being strong & steady stewards

We celebrated agriculturalists month in July, highlighting the central role of agriculture in many aspects and sectors of our daily lives. 

The workers, producers and stewards are also the current custodians of not just agriculture but also the environment and our biodiversity. Along with the ecosystem and sustainability, all are closely linked and entwined. 

For centuries, humanity has benefitted from Earth’s rich bounty of natural resources. But these last few decades also make us aware of the ensuing global impact the human footprint makes. Climate change, biodiversity loss, disrupted ecosystems, land degradation, and public health emergencies, including novel pandemics. 

the good, the bad, the ugly

We have had a home away from home in The Colony on Edgewater, New Jersey for going on 15 years now. Like many other pockets of haven wedged between busy city hubs it is being increasingly encroached upon. 

love nature & it will love you back

After six months of isolation in our provincial tropical island, our return to East Coast US has been a brutal and harsh adjustment. Our once secret haven has been invaded by greedy corporate developers who have torn down our little quaint house to build their ugly McMansions. 

Hudson River trail walk - August 2023

decolonize holidays

Columbus Day - also known as Día de la Hispanidad (Hispanic Heritage Day), Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Indigenous Resistance Day) or Día de la Diversidad Cultural (Cultural Diversity Day), and Día de la Raza - is the contentious controversial commemoration of historic events that started on this day in 1492 as seen through very different lenses. 

© Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

On one hand, some argue that this date was the beginning of the history of the modern American nations with the introduction of the American continent to the rest of the world. This Eurocentric view focuses on the colonizers' outlook. 

celebrating Indigenous groups & tribal communities across the globe

The other perspective is October 12, 1492 was the start of a process of death and subjugation of native indigenous people by European nations. This view states that celebrating the person who made that possible (Christopher Columbus) is insensitive and erroneous. 

abuse & trauma

Born and raised in a banana republic like the Philippines exposes one to intergenerational trauma from multiple layers of unresolved and often unacknowledged abuse. 

Imbedded in our DNA for countless generations of ancestors and perpetuators of a colonized land peopled by all manner of beings - local, pioneer, settler, trader, opportunist, colonial, and colonizer. 

Philippine history timelines

Asian, European, American - all these aliens fought their wars on our land and fought each other to gain a piece of our paradise. Leaving us with nowhere to run or hide all these years. 

Raping, pillaging, destroying and stealing whatever they could, in any way conceivable - most of it with malicious and violent intent. 

required reading

A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution―from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality―and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike―either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or by taming our baser instincts. 

season of resistance

Dissent was my primary mode of operation growing up - at home, in school, with relationships. I believed moving to the United States of America would be less repressive and corrupt than the false democracy of my Philippine homeland. 

Jingle dancers at Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, July 2020

I relocated in 2006 and with Barack Obama as US president from 2009 to 2017 was all too easily lulled into the belief that this was truly the land of equal opportunity, freedom and liberty. With the US' reputation abroad and the American economy significantly improved we all had our blinders on. 

 Jingle Dress Project - a healing dream

patriotism vs nationalism

With the recent death of a former decent president back in the Philippines and recent Fourth of July celebrations in the USA, issues regarding beliefs that drive and affect us have come up once more. 

Patriotism is love for or devotion to one's country. The feeling of pride, devotion, and attachment to a homeland, as well as a feeling of attachment to other patriotic citizens. The feelings of attachment may be further bound up in factors like race or ethnicity, culture, religious beliefs, or history.

Nationalism is loyalty and devotion to a nation. Feelings of nationalism are based on a belief that one’s country is superior to all others. It also carries a connotation of distrust or disapproval of other countries, leading to the assumption that other countries are rivals. 

They may have similarities but there's a world of difference between the two - they are not in the least synonymous. Patriotism is the love of one's identity and achievement to better the world and future generations. Nationalism is believing your identity and achievements are better than those of others.

heritage & inheritance

May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month – a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Let us hope it does not activate or aggravate more Asian hate crimes as it did in March - which ironically was Women's History Month. 

advocating against Asian bigotry & discrimination

“What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.”

