THE TASADAY: REAL PEOPLE OR IMPOSTERS?

                                

 (This is a reprint of an article written by my son, Jeff and published by the  Asian Reporter for whom he was writing a column a few years ago.  He is my firstborn and I am very proud of him (Even if he doesn't call often enough).
                                         
                                       
                                                 At times exploited and at times protected.

During the time in which the Tasaday were returning to relative isolation, huge changes were taking place in Filipino society.  There was social pressure on the Marcos dictatorship to change.  In 1983 Ninoy Aquino was killed and around that time Manuel Elizalde disappeared  from the scene.  Ever a poor nation, the Philippines worked more than ever  to develop its natural resources in timber and minerals.  In 1986, Marcos was deposed and the government of Corizon Aquino began.

It was also in 1986 that a Swiss journalist claimed publicly that the entire Tasaday story  was a fraud.  Journalist John Nance, living again in America, began second guessing himself.  He recognized that he was no anthropologist but he’d been among people who were and who believed that the Tasaday were just as they seemed.  He was willing to see himself as fooled, but found it fantastic that scientists of  the stature of Douglas Yen and Robert Fox along with other anthropologists and linguists, NBC news and National Geographic were all likewise fooled.

Mr. Nance returned to the Philippines and tried to run down the truth about the Tasaday and the persistent rumors of hoax that surrounded them.  Before it was all done, Mr. Nance would appear before a congressional  hearing there concerning the issue.

He went again with an NBC news crew to Mindanao to the Tasaday preserve and was able to spend four days with the Tasaday before gunmen arrived and persuaded them to leave.  This and more is explained In his new book Where the Eye Sees too Far, currently submitted to the editing process.

The gentle Tasaday, upon his return, were hurt and irritated by his long absence, like your mom if you don’t write.  Their 45,000 acre preserve, claimed by loggers, Muslims, the Christian Right and the Catholic mission remained intact, protected by Federal decree.  However, satellite photographs showed that logging tracks move in all directions up to the edge of the forest.  The Tasaday preserve had become the linchpin to the entire Mindanao watershed.

Modern war was waged around them as members of nearby tribes were enlisted by the Federal government to fight Muslim and  Communist insurgencies.  Certain tribes throughout the archipelago became critical of the deal which bestowed the very few Tasaday with vast amounts of land.  As is the local custom, they wanted more for themselves, or at least less for the Tasaday.  Everyone wanted a piece of the action.

            The Tasaday themselves had undergone profound social changes.  They had taken wives from nearby (and more advanced) tribes.  Women who had known the opulence of nipa huts had a hard time settling for caves.  Likewise, to satisfy relatively more cosmopolitan tastes, the Tasaday took up agriculture to grow that which they could not forage.

In due course, the ABC television magazine 20 / 20 piled on, fueling the hoax story.  According to Mr. Nance, the Tasaday were coerced into saying untruths and wearing certain clothing out of a desire to please the outsiders and because the outsiders gave them material things they wanted.

In 1988 the reverend Cory Aquino authenticated the Tasaday by saying that they had nearly been exploited by “unscrupulous businessmen and scholars”.  The other side claims it was part of a deal that had been cut.

 Deal cutting isn’t high art in the Philippines; it’s bread and water, the stuff of subsidence.  Are the Tasaday authentic?  I would guess so, but I’m from Indiana and, believe me, I have no trouble at all believing in backward tribes. The Tasaday seem to have displayed a childlike willingness to please (and to receive goodies) and were, like children, at times exploited and at times protected.

Looking from their home among the dense forest, the Tasaday  looked into a clearing and called it “the place where the eye sees too far”.  Geographically and spatially, this world can indeed see quite far, yet the limits of its greater vision are often limited.  The Tasaday have their  land and their name and all of these new troubles.  Their way of life as it was discovered by the outside world, is gone.  Their life has changed irrevocably and entirely.

            The same can be said about fraternity brothers who return to the class reunion with their wives and kids.  The same could be said about a thousand Midwestern towns that have either dried up or become suburbs.  Rather than rail against the change, it seems to me wiser to be happy to have caught a glimpse of the gentle Tasaday at all.  The problems assailing the Tasaday-----------greed, betrayal, ignorance---------are problems assailing the Philippines.  Ultimately, the problems of the Philippine islands are only the problems of human life on earth.