The Tasaday () are a
Philippine indigenous people of the
Lake Sebu area in
Mindanao. They are considered to belong to the
Lumad group, along with the other indigenous groups on the island. They attracted widespread media attention in 1971, when a journalist of the Manila
Associated Press bureau chief reported their discovery, amid apparent "
Stone Age
The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 4,000 BC and 2,000 BC, with t ...
" technology and in complete isolation from the rest of Philippine society. Multiple agencies were also contacted, such as
National Geographic
''National Geographic'' (formerly the ''National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as NAT GEO) is a popular American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. Known for its photojournalism, it is one of the most widely ...
. They again attracted attention in the 1980s when some accused the Tasaday of living in the jungle and speaking in their dialect as being part of an elaborate
hoax
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into pu ...
, and doubts were raised as to their isolation and nature as a separate ethnic group. The Tasaday language is distinct from that of neighboring tribes, and linguists believe it probably split from the adjacent
Manobo languages 200 years ago.
Background
Manuel Elizalde was the head of
PANAMIN, the Philippine government agency created in 1968 to protect the interests of cultural minorities. He was the son of a wealthy father of Spanish lineage and an American mother. He was a known
crony of the late Philippine dictator Marcos. He took credit for discovering the Tasaday, which he did on June 7, 1971, shortly after a local barefoot
Blit hunter told him of a sporadic contact over the years with a handful of primitive forest dwellers. He released this to the media a month later, and many excited people began the long task of clearing the thickest forest in the world. Weeks later, visitors' way was blocked by PANAMIN guards who answered to Elizalde alone and allowed only a select group of the visitors to meet them.
Introduction of the Tasaday
Elizalde brought the Tasaday to the attention of PANAMIN, which funded all efforts to find, visit, and study the Tasaday. With a small group including Elizalde's
bodyguard
A bodyguard (or close protection officer/operative) is a type of security guard, government law enforcement officer, or servicemember who protects a person or a group of people — usually witnesses, high-ranking public officials or officers, w ...
, helicopter pilot, a doctor, a 19-year-old
Yale student named Edith Terry, and local tribesmen for
interpreting
Interpreting is a translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a source language.
The most common two modes of interpreting are simultaneous inter ...
attempts, Elizalde met the Tasaday in a pre-arranged clearing at the edge of the forest in June 1971.
In March 1972, another meeting occurred between the Tasaday, Elizalde, and members of the press and media including the
Associated Press and the
National Geographic Society, this time at the Tasaday's secluded cave home site. This meeting was popularly reported by Kenneth MacLeish in the August 1972 issue of ''National Geographic'', which featured on its cover a photograph by photojournalist John Launois of a Tasaday boy climbing
vines.
Since these first meetings and reports, the group was subject to a great deal of further publicity, including a ''National Geographic'' documentary, ''The Last Tribes of Mindanao'' (shown December 1, 1972). Visitors included
Charles A. Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...
and
Gina Lollobrigida.
Ban on visitation
In April 1972,
President Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. ( , , ; September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino politician, lawyer, dictator, and kleptocrat who was the 10th president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He ruled under martial ...
(at the behest of PANAMIN and Lindbergh) declared 19,000
acre
The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial
Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism.
Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to:
Places
United States
* Imperial, California
* Imperial, Missouri
* Imp ...
s (182 km²) of land surrounding the Tasaday's ancestral caves as the Tasaday/Manobo Blit Preserve. By this time, eleven anthropologists had studied the Tasaday in the field, but none for more than six weeks, and in 1976, Marcos closed the
preserve to all visitors. The reason was the
martial law imposed on the country; outsiders were unwelcome as that put the Marcos regime under more scrutiny.
Elizalde's flight and return
In 1983, sometime after the
assassination
Assassination is the murder of a prominent or important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have ...
of Philippine opposition leader
Benigno Aquino Jr., Elizalde fled the Philippines. It had been rumoured that he fled with and eventually squandered millions of
dollars from a foundation set up to protect the Tasaday. It was also rumoured that Elizalde used the photos and other information he got from the Tasaday and Blit tribes for moneymaking businesses in various countries. It was reported that he amassed money amounting to US$100 million, which Elizalde denied.
