Title: Becoming a Mumbaki: Ritual Change and Continuity in Contemporary Ifugao Society, North Luzon, Philippines
Authors: Analyn V. Salvador-Amores, Marlon M. Martin
Publisher: Cordillera Studies Center, University of the Philippines Baguio, 2023
Description: Studies on the customary practices of the Ifugao, an ethnolinguistic group residing in northern Luzon, have received more attention compared to other ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines. However, there has been limited analysis on the current practices of both Ifugao male and female mumbaki (referring to "native priests" or ritual specialists), as well as their progression to a higher rank known as mumbagol.This book examines the norms and protocols involved in becoming a ritual practitioner amidst changing social, economic, political, and religious circumstances within a contemporary society. The contemporary practice of Ifugao mumbaki provides insights into similar transformations occurring in indigenous religious practices globally.
About the authors:
Analyn V. Salvador-Amores is a professor of Anthropology and former Director of the Museo Kordilyera at the University of the Philippines Baguio. She is also the Project Leader of the Cordillera Textiles Project (CordiTex). She earned her masters and doctorate in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Oxford University, UK. Her research interest includes non-Western aesthetics, material culture, ethnographic museums and colonial photography in the Philippine Cordillera. Included in her work is the two-time award-winning book: Tapping Ink, Tattooing Identities: Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Kalinga Society published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2013 (National Book Development Award, 2013 and National Academy of Science and Technology, 2016). As a public service professor, she continues to engage indigenous communities in her work, and promoting indigenous knowledge in different platforms. She actively carries out anthropological fieldwork among the indigenous communities in Northern Luzon, and have published extensively on this subject.
Marlon M. Martin is an Ifugao and the Chief Operating Officer of the Save the Ifugao Rice Terraces Movement (SITMo). He is the founder of Ifugao Indigenous Peoples Education Center and Community Heritage Galleries in Kiangan, Ifugao. He passionately leads community-based initiatives focused on cultural advocacy and conservation. As a dedicated community organizer and cultural worker, he engages in extensive research, authoring publications that delve into Ifugao indigenous knowledge systems, rituals, and traditional resource management. Committed to passing on the cultural legacy, he actively collaborates with the academe. The recent one is the co-authored book with UCLA's Stephen Acabado, Indigenous Archaeology in the Philippines: Decolonizing Ifugao History (2022, University of Arizona Press and Ateneo de Naga university Press.)
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| Becoming a Mumbaki: Ritual Change and Continuity in Contemporary Ifugao Society, North Luzon, Philippines |
