THE PHILIPPINES

A Reason for Pride… Revival of Negrito Food Traditions

The indigenous Negritos, with a hunter-gatherer background, share a strong relationship with the natural environment in which they live. For these forest specialists - including the Aeta, Agta, Ata, Ati and Batak - wild gathered foods from forests, rivers and coastal waters, are a healthy and enjoyable part of their diet. Wild foods include ferns, yams, mushrooms, forest honey, wild banana, flowers and palm heart, as well as bushmeat, fish, clams, crabs and other aquatic animals.

In the not so distant past, the forest was an excellent provider for the communities, but today in many places the shrinking of ancestral domain lands, degradation of forests, and cultural pressure, have contributed to a diminishing reliance on wild foods. Until recently, social pressure discouraged wild food harvesting, and promoted ‘modern’ processed and comparatively nutrient poor foods in even the remotest areas.

Our work

In order to address the decline of the unique Negrito heritage and invigorate their healthy food traditions, we are:

• Helping to develop, promote, and preserve low volume/high value wild foods for sale in local markets, including Apis dorsata honey and edible mushrooms.

• Holding festive celebrations, food cooking competitions, and knowledge sharing between communities and across generations through story-telling, recipe exchanges, and sharing of sustainable harvesting techniques and other skills.

• Incorporating traditional food and health modules into Negrito elementary school curricula, including mentoring teachers.

• Designing a Mobile Forest School curriculum for secondary education, including a module on ‘health and nutrition’.

• Growing the permanent exhibition Biyay, Tradition, Ecology & Knowledge among Philippine Negrito Communities at the National Museum of The Philippines, and developing linked activities. This program is primarily run by community leaders, mainly women, and focuses this year on Negrito mother languages (Agta-Dumagat) and traditional healing (Ati).

• Documenting threatened food traditions, and producing education and outreach materials including posters, films, video clips and bilingual illustrated booklets for children.

• Promoting greater appreciation for an ancient and rich heritage among civil society and government through innovative and compelling media exposure.

• Supporting community conservation or rehabilitation efforts in their territories, as well as efforts to attain secure resource access rights and ancestral domain titles.

Activities

Mobile Forest School, 2022

In November 2022, People and Plants partner SPNKK held the first session of the Mobile Forest School, a 10-day capacity building program for Negrito youth in The Philippines. The program is designed to offer a comprehensive, holistic approach towards forests, based on the Negrito worldview. The Mobile Forest School was held in Santa Juliana, Tarlac Province on Luzon Island and had 25 students from the Aeta, Agta, Ata, Ati and Batak communities. Learn more.

Pamaw-a Ata Indigenous Food Festival, 2022

The Pamaw-a festival included a children’s workshop, a cooking competition, skills demonstrations and indigenous games, as well as a dialogue forum with Ata communities and government agencies that provided a platform for celebrating the cultural heritage and building resilience among the indigenous Negritos.

Click here to download the program and poster of the event.

RECIPE VIDEOS

A series of recipe videos were produced by People and Plants in 2022 as part of an on-going program highlighting the links between food, culture and place, and threats to species and forests integral to important local foods. This video shows a binungoy recipe (foods cooked inside bamboo) prepared by the Aeta in the Province of Tarlac, Luzon Island.

We invite you to watch the overview video presenting the series, and the collection of recipe videos from The Philippines, Ecuador, Cameroon, Mexico and Indonesia. Learn more.

Eco-Cultural Restoration in Capas, Tarlac

This video explores the efforts of the Aeta of Capas to restore forests destroyed by a massive eruption of the Pinatubo volcano in 1991, the world's second largest volcanic eruption in the last century.

The Team

Melvin Guilleno, Caroline Evangelio, Victor Valantin, Vince Docta, Jenne de Beer, Ramil Perez, Jane Austria, Bruce Young, Robelyn Aricayos, Mercedes Limsa, Earl Paulo Diaz, Ginia Lantapon, Kristine "Kringkring" Mae Sumalinal and Joanne Abrina.

Communities most involved in efforts toward traditional food and healing revival and related forest conservation/restoration and forest-based livelihood development are: the Aeta of Tarlac (PAGMIMIHA), the Ata of Negros Occidental (Manara Ata Tribal Council), the Batak of Palawan (SKBN), the Ati of Guimaras (GACA/Guimaras Ati Healers Working Group), as well as the SPA Agta Dumagat school in General Nakar, Quezon province.

The SPNKK Board:
Chairperson: Conchita Calzado, Agta Dumagat, Quezon;
Vice chairperson: Danilo Bonales, Batak, Plawan;
Treasurer: Emily Abella;
Secretary: Vince Docta;
Perla Moreno, Ati Guimaras;
Jover Ocampo, Aeta Tarlac;
Ramcy Astoveza, Agta Dumagat, Quezon.

Partners

The Melza M. and Frank Theodore Barr Foundation

The Charles Engelhard Foundation