nigu. These daily objects and tools are renewed once a year, when the first variety of rice is about to be harvested the happier period in a yearly cycle named People’s Life, Byag ät Taw (Figure 10).
Figure 10 : Kulbang: Hunting birds with a blowpipe sapukan, a quiver kärbang, and a covert basket tingkäp
Photo N. Revel, 1972
Figure 11 : Tataran: Pwäw weaving a tabig (left) and Läsung: Minsaya’s baskets and winnowers woven for the new rice, in August (right)
Photo N. Revel,1990
- 6 In Suutheast Asia, by way of many vairants, bamboo is associated to a feminine motif. According to (...)
39The origin of bamboo is linked to music (Figure 12). By way of an inversion, the myth reminds the Pala’wan that on full moon one can see the large bamboo, käwayan, spreading out from a tubular zither resting on Nangum’s lap as she played excessively music, while iron wood, tägas, (Intsya biyuga (Colebr.) Kuntze.), grows out of her partner’s lute, since they were petrified for being excessive in playing continuously music and songs of seduction, kulilal (Revel 1990-1992, 2017)6.
Figure 12 : Left, Kangrian: two friends meet, one plays a bamboo zither, pagang. Right, Läsung: two friends Mandun and Lapung playing the lute, kuyapiq
Photo N. Revel, 1972 (left) and 1983 (right)
40To be protected from the sun during dry season, Bulag, and from strong winds, thunder and heavy rains during Monsoon season, Barat, various dwelling places are a must. Shelters are built on the edge of upland fields or alongside rivers and streams (Figure 13).
41Figure 13 : Put batu: Houses made of bamboo platforms and light wood scaffoldson rock shelters
Photo. N. Revel, 1972
42On this Eastern side to Käbätangan (Mt. Mantalingahan), an abrupt landscape with steep slopes, upland fields and fallows, cliffs and more recently erosion, prevail. Habitat is scattered and hamlets are small (3 to 8 houses). On the Western side, a larger plain and hilly landscape prevails and in the area of Kulbiq Känipaqan, hamlets are more densely populated and more extense.
43Lägwas**, designates a living space, an open space enjoying the shade of a large fruit tree – mango tree, mämpalam, mangga (Mangifera indica L.), or jackfruit tree, nangkaq (Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam.), grape-fruit tree swaq gadya (Citrus maxima L.) – it is a life connecting place for the people of each household and a playground for children (Figure 14).
Figure 14 : Mäkägwaq: large meeting house, kälang bänwa, and lägwas
Photo N. Revel, 1996
- 7 6 It has been hypothesized that platform constructions might have existed in archaeological sites d (...)
44As a matter of fact a hamlet, rurungan7 consists of several nuclear family houses, banwa, and is composed of a group of sisters, their first female cousins assimilated to classificatory sisters, their children and their parents, (father, mother and/or uncle) to which the respective young men came to ‘aggregate’ as husbands, mämikit. It is a social space of mutual help and sharing, where collaboration and solidarity prevail, but disputes do occur too and are then controlled by the eldest, mägurang, or discussed and judged according to the Custumary Law, Adat, the arbitration of a headman panglima, or the sentence of a judge, ukum.
Figure 15 : Amrang: upland field, uma – hamlet, rurungan – forest, gäbaq
Photo N. Revel, 1988
45Kälang bänwa, the large meeting-house built on strong wooden posts, is the most striking example of a pleasant, well ventilated dwelling place. There, gongs are played inviting far away relatives and visitors to join the feast for the Commemoration of the Master of Rice, Tamwäy ät Ämpuq ät Paräy and the Commemoration of the Master of Flowers, Tamwäy ät Ämpuq ät Burak or a generous ritual rice sharing lutlut, to bring fertility and good health to a community in an area of endogamy between two valleys, Tambiläw.
46It is the place par excellence for the juge, ukum, to gather several head-men, pänglima, and conduct a jural debate, bisara, the large space for a marriage discussion followed by a wedding celebration, bulun, to welcome and entertain a newly arrived guest listening to a singer of tales, mänunultul (Figure 16).
Figure 16 : Interior of the large meeting house kälang bänwa
Ink Drawings by Anna Fer, house architecture 1981
Figure 17 : Exterior and interior view of a nuclear family house banwa
Ink Drawings by Anna Fer, house architecture 1981
47Its four lateral elevated platforms, sarimbar, surrounding a spacious central floor, lawasan, all made of bamboo, turn this house into a place of sharing, par excellence, attending long jural debates, enjoying formal conversations, sharing of ideas, listening to story telling, competing in riddles, igum, a place for young maiden and married ladies to enjoy their feet percussion dance, taräk, as they listen to the gong ensemble Basal, an hospitable place for resting and sleeping in togetherness and conviviality.
48It is also the place for an equitable sharing of raw food between sisters who, every other day, gather tubers, luluwakän and vegetables in one of their respective upland field. It can be the place for a pänglima and his wife to stay aside in an alcove, singläd, where the precious jars, chinese plates and gongs of this kins’ group were kept out of sight and protected.
49However bamboo is also linked to semi-protected food products, close to the house and the near by forest. Mothers gather bamboo shoots, päri räbung, as well as banana inflorescence, päri pusuq, or palm heart, päri säpwa, to prepare a viand, isdaqan, to complement the staple food, käkanän and please the apetitus in a frugal meal.
50Women and children like to fish with hook and line along creeks and streams, while young men with homemade snorkles and spear gun, fish underwater or join in a collective fishing party by beating ichtiotoxic leaves like pangi (Pangium edule Reinw.). or tubah roots in the river bed (tubah, non identifié).
