Taboo and Environment, Cebuano and Tagbanuwa

University of San Carlos Publications
TABOO AND ENVIRONMENT, CEBUANO AND TAGBANUWA: TWO CASES OF INDIGENOUS

MANAGEMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES IN THE PHILIPPINES AND THEIR RELATION TO
RELIGION
Author(s): Harold Olofson
Source: Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, Vol. 23, No. 1 (March 1995), pp. 20-34
Published by: University of San Carlos Publications
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Philippine Quarterly of Culture & Society
23 (1995):20-34
TABOO AND ENVIRONMENT, CEBUANO AND

TAGBANUWA: TWO CASES OF INDIGENOUS
MANAGEMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES IN THE
PHILIPPINES AND THEIR RELATION TO RELIGION
Harold Olofson
University of San Carlos
Cebu City
INTRODUCTION
I have been asked to deliver a paper on traditional conservation of bio?

logical diversity and management of natural resources on Olango, which is
a small island (9.54 square kilometers) located five kilometers east of
Mactan Island in Cebu Province. I was involved with the Community
Water Resources Management Project for Olango Island at the turn of the
90s. We have been able to publish three papers so far on Olango Islanders'
use of natural resources (Olofson et al. 1989; Cusi et al. 1990; Olofson
1992). Unfortunately, there is not much positive to say about the subject
for Olango, and I will briefly show why. After that, I will offer some views
on the Aborlan Tagbanuwa of Palawan with regard to their traditional con?
servation of sacred groves and the likely present-day situation of these fea?
tures, finally using information I was able to collect over three days in
Aborlan in 1979. I will attempt to compare the two cases with respect to
the religious underpinnings of management of natural resources, or lack
thereof, and then make a recommendation. These cases have convinced me
that it will be difficult now to find sustainable examples of traditional con?
servation within Philippine ethnic groups, even if it be only conservation
of an "incidental" type. This is largely due to demographic factors of rapid
population growth and migration of peoples, expansion of the money
economy, and religious conversion.
TABOO AND ENVIRONMENT 21
THE OLANGO ISLANDERS
Olango Island is today not a site of conservation of natural resources

