 The establishment of the Museo Cordillera is part of a continuum of the development of UP Baglio as a constituent unit in the Cordillera and Northern Luzon. Since the 1980s, we have been doing research and publishing on cordillera studies through the Cordillera Study Center. The Museo Cordillera complements the Cordillera Study Center and further fortifies our niche in cordillera studies and individual studies by serving as a platform for presenting the research outputs of our faculty through a visual display of the knowledge that they have created. So the Museo Cordillera is also a platform for the university's interaction or engagement with Cordillera communities and Northern Luzon communities. We did physical infrastructure development simultaneous with the intellectual infrastructure for it. First, we created a committee composed of consultants from different institutions in Manila. All of them were also alumni of UP Dileman from Atineo, from the Uchenco Museum and the Lopez Museum partnering with our local faculty of UP Baglio. As far as the infrastructure development was concerned, there were more challenges there because, you see, we're not really builders, so we had to rely on the expertise of engineers and architects and the contractors, the builders. So there were a lot of delays in building the infrastructure due to various reasons, delays in the design, delays in implementation due to the iPhones and other disasters that hit Baglio from 2012 up to last year. So there were several delays. So it was only this year, January 31, that it was finally inaugurated. It went through a participatory and consultative process. That's why it took so long. The conceptualization part started in 2012 immediately after I took over as Chancellor of UP Baglio through participatory workshops, discussions, round table, benchmarking of good or best museums here and abroad. This space that we're providing for the Museo, in the Museo Carillera, is really going to be an interactive space. We want to veer away from the traditional notion of museum as something just a display of old artifacts, shelved and with no interaction with the day-to-day lives of people, from the very people that where these objects came from. And they are just here in our very region, the Carillera region. It's going to be an intertextual space where both tangible and intangible culture of the people here will be showcased. We are going to bring in the role of new technologies in preserving, in documenting and displaying all these objects of culture, artifacts. So there's going to be a digital component of the museum. In fact, we're already starting that by cataloging all the objects. The museum is going to be a dynamic platform for both traditional as well as contemporary because our view of the museum is consistent with our view of culture, one that is dynamic and constantly changing and adapting to changes in the environment. Welcome to the museum here at Museo Carillera. We have a museum shop that carries UP Press publications and Carillera Study Center publications. We also sell crafts from our local artists. We also have mags and other exhibition monographs of the museum. So here, this is the main exhibition hall of the Museo Carillera. So we have life-size mannequins depicting the traditional tattoos of the Kalinga, Ibaloy, Ifugao, and bontok groups in northern Luzon. This is based on my book, on my research on traditional tattoos in Kalinga which is the basis of this exhibition. Here you can see the different traditional tattoo instruments that are used in traditional tattooing in Abra, Kalinga, Bontok, Ifugao, and Baguette including the ink that were used in traditional tattooing. When our curatorial team was thinking about what to exhibit inside the museum so what is ready and available is my book. So we have to think about how to feature that and how to present that in a way that it will be most appreciated by a lot of people especially the communities that we serve in the Carillera region. At one point we also had consultants, elders as consultants from the communities and they came here, visited our museum. When they saw the tattooed mannequins they wanted to erase the whole tattoos on the mannequins because they said that they don't have a tattoo culture. So when we showed the book and I showed them the archival photographs that as early as 1700s they had ancestors who were tattooed from the head down to the toe or full body tattoos. So that's the time where they only realized that the tattooing culture was erased in their memory because of Christianity. We make sure that there is a local collaboration when we set up the research. We in fact consulted our research collaborators in the field, these are elders, these are local historians, even our faculty, even the families of those who were that were consulted. So their comments are integrated in the captions even in the exhibition displays of the museum. So we make sure that there is always an engaged collaboration. In fact we also went against the usual short captions inside the museum. We have expanded our texts for our audience to read deeply what these exhibitions are all about. We also produce monographs for an extended explanation of the exhibition. And these are actually sold at a very affordable price targeting the students so they can bring home to study even teachers use these monographs for teaching cordonary culture in their schools. The target audience for the Museum Cordillera is actually the young millennials aside of course from our faculty students and other visitors because we see that the young millennials have forgotten their culture so we want to maximize the use of technology when they come to the museum they are more interested in doing selfies inside the museum