Cultural agency: power and resistance in everyday life among Manobo-Pulangiyon

How do the Manobo-Pulangiyon as Indigenous peoples navigate colonial legacies, extractive capitalism, dispossession, and constant marginality in an increasingly precarious and mediated world? This thesis examines how Manobo-Pulangiyon, one of the Indigenous peoples in the Philippines, navigate everyday ruptures through forms of cultural agency and resistance. Drawing from eight months of ethnographic research in the Manobo-Pulangiyon community in Sitio Quemtras in the province of Bukidnon, Mindanao in the southern Philippines, the study centres on the various contexts shaped by ruptures (open moments) and its impacts on Indigenous peoples, including hacienda occupation, state intervention, surveillance, economic tourism, the digital space, and COVID-19 pandemic. Significantly, this thesis interrogates the conception of a cultural agency concerning reclaiming rights to ancestral land as a cultural space, culture, performance, and identity. It also explores how open moments influence collective memory, political relations, everyday resistance, Indigenous rituals, cultural performances, aspirations, and futurity. I adopt the concept of ruptures in this book, referring to them as events or moments of irreversible change affecting Manobo-Pulangiyon’s everyday life. Colonial ruptures bring forth vehement transformations affecting their Indigenous life, creating external pressures and compounding social dilemmas caused by continuous land grabbing, dispossession, extractive industries, capitalist economy, tourism, ecological destruction, and agro-industrialisation. These activities entail the legacies of the colonial past and constitute neo-colonial practices and residues that subjugated the Manobo-Pulangiyon to a range of social problems like poverty, social stratification, discrimination, and marginalisation. These external pressures have also brought along stories of clan conflicts, the intersectionality of power, contrasting interests, and cultural hegemony concerning land claims, access, and rights over ancestral domains, which have severed their cultural beliefs, Indigenous rituals, and family and kinship ties. These conflicts carried collective memories of trauma, despair, a sense of loss, and psycho-social and emotional stress. Hence, these social issues speak to colonial remnants and capitalism, which position the Manobo-Pulangiyon at the periphery of Philippine society. This thesis explores what it means to be Manobo-Pulangiyon within contemporary Philippine society in contexts shaped by various ruptures. I illustrate how the Manobo-Pulangiyons are not only victims of colonial and capitalist expansion but also agents of resilience, power, rights, and resistance. A central aim of the thesis is to investigate how culture and identity are enacted, reproduced, performed and negotiated to reclaim rights to ancestral land, territory, culture, performance, and identity. By combining methods of participant observation, interviews, and photo-video documentation with innovative, creative methods (Creative Voice), I examine how the Manobo-Pulangiyon community can create counter-narratives about ancestral land rights and cultural recognition and how they position themselves as agents for change, continuity, and reflexivity. In conclusion, this thesis argues that cultural agency in everyday life plays a significant part in presenting Manobo-Pulangiyon’s cultural heritage and identity, particularly in times interceded by ruptures.