- 8 N. Revel 1990-1992, I : 143-144, 33 varieties of edible mushrooms.
51Small edible ferns, paku, and many varieties of mushrooms (11 growing on the ground, 23 on dead tree’s trunks or on bamboo)8, land snails (patung balay, patung lintang, patung kälaq, etc.) are picked up on their way back home.
52After ten to twelve years fallows, a secundary forest of bamboo, Täring gäbaqan, (Bambusa vulgaris Schrader ex Wendl.) indicates that the soil was given enough time to regenerate and an upland field, uma, can eventually be open anew.
- 9 N. Revel 1990-1992, I : 95, Typology of Forests and Fallows or new growth in the Wilderness, Talun.
53The four distinct vegetation formations9 and the various stratas raising to the upper canopy are not perceived as hostile in day time; on the contrary, it is rather a pleasant playground for hunters, foragers and the little flocks of children from 3 to 12 years old, the känakan (Revel et al. 2017).
Figure 18 : Typology of forests and fallows
N. Revel, Fleurs de Paroles, 1990-1992, I : 95
- 10 N. Revel-Macdonald, 1982, Brève Histoire d’une vie, in « Kudaman. Une épopée pala’wan chantée par U (...)
54This lively world can provoke a genuine cynegetic passion, driving afew men to keep on hunting and foraging in the forest, neglecting totally the work in the upland field – mainly during the long rainy season when the tedious work of weeding, mängilamunän, is needed for the rice to grow from suckers. Such was the behavior of Usuy, the shaman and beloved singer of tales of Mäkägwaq valley10.
55At dusk, the forest turns dark and is felt as hostile and dangerous. Children are asked not to make noise anymore. It is the time when Säqitan and many Malevolents, Taw Märaqat, take over and move around, hitting, stinging, burning, fitting, hurting whoever crosses their ways and meets with them inadvertently. Hence to walk in the forest at night searching for medicinal plants, ururu, is considered a brave and daring act. In the past, Tagung took this risk to cure a sick relative. He was then living in Kämantiyan, near the Tämlang river valley.
56The hardships and pleasures one feels walking in the forest, the nice sensation its bounty inspires to the hunter-forager, the blow of wind in dry season, the lights and sounds filtered by the foliage, the bachelors’ joyful screams of departure, linsaq, as they run downstream to the foothill market and the coastal plain, the melodic call of young mothers to their sisters carrying on their shoulder bamboo tubes, sagäb, on their way to the spring, the careful listening to birds’ songs and their omens, ngasa, the noisy chitchat of birds with others animals are part of the Highlanders daily soundscape, a dialogic experience between humans and the living in the surroundings of the house, lagwas and the near by forest. (Figure 19)
Figure 19 : Kangrian, bamboo water container Sagäb, 3 internodes
Photo N. Revel, 1972
57In other words, the teachings of the Ancestors, tuturan ät Kägungurangan, together with the lived empirical knowledge perpetually generated are inherent to the Highlanders’ motions and actions upstream dayaq, and the foot hills, tikäd (Ingold 2003 : 302).
Figure 20 : Trunk of Bägtik (Agathis philippinensis Warb.) with the crystals of resin
Photo Norlita Colili, 2017
58The Trees boles of Käbägtikan, are the only ancestral possession of the Taw ät dayaq and the resin they know how to collect introduced them to a larger scale cash money economy. Collecting crystals of resin is a periodical men’ hard work. In a remote part of the forest, they have inherited some huge trees from their parents and grandparents, and know how to gather lumps of white pure resin leaking from the huge trunks.
59As a group, they go and spend one or two nights entertaining themselves by way of conversations, storytelling, sudsugid, jokes, luluy, or listening to a singer of tales long sung narrative, tultul.
60The forest, gäbaq and all the more the ‘primary’ forest, rupaq, the forest of damars, is also a beautiful world of sounds, the Highlanders enjoy to listen to, imitate and be inspired by.
61During these very peculiar nights in altitude, a singer of tales can step aside from the group of men and spend hours listening to the wind’s melodies filtered by the upper and lower foliage of the canopy.
62He might be then ‘touched’, läpläp, by a Good Doer, a Benevolent of the Mounts, Taw ät Käbudbuluran. This is a moment of poetical inspiration, päläpläp, a state between wake and sleep. Through the canopy, the wind blows melodic motives to the attentive ear of the becoming singer of tales.
63After a long solitary process of working memory and creativity experienced in the forest, these melodies will turn into sound icons of the various characters as a sung narrative is recreated by each singer of tales. Someday he will feel more confident and able to perform the song of an epic a whole night long to an attentive audience in the kälang bänwa as the first rays of the sun appear.
64All these sounds, motions and lived experiences reveal the Highlanders’ embodiment and attachment to the forest of Käbätangan, Trees’ Trunks (Mt. Mantalingayan), their home.
65To bring this brief synthesis to a close, I wish to raise once again a major question: How can one access Reality?
66In 1985, I defended a Thèse d’État entitled: Burak ät bäräs, ‘Fleurs de paroles’. Du Sens et de la Traduction (Revel 1990-1992). My quest during 18 years alternating fieldwork and precious collaborations of various Departments at le Jardin des Plantes in Paris, was about Reality and the Meaning of things.
67Is Reality as lived and conceived by the Pala’wan, then observed, described in their words and analysed by a linguist-anthropologist genuinely accessible to them both?
68After many years of interrogation, I would answer today quoting Augustin Berque:
“The meaning of things is a matter of trajection, a general operation through which the data of the environment are captured as something by one’s senses, actions, mind and language.” (Berque 2016).
“Reality is neither purely objective, nor purely subjective, but always trajective” (Berque 2018).