so you want to tap the technology in deeply appreciating their culture more so hopefully the young millennials can actually appreciate cordillera culture specifically and Filipino culture in general. This is our bead room of the Museum Cordillera where we feature the different adornments used by other groups in the Cordillera such as the Da Dang, Ifugao and Ting Yan in Abra. We also feature here the traditional payments used for traditional tattooing in the past such as the ornaments clothing gold and silver ornaments that were used during that time. These are the Ifugao traditional adornments and the Ting Yan. In this section we also feature some of the material manifestation of traditional tattoos and other forms of material culture such as the bamboo instruments lime containers and even shell ornaments in the Cordillera. This also include the pottery tradition in Kalinga which has tattoo incision similar to the body tattoos found in Kalinga. Our first donor in the Museum is our National Artist for Visual Arts Ben Cabreda He actually gave us one Hagabi beach bench used by the affluent class in Ifugao society. Our second exhibition is on the life works of Jules de Rat. Jules is one of our faculty at the College of Social Sciences in UP Baguio. He was a missionary anthropologist that came to Northern Luzon specifically in Kalinga so here we feature the production of anthropological knowledge through his anthropological field work in Bayo Society such as his slides his old camera his maps and kinship charts are also included his field notes where researchers can also learn his research through his notes. Some of these items are in fact the CICM diocese in Baguio City where the Belgian missionaries came and brought with them their containers for their stuff when they do work and missionary activities in Northern Luzon. Our third exhibition is about the photographs taken by one of our faculty Roland Rabang on Sagada's Way of Life This is a documentation of the traditional lives in Sagada despite the modernity that is going on in that particular area. So this was the result of the field work that I did when I was working on my master's thesis in language and literature. So I did a study on the photography of Eduardo Masferi and Tommy Hafalia. So this spread basically was inspired by their photography. So as you can see the method that I employed is silver printing film photography just because they have also deployed traditional photography in their documentation. The documentation took place from 2006 to 2009 but some of the the images that are added into this spread was taken after the thesis project. So particularly the latrinidad and the bengate displays. When I first decided to do the field work in the exploratory parts of the research I did not bring a camera. I did not bring a camera because I wanted to introduce myself to the people. I wanted to get permission if only to get their permission the acceptance is good the friendship is good but as a photographer I felt that it is the photographer's obligation not just mine to get permission before you take the photographs. In the process as you obtain their permission there is a kind of openness they open themselves up to you and therefore the camera now does not become a barrier between you as a researcher and as an academic and the people they begin to see the entire event that is unfolding. In that manner is to the advantage of the photographer the acceptance, the friendship is to the advantage of the photographer because at the very least they do not mind your presence anymore they do not mind the presence of your equipment therefore if the word is authentic the images that you get is free flowing as it can be because of the the absence of the subject's consciousness of what you have and what you're doing. So far as I look back this work began over 10 years ago and I feel that I barely scratched the surface what I have encountered so far is the most common ritual that is held in Sagada mountain province which is held six times called the Bognas. In itself that ritual is important they hold it they hold it six times in a year that is important because they invoke the invoke the intervention of the ancestors and the spirits to keep the community in a constant state of welfare. To me that's important but I have not I have yet to document and that's the goal of this continuing project. I have yet to document the ritual they call dangte. Dangte happens every 10 years in Sagada mountain province and so it's due to take place anytime soon but it has to be ordained by the elders but this ritual is to stake the boundaries of Sagada Sagada and because it happens very rarely it is to me a very important ritual as well. There are other little things that take place every now and then daus gubao the ritual of naming a child daus, the ritual of cleansing these are the things that that is in the pipeline as far as this continuing project is concerned. Kapikaan is part of the ritual bagnas it is part of the ritual bagnas it is these are the preparatory stages these are the preparatory stages of the ritual in which a contingent of the host daapai in this particular photograph the daapai or the council or the brick and mortar structure the stones gathered together in which the elders converge they are preparing to go to a sacred place they are preparing to go to a sacred grove in which there they will invoke prayers they will invoke the presence of the ancestors to say here we are we are we are performing performing the ritual called the bagnas we call on you to be with us during the during the ritual's duration so in a sense in a sense there is this belief among all of the mountain province that the spirits are within the community the spirits are within the community