View source for Tasaday

{{Short description|Philippine indigenous people}}
{{For|the language|Cotabato Manobo language}}
{{more citations needed|date=September 2021}}
{{Infobox ethnic group
| group = Tasaday
| rawimage = [[File:Lobo und gruppe or wald 322.jpg|270px]]
| caption = The Tasaday people in their homeland, the last primal rainforest of Mindanao.
| population = 216 (2008)
| popplace = {{PHI}} ([[Mindanao]])
| langs = [[Cotabato Manobo language|Tasaday dialect]] of [[Manobo languages|Manobo]], [[Cebuano language|Cebuano]], [[Tagalog language|Tagalog]], [[Philippine English|English]]
| rels = [[Animism]]
| related = [[Manobo people]], other [[Lumad]], [[Sama-Bajau]], [[Moro people|Moro]], [[Visayans]], other [[Filipinos|Filipino people]]s, other [[Austronesian people]]s
}}
The '''Tasaday''' ({{IPA|tɑˈsɑdɑj}}) are an [[Indigenous peoples of the Philippines|indigenous peoples]] of the [[Lake Sebu]] area in [[Mindanao]], Philippines. They are considered to belong to the [[Lumad]] group, along with the other indigenous groups on the island. They attracted widespread media attention in 1971, when a journalist of the Manila [[Associated Press]] bureau chief reported their discovery, amid apparent "[[Stone Age]]" technology and in complete isolation from the rest of Philippine society. Multiple agencies were also contacted, such as [[National Geographic]].<ref name="Reid, Lawrence A 1992">Reid, Lawrence A. 1992. "The Tasaday language: a key to Tasaday prehistory." In Thomas N. Headland (ed.), ''The Tasaday controversy: Assessing the evidence'', 180–93. American Anthropological Association Scholarly Series, 28. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.</ref> They again attracted attention in the 1980s when some accused the Tasaday of living in the jungle and speaking in their dialect as being part of an elaborate [[hoax]], and doubts were raised as to their isolation and nature as a separate ethnic group.<ref>''Gentle Tasaday Stone Age People In The Philippine Rain Forest'', John Nance, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1971</ref><ref>"Shaping and Reshaping the Tasaday: A Question of Cultural Identity – A Review Article", AA Yengoyan, ''The Journal of Asian Studies'', 1991</ref><ref>''Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday'', Robin Hemley. U of Nebraska Press, 2007</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Dumont |first=Jean-Paul |date=1988 |title=The Tasaday, Which and Whose? Toward the Political Economy of an Ethnographic Sign |journal=Cultural Anthropology |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=261–75 |doi=10.1525/can.1988.3.3.02a00030 |jstor=656174}}</ref> The Tasaday language is distinct from that of neighboring tribes, and linguists believe it probably split from the adjacent [[Manobo languages]] 200 years ago.<ref name="Molony, Carol H 1992">Molony, Carol H. 1992. "The Tasaday language: Evidence for authenticity?." In Thomas N. Headland (ed.), ''The Tasaday controversy: Assessing the evidence'', 107–16. American Anthropological Association Scholarly Series, 28. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~reid/Tasaday/Papers/pdffiles/tas1.pdf |title=Another Look at the Language of the Tasaday |last=Reid |first=Lawrence A. |accessdate=12 June 2011}}</ref><ref name="Reid, Lawrence A 1992"/>
== Background ==
[[Manuel Elizalde]] was the head of [[PANAMIN]], the Philippine government agency created in 1968 to protect the interests of cultural minorities. He was the son of a wealthy father of Spanish lineage and an American mother. He was a known [[Cronies of Ferdinand Marcos|crony]] of the late Philippine dictator Marcos.<ref>{{Cite web |title=It Takes a Village to Loot a Nation: Cronyism and Corruption |url=https://martiallawmuseum.ph/fl/magaral/it-takes-a-village-to-loot-a-nation-cronyism-and-corruption/ |access-date=2022-10-21 |website=Martial Law Museum |language=en}}</ref> He took credit for discovering the Tasaday, which he did on June 7, 1971, shortly after a local barefoot [[Cotabato Manobo language|Blit]] hunter told him of a sporadic contact over the years with a handful of primitive forest dwellers. He released this to the media a month later, and many excited people began the long task of clearing the thickest forest in the world. Weeks later, visitors' way was blocked by PANAMIN guards who answered to Elizalde alone and allowed only a select group of the visitors to meet them.
