DAVAO CITY, Philippines — The Philippine Women’s College (PWC) in cooperation with Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and National Commission on Indigenous Peoples XI (NCIP) officially opened this year’s National Indigenous Peoples Month (NIPM) on Wednesday at RSM Event Center.
This year’s theme, “Celebrating Heritage of our Creative Community”, aims to acknowledge the cultures and practices of the various tribes and to recognize the indigenous peoples of Davao Region who were the primary inhabitants of the land.
Hon. Bai Halila Sudagar, the chairperson of Committee on Cultural Communities and Muslim Affairs encouraged the participants to further promote the traditional practices by various IPs in the Philippines, most especially in Davao.
“This Indigeneous Peoples Month celebration is a good way of remembering the great contributions of our indigenous brothers and sisters, reminiscing their great contributions here in the city,” Sudagar said.
“The uniqueness and promotion of each tribe in Davao City cultivated the cultural heritage that we are enjoying today, thus, without them being present in the city, Davao City would not be like this today,” Sudagar added.
Eleven tribes were present during the event, namely the Matigsalug, Ata-Manobo, Obo-Manobo, Jangan-Clata, Bagobo-Tagabawa, Kagan, Maguindanao, Maranao, Tausug, Sama and Iranun. Each dressed in their festive and colorful tribal attires.
The essence of the celebration of NIPM is to gain comprehensive knowledge on cultural heritage, to raise cultural awareness, to advance cultural sensitivity and to nurture sustainable development orientation.
With the recent recognition award from the British Council’s Creative Innovators Fellowship Programme and as the largest school for fine arts in Mindanao, PWC vowed to host the NIPM annually with the support of CHED.
Proudly recognized as one of the 15 creative hub institution sin the British Council’s Creative Innovators Programme and a CHED Instutional and Innovation Guarantee for 2018, PWC’s Artisanal Heritage Studies and Creative Enterprise Center (AHSEC) is set to become a better platform to showcase the rich heritage and culture of Dabaweyo IPs as well as to educate the future generations on the traditional tribes.
Rooted from the enactment of Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) in 1997, the festivity of NIPM is bounded to continuously promote tradition and culture approaching the age of advance technology.(Cyntelle Joanne Saguan/
davaotoday.com)
