MY IGOROTNESS

I was commenting on Bill's Igorots in EDSA 1 and noticed that I was going off topic so I cut the rest of my comment and pasted it here and now I am forced to expand it a bit. I would like to ask any reader if they ever saw an elementary school textbook where Igorots were pictured as little black people with frizzy hairs and thick lips and flat noses. Last time I was down South (in Zamboanga del Norte to be exact), my husband and I went to this church where I was given an opportunity to talk about what I do. Being the proud Igorota that I am, I started off by saying, "If you haven't yet seen a pure-blooded Igorot, before you is one." Can you imagine what response I got? Laughter. I was startled for a moment so I decided to talk about other things. I finished my little speech and Mr. MC took the podium. He thanked me for visiting them but here's what made me flabbergasted! He said: "And thank you for that nice joke! " There I was telling the truth about my ethnic origin and there my fellow Filipinos were thinking that I was kidding. "You can't be an Igorot. I have seen Igorots in Pampanga and they don't look anything like you!" The MC added. 

 In Manila, my husband introduced me to a relative of his. He said, "Asawa ko po, si ____, Igorota yan!" The relative said, "Ay, Igorota ka? Mabuti at di ka mukhang Igorota!" I was really offended that I started giving the relative a piece of my mind that my husband had to pull me away! In another instance, when my ex-boyfriend (kase husband ko na, ang corny :) informed his family in a letter that he proposed marriage to an Igorota, his mother said, "Nakuh! Sigurado ka na ba diyan? Ano ang height? Padala ka ng picture."    When my husband's friends learned that he was marrying an Igorota, they laughed at him. They wanted so badly to see a picture of this Igorot girl. But to make the story short, I went with my fiance to Mindanao and  when his laughing friends came to their house to be introduced to the Igorota, they decided not to come out of their car after they saw me.  I guessed it was out of embarrassment; realizing that it was so ridiculous of them to be laughing at B when he told them that he chose an Igorota for a wife. I was told later that they were truly expecting to see someone who is less than 5ft tall, with shiny black skin, kinky hair and all that. Even my husband's family, at first said that I can't be an Igorota; and their evidence was that I don't look anything like the Igorot that their teachers showed them in their textbook back in their elementary days. I don't have anything against the appearance of our Agta/Ayta brothers/sisters (actually, I think they are beautiful in their own right) but it gets irritating when people force on you something that you are not and they won't even believe you even if you say otherwise. All that to say that it is sad how even our fellow Filipinos can be so ignorant about us, perceiving us in a skin that is not our own! And I will bet my bottom peso that a large percentage of the population in Mindanao believes that Igorots and Pygmies are one and the same,   all because of that textbook that has an "Igorot" person in bahag, trying to catch fish with his spear.

The bottomline is, the Department of Education needs to do a better job.