Mangyan Folklore

I spent my early childhood years living on the remote hillsides of Mindoro, Philippines with my family and mother’s people known as the Hanunoo Tribe, one of the eight tribes of Mindoro Island collectively known as the Mangyan. I would like to propose spending the Summer Session 2 documenting traditions from my tribal-Filipino background with a focus on their social communication as defined below.

• Folklore- An oral story passed down from generation to generation. My people have many stories, unfortunately they are being lost due to the integration of “normal” Filipino society or in other words, survival to “catch-up” with the present time of working.
• Interpretation- I will dive into the linguistics of this piece by recording the story in my native tongue and interpret it in modern English.
• Translation- The Hanunoo tribe is one of the two Mangyan tribes who still practices its own pre-Spanish syllabic writing system and is one of the four ethnic groups in the Philippines, composed of over 7,000 islands, that remains to write in their original syllabary. The story will be written in Hanunoo and translated in modern English.

Description of the project:

There are about 350 million indigenous people in the world. The Philippine Islands has about 10 million among around 110 tribes.

1. In this project I will document a Hanunoo story by interpreting and translating it in English.
   
   
2. The goal is preserve and share a piece of my culture. The purpose is create a system of archiving these endangered languages and writing, as well as to create a new found interest in learning.
   
   
3. The outcome will yield one story from my Hanunoo tribe fully deciphered.
   
   
4. I have direct connection with the Mangyan Heritage Center located in Calapan City, Mindoro. I will use their resources to write and translate the Hanunoo script into English.
   
   
5. My target audience will be young American kids 5 to 9 years old.