but quite the opposite; it is a source of environmental and resource degra?
dation rippling out from the island to infect other sites in the region.
Olango Islanders have devastated their own mangroves by cutting
them for firewood and Christmas trees, and this, along with dynamite fish?
ing, cyanide fishing, fishing with fine-mesh netting, over-collection of
shells for home shellcraft piecework industries, harvesting of corals for
jewelry and for use as clothes scrubbers in laundering, and the collection
for export of exotic aquarium fish and reef-flat marine food species such as
clams, shrimps, edible seaweeds, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins, has seri?
ously affected the reefs, their aquatic faunal populations, and fish sizes
available near the island. Although species diversity remains, continued
over-harvesting will soon begin to affect this. For marketable sizes of food
fish, species of aquarium fish, and shells that are in demand world-wide,
and for various kinds of decorative starfish, islanders must now travel to
other islands with reefs. Many have resorted to enlisting as fishing laborers
on distant fishing vessels in order to acquire a share of fish for consump?
tion. Such activities away from Olango are a response to declining natural
resources there and are a threat to the natural resources available to other
islanders, but it is likely that people from many islands in similar situations
are going out looking for such resources, too, and this has dire implica?
tions for the health of reef and mangrove ecosystems in the entire southern
Philippines. On Olango, campaigns by local officials urging local near
shore collectors not to harvest female shells and spawning fish have been
ignored.
The removal of the mangroves is believed by the Water Resources
Center of the University of San Carlos to be weakening the shoreline of
the island. In addition, illegal removal of beach sand for local construction
projects as well as for decorating the bottoms of tropical fish aquaria has
had the same effect in places. Due to the permeability of Olango's lime?
stone geology, there is serious danger impending from this to the island's
small but still adequate fresh water lens. A reparative mangrove replanting
project ran into serious difficulties when shell-col lectors used the sudsnd
scissors or push-net at night to harvest the shells that appeared very soon
after reforestation, thereby dislodging the propagules. Farther out on the
22 PHILIPPINE QUARTERLY OF CULTURE & SOCIETY
reef, eel-grasses have almost all been harvested and sold for use as filler in
mosquito fumigants.
In addition to mangroves, some species of terrestrial trees have almost
disappeared from the island. The most important historical cause has been
the need for firewood, and in one island community, until recently, the
need to harvest intense heat-giving species for burning in the production of
salt needed in fish preservation. One special reason why these same spe?
cies were preferred was the fact that they did not leave bitter-tasting ash
residues in the salt. Other species were damaged by the collection of the
bark, which is apparently useful medically, such as in antidotes against the
sting of poisonous fish, and the rest were finished off by typhoon winds.
Moreover, all forms of fuelwood on the island, whether in the form of co?
conut parts, woodlots, or mangroves, are in need of replenishment. In the
dry season, fuelwood (often mangrove) is imported by banca from the is?
land of Bohol.
There are three major causes for this situation. The first is population
growth. The Olango Island population has been growing at a high rate of
2.82 percent over the period 1975 to 1990. Its population has reached an
urban density of 1,694 persons per square kilometer. Growth has taken
place especially since 1944, when refugees fleeing from the Japanese initi?
ated the formation of interior hamlets. The population has increased (by)
three times since then, but ominously, the population of wells (356 in
1988) has increased nine times, with 32 percent of them having been sunk
since 1981, One respondent was queried as to why he thought nearshore
resources had become so low. He replied that population growth had led to
over-gathering. It was ironic that he himself continued to engage in the
collection of the few remaining mangroves for sale as firewood.
The second is the intrusion of capitalism and the money economy into
the island, especially since the mid 70s. This has particularly affected the
coral reef, aquarium fish, and decorative shellfish and starfish populations.
The combination of capitalism and unrestricted population growth has
been deadly, a situation that has caught the people seemingly suddenly and
by surprise.
Thirdly, there is the lack of any traditional social organization for man?
agement of natural resources, such as would map out resource-use territo?
ries or turfs to be restricted to local village communities or families, or of
any religious sanctions against environmental abuse. Instead, the nearshore
is seen as an unrestricted-access commons (Bruce 1989). Government

ownership and management of this area are, if known, ignored. While
some people are willing to receive rights of stewardship over the man
grove-plantable areas from the government, for example, others do not rec?
ognize their rights and will seriously damage any reforestation attempts in
their search for harvestable shellfish.
THE ABORLAN TAGBANUWA
In 1979 as an anthropologist working for the Forest Research Institute