―THE TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN PAVILION

(金閣寺, Kinkaku-ji) 1956 by Yukio Mishima

fossil hunter & self taught paleontologist | Mary Anning

As March ends and Women's History Month draws to a close, we celebrate the life and contribution of yet another woman of substance - Mary Anning. 

Phoyo byTommy Trenchard,Panos Pictures/Redux

This woman was arguably the greatest fossil hunter of them all - Anning’s discoveries ended up in museums, including an ichthyosaur pictured above in the Natural History Museum in London. Her findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.

big picture | big questions

Scrolling through my feed I came across this information on ancestral mathematics.

In order to be born, you needed:
2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great-grandparents
16 second great-grandparents
32 third great-grandparents
64 fourth great-grandparents
128 fifth great-grandparents
256 sixth great-grandparents
512 seventh great-grandparents
1,024 eighth great-grandparents
2,048 ninth great-grandparents

For you to be born today from 12 previous generations, you needed a total of 4.094 ancestors over the last 400 years.

Think for a moment - How many struggles? How many battles? How many difficulties? How much sadness? How much happiness? How many love stories? How many expressions of hope for the future? - did your ancestors have to undergo for you to exist in this present moment. 

Art by Joe Magee

adventurers, pioneers, colonizers

It takes an adventurous spirit to head off into the unknown. To risk it all to pioneer a new life in a new world. Proud conquerors of much trial and tribulation.

No wonder colonizers often ignore, forget and intentionally bury their original sin. Invaders of a paradise who dispossessed its original inhabitants. Settlers in denial of how much they unsettled in staking their claims.

Violators of nature and its wilderness. Resorting to violence to tame their new home. Aggressively wiping off all other contenders. With no consideration for its original inhabitants - plant, mineral, animal or human.

Recorded or remembered the Philippines predates many of today's nations. Yet too many of its masses are kept ignorant and primitive. Byt the few who continue to rape and dishonor our country and its folks out of greed and power.

In the Philippines June 12 is designated as the birth of a nation and its independence day. Proud of its claim as the oldest democratic nation in Asia. The country's independence has remained on shaky ground from birth until today.

Long before the first colonizers invaded its verdant shores much of its primordial life and indigenous history had already been lost to winds of change and territorial warring.

The victorious rewriting history blinded by ahistorical visions of idealism and grandeur. Blanketing the past and hiding its truths in shaded stories and fraudulent claims.

How do we untangle this miasma when we can only guess at what may have been? How can we hold our ground when it too easily blows up or away when we need to hold on to it the most?

Paradise lost indeed. Persevere and preserve what is here now. All can still be revived and restored.

Ina Gunid | goddess of war & poisons

Ina Gunid was invoked for success in war and mangayaw raids. She was also associated with another trinity of deities when working with and concocting poisonous oils and charms. 

Courtesy of Anituo

Also known as Ynaguinid, Inagunid and Naguinid, she was one of the three deities according to whom the tribe offered prayers to for success in the battlefield. 

good intentions & the road to hell

As we celebrate yet another Thanksgiving day, feasting with friends and family, strangers or loved ones, too few know the truth behind this beloved celebration.

The tale of food, football and oppression we celebrate as Thanksgiving. 

Caught between the fiction of what really happened and the ignorance of not bothering to find out, many are divided between grief and gratitude or outraged betrayal and corrupted commercialism.

This new retelling of past pilgrim history recounts their voyage as one of folks fleeing seduction rather than persecution.

Fearing materialistic corruption they fled the comfort of Holland for the unknown wilderness of America.

Much as their intent was to remain pure and holy, they were unprepared for the dire consequences of their dream to risk all for the ideal commonwealth.

To this day we tell ourselves tall tales and misguided misrepresentations of those times. As we sit in the warm comfort of our homes, over tables groaning with food, intent on stuffing ourselves to bursting.

