REFLECTION PAPER ON TASADAY DOCUMENTARY

Tasaday is a group of indigenous people that lived in the rainforests of Mindanao.

They are believed to exist since the stone age and they still have descendants up until
today. Tasadays lived in the forest before, they rely on the resources of the rainforest in
order to sustain their daily living. They used roots and some plants as their food and the
vines serves as a playground for their children. They are all doing fine until Manuel
Elizalde Jr., the head of Philippines Presidential Assistance on National Minorities
discovered them. The discovery of Tasaday tribe blew up and captured the attention of
international media. But several years later some scientists and reporters came back to
the said location where the Tasaday people lives, they found out that the Tasadays were
wearing modern day clothes unlike what it is shown before where they wear leaves as
their clothing. The scientists concluded that the discovery of the Tasadays were just a
hoax, that they are not true. In order to solve the mystery whether the discovery of
Tasadays is true or not, Kara David, a well-known journalist sets out to find the truth.

As I watch the documentary of Kara David about the Tasadays, I learned so much
about them. They used to depend on the nature for their daily needs but they said that it
was much better before than where they are currently according to Dul, one of the pure-
blooded Tasaday living in the community in which Kara David visited. In the documentary
they went to the cave where the Tasadays lived before. Dul still remembers how they
lived back then and where is the cave located. As I was watching I asked myself if they
are fake, how does Dul still remember how she used to lived back then and the location
of the cave where they used to live? If the reports of the scientists that came back to their
place before are true, why does she know all of those things? There is also another
person that can prove that the Tasadays are true. A man named Lobo who is just 14
years old when they are discovered said that all of the pictures are true and he is angry
of the people calling the Tasadays a hoax, because he is one of the pure-blooded
Tasadays that lived before and all of the memories of how they used to live before are
still fresh from his mind.

I feel bad for them because they don’t want to be discovered, they are fine living
in a cave, relying on nature until someone discovered them. They thought that they will
receive help, yes, they received help but a ton of hate is thrown to them because they are
just trying to keep up with the modern world. As I finished watching the documentary, I
realized that curiosity is not bad, it is a good thing as long as we discover new that it can
help all of us. It becomes a bad thing if we exploit that discovery and use it to gain attention
and money. We can discover something but we need to take care of it unlike what
happened to the Tasadays, they were promised that they will receive help but instead
they received hate. I also realized that people and media can be biased, just like what
happened to the Tasadays, they were called fake by the scientists and the media just
because they are not living according to what is told by the anthropologists before, they
didn’t even bother to know or studied why the Tasadays are living like modern day people.
They just based on what they saw and that’s it, they called them fake and a hoax without
conducting deep study or considering some instances why the Tasadays become like
that. I hope that someday the Tasadays can regain their identity and abolish the thought
that they are fake.