TATTOO: THE MAMBABATOK’S ART

Although mingor were perhaps the most respected individuals of any Kalinga village, their masculine violence required acts of female mediation and spiritual guidance on behalf of the mandadawak. Of course, some Kalinga tattoo artists were also female and they permanently inscribed a man’s masculinity for all to see. In fact, tattoo artists were the only individuals that could make “real men” in the eyes of the community, since only they had the power to physically transform boys into men through painful tattooing rituals.


But mambabatok also transformed girls into women through the beautiful and intricate tattoos they created. Whang Od told of an old myth that says that women should be tattooed to increase their fertility. That is why many of the women in her village are tattooed and have large families. “I tattooed many of these older women before they reached puberty, because once their hormones kick in…we believe that the tattooing hurts more at that point. Women not only receive tattoos for fertility, but also for beauty, and some women can receive additional marks if their male relatives received some for success in war. Most of their designs came from nature, like rice bundles, ferns, steps or snake scales and especially centipedes which are powerful spiritual guides and friends of the warrior. Some of the women also have tattooed necklaces.”

Other male and female individuals like Whang Od wear small X’s on their faces either between the eyes, at the center of their cheeks, or at the tips of their nose. Some elders stated that these markings were placed on girls who struck (with family weapons) those human heads that were brought into the village. Others said that they are simply beauty marks. For example, when a woman is walking in the village, a man will take notice of her facial features because these tattoos are strategically placed at the contour points and they grab visual attention.


Whang Od’s other tattoos were given to her by her father. Upon closer inspection, her legs are completely covered with faint tattoo tracings which she said were her “practice marks.”

The mandadawak practice similar rituals when seeking to cure their sick patients of illness. In her attempts to determine which evil spirit is causing an affliction, the mandadawak sacrifices a chicken, pig or other animal. With a piece of green leaf, usually an orange leaf, soaked in the blood of the sacrifice, she sprinkles the crimson liquid on the hands and legs of the patient. She prays in a frightful manner over the head of the patient, and demands the evil spirit to accept the offering and to get out or remove the malady from the body.


Interestingly, the Kalinga believe that the smell of orange leaves is disturbing to evil spirits. And after a deceased family member is buried, the thorny twigs of the orange tree are placed at the entrances of the house of the dead for three to five days to keep its spirit from coming back into the neighborhood during the night and haunting anyone in the area. Although Whang Od could not give a definitive answer, probably the reason why she and other mambabatoks use orange thorn tattooing kits (siit) is because they have similar magical properties; evil spirits should always be kept away from the living especially when flowing blood may attract them. This is a common belief among many indigenous peoples that tattoo.

VOICES OF THE ANCESTORS

For hundreds of years, the Kalinga have overcome deadly colonial and tribal conflicts that threatened their security and survival in an unkind wilderness. Moreover, Christian evangelization profoundly altered their spiritual and social outlook, and new colonizers in the form of transnational logging, mining, and hydroelectric corporations threaten to usurp ancestral lands that have been, as one elder reported, “nourished by our blood.”

Out of these bitter struggles, however, the Kalinga have continued to be vigilant, courageous, and peaceful even though the 21st century is a time when the dynamism of modernity regularly clashes with their cultural practices and beliefs.

As more and more villagers migrate to towns and cities in search of jobs and college educations, many Kalinga have become dislocated from their ancestral traditions while others remain firmly rooted to them. But as long as the mountains and rivers of the Philippine Cordillera continue to rise and flow, their unity as a people will remain constant as this Kalinga proverb suggests: “From the mountains we derive our strength, the rivers our peace, the valleys our hopes and from the skies, the wisdom of our ancestors.”

For the Kalinga, nature has always provided a kind of talisman against unbridled change and a link to ancient traditions because it is constant, perpetual, and eternal. Nature was the basis from which many Kalinga cultural traditions sprang and none more so than the ancient art of tattoo. Tattooing was a natural language of the skin that gave voice to the ancestors and their descendants who attempted to emulate them by sacrificing their own bodies to make them more lasting and sacred.

