An anthropologist's reaction to 'Unexplored Philippines'

Last week’s column entitled “Unexplored Philippines” sparked quite a number of e-mails from readers. Almost all wanted to see a copy of the National Geographic magazine that I wrote about. But the best e-mail I got was something I could not keep to myself because it just contained too many wonderful coincidences and connections across time and space that should not pass without reflection.

On the day the column was published online last week, one of the first e-mails I got was from Dr. Tom Headland (www.sil.org/~headlandt). His e-mail moved me in so many levels that I could not respond to him right away. I was glued to his line that said, “I know the names of some of the Agta natives in Goddard’s photos.” Holding my 1930 National Geographic magazine, I read his e-mail as he mentioned those names.

On the page where the natives were carrying the white men who landed their seaplane so as not to get wet, Headland guided me, saying, “On page 324, photo on left side of page is of Mulan (on left) and Padpaden (on right), both carrying an American man. Mulan died about 1929 at age 64, and Padpaden died about 1945 at age 65. “

Then I flipped on another page where there is a photo of an Agta couple, as Headland’s e-mail read: “On page 329, photo of three Agta people. We do not know who the tall man is on the left, but the woman in the middle is Miya and the man on the right is her husband Madeng. Madeng died about 1939 at age 67, and Miya died about the same year at age 65. We lived next door to one of their children, a woman named Upila who died in 1977.”

On one page of the Nat Geo magazine was a striking picture of an Agta woman posed sideways with a warm smile and instead of an earring, she had a rolled piece of what seemed like leaves. This woman became much more than a ghost of the past when Headland wrote to me that “On page 336, Panyang, with the photo caption saying, ‘She carried perfume in her ear.’ Panyang died about 1966 at age 61. We met her we think only once.”

It turned out that Dr. Tom Headland is an American anthropologist who, together with his wife, Janet, devoted most of their adult lives to chronicling the Agta (Aetas) of northern Aurora. They started their work there in 1962 and all their children were born in Aurora while they lived among the Agta communities. When Dr. Headland got hold of a copy of the 1930 September issue of the National Geographic in 1963, he brought it with him to show to the Agtas in the northern Aurora community where he lived and their Agta neighbors identified the ones in the photos.

Dr. Headland and his wife are credited for their life’s work of completing a census of this community. The census has about 4,000 names and genealogies, as well as photographs of about 20 percent of them. The database could also be downloaded for free in the site you can reach by writing “Agta Database” in your search engine. In that record, Dr. Headland mentions you can trace the 121 descendants of Madeng and Miya.

Dr. Headland’s home institution now is the Summer Linguistics Institute (www.sil.org/asia/philippines). There, he said, you could find the book that the couple wrote and published last December called “Letrato na Agta” which has the details and photographs of those 760 Agta individuals, written entirely in the Agta language. Two months ago, they came to the Philippines for the last time, since 1962, and gave to each of the remaining 79 Agta family in northern Aurora, a copy of the book.

Most of you tried to answer this open-ended question in last week’s column: How do you see our islands when you are up there? Most of you said that from up there, it does not seem like so many things are wrong with our country now. Dr. Headland saw our islands from up there and every time he landed, he lived and loved our land enough to understand and chronicle the lives of Agta who inhabit northern Aurora. He and Janet did that for almost 50 years and what do they think at this time when they have made their final trip to that community about two months ago? Dr. Headland ended his e-mail with this: “We love the people of northern Aurora and we love the Philippines.”

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