For a long time, the residents of the town of Hinatuan in the Philippines thought themselves the descendants of a Manobo tribe, yet lately many of them realized they neither speak nor understand Manobo, whereas they can converse relatively well with another ethnic group called the Mandaya. Who are the Kamayo people of Hinatuan, and what does the Mandaya tribe have to do with them?
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The Kamayo People of Hinatuan
The Kamayo are a people populating the east coast of the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Those residing in Hinatuan used to celebrate the Paladong Festival, which features a healing ritual invoking the aid of the spirits. In reality, the Kamayo have been Christianized, and thus have lost such pagan ways. An old animist ritual like the ladong can come across as something foreign to the contemporary Kamayo.
Hinatuan Quick Facts
Municipality: Hinatuan
Province: Surigao del Sur
Region: Caraga
Country: Philippines
Town Fiesta: August 28
Main Tourist Attraction: Enchanted River
However, when they chose to celebrate their cultural heritage, Hinatuan opted to make a festival of the ladong ritual, which they thought is a Manobo tradition. Thus, the municipality annually held the Paladong Festival, where dancers in Manobo costumes reenacted a healing ritual while performing Manobo dance steps. The people of Hinatuan were so convinced that the ladong was their own ethnic practice.
But Hinatuan Is Not Manobo
To the confusion of Hinatuan’s residents, they began to realize that they are not Manobo. For one, they don’t understand the Manobo language. A Manobo man sang their native song on TV, but not a word conveyed any meaning to a Kamayo listener. How could they have descended from an ethnolinguistic group whose tongue they could not make sense of in the slightest?
On the other hand, when visitors arrived from the nearby province of Davao Oriental, the Kamayo residents of Hinatuan can intelligently share a conversation with them in their own language. The case is similar with natives of Davao City, who say madayaw to greet people. This word the Kamayo understand properly to mean “good,” the same message that English-speakers use in saying good morning and good night. Yet the natives of Davao Oriental were not Manobo; they were mostly Mandaya. And the word madayaw was neither Manobo, but Mandaya. Were the natives of Hinatuan Mandaya all along, not Manobo?
Source: Davao Oriental Government
Too Hung Up on Manobo to be Mandaya
The idea that they were not Manobo but Mandaya disturbed the sense of identity of Hinatuan’s people. Have they been celebrating the ethnicity of an entirely different people all along? Have they represented themselves as the descendants of an inland tribe with whom they never had biological connection? Have they danced on the streets as the native performers of a ritual that was never actually theirs?
For some residents, it was like a rug was pulled from underneath their feet. The natives of Hinatuan woke up to the truth — foreign and disturbing as it was — that they were not in fact Manobo.
The gravity of this realization reverberated in Hinatuan society. Should they now shed every practice that linked them to the Manobo? Should they stop celebrating the Paladong Festival? Should they cease performing the one dance they so looked forward to each year?
For many, especially for fans and past performers of the Paladong Festival, this realization was sad and painful. Before they knew it, the Kamayo people of Hinatuan had gotten attached to a Manobo identity.
Tracing the Roots of the Kamayo People
To get down to the roots of the matter, a group of Hinatuan residents went to a Mandaya city. On the 18th of July, 2024, members of Hinatuan Culture and Arts Council (HICAC) traveled down south to the city of Mati to probe their town’s ethnic identity. Were Hinatuan’s natives, who call themselves Kamayo, really Mandaya, not Manobo? Are the Kamayo and Mandaya the same ethnic group after all?
Kamayo People meet Mandaya
After traveling for hours, the members of HICAC arrived in Mati, the capital of Davao Oriental. What met the Kamayo visitors was a people whom they could freely talk with. Their hosts were Mandaya, who shared the Kamayos’ lexicon. The Mandaya said good afternoon the way the Kamayo did. The Mandaya can verbally express the Kamayo’s sense of self-importance and pride with the same vocabulary. The two peoples even shared the same curse words.
What followed was a lively discussion. Yes, to exchange ideas, both the Kamayo and Mandaya spoke English. They also spoke the national language, better known locally as Tagalog. Both likewise spoke Bisaya, the region’s lingua franca. Yet, from time to time, words came out that were native to both peoples. The Mandaya spoke Kamayo words, and the Kamayo vice versa.
Representing the Mandaya, a former official of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, Marilyn Yumon, explained who the Mandaya are. They are natives who settled along the east coasts of Mindanao. When the Spanish colonizers arrived, some of them accepted foreign rule, while the others fled, possibly thinking the fair foreigners to be engkantos or fairies. The consequent separation between tribe members manifested in their ethnic clothing. Those who ran way eventually donned red and blue clothing – which is a distinguishing mark of the Mandaya today — while the Mandaya who stayed wore almost entirely black.
