NIKE

THOUGHTS UNLIMITED
Eugene Balitang

NIKE. I thought it was the shoes. This was when I received the letter asking me to be one of the judges in the inter-school debate during the recent Gotad ad Ifugao. Alas, it was not the shoes, or rather, the popular shoe brand. NIKE stands for Nurturing Indigenous Knowledge Experts. After the final round of the debate, I asked Architect Rachel Guimbatan about it and she was kind enough to email me the meat of it, which, for the sake of column space, I hereunder quote according to my “editorial” skill, here goes:

NIKE is implemented by an association, yes. The implementing members are the NCIP, Dep-Ed, ISCAF, SITMO, with the Provincial Government acting as coordinator. These are members of the Ifugao Provincial Heritage Council created under E.O. 30 which is supposed to act as the policy-making body for culture-related projects such as NIKE and those on the performing arts. The existence of NIKE currently gives teeth to this council.

What is NIKE for? It is a project that responds to what the hudhud chants, native dances, beauty contests, and Gotad festivities could not really act on no matter how often they are performed. While these are equally important in values formation, NIKE works on revitalizing the intellectual heritage of the Ifugaos focusing on philosophies, principles, and scientific systems that built those rice terraces.

We are referring to that sophisticated heritage that puts to shame modern agricultural, engineering, and conservation planning systems. Thus, NIKE’s objective, among others, is educating civil engineers not to design irrigation systems (alak) as drainage systems (liglig), otherwise they will cause more landslides, or campaigning for agriculturists to pay more attention to the moon and the sun, or promoting conflict resolution strategies of the munkalun.

The project tries to break the myth that development undermines conservation through human resource development. It intends to assist knowledge transfer between the older generation of Ifugao knowledge holders and the younger generation of Ifugaos, particularly in the sciences dealing with natural resource management, terrace construction and building techniques, and rice production, through alternative and modern education channels, with the end in view that Indigenous Knowledge systems and its principles are carried on and applied in every development intervention on the Ifugao landscape by the emerging generation of Ifugao leaders and professionals.

Rachel went on to state that the factors that had weakened the knowledge link between the old and the young Ifugaos, factors which are now manifested in the deteriorating state of the Ifugao Rice terraces, are: 1) modernization/loss of interest in our ancient ways, 2) formal education, which demands eventual outmigration, causing the social and intellectual disconnect between the young and the old folks, 3) low income/limited economic opportunities, and 4) Christianity, which had perhaps sealed the gap by removing the spiritual dimension that is essential in keeping these important conservation practices alive.

The debate among the high schools revolved on the general proposition of whether or not to include indigenous knowledge in our formal educational system in Ifugao. I have long forgotten the arguments of the students, but I will surely ponder the matter in the near future. Being a true-blue Ifugao, born no less in Banaue where the famous 8th Wonder of the World is situated, I owe it to myself and my people to at least “debate” on the matter. At least for now, I know that NIKE is not about the shoes. (ebalitang@yahoo.com.ph)