(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.
