Philippine Normal University

National Center for Teacher Education

The Indigenous People’s Education Hub
North Luzon Campus
Alicia, Isabela

DE GUZMAN JASON MARK P. IV-BSSE

Observations in the Documentary of “Tasaday” A Documentary by Kara David

Tasaday are a tiny tribe of people that live in Mindanao's upland rain forest in the

Philippines. Before their discovery by surrounding settled tribes in 1966, the Tasaday, a

group of roughly 25 people, appeared to have been living a completely secluded, primitive

(incorrectly dubbed "Stone Age") lifestyle before their existence was first recorded by

anthropological investigators in 1971. Visiting anthropologists discovered cave-dwelling

food-gatherers subsisting on wild yam; other meals included tadpoles, frogs, small fish,

crabs, grubs, palm fruit, and wild bananas. The Tasaday wore only loincloths and skirts made

of orchid leaves, utilized only basic stone tools (axes and scrapers) and wooden instruments

(fire drills and digging sticks), and possessed no hunting or war weaponry.

The Tasaday's finding was heralded as one of the most remarkable ethnographic

finds of the century, receiving widespread international media coverage. However,

suspicions regarding the Tasaday's validity were raised in 1986, when they were discovered

to be wearing Western dress and using modern instruments such as knives, mirrors, and

other modern items. It was claimed that their ethnic and cultural identity were a fiction

fabricated by officials of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos' dictatorship in order

to gain fame and, eventually, profit from the control of Tasaday forestlands. According to

later sources, the Tasaday were actually a member of the adjacent, more culturally evolved

Manubo-Blit or Tboli tribes who had played the role of more primitive peoples at the
request of Marcos' national minority aide. Nonetheless, linguistic data acquired during the

earlier anthropological study, though fragmentary, seemed to imply that the Tasaday were

truly isolated, even if the Philippine government may have influenced the people to seem to

live a more primitive life than they actually did.

President Corazon Aquino declared the Tasaday an authentic minority group in 1988, on the

suggestion of a Congressional investigating commission, but many scholars remained

doubtful, and optimism for any convincing proof on either side of the debate was beginning

to evaporate.

According to Kara David's well-documented documentary, the Tasadays have many

parallels with the Indigenous People tribes of the Philippines. To begin, Tasadays rely on

their ancestral lands to survive in their daily lives. They use their ancestral lands, which were

granted to them by their ancestors, to provide their requirements such as food, water, and

shelter. They use the lands by cultivating and domesticating animals. Second, the Tasadays

have their own language. Indigenous peoples in the Philippines have their own distinct

language, which is one of the primary means of distinguishing Indigenous tribes from others.

The third commonality I saw is that they, too, require assistance in sustaining their own

culture. According to the documentary, Tasadays lived in the jungle for a long time without

outside intervention, and as a result, just a few of their civilizations are known to us.

Tasadays require assistance in enriching their left culture as well as their lives.

Because of their extended stay in the woods away from the modern world, Tasadays have

many severe challenges in expressing their culture and way of life. We must assist them in

properly protecting their rights and promoting their long-lost culture in order to preserve

the essential knowledge that our Tasaday forefathers bequeathed us.