“I am the land and I am their witness”: placemaking amid displacement among Lumads in the Philippines

Abstract

ABSTRACT What happens to place-based, intergenerational knowledge in conditions of displacement? Here we attempt an answer to this question by reflecting on the experiences of the Indigenous peoples of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, collectively known as Lumads. For decades, Lumad communities have faced violence and displacement at the hands of the Philippine military, corporate armies, civilian militias, and rebel groups. Most accounts of Lumads portray them as passive victims who are “caught in between” warring factions of capitalists and leftists. This paper aims to augment a small but growing body of work that challenges such accounts and centers the historical agency of Lumads. In particular, we highlight some of the ways in which Lumads make life, place, and memory in the schools and community centers that they have established at three sites in Mindanao and Manila. In becoming Lumad places, these are sites in which Lumads of different ages, ethnicities, and social standings actively remake their relations with themselves, with their surroundings, and with others; they are sites of intergenerational communication and consternation; they are sites of pan-ethnic identity formation and solidarity; and they are sites of despair, repair, and potentially transformation.