=== Introduction of the Tasaday ===
[[File:Tasaday on motorbike 1997.jpg|thumb|left|Tasadays riding on a motorbike.]]
Elizalde brought the Tasaday to the attention of PANAMIN, which funded all efforts to find, visit, and study the Tasaday. With a small group including Elizalde's [[bodyguard]], helicopter pilot, a doctor, a 19-year-old [[Yale University|Yale]] student named Edith Terry, and local tribesmen for [[interpreting]] attempts, Elizalde met the Tasaday in a pre-arranged clearing at the edge of the forest in June 1971.
In March 1972, another meeting occurred between the Tasaday, Elizalde, and members of the press and media including the [[Associated Press]] and the [[National Geographic Society]], this time at the Tasaday's secluded cave home site. This meeting was popularly reported by Kenneth MacLeish in the August 1972 issue of ''National Geographic'', which featured on its cover a photograph by photojournalist John Launois of a Tasaday boy climbing [[vine]]s.
Since these first meetings and reports, the group was subject to a great deal of further publicity, including a ''National Geographic'' documentary, ''The Last Tribes of Mindanao'' (shown December 1, 1972). Visitors included [[Charles A. Lindbergh]] and [[Gina Lollobrigida]].<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=James |first=Jamie |date=2003-05-19 |title=The Tribe Out of Time |language=en-US |magazine=Time |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,452856,00.html |access-date=2022-10-20 |issn=0040-781X}}</ref>
=== Ban on visitation ===
In April 1972, [[President (government title)|President]] [[Ferdinand Marcos]] (at the behest of PANAMIN and Lindbergh) declared {{convert|19,000|acre|km2|lk=in}} of land surrounding the Tasaday's ancestral caves as the Tasaday/Manobo Blit Preserve.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}} By this time, eleven anthropologists had studied the Tasaday in the field, but none for more than six weeks, and in 1976, Marcos closed the [[Nature reserve|preserve]] to all visitors.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}} The reason was the [[Martial law in the Philippines|martial law imposed on the country]]; outsiders were unwelcome as that put the Marcos regime under more scrutiny.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}
===Elizalde's flight and return===
In 1983, sometime after the [[Assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr.|assassination]] of Philippine opposition leader [[Benigno Aquino Jr.]], Elizalde fled the Philippines. It had been rumoured that he fled with and eventually squandered millions of [[dollar]]s from a foundation set up to protect the Tasaday. It was also rumoured that Elizalde used the photos and other information he got from the Tasaday and Blit tribes for moneymaking businesses in various countries. It was reported that he amassed money amounting to US$100 million, which Elizalde denied.
Elizalde returned to the Philippines in 1987 and stayed until his death on May 3, 1997, of leukemia. From 1987 to 1990, Elizalde claimed he had spent more than one million [[United States dollar|U.S. dollars]] of Tasaday [[Nonprofit organization|non-profit]] funds. During this time, Elizalde also founded the Tasaday Community Care Foundation, or TCCF.