of the Philippines I visited the Tagbanuwa out of curiosity to see whether
Robert Fox's description of their sacred groves still held true (Fox 1982
[1954]). Their sacred groves had been described by him (pp. 163-176) as
having significant ecological consequences. By their being tabooed for
swiddening, and dispersed among swiddens and villages, he proclaimed
them crucial in the maintenance of the relative ratios of primary forest,
secondary growth, grassland, cropped area, and fallow, the last of which
was able to regain fertility rapidly because the groves acted as seed reser?
voirs. In making these observations, Fox was a forerunner of modern-day
ecosystem anthropology, but without the quantification which that often
requires. Not only forests but any striking natural site was proclaimed sa?
cred or untouchable.
His description of sacred groves made them out to be like ecosymbolic
regulators (my coinage), having characteristics conducive to the mainte?
nance of faunal and floral diversity, such as by providing numerous kinds
of ecotones or vegetation edges. He also described the Tagbanuwa charac?
ter as almost Buddhist in its tolerance for the monkey invaders of swiddens
and for the animal kingdom in general (pp. 173-174).
Fox described a total of six such named groves connecting the barrios
of Baraki and Cabigaan in 1951.1 Each had been ritually set aside by a
shaman or shamaness as being the residence of a "prohibiting" spirit (pan
yaqSn) who would take offense at the grove being slashed-and-burned and
lrThese were named Tagbulubulu, Magbabadil, Batas or Bitas, drang drang or Arang
Arang, Kdyitat or Kayqtas, and Panlawagan (1982; 165). A wooded cemetery and a sa?
cred bamboo grove were also preserved here.
in retribution visit illness on all trespassers. Such a taboo would hold for
the lifetime of the shaman, after which it would be forgotten - thus, over
the very long term we could see that a rotation of cropped land and forest
might have taken place.
I was able to interview with the help of an interpreter two knowledge?
able informants on the subject. The first was Duno Bangkit, the husband of
the shamaness Rufina mentioned by Fox in his text. They resided in
Cabigaan, which, I was told, was a place where the shamanic religion was
still strong. Unfortunately, she was away on a visit of her own at the time,
but her husband obliged us, and he, with his neighbors, was able to explain
to us the thirteen items of shamanic paraphernalia found in their house,
many of which were hanging from the rafters as sorts of shamanic mobile
in readiness for use.2 These artifacts gave supporting evidence that sha?
manism was indeed still practiced there, and so also that perhaps sacred
groves were likely to be of importance to some people.
The sacred groves (panyaq na talon or liqyat?) known by these in?
formants were seven in number. All were located in Cabigaan, for, as Fox
Fox recounted shamanic paraphernalia for the pagdiwata ceremony to include qug~
sang (stripped palm leaf bundles with small brass bells); samban (waist-sash) and other
ceremonial costumes; paqwan (wooden bench used as a stand for jars and rice wine);
sakayan (wooden boat); butukan (wooden stand); small wooden turtles, shields, spears,
and birds; gimbal (drum); qagung (large gong); babandil (small gongs); tarindak (cere?
monial staff); bintayawan (swing); various sizes of stoneware jar; qurhay or mandarirong
(a rope made out of an areca palm infructescence); kris; and the timbak timbak (bamboo
pop-gun).
We saw the following, written as we heard them pronounced. First were those things
suspended from the ceiling: The tarendak, bintayawan, mandarerong, and three types of
bamboo trays and frames (bubuman, bukutan, and saredung). Next, the gimit it pagdi?
wata or musical instruments: Gimbal, qagung, and babandil. Third, the bwotbwot it di
wata that are carried or held by the shaman, including the qugsang with its gurunggurung
(small brass rattles); kalasag (wooden shield carved with organic motifs, held in the sha?
man's left hand); busabusak (little spear held in the right hand); sakasakayan (little boat
placed on the head with a lighted candle inside); and the karis (sword balanced on the
head during trance).
2
Panyag na talon is "prohibited forest" while liqyan is a cave or hole, perhaps a deep
pool in a stream (Blust 1985).
had written, people only know about those within their own endogamous
village. These were usually said to cover only one hectare in size, and to
be occupied by spirits, some of whom were scaly or lizardlike in form.
Four of them were described as being associated with water, such as a
deep pool in a strong river, or a spring. For four also it was especially
mentioned that a large or striking stone or series of large stones constituted
a center. For example, the forest of "Red Stone" (Margong Bato) had at its
center a long, flat stone in which a spirit dwelt. In the forest of Rongka
Rongkang (meaning unknown) the stone existed as a culvert under which a
four-meter-wide creek flowed. Our informants refused to take us to see
these groves because they were forbidden, and so we were unable to assess
them visually.
The second informant was Ignacio Joya, who had the title of Masi
kampu {Maestro de Campo). Fox describes this title as being given to the
appeals judge for all of the Tagbanuwa. As such, Joya had traveled widely
in the area, and this was reflected in what he knew of "enchanted forests,"
as he called them .in English, for the six he told us about were in three
towns and six different barangays. His travels had also made him
knowledgeable in legend and shamanic myth, for he described two of the
sites as associated with events in the life of the Tagbanuwa culture hero,
the shaman Bungkayaw. At one of them, this culture hero had been able to
magically resurrect a molave tree that had fallen over. A third site was at a
stream with a whirlpool leading down into an underground river. This river
was inhabited by two sting rays connected by a common umbilical cord.
Two others of his sites also had stones. In the center of one, two small
stone "charms" {mutya), which were in the shape of machetes, lay upon a
small stone table in the center of the forest. In the other, a stone seven by
seven meters in size was inhabited by a spirit; from it, two trees grew, a
dakalan and a balmda dagat. He had visited each of these with a compan?
ion, and each time either he or his friend had gotten ill upon reaching
home.
The presence of sacred stones at these sites, noted by both informants,
was not mentioned by Fox. This makes these groves reminiscent of those
described in Maharashtra, India, in the center of which can be found either
stone figurines of a guardian goddess or stone sculptures of an enlarged
grain of rice (Gadgil & Vartak 1976). See Table 1 for data on the sacred
groves mentioned by the two informants.
Table 1. Some Tagbanuwa sacred groves and sites known or remembered in 1979.
NAME MEANING SIZE SACRED FEATURES STATUS
A. Sacred groves in barangay Cabigaan (enumerated by Duno Bangkit)
1. Baqtes unknown 160m2 Deep water pool Destroyed by

