PHILIPPINE INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

NAME: Josep, Anngeline S. SECTION: BPA-3A

Answer the following questions. Limit your answers to a maximum of 10 sentences each item.
Highlight (either Bold or Underline) key ideas.

1. Who are the Tasadays? Describe their ways of life, culture and language.
The Tasadays, a cave-dwelling people, were discovered in a secluded rainforest in South
Cotabato, Mindanao, in 1971. They were said to be living a Paleolithic lifestyle, utilizing stone
and wood tools, hunting animals to survive in the woods, and dressing in leaves (incorrectly
labeled “Stone Age”). Their existence was initially reported by a hunter named Dafal, who
claimed to have discovered them when hunting several years ago while belonging to a nearby
community living on the outskirts of the rainforest. After learning of their existence, Manuel
Elizalde, Jr. With the 26 members of the tribe being declared living proof that prehistoric life
existed in the Philippines. However, thirteen years later, news reports revealed that the
Tasadays' story was a huge fabrication, and that their story was only made up to promote the
Marcos regime's popularity. The Tasaday were learning Blit Manobo, the language of the
Manobos who lived nearest to them, and it was their inept attempts at speaking Blit that
Molony recorded. It's worth noting that early Blit Manobo translators claimed to only grasp half
of what the Tasaday said in this regard. And the Tasaday began conversing in a language that no
one could understand when they didn't want anyone to know what they were talking about.
The Hidalgos conclude their presentation by pleading for the preservation and study of the true
Tasaday language before it becomes extinct. And Tasaday were a hoax when viewed as a group
of paid actors that paraded around the forest wearing leaves, but they were authentic if they
were viewed as a forest-dwelling group of people caught in the midst of the media.

https://www.pep.ph/guide/tv/4134/kara-david-investigates-the-truth-behind-the-tasaday-tribe

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~reid/Combined%20Files/W02.%201999.%20Another%20Look%20at%20the
%20Language%20of%20the%20Tasadaypdf.pdf

2. How did the foreigners and other outsiders view the Tasadays? How did this affect the
Tasadays' lifestyle and worldview?
 Manuel Elizalde, Jr., the head of Panamin, a federal body formed in 1968 to preserve
cultural minorities, was the originator of the Tasaday hoax. Presidential Assistant for National
Minorities was known as Panamin. Elizalde reported in July 1971 that he had identified a
primitive cultural minority living in the Mindanao jungles surrounding Lake Sebu. While foraging
for sustenance, a local hunter named Dafal purportedly had intermittent contacts with the
primitive tribe. President Ferdinand Marcos designated 182 square kilometers of territory
surrounding the Tasaday cave as ancestral land of the Tasaday people in 1972. However, at the
same year, a scientist named Carol Maloney expressed his reservations about the Tasaday,
notably their food. The Tasaday's cuisine and language exhibited irregularities, according to
Maloney, and the idea that they had lived in seclusion for 1,000 years seemed dubious.
However, as the world's attention was drawn to the big find, Elizalde deemed it prudent to limit
visitors to the tribe's area. Marcos banned access to the Tasaday lands in 1976.

https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/tasaday-hoax-a00293-20200803-lfrm