The name Mandaya means “people of the highlands,” where they lived away from Christian rule. Those who converted to Christianity became the Dabawenyos, whose name refers to residents of the old, unified province of Davao. There is also the possibility that some of the Mandaya converted to Islam, wherefore they became known as the Kagan, the Muslim residents of Mati.
Who are the Kamayo?
What of the people of Hinatuan? What of the Kamayo people, who populate the neighboring province of Surigao del Sur from the town of Marihatag through Hinatuan to Lingig? What of the lowland inhabitants of Davao Oriental who are also known as Kamayo?
It appears that the Kamayo people were also Mandaya. The Kamayo once shared the same ethnic identity as the Mandaya of Mati. The difference ensued from the geographic separation and the Kamayo’s exposure to other cultures, particularly of the Bisaya who migrated from the islands of central Philippines.
In short, the Kamayo people were lowland Mandayas who lost their cultural identity after Spanish colonization and Christianization, whereas the present-day Mandaya kept theirs after fleeing to the mountains. Thus, the word Mandaya literally meant “uplanders,” while Kamayo refers to the people who remained at the coasts and speak a similar language.
The cultural separation of the natives of Hinatuan from the Mandaya is quite pronounced. Not only were they removed from their heathen roots after acquiring a Christian identity, these Kamayos were also geographically torn away from the heart of Mandaya’s political domain. When the government split the old province of Caraga between Davao and Surigao, the northern Mandaya tribes were cut off from the rest. These were the Kamayo of the present-day province of Surigao del Sur, to which the town of Hinatuan belongs.
In a nutshell, the Kamayo in Surigao del Sur were ethnic Mandayas who had undergone Christianization.
Yet the Kamayo Are Now Very Different from the Mandaya
While we can trace the origin of the Kamayo people to the Mandaya, there are now very strong differences that exist between the two cultures. These prevent the Kamayo from entirely identifying with the Mandaya, and the Mandaya from truly recognizing the Kamayo as their own.
1. Clothing
Kamayos now wear modern Western clothing. When they performed the Paladong, they wore Manobo costume and erroneously thought it was their own ethnic clothing.
The Mandayas on ordinary days also wear Western clothing, but in their case, they still keep their tribal costumes, which they wear on special occasions. Their weave goes by the name dagmay, a word whose meaning the Kamayo visitors from Hinatuan had no idea of.
2. Language
Besides dagmay, there were other Mandaya words that the Kamayo did not understand. These included words referring to Mandaya objects that the Kamayo no longer used, like the dagmay fabric. Even when the Kamayo knew some of the words, the way the Mandayas put them together often rendered them unintelligible. For instance, the Kamayo visitors failed to understand the meaning of Mati’s cultural festival, Sambuokan, until they realized that the name derived from the phrase isam buok, which they understand to mean “one piece” — the Sambuokan Festival being a celebration of unity among Mati’s different tribes.
What made communication between Mandaya and Kamayo even more difficult is the variation in words, along with the way they were inflicted. The Mandaya speak words familiar to the Kamayo in a tone that makes their meaning difficult to comprehend. There are also obvious differences in pronunciation. For instance, the Mandaya word for “forum,” ballaw-ballaw, corresponds in Kamayo to an antiquated word baraw-baraw.
Indeed, the geographical distance between the Mandaya of Davao Oriental and the Kamayo of Surigao del Sur gave birth to differences in their words, pronunciation and overall tone, which now constitute a significant language barrier between the two cultures.
3. Religion
When the Mandayas of Mati said a prayer before starting their forum with the Kamayos, the former made a sign of the cross. Yes, Mandayas of present-day Mati have also been Christianized. Still, they have held on to the belief in their old God, or at least to its name, superimposed on the Christian God. The Mandaya worshiped the Magbabaya, also known as the Tagalang na Magbabaya, “the divine spirit that governs all.” While the Kamayo from Hinatuan knew of the God Magbabaya — whose name literally means the “Governor” — the word tagalang was new to them. This term simply means “divine spirit.” Besides this, there are many other Mandaya beliefs that were lost among the Kamayo.
4. Rituals
Where did the Kamayo learn of the God Magbabaya? The answer is the Paladong Festival, which recalled this belief. The Manobo share the faith in Magbabaya with the Mandaya. However, the ladong — in which a Kamayo performer in Hinatuan portrayed the veneration of Magbabaya — may have been a ritual foreign to the Mandaya, at least to Mati’s Mandaya, who in the forum did not seem to have any idea what paladong meant.