inhabited by a non-Tagbanuwa
crocodile farmers in the
government
Palayan ng
Bayan program
l.Margong "red stone" a 2 ha. A long flat stone;

Bato forest the center is
inhabited by a
spirit
3. Bubuman "entrance" a 4 ha. A large stone with

where a path forest nearby deep pool
from brgy. in a strong river
Cabigaan
enters brgy.
Aporawan
4. Tagpaniki "place of the A spring with many

lizard"? large stones and a
giant, invisible
lizard that steals
children in the tow
of their mothers
5. Kagaretan from garet, a 1 ha. A scaly spirit who

"rough or forest lives in the forest
scaly skin"
6. Maraqasang unknown a 1.5 ha. A spirit dwelling

forest here replaces a
baby on its mother's
back with a rock or
stone of equal weight
7. Rongka unknown a 1 ha. A culvertlike Converted to

Rongkang forest stone over a 4 meter upland
wide creek; marine farms
fish are found in
the fresh water
Table 1. (continued)
NAME MEANING SIZE SACRED FEATURES STATUS
B. Sacred groves elsewhere in Palawan (enumerated by Ignacio Joy a)
1. Nagbutasan "Place of a 6 ha. In a house nearby the

(brgy. Destruction" forest on culture hero Bungkayaw
Aporaran, a mountain discovered how to use
Aborlan) purad to make rice wine.
He got so drunk that his
host teased him, saying
he would not be able to
get home. Bungkayaw
proceeded to break down
the door of Iiis host's
house.
2. Biyangan "Resurrected When this tree fell over,

Tugas Molave" Bungkayaw performed a
(brgy. ritual to make it stand
Gogognan, up again.
Aborlan)
3. Baqtes unknown Where a stream goes

(brgy. into an underground
Inagawan, river at a whirlpool. The
Puerto tunnel connects with
Princesa) Aborlan and is inhabited
by two sting rays
connected by a common
umbilical cord. In the
time of slavery, a man
swam to freedom
through this tunnel.
4. Man git unknown 1 km. A cave of many

branches, near
the Bato River
5. Toranki unknown a forest on A small stone table Converted

seashore in the center has into farms
100 x 1,000 lying on it two by new?
meters in bo lo-shaped comers
size precious stones
or channs
6. Magdidi unknown A stone 7 x 7m in size;

