The Culture and Art of the Mangyan
by: Jericho Paul Santos
September 2012--The Mangyan tribe has been included in the history of Mindoro. Spaniards have long documented the life of the Mangyan people. However, much is still to be learned from the culture of one of the Philippines’ richest ethnic group.

The Culture

A Mangyan bracelet

Some Mangyan crafts
The Arts
Ara kaw bala kasapo Didn’t you notice before
Ga buyong-buyong ang barko That a boat turns left and right
Nagapangita rikudo Looking for a landing-place
Yadtong punduhon maayo Where it can anchor safely?
(Finding the right and well thought decision)
Nos anod di anod wan Its a fact that we all know
Nos anod ti tuo wan A truth wherever we go
Kayaw toy was lanbungan The sun is in the afternoon
Kayaw ambaba yi man will be setting very soon.
(Accepting the ageing and dying is something we all share)

The simplest form and sample pattern design of pakudos

Mangyan script
REFERENCES
Howell, S./R. Willis (eds.). Societies at Peace. London: Routledge. 1989
Postma, Antoon. Mangyan History. November 1999
Postma, Antoon. The Ambahan: Mangyan Verbal Art. Manyan Mission
Reyes, Lynda Angelica. The Pakudos as Motif of Mangyan Art. Pandiwa Journal, 1992.
Service, E. Primitive Social Organization. New York: Random House. 1971
*Images from the Mangyan Heritage Center were used to accompany this article.
Recent Articles

June 2018-- A flurry of renewed interest was directed towards the works of Lamberto Hechanova who was reputed as an incubator of modernist painting and sculpture in the 1960s. His...

April-May 2018--The Pere Lachaise Cemetery in the 20th arrondissement in Paris, France was opened on May 21, 1804 and was named after Père François de la Chaise (1624...

October-November-December 2017--In 1979, Inday Cadapan was forty years old when she set out to find a visual structure that would allow her to voice out her opinion against poverty...

August-September 2017 -- Dex Fernandez began his art career in 2007, painting a repertoire of phantasmagoric images inhabited by angry mountains, robots with a diminutive sidekick,...

April-May 2017—The public exhibition of Noel Soler Cuizon’s works began in 1987 when he was a member of Hulo, a group of alumni students of the Philippine Women’s...

March 2013--Magkalinawan na tayo sa simulat simula pa. Hindi ito ang last full show ni Danilo Dalena. At lingid sa kaalaman ng karamihan, naging abala naman siya gayong tila...

January-February 2017—Lito Mayo was a fixture in the Philippine art scene since the 1970s and his relevance in the history of Philippine art has never been questioned and ignored...

December 2016--This ancestral house was built circa 1870 by Domingo Ilagan and Maria Martinez (who died both in 1903). They had six children: Aniceto Ilagan, Rosario I, Villanueva,...

Restless, daring, imaginative he blazed new paths in his chosen art. A protean innovator in a craft which demand high skill, he is the weather vane of contemporary sculpture, planting the seeds of...

September 2016--Leo Abaya has an enviable sense of timing. In 1993, his student plate of a collage study of images from magazines, Views and Points of View won the Jurors...