A Week in Tudaya

So this is what it's all about: Mount Apo. This week I spent five days in the house of 'datu' (chieftain) Rudy Agtag at the foot of Apo Sandawa, the sacred mountain of the Bagobo-Tagabawa. The Bagobo-Tagabawa are the indigenous people of Mount Apo and were granted an ancestral domain title to the area which makes them the owners of their ancestral ground.

Datu Agtag is the chieftain of barangay Tudaya, a mythic place. According to the myth of origin of the Bagobo-Tagabawa, the very first datu was captured by an eagle and carried to the spring of the Tudaya falls. I visited the falls on Tuesday and the place is truly remarkable. The water drops some 100 metres into the Sibulan river. When the wind is strong, a fog of waterdrops shrouds the place in mystery.

But Tudaya is also a place of potential conflict and friction as 'tradition' and 'modernity' meet right at the foot of the Tudaya falls. Last year a Philippine energy company started the construction of two hydro-electric power plants that will be tapping water from the falls and the Sibulan river to generate electricity for southern Mindanao. Opinions differ as to whether this project will bring 'development' to the area. Government officials, indigenous peoples' rights activists, NGO's and environmentalists all claim their 'truth', often over the heads of the people who are truly affected by the project. Datu Apo Adoc Purok, however, made a very personal and symbolically charged statement. This 107-year old datu walked all the way to the falls - a tough hike - to perform a ritual to protest against the building of the plant. I got the chance to meet Apo Adoc at the Barangay Tribal Council on Wednesday. He is the man sitting to my left in the picture below. I have no fixed opinion about the whole thing as there are so many factors and actors involved. But I am learning every day...