NCCA Gallery exhibits train spotlight on indigenous traditions
In his speech after his short film Figat won Best Screenplay at the recently concluded Cinemalaya, director Handiong expressed hope that, in the future, stories about indigenous communities would be produced by indigenous people themselves.
It is time to hear indigenous voices in a mainstream setting. For who else could best tell their stories and share their cultures than themselves?
Let’s start now, especially since we are celebrating National Indigenous Peoples Month and Museums and Galleries Month this October.
To know more about Philippine intangible cultural heritage, there are two exhibits you can explore—Haggi̱yo, Huwah! A Living Heritage of the Tuwali Ifugao of Hungduan, An Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and Community, Creativity and Continuity: The Story of the NCCA Schools of Living Traditions. Both are on display at the NCCA Gallery in Intramuros, on view until Oct. 30.
The exhibits are presented by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and curated by a team led by Renee Talavera, chief of the Program Management Division of the NCCA Secretariat.
The exhibits offer ways to show how rituals and traditions endure—through memory, practice, craftsmanship, and the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next.
Haggi̱yo, Huwah! showcases an age-old tradition that continues to be practiced by the Tuwali Ifugao communities of Hungduan, a town in the Cordillera highlands.
The Huwah, the post-harvest celebration of the communities of Hapao, Baang, and Nungulunan, culminates in the Punnuk, a tug-of-war game performed in the waters of the Hapao River.
“The Punnuk,” writes journalist, cultural researcher, and Gawad Urian-nominated documentary filmmaker Roel Hoang Manipon in the exhibition note, “is a convergence of ritual, memory, and play that closes the year’s labor on the terraces and reaffirms the ties of kinship and community.”
The Punnuk was inscribed in 2015 on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The exhibition displays samples of the kina-ag, an anthropomorphic figure used in the Punnuk; a jar where bayah or rice wine is stored, used for the baki or divination ritual; and traditional Ifugao attire. Wooden figures made by Hungduan carvers depict the guyyudan or tug-of-war, using the pakid, a wooden implement with a hook.
The exhibit is brought to life by Manipon’s photographs of the communities and the Huwah—the breathtaking Hapao rice terraces, the harvest of rice in granaries, the mumbaki performing a ritual and the guwe or announcement, the making of the kina-ag, the dramatic tug-of-war, and the throwing of paraphernalia into the river.
Complementing the display is a short documentary written and directed by Manipon, offering visitors an immersive glimpse into the energy and devotion that animate the Punnuk—where the river becomes both a stage and a spiritual cleansing ground for the community.
Running alongside Haggi̱yo, Huwah! is Community, Creativity and Continuity: The Story of the NCCA Schools of Living Traditions, which features the NCCA’s flagship program and shows how Filipino communities keep their traditional crafts and practices alive through teaching and learning.
The Schools of Living Traditions (SLT) are community-run centers where cultural masters pass on indigenous and traditional knowledge to the youth through hands-on learning. Since its launch in 1995, over 300 SLTs have been established nationwide, from the Dumagat Remontado in Luzon to the T’boli in Mindanao.
Recognized by UNESCO in 2021 as a model of good safeguarding practice, the program promotes the preservation of intangible cultural heritage.
The exhibition features crafts by SLT learners—woven textiles, mats, basketry, and attire—alongside Gerald Marcfred Dillera’s photos of cultural masters and apprentices. As Manipon notes, each piece tells a story of continuity and shared cultural memory.
Like its companion show, the SLT exhibition is also accompanied by a short documentary written and directed by Manipon, School of Living Traditions of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts: Safeguarding Philippine Cultural Traditions, Empowering Communities.
Viewed together, the two exhibitions create a tapestry of cultural vitality—one flowing with the rhythm of an Ifugao river, the other pulsing with the craft and creativity of communities across the archipelago. Haggi̱yo, Huwah! and Community, Creativity and Continuity are affirmations of a culture still alive, still moving, still teaching.
As the exhibitions remind us, heritage is not a relic preserved behind glass but a living current that binds the past and the future—like the rivers and hands that continue to shape it.
