How a displaced Lumad community keeps their culture alive during pandemic
As the world deals with a disease, the young Lumad in the Bakwit School turn to their culture and community for support.
A mobile school for Lumad, or internally displaced Filipino indigenous groups from Mindanao- was born out of the initiatives of advocates to defend the groups’ right to education amidst ongoing land conflict in Mindanao. The Bakwit School (bakwit means to “evacuate”), which teaches around 100 Lumad children, is currently settled at a university located in a district in Manila, which has one of the highest number of COVID-19 confirmed cases in the Philippines.
A week before the school’s moving-up ceremony, the Philippine government imposed a lockdown, leaving the Lumad students with no other choice but to delay their return to their homelands and confine at a densely populated shelter that has no access to health and other social services. Worse, the pandemic induced a great amount of fear and triggered past traumas among the community. Being far from their loved ones while confronting this uncertainty urged both Lumad students and their teachers to hinge on one another - teaching each other to embrace emotional vulnerability and instill hope in the time of crisis.
Adapting to the realities of a pandemic poses an even greater challenge for indigenous peoples, who have already been facing humanitarian crises prior to COVID-19. Therefore, this project aims to highlight how displaced indigenous communities seek their own solutions by taking actions rooted from their own traditional values - addressing everyone’s well-being through collective coping.
Story is written with Maro Enriquez. Read the full published story on Rappler.com.
This project is supported by the National Geographic Society through the COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists.
Note: The Save Our Schools Network (SOS) calls for assistance for hundreds of Lumad evacuees in Metro Manila, Cebu, and Davao in light of the COVID-19 global pandemic and its spread all over the Philippines. Contact the following numbers for more details on how to help: Metro Manila (+63 909 012 8952), Cebu (+63 945 354 9620), and Davao (+63 946 233 6527).
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