(brgy. has two trees growing
mentioned out of it, a dakalan
by informant and a balinda dagat;
not locatable) a spirit dwells in the
stone.
We found in 1979, then, that at least in one barangay shamanism was

still in force, and sacred groves were still presumably being maintained.
Ominously, however, three of the groves described by the two informants
had disappeared - as I was told, cleared for farms by newcomers, some in
a government program. This point can be put together with secondary data
and other data in Aborlan, as follows, and the overall view these give us is
that Fox was misled, when in one of his papers (Fox 1971: 4) he described
Tagbanuwa religion as reinforcing traditional sentiments in the face of in?
creased intercultural contacts:
1. By the 1960 census, Aborlan had become the 35th fastest growing
town in the Philippines with the Narra Resettlement Project. Six new
barangays had been created between 1948 and 1960, one of which,
Plaridel, appeared from nowhere to become the largest population cluster.
Even with the separation of the Narra cluster into a new municipality in
1969, some influxes of newcomers diverted into old Aborlan rather than to
Narra, and they continued to increase the population there. By the 1975
census, the Aborlan Tagbanuwa were outnumbered in their own town by a
combined population of Hiligaynon, Tagalog, Ilocano, and Cuyunon.
2. A researcher at Palawan National Agricultural College in a study of
Tagbanuwa housing conditions in 1977 reported that in six Aborlan baran?
gays she had difficulty in locating "pure Tagbanuwa" families, by which
we assume she meant families where both spouses were Tagbanuwa (Sori?
ano 1977).
3. Barangay Baraki is somewhat removed from the Poblacion. It was
the major focus of Fox's study. He described it as entirely non-Christian in
the late 40s. Its non-Tagbanuwa captain in 1979 could only think of one
sacred place, a cave found only after a long hike into the mountains. He
was able to name two living shamanesses in the settlement, however. He
described his barangay as composed mostly of Visayan and Ilocano Chris?
tians, with several inter-marriages of Tagbanuwa and non-Tagbanuwa, and
a few other baptized Tagbanuwa.
4. With regard to barangay Magbabadil, the Aborlan Vice-Mayor, Jim
Kutat, stated that the pagdiwata, a major shamanic ceremony, was then
only very rarely performed there. He also said that he knew of only two
shamans still living in the town center and in four post-1948 barangays, in?
clusive. My Tagbanuwa interpreter was the son of the barangay captain of
Magbabadil. This captain had been one of Fox's major informants. The in
terpreter was thus related to shamans. But he did not seem aware of the
presence of enchanted forests in Magbabadil nor did he personally know
of any shamans living there. He did not seem aware of any concept that
could be translated as "sacred groves" and learned about them only
through our research. In his monograph Fox had a map showing a sacred
grove named Magbabadil (1982:165). It seems likely that the settlement of
Magbabadil has grown on top of the sacred grove that gave it its name.
The historical trajectory of the pressure against traditional conservation
based on religion was abundantly clear: in-migration of Christians, their
inter-marriage with Tagbanuwa, conversion of Tagbanuwa to Christianity,
decline of shamanism, and the ensuing destruction of sacred groves, along
with floral and probably also faunal species unique to Palawan, and their
replacement by permanent farms and new villages.
RELIGION AND CONSERVATION
The very reason why Fox's implication that Tagbanuwa religious ritual
might protect them from change was incorrect lies in another statement
that he made to the effect that sacred groves provided only an "incidental"
balance to the Tagbanuwa environment (1982: 164), a view later argued
cogently by the late Ralph Bulmer (1982) for New Guinea traditional con?
servation. Tagbanuwa conservation was a latent function of their religion,
and thus a weak form of conservation. Fox did not find (or at least never
said) that the Tagbanuwa were aware that their sacred groves facilitated
the reseeding of fallows and made possible the continuing fertility of their
fields, and that was why they were kept. Like the New Guineans, their
concern was more for the protection of themselves and their children from
disease-causing environmental spirits in their neighborhood.
Now we can return to the Olango Islanders. The Tagbanuwa had at
least "incidental" forest conservation, brought about by taboos against for?
est felling instituted by shamans who in a state of trance had not received
permission from forest spirits to cut. On Olango Island, there had always
been a delinking between religion and environment, and this was appar?
ently reinforced by conversion to Catholicism.
It is not known when Olango Islanders began to be converted, but field
work on the fiesta of St. Vincent Ferrer held at the highest Spring tides in
sitio Poo (a shortened Cebuano form for /?/////, "island," officially made
barangay San Vicente in 1994) strongly suggests that there has been a fus?
ing of that saint with a pre-Hispanic Thunder God of a type known by
many peoples throughout Southeast Asia (see Blust 1981). This must have
taken place through a process of "guided syncretism" (Nutini 1976) in
which the earliest Catholic missionaries to reach Olango enabled the peo?
ple to accept St. Vincent by matching or overlapping him with their Thun?
der God. Now this Thunder God is a punisher wherever he is found. He
strikes individuals with lightning, submerges whole settlements with flood,
and brings cholera to whole populations, and so instills fear into people's
hearts. His punishment is for infractions of taboo, usually prohibitions
against reversing the proper order of nature, specifically in such acts as
talking to animals or treating them as if human, or violating certain sexual
prohibitions. An examination of the life of St. Vincent Ferrer shows that
he, too, could be misconstrued as a punisher - at least he evoked the fear
of hell as a fire-and-brimstone preacher of his day. He makes a fitting ana?
logue to the Thunder God. Today, citizens of Olango who have recovered
from an illness or who inherit the task perform a personal ritual before the
icon of St. Vincent on his feast day and in the sea in front of the banca in
which he returns to his chapel. These personal rituals (ba/hv-baliw) in?
volve a reversal of the proper order of some part of nature, with transves?
tism or disguise as a frequent element in the "play."
I see the bringing of St. Vincent to Olango as enabling them to make
their peace with a Thunder God that is now fused with St. Vincent in the
icon, through a form of joking relationship, done for the saint's amusement
and as a vow. The annual repetition of the fiesta as a whole and the per?
sonal rituals in particular will save self and community from re-affliction
or from punishment for the breaking of taboos for an entire year.
My point here is that nowhere in this history was there a conscious or
even inadvertent putting-to-work of the St. Vincent fiesta on the behalf of
the conservation of nature. Whereas the Tagbanuwa environmental spirits
are described as belonging to the social world of the Tagbanuwa, with a
focus on social relations between humans and environmental spirits,
some of whom were recently deceased relatives, the Thunder God, who
also was in a sense a nature deity, resided in the remoteness of the sky, and
dealt only, but powerfully, with matters of proper social behavior among
still-living humans and between humans and animals. The social behavior
between the people and the Thunder God was absent, or collapsed into acts
of punishment by the deity or into offerings to him done by a transvestite