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

blood & gore

We Filipinos have been influenced by our Asian neighbors. Colonized for hundreds of years under the yoke of Spain. Occupied by the US and obsessed with all things American.

As mixed Chinese and Spanish mestizos with bloodlines and lineages still coursing through us - we are torn between the love that birthed us and the curse of our colonizers.

We reach past the birth of our nation. way back in time. Past our local creation narratives, imagining what might have been. To the spontaneous combustion that brought forth this land from the depths of our ranging seas.

Our heritage and history are long lost and largely mis-remembered or retold. Burned and buried in chaos and upheavals - natural or man-made. Attached to their loss or indifferent and ignorant, we hold these painful memories in our genes.

With a new generation of fascists on the rise in too many parts of the world, many protected by government clout and influence even - amnesty is declared over mass graves of countless genocides.

It is simpler for current leaders and legislation to sweep it under the rug in a haze of selective amnesia because if the truth were told no one could afford the cost of reparation.

None of these past atrocities can ever be undone but the fact that we sit and wait hoping enough time will pass to distance ourselves from it is counter productive and fatal for our future.

Forgive? Yes. Forget? No.

The Ghosts Spain Tries to Ignore - art by Marta Monteiro

In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world. ~ Federico García Lorca, “El Duende”

Listen to this lovely heart rending ode to our heroic masses by Luisa A. Igloria, Dear Federico.

memoricide - a spreading worldwide dis-ease

Ilan Pappé, Israeli historian and political activist, refers to the uprooting of Palestine's indigenous olive trees and the massive erasure of Palestinian history as state organized memoricide.

Memoricide is not just forgetting the past, it is the killing of our memory.

All over the world it seems governments, countries, organizations, and peoples prefer to bury a past that brings up messy issues with the possibility of attendant accountability or reparations.

The disrobing of Draupadi, 

Histories throughout the ages hold memory is an essential part of life. Memory is the love that forms the foundation which sustains and nurtures humanity in limitless ways.

memory in our genes | history on our skin

Commissioned Art by Mahala Urra

The recent uproar over the exploitation of a tribal elder at the recent Manila FAME event has opened a whole can of worms. 

Read a BBC article on it - one of many that have since gone viral. 

Apo Whang Od Oggay herself may well disagree. 

Sleeping figure is celebrated Kalinga tatoo artist, Apo Whang Od

Conquests and Conquerors

According to historian Edmund Morgan, Columbus was not a scholarly man. Yet he studied these books, made hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the world that were characteristically simple and strong and sometimes wrong, the kind of ideas that the self-educated person gains from independent reading and clings to in defiance of what anyone else tries to tell him. [Morgan, Edmund S. (2009). "Columbus's Confusion About the New World". Smithsonian Magazine.]



Today is Columbus Day – an occasion fraught with as much controversy as the historical icon himself. Columbus may have been a gifted navigator but he was a troubled and troublesome soul. His ambition knew no bounds and he was determined to wipe clean from humanity’s collective memories the fact that the Vikings led by Lief Ericson came three centuries before him.

In his search for wealth and recognition, Columbus’ avarice fueled the birth of torture, tyranny and genocide in all of the Americas - killing off most of the New World before it could even gain a foothold in history. Trade routes were key to success for European kingdoms and their emerging imperialism and expanding economies. Columbus preyed on this need to propel his own ambitions.

On inception Columbus was already soundly beaten by his fellow countryman, Bartholomew Diaz, the Portuguese nobleman and explorer who had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. After begging from court to court across Europe, his failed mission brought him to Portugal’s primary nemesis - Spain and the royal court of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille.

 

In the end Columbus never got what the Spanish crown promised. Columbus the unrelenting social climber and self-promoter stopped at nothing - not even exploitation, slavery, or twisting Biblical scripture to advance his ambitions - in denial until his death that what he had discovered was not Asia but the Americas.

 

Rightly or not history has chosen to remember and revere the man.