Land is Life: Three Lessons from Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan and the Lumad Community

October 2024. Here we are: one full year since the genocide in Gaza ignited, the presidential elections are a month away, and people across the country are grieving and rebuilding in the wake of life-threatening wild fires and hurricanes.

Some days, I feel overwhelmed by devastation after devastation, injustice after injustice. It feels like nothing we do is enough to make a difference.

In times like this, I look to my kapwa, family and community in the Philippines.

Our people have prevailed against land grabs by colonial powers and big corporations, periods of martial law declared by authoritarian presidents, and horrific climate disasters sweeping our homes and villages. This year, we celebrated the 38th Anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution where kasamas, students, workers, people of faith, families, activists, rallied to end the 20 year dictatorship of former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

We are courageous in the face of adversity. We take care of one another. Together, we create new possibilities for our future.

Bai Bibyaon Quote, from Sabokahan Unity of Lumad Women’s Instagram

This Filipino American History Month, I honor the revolutionary legacy of Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay, the first woman chieftain of the Lumad Talaingod Manobo tribe. The Lumad people span many different sectors and language backgrounds — 18 tribes all throughout Mindanao, the southern region of the Philippines. Bai Bibyaon helped unify the tribes during the 1986 Assembly of the Mindanao Peoples Federation.

She passed away November of last year but has left an undeniable mark in my homeland’s history. She fought against the logging of the ancestral lands, advocated for the self-determination and rights of the indigenous, and reshaped the future of not only the Lumad women and children but of all of the Philippines.

These are three lessons I‘ve learned from Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan and the Lumad Community:

1. Land is Life

The Lumad people continue to be stewards of the land. They cultivate their own crops and make food from their harvest. They practice many sustainability measures in their agriculture: from using coconut husks to slope the land to recycled bottles for insect attractants with molasses and vinegar.

Excerpts from Scent of Rain, Sun and Soil: Stories of Agroecology by Lumad Youth in The Philippines, design by Ali Wright

I am in awe of their partnership with nature, their surrounding environment. Working in the South Bay & Harbor Region of Los Angeles, I am saddened by how the residents here are not able to access their own coasts and beaches. The Ports of Long Beach and LA instead pollute the area alongside the refineries of Marathon, Phillips 66, and Valero. The Lumad fight to protect their land against logging and mining by companies such as Alcantara & Sons. They make their own fertilizers, tend to the seedlings daily, and not only preserve the land, but strengthen its nutrients and fruits. How can we do the same?

“Everything that we need to create a sustainable future is already here. We have to learn to build with nature and not against it.” — Mai Thi, APEN LA Academy 2023 participant and APEN Action Statewide Member

Mai’s words remind me of our work to clean neighborhoods and decommission refineries. How we can protect our land, water, and people. How we can foster an accessible, affordable and green community. How we are doing this work with our members and coalition partners all throughout the state.

2. Culture is a Source of Strength

T’boli, Bisaya, Cebuano, Manobo, and Subanen are just some of the many languages that the Lumad tribes speak. They come together to share recipes on how to make delicious Filipino dishes such as Tinola and Pinakbet. They have beautiful intricate colors and patterns in their clothing. They show great pride in their traditions, and their culture is a source of strength in resisting the increasing land grabs, militarization, and policing of their people.

I wish I was taught more and knew more about my own indigenous roots. I moved from the Philippines when I was 11. Like so many Asian immigrants and refugees in the Los Angeles area, my parents wanted me to have a brighter future here in America, to have more job opportunities. But those opportunities meant separating from our family and community in the Philippines, and it was hard to know that while we were building a life here, our relatives back home were struggling to get their basic needs met. For the Philippine government, Overseas Filipino Workers are seen as commodities, exported to generate money to send back home. In Filipino communities here, working for a better life often means losing connection to the land and ways of living that sustained our communities historically.

By learning from our culture, we can return to practices that build stability and resilience in our neighborhoods.

When I was young, my mom would make food for our whole block of neighbors, we would deliver food to each of them, and we would check in on how they were doing. A beautiful practice I had learned growing up in Mindanao.

In our APEN LA organizing, we experience great joy in sharing our cultures during our member meetings. We envision a future for our neighborhoods where all people have what they need, where our cultural foods and practices are celebrated, and there are community cultural centers and spaces to continue these traditions.

Here are some snapshots of what APEN LA members have shared as part of their vision for the future of their communities:

3. Youth are Our Future

Bai Bibyaon and the Lumad people built entire educational systems for the Lumad youth. At a time when the Philippine government was trying to rewrite history to prop up the existing power structure, the Lumad people established over two hundred schools where young people could learn about their history as indigenous people, and build the skills they would need to sustain land and life in their communities. The Community Technical College of Southeastern Mindanao (CTCSM) was the biggest in Mindanao, graduated over 90 midwives, teachers, healthworkers, and farmers, and educated over 300 elementary to high school students.

Sadly the schools have been raided and shut down by the government. Students like Kuni Cuba a Dulangan Monobo have been killed by paramilitary forces and many others have been jailed like the Talaingod 18.

However, the Lumad tribes continue to fight for their young people. They have successfully gotten charges dropped against Lumad leader Datu Benito from a raid on Lumad Bakwit School Cebu, held more paralegal and rights trainings to protect further persecution of their communities, and are reporting abuses to United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Importantly, more and more Sabokahan Lumad youth are graduating from the national universities and shedding light on the Philippine government’s oppression of the country’s indigenous peoples.

Lumad youth are shaping the future of their tribes and demanding an education that serves their communities.

As we build our environmentally just future here in LA, we are learning from the Lumad peoples.

Our members have developed a values statement that will shape our future projects and campaigns:

The Los Angeles South Bay & Harbor area is and will be an abundant, and tenacious community that shares culture through food, stories, traditional knowledge and joy. This community centers family, trust, and sustainability that honors our uniqueness, creates fun community spaces, and connects with the land and water. It will be an accessible, affordable and green community where immigrants, refugees, workers, students and people of all ages feel safe, resourced and cared for.

We honor Bai Bibyaon’s legacy by defending the land and growing our community.

Join us and be a part of the movement for environmental justice in LA!

Janielle Torregosa is APEN’s Los Angeles Community Organizer. She is mixed Filipina, Chinese, and Spanish and moved here from Ozamiz City, Philippines. She graduated from CSULB with a Spanish major and International Studies minor.