Mandaya Tribe

Consisting of both the non-Christian and non-Islamic, the Mandaya are found throughout Davao Oriental and Davao del Norte, Mindanao. Their name denotes the “first people upstream” and derived from man “first” and daya “upstream or upper portion of a river”. They are shifting cultivators who depend largely on swidden farming (slash-and-burn) and supplement it with fishing, hunting-gathering, and planting of abaca as a cash crop.