and therefore the unseen is as much a part of the scene in fact there are rules attending parts of the ritual like this for instance for none of your implements whether the rock should fall off because then if that happens it is considered a bad omen it is considered a sign from the spirits that they are displeased and so therefore you have to perform a ritual that will counter that particular omen so you have to butcher chicken something like that beyond the images that we see in these photographs we are glad for what the Museo Cordillero is doing in terms of showcasing studies on traditional Cordillero culture but I think that and that is fine and well and certainly there are more traditional cultures to be explored to be studied more deeply at the same time we also observe a progressive and dynamic production of pop culture among the indigenous peoples and and we can count decades for instance of the production of popular songs among the indigenous peoples starting with recording on vinyl discs then moving on to tapes cassette tapes and then to CDs and then to VCDs, DVDs and now uploading all of these productions recycling them and putting them on YouTube for me this is significant because because the traditional representation of the indigenous peoples was done mostly by outsiders by scholars but certainly outsiders I think that the study of the pop culture production of the Cordillero peoples is a study on the effort of the indigenous peoples to represent themselves so let me take the production of pop songs for example definitely in the 70s and 80s most of the pop songs make use of American country tunes but the interesting thing is they don't use the English language in these songs they use ibaloy, kankana, ay kalamuya so in that alone I think they assert who they are by making use of their own language they assert they make use of their agency by appropriating American country music tunes but putting in their own language into the songs and certainly their present experiences in a commercial and globalizing world in the early decades the distribution of these popular songs happened through the radio and the audience feedback I guess would be measured by the continuing requests for the playing of these songs because in the early years just one or two of these local songs in the morning and all the rest would be Ilocano, Filipino and American pop songs but that has changed significantly now there are instances of whole programs dedicated to the playing of cordillier produced songs in the various languages so to me this is an interesting development of their own most requested songs their own star singers and in fact they've been producing music videos of previously recorded songs so there's this upcycling recycling of old songs by putting in music video and uploading them to YouTube all the other productions were done in Metro Manila in some small studios that accommodated them unknown studios but they allowed them to record in Manila but they were refused by the larger studios because they would only record for Nora Onor and Vilmas Hanto that's also another interesting story but yes, they also have their own systems of production now they bought their own small machines here so they do the recordings and the productions here they go up to the cordilliers for the music videos and yes, they do have their own small stars popular faces and the people in the villages would be excited to meet them in person when they do concerts in the villages but I think the difference is that marketing strategy to distribute all of these things so even small productions are also pirated in the urban centers up north pirated copies of music and music videos are displayed on the streets along with dried fish vegetables at the roadside so it's a very interesting distribution of these indigenous productions I speak Ibaloy and that's the language the indigenous language of the people of Baguio and Baguio of course comes from the Bollywood Baguio and it became Baguio but yes so a popular Ibaloy pop song would be Sabung Si Bahung meaning the flowers of Bahung Bahung La Trinidad so it's nice to be the rose capital of the country and they sing of and of course just like any other love song the flower is the sign or the symbol for love so they say a rig mo'y sab sabung naisak si Bahung no kultaan siya ilao cid manida panpiping ilan siya you are like the rose of Bahung when they harvest the flowers and they bring this down to Dangua in Manila the dealers will go and run after after the flowers like that something like that but yes, UP Baguio has always been open to the performances of indigenous culture and in fact we have a program here at UP Baguio at least for UP Baguio I think the students have a regular exposure to indigenous culture and other cultures which is good of course we need to see this expand in the entire Baguio city it is supposed to be a culture rich place but commerce is overtaking culture so welcome to the visible storage of the museum Cordillera this is where we store the artifacts that we study and curate such as the collection on Cordillera textiles from the different areas in northern Luzon these are textiles from Ifugao Abra Kalinga and mountain provinces so we study these textiles before they get exhibited in our hall we also have the collection on anthropomorphic carvings from the Cordillera this is a research collection by our professor Emeritus Delphine Tolentino who kindly lent us these items for the museum we also have a collection of basket tree from the different areas in northern Luzon so this is traditional baskets from Ifugao used in little locations we also have musical instruments like such as gongs and the solibao and also we have these small mannequins which we use for teaching our students