shaman in order to appease his wrath in advance (Lietz 1960: 237-238).
The concern of the Catholic priests was to convert these Thunder God be?
lievers. All about them was the abundance of nature and no need to give
the environment special consideration. As far as religion played any role in
recent history, characterized as that history has been by combinations of
population growth, spread of the money economy, and degradation of the
open-access commons at the edge of land and sea, it has been as a mask di?
recting attention away from what was happening to the environment,
rather than as a role of traditional conservation. Once St. Vincent had been
amused and venerated on the occasion of an annual fiesta, the populace
could rest easy that no catastrophe, environmental or otherwise, would
overtake them in the following year. The yearly cycle could continue
safely as it always had.
RECOMMENDATION
I said at the start that I would at this point make a suggestion. Human
beings are symboling animals, but the symbols that they use are not deter?
mined by genetic processes. They can change the meanings of their sym?
bols, add to those meanings. It is not true, then, as Fox suggested, that
ritual could prevent change. In fact, ritual might be able to catalyze change
in desired directions. Why not, on Olango Island as well as in Aborlan, put
the saints to work? Catholic organizations in the Philippines do exist
which have been working hard for the environment, but what is needed is
the motivation of resources and structures from the top. The Church could
take a creatively syncretic approach to this topic, in much the same way as
it did when it arrived on Olango Island, but now with environmental pres?
ervation in mind. Strategic remaining Tagbanuwa groves and their wildlife
could be placed under the protection of saints (there are enough to go
around) rather than be destroyed; likewise with the now-degraded man?
grove forest on Olango Island, which the Asian Wetlands Bureau wants to
turn into a resting sanctuary for endangered migratory wading birds. The
saints' work can be coupled with issues as policy, much in the same way
as is being done with St. Luigi Gonzaga in Italy, who is being pressed into
service as a saint for AIDS victims (McKevitt 1992). The old custom that
was popular in Germany in the Middle Ages of preserving forests by put
ting them under the protection of specific saints could be revived and
broadened in application. In this effort, we have to realize that to make na?
ture sustainable in relation to man, it will be necessary also to make man
sustainable in relation to the tasks he sets for himself. The saints, religious
symbols highly relevant to the nature of Philippine society and its prob?
lems, could be asked to help. The people could eventually come to believe
in their new role as environmental protection agents and eventually learn
to help them. This sort of seemingly "artificial" beginning has a long his?
tory; there is no reason why it might not work again today.
ACKNOWLEGMENTS
Thanks are due to the Sentro Para sa Ganap na Pamayahan, Inc., for
the chance to present my material in just this way at the conference on
Biodiversity and Indigenous Resource Utilization and Management Prac?
tices on 1-3 April, 1993 in Cebu City.
The research on Olango Island natural resource use was made possible
by PACAP-Australia and Oxfam-Quebec through their funding for the
Community Water Resources Management Project for Olango Island of
the Water Resources Center, University of San Carlos, and on St. Vincent
of Poo by a small grant from the Cebuano Studies Center, University of
San Carlos.
Travel to Aborlan was partially financed by the United States Peace
Corps. Thanks must be extended to then President Miguel Palao of the
Palawan National Agricultural College for his helpfulness, and to my
guide and interpreter, Rodencio Imag. On Olango, my interpreters have
been Rene Alburo and Ruben Villa; I am grateful to them also.
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University of San Carlos Publications

