HOW I WISH IGOROTS WERE LIKE DOGS. THEY WOULD BE THE BEST HUMAN BEINGS.

Yes, I said that.

 In fact, how I wish all humans, not just Igorots, were like dogs.

 Dogs are known for loyalty. They are protective of their human associates.

 

More admirably, dogs do not devour or feast upon their kind. So when a situation is called "dog-eat-dog, " it means it manifests a total breakdown of goodness, of morality, of how it is to be humane. It means everyone has become selfish. It raises the questions, "Why have we stopped caring for others?" "Is love still alive?"

There is a series of famous paintings by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge showing anthropomorphized dogs playing poker. I have yet to hear a human being whisper a protest. But I honestly believe that if dogs could speak to us in a language we fathom, they would probably demand that the paintings be expunged from the face of Earth and human memory.

As I said, dogs do not eat their kind. When human beings gather around the table to play poker, they are not being "doggy." They are being human - and by that, I mean most probably selfish. In a real poker game, the objective of the poker player is to empty the other players' pockets and siphon their wealth to his/hers. Who cares if the poker players you defeat are gambling away food for hungry children at home or medicine for a sick spouse, child, or parent?

Sounds like greed, no? It should.

The Coolidge paintings earned Coolidge fame that outlived him and earned the paintings enormous popularity that made their maker seem smaller than them, a case of the creator fading as the creature shines.

Coolidge's paintings' fame is the diametric opposite of the instant notoriety gained by the painting of two anthropomorphized dogs - one a woman dog and another a man dog, both in traditional Igorot clothes. The female dog is dancing while the male dog is beating an Igorot gong. The hands of an Igorot artist, Clemente Delim, produced it.

According to those who know Delim, he created the work to celebrate the Year of the Dog. It is currently on exhibit in a mall-that-I-would-rather-not-name-and-this-has-nothing-to-do-with-this-post. 📷:-)

An Igorot lawyer, a prosecutor from the Department of Justice (DOJ), hurled the painting to the attention of the Facebook community. He expressed concern that it could perpetuate discrimination against Igorots. His post became viral. Personalities from the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) and the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) added their dissenting voices. Some concerned individuals echoed them in careful language that revealed genuine and well-meant fear of exacerbating ethnic marginalization.

 

"The artist may mean well; however, considering the historical ethno-prejudice we are still suffering from, he should explain what his work means. Not everyone understands artistic license."

 

"What is he trying to tell us? Am I right that there is something in this painting that is offensive?"

 

However, more were angry in their articulation of dissent. Make that livid.

 

"He is assaulting our dignity and honor as Igorots."

"Insensitive to indigenous peoples."

"He disrespects the Igorot culture!"

"Dog-brained!"

 There was also that litigious, knee-jerk two-word statement. 

“Sue him!"

 Some embarked on a hate campaign.

 "Behead the painter!!!"

 "Chop his head into pieces!"

 "Let us make azucena pulutan out of him!!!"

 If the painter really slurred Igorots by depicting us as dogs, he caused far less damage than the "Crucify him!" crowd. They claim to be Igorots. They offended me by spreading the message that we, Igorots, are irrational, murderous, and diabolical. We do not behead others over matters that deeply vex us. We are not cannibals. We do not chop fellow human beings to pieces when they say things that ruffle our feathers.

Opps...Did I just liken Igorots to birds? Will I be virtually crucified, too?

More than 20 years ago, my and my siblings' friend and singing buddy, the late Lito Bagano, was working with the community of persons with disabilities in Baguio. Lito was a community member who had severe polio since infancy. He used to hang out a lot with his deaf friends, introduced me to some, and -I honestly believe- even forced one of them, a really cute guy named Mike, to court me (and I had to learn a little sign language to converse with Mike). Lito also introduced Delim and convinced me to have him paint my portrait in charcoal. I still have the portrait at home in Baguio, at the topmost shelf of the wall cabinet beside a bedroom.

I must admit that when I was just out of my teens, I was still not sensitive enough to persons with disabilities. When I asked Delim to paint me, it was because I was a bigoted jerk. I was incredulous that deaf persons could paint and it was nice to have the work of one who could. And I used deaf-and-dumb and deaf-mute to refer to them like almost everybody else did and seemingly still do, not aware that the deaf are deaf but not necessarily mute or dumb since they speak sign language and are as capable of discernment as everyone.  Remembering it now, I feel deep regret and remorse.