most specially if we have group tours from elementary in high schools in Bagu City in other parts of northern Luzon where they can actually draw their own tattoos and erase it to ensure some kind of imagination and creativity in appreciating traditional tattoos in the Cordillera so we have other collections here such as basket tree we have a giant backpack upstairs at the main reception hall so this is the actual size of that particular basket from the mountain provinces we also have other collections here we also had a basket tree workshop one of our activities at Misericordillera where we invited a basket we were from Sagada our target was actually to produce a coffee container but since it's very difficult to make we only produce this particular size so we appreciated how difficult it is to make a basket and it takes a lot of patience to produce baskets in the Cordillera so we have high respect for the artisans in the Cordillera our recent acquisition at the Misericordillera are the traditional holding from Talinga so we actually studied this textiles that was worn by the Kalinga almost a century ago so we kept this in a nice cabinet to preserve the color and the weaving of the materials the third part of our visible storage is where our researchers would come and volunteers who will conduct research on the different collections in the museum so this is like the fumigation area where we actually clean artifacts that we collect from the field we study them curate them do the catalog for all of the objects we are still in the process so slowly we are getting there so this is where we keep all our artifacts for study by our researchers, students and interested scholars welcome to the Misericordillera we would like to invite you to come to our museum we are very proud of Misericordillera because it's a showcase of Cordillera culture and this is collaboration with the faculty and the communities that we serve and it's a very good place to stay and look at the exhibition hi, I'm Ikin Salvador I'm the project leader of the Cordillera DEX project so this is an EID our funded project under the UP system the project is called Anthropological Analysis Mathematical Symmetry and Technical Characterization of Cordillera DEX is a team of researchers who are actually analyzing different textiles from Northern Arizona for instance, we have this Universal Textile Machine and we have here next one of our research assistants from the physics department what she will do is actually to get a sample of the thread from the textile and to test it with this machine in terms of the tensile or how strong is the textile used in traditional textiles so we can actually understand how our traditional weavers outsource or use their materials for weaving and how we can help them improve the material that they use later on also in the project we also analyze the designs and patterns in order to preserve them for their weaving so here you can see Nats putting the textile in the machine though it was a time in our history when indigenous communities or ethnic communities especially in the peripheries of our nation were not known or whatever knowledge our brothers and sisters in the lowlands or in other countries have about indigenous communities is one of exoticized identities marginalized and poor poverty as a stereotypes of indigenous communities here when we establish the museum I get to talk to the people who enter the museum mostly from from Manila from the lowland provinces and I ask them how do you feel about the museum and they say we feel so proud about being Filipino we didn't realize that our culture is so rich and it's so diverse and it's becoming more clear to us now what it means to be Filipino and it's interesting to me to find out what kind of reaction of non-igurots or non-indigenous peoples identifying with indigenous peoples and the objects the artifacts of indigenous people as their own as part of becoming Filipinos and this is precisely the kind of impact that we want to achieve or outcome that we want to achieve this intercultural dialogue that that takes place which will acknowledge the diversity of our culture which actually will strengthen our sense of being Filipinos or our nationhood it's not it's not going to reinforce the otherness or the difference of indigenous and non-indigenous in fact allows for interaction and dialogue and for being being one as Filipinos regardless of your ethnic identity I think when UP Baguio is proud of his accomplishments to date we have finally found our niche and we're comfortable with it our niche in Cordillera Studies and indigenous studies and we thank the administration of the sister administration in acknowledging this and for supporting our contribution in the UP system and in the nation I think the university is truly fulfilling its role as a a space for dialogue for discussion, for debate both within the university as well as outside of it we see our role as a facilitator as an animator of this intercultural dialogue of course there are different perspectives on how to deal with identities both individual and collective identities but and it's good as a university and as a forerunner in liberal education it is our moral responsibility in fact to provide for a space for discussion of these emerging identities as well as old identities and the university should not close its doors in fact it should open its doors to these emerging identities not only national identities regional and ethnic identities I don't see them as threats to our nation in fact it will to me if we handle it carefully then it will strengthen national culture by opening spaces for the communities outside of the rubric of the nation state to actively engage the university and the nation about their issues