Elizalde returned to the Philippines in 1987 and stayed until his death on May 3, 1997, of leukemia. From 1987 to 1990, Elizalde claimed he had spent more than one million
U.S. dollars
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
of Tasaday
non-profit funds. During this time, Elizalde also founded the Tasaday Community Care Foundation, or TCCF.
Controversy
After President Marcos was deposed in the 1986
People Power Revolution,
Swiss
Swiss may refer to:
* the adjectival form of Switzerland
* Swiss people
Places
* Swiss, Missouri
* Swiss, North Carolina
*Swiss, West Virginia
* Swiss, Wisconsin
Other uses
*Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports
*Swiss Internation ...
anthropologist and
journalist Oswald Iten, accompanied by
Joey Lozano
Joey may refer to:
People
*Joey (name)
Animals
* Joey (marsupial), an infant marsupial
* Joey, a Blue-fronted Amazon parrot who was one of the Blue Peter pets
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* Joey (1977 film), ''Joey'' (1977 film), an American film di ...
(a journalist from
South Cotabato
South Cotabato ( hil, Bagatnan Cotabato; ceb, Habagatang Cotabato; Maguindanaon: ''Pagabagatan Kutawatu'', Jawi: ڤاڬابڬتن كوتاواتو; tl, Timog Cotabato), officially the Province of South Cotabato, is a province in the Philippine ...
) and
Datu Galang Tikaw Galang may refer to:
* Galang (song), "Galang" (song), a song by M.I.A. from ''Arular''
* Galang (surname), a Filipino surname
* Galang Island, Indonesia
* Galang Refugee Camp, a refugee camp that accommodated Indochinese refugees from 1979 to 1996 ...
(a member of the
T'boli people as lead translator, despite not speaking Tasaday), made an unauthorised visit to the Tasaday caves where they spent about two hours with six Tasaday individuals.
Upon returning from the forest, Iten and Lozano reported the caves deserted and further claimed the Tasaday were simply members of other known local tribes who put on the appearance of living a Stone Age lifestyle under pressure from Elizalde.
Many local tribesmen admitted to pretending to be Tasaday in order to gain funds, reputation, and other items.
In the mid-1990s, American linguist
Lawrence A. Reid
Lawrence Andrew Reid (often known as Laurie Reid) is an American linguist who specializes in Austronesian languages, particularly on the morphosyntax and historical linguistics of the Philippine languages.
Education
Reid graduated with an MA in ...
wrote that he spent 10 months with the Tasaday and surrounding linguistic groups (1993–1996) and has concluded that they "probably were as isolated as they claim, that they were indeed unfamiliar with agriculture, that their language was a different dialect from that spoken by the closest neighboring group, and that there was no hoax perpetrated by the original group that reported their existence."
[]][ In his paper 'Linguistic Archaeology: Tracking down the Tasaday Language', Reid states that, although he originally thought that a Tasaday named Belayem was fabricating words, after a detailed analysis of the linguistic evidence he found that around 300 of Belayem's forms were actually used in Manobo, Manobo languages of Kulaman Valley, a place Belayem had never visited. Reid concluded that the Tasaday's isolation "may have lasted for only a few
generations, possibly no more than 150 years."] He also mentions that a similar group was later found and confirmed to be living as hunter-gatherers without contact with other tribes.[Lawrence A. Reid]
The Tasaday Tapes
/ref>
The Tasaday were likely a separate group living as gatherers deep in the jungle, who were rarely in contact or trade with neighboring peoples, but probably were not a Stone Age culture.
Legacy
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard invokes the Tasaday controversy in his 1981 book '' Simulacra and Simulation'' to illustrate the phenomenon of simulation at play, where he argues that the Philippine government and scientists' return of the Tasaday to the forest was aimed at constructing "the simulation model for all conceivable Indians before ethnology" to preserve the "reality principle" of the discipline.
References
External links
Tasaday Website
*
{{Authority control
Lumad
Ethnic groups in Mindanao