Sadly however, Whang Od’s generation may be the last to wear these indelible symbols so closely tied to nature, Kalinga identity, and the ancestral past. And like the marauding headhunters who once roamed the mountains and forests of Kalinga only a century ago, these elders are the last vestiges of an era that will soon fade away into memory; but one that will always remain in story, song, and above all spirit.

Whang OD: The Last Kalinga Tattoo Artist

PERPETUALLY SHROUDED IN MIST, the Kalinga village of Buscalan sits high up in the Cordillera Mountains of northern Luzon, Philippines. Although all of the tattooed warriors are now gone, the village is teeming with tattooed elderly women that wear the artistry of the last Kalinga tattoo artist: 89-year-old Whang Od who learned the art of batok (tattoo) from her father.

Whang Od is a graceful woman who despite her age continues to work in her family’s rice fields nearly everyday. That may seem like nothing special, but then again Buscalan sits high atop the ridge of a mountain that dives 1,500 feet down towards a raging river that feeds numerous terraced rice fields below. Every morning at sunrise, Whang Od scales down some one-thousand stairs that shimmer in morning dew passing waterfalls and lush foliage in her worn-out flip-flops that have lost their treads. After reaching the river, she heads one mile upstream on a series of treacherous and muddy footpaths that eventually lead to her family’s rice terraces. She works all day until the heat of the afternoon sun drains all of her strength. Just after 4pm, the trek back up the mountain begins and Whang Od now has a fifty pound basket of rice attached to her forehead with a tumpline. Singing a few melodies along the way, she takes care to not miss a step and slowly, and very methodically, she plods her way up the staircase that seems to have no end. Once she reaches her hut, the rice basket comes to rest on the creaky wooden floor and then she immediately begins to prepare her dinner consisting of rice, greens, and a little pork that was gifted to her. As the sun starts to fade, crisp mountain air begins to permeate the cracks of the wooden walls of the house and Whang Od moves closer to the fire in her kitchen where she always sleeps. Tomorrow, she will repeat her routine as she has for over seventy years. (see related story here http://www.gmanews.tv/story/196315/ang-huling-mambabatok-documentary-by-kara-david)



KALINGA BATOK, THE HEADHUNTER’S SHRINE, AND A MODERN-DAY WARRIOR



When Whang Od was twenty-five, the man she was in love with died in a logging accident. Instead of looking for a new husband, she dedicated her life to tattooing and now sixty-four years later she is the last practitioner of an art form that many scholars believe is nearly one- thousand years old.




Although decades of missionization, colonial administration, and modernization have gradually led to the abandonment of Kalinga batok, enduring fragments of this rich tradition of body art continue to be worn by Kalinga elders: including the last generation of headhunting warriors whose numbers have perhaps dwindled to some thirty men. These World War II veterans who bravely fought Japanese machine gunners with spears, shields, and axes incited great fear in their Nipponese enemies; because once captured their heads would be taken and their bodies left to decompose in the moist air of the mountainous jungle terrain.

One of the last Kalinga warriors (mingor) to wear the traditional tattoos of his ancestors is 88-year-old Lakay Miguel (Lakay means “respected elder”). Miguel earned his marks for inter-village combat before WWII and for the heads he took during the great conflict. Because he killed or wounded more than two enemies he was permitted to receive the bikking tattoos on his chest which are the headhunter’s primary emblem. But Miguel’s bravery on the battlefield was unsurpassed and he was also allowed to receive the tattooed khaman or head-ax on his rib cage, markings on his back, and tattoos on his arms. The human anthropomorph tattooed beneath his khaman symbolizes his Japanese victims and also denote that he is a warrior of the highest rank. He also wears a faded cruciform between his eyes, three marks on his Adam’s apple as a preventive therapy against goiter, and small tally marks behind the ear that represent his number of enemy engagements.

Miguel's fondest memories was when he took the mandible of a Japanese enemy and began using it as the handle of his gangsa gong; a traditional custom of the Kalinga people. Today, gangsa gongs with human jawbone handles are considered priceless heirlooms and are only used during very special occasions.