Is Paladong an Authentic Mandaya Ritual?
The fact that the Mandaya of Mati did not recognize such an ethnic practice as paladong can mean that the ladong is not a Mandaya ritual. If this was the case, the Kamayo people of Hinatuan celebrated a ritual that was not Mandaya, but Manobo.
In truth, since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Paladong Festival has gone on a hiatus. Fans and admirers of the Paladong have missed this colorful festival for years. Should the Paladong, which celebrates a possibly Manobo ritual, remain missing, never to return again?
Paladong is a Kamayo Ritual
What’s mysterious about the ladong is that the very old Kamayo practiced them. These elders, who were essentially Mandaya, performed a religious ritual that might not be Mandaya.
One of them was the very own grandmother of Hinatuan’s municipal councilor, Monalisa Su, who accompanied the Hinatuan Culture and Arts Council in their trip to Mati. “My grandmother was a huge woman,” Mrs. Su recalled, “but when she performed the ladong, she was so light,” noting that the late Escolastica Potenciando used the same dance steps that the Mandaya consultant showed in Mati, just in a much faster rhythm.
There are two conclusions that can result from this observation. One, the ladong was a Mandaya ritual unique to those living in Hinatuan, and it was merely the mechanics of the contemporary Paladong Festival — which required performers to wear and dance in Manobo fashion — that was erroneous. The ritual itself was authentic, but the festival celebrating the ladong got it wrong.
The other possibility is, the ladong was a Manobo ritual that Mandayas in Hinatuan adopted using their own dance steps. The latter is not improbable, given that even in Mati, there were Mandayas who imbibed influences from the Manobo, with whom they intermarried. These Mandayas became known as Manobo-Mandaya. Such intermarriages were likely not absent in Hinatuan, whose remote inlands the Manobo inhabited. This marriage of cultures would consequently manifest in the ritual of ladong, thus embodying the Manobo’s influence on Hinatuan’s Mandaya population.
Abolish the Paladong Festival?
Does the Paladong Festival make the Kamayo people of Hinatuan less Mandaya? Should they completely abolish this possibly Manobo ritual from their town’s festivities?
While many of Hinatuan’s residents – including their lawmakers — consider abolishing the Paladong, the answer, when you come down to it, is no. Sure, in Hinatuan, the Manobo might have influenced a Mandaya culture, but this did not debase the Kamayo culture so as to erase its Mandaya roots, given that the Mandaya themselves also observe rituals that involve sacrifices like the ladong. The latter ritual is simply a religious practice that a subgroup of Mandaya developed, possibly from their interaction with a Manobo tribe.
What the Paladong Festival does really is add a layer of features that distinguish the Kamayo, particularly of the town of Hinatuan, from the rest of Mandaya. The Kamayo of Hinatuan is a subgroup of Mandaya who have their own healing ritual, possibly influenced by their Manobo neighbors. The Kamayo dancers of Hinatuan need only to perform the paladong in their own dance steps and ethnic clothing for the festival to be authentic.
Then again, here lies the problem of the Kamayo: They have not been recognized as an ethnic group. To Philippine authorities, Kamayo is just a dialect, not an ethnolinguistic community.
This, to the Hinatuan Culture and Arts Council, is false and may be unjust. Kamayos of Hinatuan know for certain that they are natives of their hometown, and they identify with the Mandaya, whom authorities recognize as an indigenous people. It’s just that when they refer to themselves, they use the word Kamayo, and seldom call themselves Mandaya. Still, the Kamayo should also be recognized as an ethnic group, at least as a subgroup of the Mandaya.
Kamayo, a Subgroup of Mandaya
Even the Mandayas of Davao Oriental have various subgroups, including the Mansaka and Manobo-Mandaya. Among these subgroups, the Kamayo also deserve to be recognized; because, in reality, the Kamayo are simply Mandayas who, having lived in the lowlands of Surigao del Sur or Davao Oriental, experienced deep exposure to Christian influences – particularly of the Bisaya – and, at least in the case of Hinatuan, may have picked up traditions from their Manobo neighbors.
Thanks to Our Benefactors
Who made our Mati trip possible:
- Hinatuan Municipal Government
- Mati City Government
- Mayor Shem Garay
- SB Monalisa Su
- SB Joan Garay
- Datu Arnoldo Cabilin, Jr.
- SB Edilberto Barrios
- SB Aloha Telewik
- SB Lourdes Villaluz
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