Delim, without knowing it, helped transform my consciousness. I am now an advocate of persons with disabilities. In fact, in the DOJ, I am in charge of Disability Affairs. That's the beautiful part of my shameful, self-flagellating narrative. 

Delim may not remember that he painted me or may no longer have a clue of me at all. That should make us even. I forgot he was the one who did my portrait. But this uproar over his work summoned buried memory back to life. As if it was just yesterday, I vividly recall that he delivered the portrait to me in General Luna in Baguio.

As Delim helped salvage me from my own bigotry, I need to speak out to reinforce the volume of voices defending him, which are less audible than those condemning him.

No, Delim is not vilifying Igorots nor is he trampling upon our collective dignity. On the contrary, he is utilizing anthropomorphism as an expression to dismantle ethnic prejudice directed at us. He is unquestionably interrogating the outsiders’ ethos which is biased against us.

We, Igorots, are widely known as dog-eaters. In fact, some of us actually believe we are dog-eaters, when only a few of us are. In a world that considers the dog a human being's best friend, dog-eating is outright infernal, fiendish, even demonic. That is why in the early 1900s when the imperialist forces in the United States wanted to convince the American public of the morality of its continued occupation of the Philippines, they imported 100 Igorots from the Mountain Province who reached The Land of the Free, Home of the Brave by ship.

In what could easily be denounced now as unforgivable objectification, the US displayed the Igorots naked but for their loincloths as spectacles in the St. Louis World Exposition of 1904. The Igorots were regularly given dog meat to eat, less to nourish their bodies and more to make a case that the Manifest Destiny of the Superior White Race to Civilize the Inferior Brown Heathens had to be honored. The American public gawked at the horrifying half-devils, half-children. In their collective mind, Benevolent Assimilation had to be enforced. This cruel, racist policy was immortalized by US President McKinley in his instructions to the Philippine Commission of April 7, 1900:

In dealing with the uncivilized tribes of the Islands, the Commission should adopt the same course followed by Congress in permitting the tribes of our North American Indians to maintain their tribal organization and government, and under which many of those tribes are now living in peace and contentment, surrounded by civilization to which they are unable or unwilling to conform. Such tribal government should, however, be subjected to wise and firm regulation; and, without undue or petty interference, constant and active effort should be exercised to prevent barbarous practices and introduce civilized customs.”

Delim is saving us from a false narrative that has become the Igorots’ inter-generational curse. Dog-eating has been too long portrayed as the most stark badge of our inferiority. And this supposed inferiority is the justification for the discrimination we suffer. This discrimination finds expression in barriers that make it difficult for us to access social services, justice, and other public goods, and in oppressive policies and programs that target us.

Yes, some of us eat dogs for breakfast, lunch, or dinner to please palates, as do some members of other ethnic or national groups. But azucena is not a staple of every Igorot meal. Pinikpikan, not azucena, is to the Igorots what tinola is to the Tagalogs and what pinakbet is to the Ilocanos. In the days of yore, Igorots butchered dogs as offerings to Kabunian during sacred rituals. Dog-eating was, therefore, an act of reverence for the Supreme Being.

 Rather than nourishing ethnic prejudice, Delim is helping us recapture the glory days of our “Igorotness.” We are descendants of people who, during the greater part of the last century, still shared resources and bounties and ate from one plate, carried one another's burdens as communal pains, and considered it inayan to cause others' sufferings or to be greedy. We are keepers of traditional knowledge that conserved much of the natural resources still unreached by greedy hands in this country.

 We were like dogs. We did not gobble up our kind. This is Delim’s message.

Let us not pick on the likes of Clemente Delim, Igorot artist who is deaf. Delim has been bullied far too much when he should be hailed as a model of how an Igorot should think.

Let us reserve our voices for the real enemies of Igorots: the royalties and principalities of greed and selfishness, their bishops, and their other enablers.

We need to speak out when the avaricious bulldoze our mountains and kick us out of our ancestral lands to build homes for the opulent while we are rendered homeless. We need to speak out when they mine our mountains for gold and mercilessly pollute our rivers and lands hurting our food security and making us poor even if our lands are rich. We need to speak out when they frenetically denude our forests, apathetic to our fate as locals who have nowhere to go for refuge when landslides bury our homes while the plunderers can always scamper to the safety of their luxurious, safe villages. We need to speak out when they keep slandering us in textbooks, movies, and popular media.

Unfortunately, the times when we need to speak out are the times when many of us choose to be silent as the grave.

 Let us be like dogs again. This is Delim’s entreaty.

 Keep the gongs beating.