Easter College Incorporated
Easter School Road Guisad, Baguio City
Senior High School Department
In Partial Fulfillment of the Subject
UNDERSTANDING CULTURE, SOCIETY AND POLITICS
Section: Grade 12-Block F
Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS)
Submitted By:
Jara Mae U. Sugao Jeff Robert F. Balanay
Submitted to:
Sir Renante Lamoste
December 09, 2019
INTRODUCTION
Do you want to learn more about Buscalan kalinga
Butbut Tribe? Don’t hold yourselves back any
longer. Step into our domain and navigate your
way around our reaction paper for a brief
The Kalinga’s are known as headhunters and they were never under any foreign
rule and during World War II they fought with hatchets and Buscalan is beautiful. In fact,
the name Kalinga, which originated from the Gaddang and Ibanag languages, means
“headhunter”. Grass and local blooms fill its meadows overlooking the expansive
panorama of a pristine terraced hinterland. The practice of headhunting has long been
dead since the 1960s. The new generation of Butbut is gentle, respectful and very warm
to tourists. Many of them go to school but only very few make it to college. Animism was
once a time-honored practice among the Butbuts. They believed that spirits live on trees,
stones and animals. Magical powers from natural elements were believed to cure, protect,
guide or promote fertility. All of these are told in the tattoos on their skins. Christianity may
have been evangelized in the highlands, but these folk beliefs are still silently honored
alongside the modern-day religious practices. The realities of modern times such as the
necessities of education and jobs, assimilation to mainstream lowland societies, the
disappearance of true hand combat warriors and the changing concepts of beauty impact
the tradition of acquiring their customary tribal tattoos. This reality is threatening the Batek
tradition and is feared to end in the hands of its last master artist, Apo Whang-od.
There are five Butbut mountain villages: Bugnay, Buscalan, Locong, Butbut proper,
and Ngibut. There are also several lowland resettlement villages including Ileb, Lacnog,
Pakak, Binungsay, Anonong, San Pedro, Malapiat, and a few mixed villages. Oral history
recounts that the forefathers of the Butbut tribe were originally from a village called Astan
but which is now extinct. When the population grew, they decided to split and two tribes
emerged, the Butbut and Tulgao. The Kalingas are a proud people and well known for
their intricate hand-woven textiles and beautiful and colorful beaded jewelry. In every
celebration, they incorporate dance and traditional music as a form of thanksgiving and
cultural preservation. The Butbut Kalinga reside in Tinglayan, Kalinga. Farming is their
main source of livelihood, as the province has a rugged and mountainous topography.
Sometime in the 1970s, because of economic problems, the Butbut began migrating to
two municipalities up North: in Tabuk and in Rizal. Since then, eight more Butbut
barangays have been established. Despite this out-migration the Butbut people have
maintained their culture, their distinct language, and a strong sense of communal
solidarity. The Butbut people settled in a village now called Butbut Proper. Again, increase
in population caused them to spread out into four more villages or barangays: Loccong,
Ngibat, Buscalan and Bugnay. These barangays form part of the municipality of
Tinglayan.
BODY
Stewardship is everyone’s concern and must be held with action. They have a
reputation for being “the strong people of the Cordilleras.” At the same time, Kalingas
greatly value family and kinship; thus, the household, extended household of the kinship
circle, and territorial region are significant units of Kalinga society. In the past, they gained
leadership and respect through headhunting, along with other skills at which an individual
excelled. Their neighbors and even invaders feared them due to their as headhunters.
Chiefdoms are like bands and tribes in being mostly classless societies. However,
chiefdoms differ in having a permanent, fulltime leader with real authority to make major
decisions for their societies. These leaders are usually referred to by anthropologists as
chiefs. Sometimes there is an advisory council as well, but there is no bureaucracy of
professional administrators.
The government is essentially just the chief. Some of the more advanced
chiefdoms in Africa are an exception in that they have a paramount chief and lesser chiefs
who perform administrative functions. The Baganda click this icon to hear the preceding
term pronounced and Bunyoro click this icon to hear the preceding term pronounced of
Uganda are examples of this. The chiefdoms of ancient Hawaii and elsewhere in
Polynesia were similar in having several levels of chiefs. Chiefdoms also are known
historically from Europe, Asia, the southeastern United States, the Caribbean islands,
Panama, Colombia, and the Amazon Basin of Brazil.
Seniority in kin groups is usually the primary basis for individual status within
chiefdoms. The chief is at the top of the kinship hierarchy. Other people are commonly
ranked in terms of their genealogical distance from the chief. Subsequently, there is a
keen interest in maintaining records of descent from important family ancestors.
CONCLUSION
The butbut tribe have the reputation of being the strong people of cordilleran. They
greatly value Kinship thus, the household, extended household of the kinship circle, and
territorial region are significant units of Kalinga society. They would cut off their enemies’
heads and as a reward they would be inked with magnificent tattoos that exude valiance
when they return triumphantly to their village. The females also received tattoos as a rite
of passage and symbol of beauty. Their tattoos transform girls into women; the women
thereafter become eligible for marriage and bearing children. The more tattoos women
had, the more attractive they were to the men in the village. One of their leaders was
Macliing Dulag and he was called the father of the tribe in which he was the one who
fought for the Chico Dam project but then he was killed by Philippine Military. Butbut is
represented in the formal government structure by elected officials with assistance from
respected elders.
Bodong, known as the Peace Pact system, defines intertribal relationship. The
Peace Pact is very important because of intermittent tribal wars among the different tribes
which are caused by land dispute, killings, and water rights. The elders of the family who
holds the Bodong is responsible to maintain the peace between the tribes. These
centuries old practice of revenge-killing has kept the Butbut people under the bondage to
fear. Currently there is tribal war going on between Butbut and a neighboring tribe.
REFFERENCES
Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas,
Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.
CCP Encyclopedia of the Philippine Art. Volume II: Peoples of the Philippines Kalinga to
Yakan. 1994. Manila: Cultural Center of the Philippines.
