The Curious Cat Killed the Bird

𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐚́𝐰𝐨𝐧

𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐚́𝐰𝐨𝐧: 𝑨𝒏 𝑰𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝑪𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒂𝒏 𝑰𝒔𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒅

Mindanao to outsiders may ironically be seen as the “Land of Promise” that only has 37-floor building as the tallest and a typical Filipino would only identify a Mindanáwon as an ethnically Bisayâ who has an English ngalan, Spanish apelyido, and sometimes with Chinese matá, that speaks with strong aksint from the South — this stereotype, in actuality, is true, and is not; and would only bring a Mindanáwon in conundrum and starts having an identity crisis.

This is because the term Mindanáwon itself does not equal to a Bisayâ, in fact a Bisayâ is not just one ethnic group nor is Mindanáwon an ethnicity. The term Bisayâ, as per anthropologist H. Otley Beyer and others, was first applied to aboriginals of Pánay and to their scattered settlements on Negrós and Romblon islands, in contrast to contemporary users of the term like the Sugbûanon, Bol-anon and Leyteño who were called as Pintados back in the day.

If one is not a Bisayâ, why does he speak Binisáyâ? If he is a Bisayâ why is there no one from his family that has a Bisayâ ancestry? If he has one, will he still be a Bisayâ even when he has not yet set foot on Visayas himself? Or if one speaks Binisáyâ, has Bisayâ parents, or that is partly Bisayâ why not he identify himself as just a Bisayâ? Why the complexity?

As to the confusion of who is a Mindanáwon will just be worsened with the fact there are also Mindanáwon who have no ethnic roots in Visayas and there are those who have mixed Visayan-Mindanáwon heritage.

Mindanao, although settled mostly by Bisayâ peoples — around 25.8% are Cebuanos, Hiligaynon/Ilonggo compose 8.2%, and noteworthy that those who identity themselves as Bisayâ/Binisáyâ are only 18.4% — who settled here in the first part of the twentieth century, there are also non-Bisayâ groups that make up the Mindanao population: the Moro, biggest of them are the Maguindanaon (5.5%), the Maranao (5.4%), and the 36.6 percent belonged to other groups like other Moro and Lúmad ethnicities according to the National Statistics Office data published in 2005.

To simplify the inquiries, one must ask this prime question: who is a Mindanáwon in the first place?

Karlo Antonio David, a Kidapawan historian, in his Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Colono: Settling Issues on Mindanao Settler Identity, writes that “anyone who lives in Mindanao can be called a Mindanáwon.”

Mindanáwon, like Bisayâ is a geographical identity that comes in with sometimes complicated and overlapping identity markers like racial, national, ethnic, religious and linguistic categories.

One can be of Ilonggo ethnicity, a Muslim, who speaks Cebuano yet still be a Mindanáwon. One can be of foreign nationality, speaks Tágalog, and still be a Mindanáwon. David further explains that there are two ways by which one becomes a Mindanáwon: either by birth and or migration.

“Although diverse in cultures, both kinds will have shared experiences among one another that the other kind won’t relate to,” he said.

This unique multiculturalism, born from cultural contact and hybridization, makes Mindanao — its tri-people: millions of Colono settlers, 13 Moro bangsa, and 23 Lúmad tribes — distinct from other cultures in the archipelago, and to some degree varied from their mother societies.

This is not really a question of why a Mindanáwon is having an identity crisis on the island, the crisis itself should not be seen as indication of cultural dubiety, but rather an invitation of self-awareness and potentials once he fully questions who he is — as a Bisayâ, a Lúmad, a Moro — and understands himself as a Mindanáwon.