In the Buaya region of northern Kalinga Province, most enemy skulls – minus their jawbones – usually came to rest in the sangasang or village shrine. Village shrines were the location where trophy heads and the severed body parts of enemies were stored after a headhunting celebration. Although individual family shrines were located in people’s houses that sometimes contained a bit of enemy skull, the village shrine was the most revered in the community because of the extreme supernatural power that emanated from it. In the Kalinga village of Buaya this enclosure, which stood at the outskirts of the village in a bamboo thicket, was believed to be protected by spiritual guardians of the sky, underworld, and water: each resembling a kind of aggressive or bloodthirsty beast (kakayap) or demon (alan). But the shrine also housed more beneficent entities like protective “friends” (bulun) and companions (bilbulun) that sometimes aided Kalinga headhunters on their human quests. If a village did not construct a sangasang, an evil spirit called a bingil was believed to plague the settlement until a shrine was erected or a blood sacrifice was made. These foul creatures resembled humans but their bodies were covered with pus and festering, decomposing wounds that smelled of rotten flesh.

Nowadays these shrines have for the most part been all but neglected because headhunting has lost favor. Rumors of recent headhunting raids are still heard throughout Kalinga territory, but these accounts are more fictitious than real. Even though there is a long history of blood feuding in the region and scores of victims have not yet been avenged by their family members, automatic weapons and rifles have replaced spears, shields, and head-axes, making headhunting less practical today than in the old days. A more typical feat is to simply shoot a foe at long range rather than attempting a close encounter of the enemy kind. Moreover, the agricultural areas around villages, which for centuries have been the primary hunting grounds, have been clear-cut to promote spotting enemies from a distance. So unless you’d like to make yourself an easy target in the scope of a M-16 assault rifle, most contemporary warriors don’t even think about taking heads because today’s warfare is long range and chances are that you would fail before you even started.

Batok Festival

OCTOBER is INDIGENOUS people's month in the Philippines and in the northern province of Kalinga, local organizers in the city of Tabuk, the capital of the province, hosted a Diddiga (pride) celebration to mark the accomplishments of the Kalinga people. This year's four-day event was themed "Pride of the Past - Hope for the Future" and showcased the beauty of Kalinga culture through a music and dance competition (sallidummay), a Chico River rafting exerience (the "River of life" in Kalinga), and on the final day a Batok (tattoo) Festival that tattooed Kalinga elder and provincial officer of the National Commission on Indegenous Peoples (NCIP) Ms. Naty Sugguiyao suggested "expresses through individual talent, arts, prowess, and strength..... the very best of Kalinga.





The purpose of the Batok Festival was not only to celebrate the artistic achievements of Kalinga tattoo artists and the beautifully adorned men and women in attendance, but to also recognize that this ancient 1,000 year-old cultural practice is vanishing along with the gatekeepers of knowledge associated with it. Fifty-two elders from remote highland communities and the Tabuk area visited the event including the last Kalinga mambabatok or tattoo artist - the graceful 89-year-old Whang Od. She along with california-based Elle Festin, Zel, and Gyroe of "Tatak Ng Apat Na Alon" (Mark of the Four Waves Tribe) demostrated the ancient hand-tapping art of batok for all to experience. Elle also got the mayor of Tabuk (Camilio T. Lammawin Jr.) involved by inking his first tattoos - traditional Kalinga designs on his wrists.







To promote the event, Gov. Floydelia R. Diasen drafted an executive order encouraging the participation of the entire province to observe indigenous month with the Diddiga as its highlight. It stated that this celebration is "meant to engender the Kalinga's pride of identity [and] to enrich their foundation to stand on their own ethnicity anchoring their dreams and aspiration to the positive dynamic aspect of culture and time tested traditions." In her speech to the vast crowds that were present she stated: "We must not shy away from the lessons we have learned in the old days and let us be proud of our ethnic roots for its from looking back into who we once were that we become more enlightened with where and who we must be in the future."