Another Ifugao culture icon facing extinction

By Jeremy M. Gawongna

MAYOYAO, Ifugao – Aside from the Banaue rice terraces, another cultural masterpiece is facing extinction in the province.

This is the apfo’or burial tombs erected in the early period of Mayoyao as family or clan graves.

It is a rounded stone-walled enclosure where the dead is put in a sitting position and constructed to keep away rodents and other animals from ravaging the body.

Elders here said only the well-to-do in those times made use of the apfo’or to lay their dead to rest.

The construction was done through bare hands and crude implements such as hard wood and sharp stones.

But over the years, domes of two of these burial tombs collapsed. Weeds and other plants grew over it.

One of these tombs is that of Inchimag, a wealthy yet childless woman in olden times who had her apfo’or built in full exposure to the sun at the edge of the mountain range of Ottong which could be accessed in a five-minute walk from the recently constructed Mayoyao hostel.

This serves as a memorial grave since accounts from oral tradition reveal that Inchimag wanted to be remembered by the generations after her in spite of being childless.

The locals recounted that stones used for construction were carried up by hands from quite a distant Pinuwo’ river and the clay (oklet) to cement or seal the stones together were carried down from a distant elevated area called Tanaw.

The other apfo’or now starting to collapse is that of Uhupfan, a fierce yet childless chieftain in the early period of Mayoyao.

Elders said he was mocked by the people in his community because despite his fierceness, his body would be eaten by dogs when he dies because he had no children to take care of his burial.

“Challenged by the taunts nd with a wish to be buried respectably and honourably befitting his status, he planned to build his apfo’or on the hill called Tomo’,” the locals said. He had a hundred bundles of palay pounded on the site and 20 pigs butchered to feed the people.

Gloria Likiyan, one of the indigenous knowledge holders, said she feels bad that the collapse and eventual extinction of the apfo’or burial tombs are manifestations that they are losing their cultural heritage.

“These cultural masterpieces tell something about our past and someone must initiate to find ways to preserve and improve it,” Likiyan said.

Some conservationists say losing such cultural masterpiece would mean the eventual loss of this town’s distinctiveness to other places or cultures.