TABOO AND ENVIRONMENT, CEBUANO AND TAGBANUWA: TWO CASES OF INDIGENOUS

TABOO AND ENVIRONMENT, CEBUANO AND

I have been asked to deliver a paper on traditional conservation of bio?

THE OLANGO ISLANDERS

Olango Island is today not a site of conservation of natural resources

is seen as an unrestricted-access commons (Bruce 1989). Government

THE ABORLAN TAGBANUWA

In 1979 as an anthropologist working for the Forest Research Institute

NAME MEANING SIZE SACRED FEATURES STATUS

A. Sacred groves in barangay Cabigaan (enumerated by Duno Bangkit)

1. Baqtes unknown 160m2 Deep water pool Destroyed by

l.Margong "red stone" a 2 ha. A long flat stone;

3. Bubuman "entrance" a 4 ha. A large stone with

4. Tagpaniki "place of the A spring with many

5. Kagaretan from garet, a 1 ha. A scaly spirit who

6. Maraqasang unknown a 1.5 ha. A spirit dwelling

7. Rongka unknown a 1 ha. A culvertlike Converted to

NAME MEANING SIZE SACRED FEATURES STATUS

B. Sacred groves elsewhere in Palawan (enumerated by Ignacio Joy a)

1. Nagbutasan "Place of a 6 ha. In a house nearby the

2. Biyangan "Resurrected When this tree fell over,

3. Baqtes unknown Where a stream goes

4. Man git unknown 1 km. A cave of many

5. Toranki unknown a forest on A small stone table Converted

6. Magdidi unknown A stone 7 x 7m in size;

We found in 1979, then, that at least in one barangay shamanism was

RELIGION AND CONSERVATION

of punishment by the deity or into offerings to him done by a transvestite

Cusi, Michael Anthony, Rene Alburo and Harold Olofson

Gadgil, M. and V.D. Vartak

Lietz, Paul S. (tr.)

Olofson, Harold, Elizabeth M. Remedio and Jade Neri

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