== Controversy ==
After President Marcos was deposed in the 1986 [[People Power Revolution]], [[Switzerland|Swiss]] anthropologist and [[journalism|journalist]] [[Oswald Iten]], accompanied by [[Joey Lozano]] (a journalist from [[South Cotabato]]) and [[Datu]] [[Galang Tikaw]] (a member of the [[Tboli people|T'boli]] people as lead translator, despite not speaking Tasaday), made an unauthorised visit to the Tasaday caves where they spent about two hours with six Tasaday individuals.<ref>Iten, Oswald. 1986. "Die Tasaday: Ein Philippinischer Steinzeitschwindel." ''Neue Zurcher Zeitung''. Zurich, April 12: 77–89.</ref><ref name="Molony, Carol H 1992"/>
Upon returning from the forest, Iten and Lozano reported the caves deserted and further claimed the Tasaday were simply members of other known local tribes who put on the appearance of living a Stone Age lifestyle under pressure from Elizalde.<ref name="h2g2">{{Cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A726653 |title=BBC – The Tasaday Hoax |access-date=2010-12-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110705114909/http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A726653 |archive-date=2011-07-05 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Many local tribesmen admitted to pretending to be Tasaday in order to gain funds, reputation, and other items.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Hyndman |first1=David |last2=Duhaylungsod |first2=Levita |date=1990-12-01 |title=The development saga of the tasaday: Gentle yesterday, hoax today, exploited forever? |url=https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.1990.10413101 |journal=Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars |volume=22 |issue=4 |pages=51 |doi=10.1080/14672715.1990.10413101 |issn=0007-4810 |quote="Bidula Tusina, who appears in a photo in Nance's book The Gentle Tasaday, testified she was a T'boli paid to pose as a cavedwelling Tasaday."|doi-access=free }}</ref>
In the mid-1990s, American linguist [[Lawrence A. Reid]] wrote that he spent 10 months with the Tasaday and surrounding linguistic groups (1993–1996) and has concluded that they "probably were as isolated as they claim, that they were indeed unfamiliar with agriculture, that their language was a different dialect from that spoken by the closest neighboring group, and that there was no hoax perpetrated by the original group that reported their existence."<ref name=Reid01>{{Citation |last=Reid |first=Lawrence A. |title=The Tasaday Controversy |url=http://www2.hawaii.edu/~reid/Combined%20Files/A34.%201992.%20Tasaday--rev%2011-06-09.pdf}}]</ref><ref name=Reid2/> In his paper 'Linguistic Archaeology: Tracking down the Tasaday Language',<ref>{{Cite conference |last=Reid |first=Lawrence A. |date=1994 |title=Linguistic Archaeology: Tracking Down the Tasaday Language |url=http://aa2411s.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~reid/Tasaday/Papers/pdffiles/tas2.pdf |conference=Paper presented to the World Archaeology Congress – 3: Language, Anthropology and Archaeology, New Delhi, Dec. 4–11, 1994 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614115509/http://aa2411s.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~reid/Tasaday/Papers/pdffiles/tas2.pdf |archive-date=2011-06-14}}</ref> Reid states that, although he originally thought that a Tasaday named Belayem was fabricating words, after a detailed analysis of the linguistic evidence he found that around 300 of Belayem's forms were actually used in [[Manobo|Manobo languages]] of Kulaman Valley, a place Belayem had never visited. Reid concluded that the Tasaday's isolation "may have lasted for only a few
generations, possibly no more than 150 years."<ref name=Reid01 /> He also mentions that a similar group was later found and confirmed to be living as hunter-gatherers without contact with other tribes.<ref name=Reid2>Lawrence A. Reid, [http://www2.hawaii.edu/~reid/Combined%20Files/A41.%201996.%20The%20Tasaday%20Tapes--rev%2011-07-09.pdf The Tasaday Tapes]</ref>
The Tasaday were likely a separate group living as gatherers deep in the jungle, who were rarely in contact or trade with neighboring peoples, but probably were not a Stone Age culture.<ref>Thomas N. Headland, [http://www-01.sil.org/~headlandt/caveppl.htm The Tasaday 'Cave People']</ref>
=== Legacy ===
French philosopher [[Jean Baudrillard]] invokes the Tasaday controversy in his 1981 book ''[[Simulacra and Simulation]]'' to illustrate the phenomenon of simulation at play, where he argues that the Philippine government and scientists' return of the Tasaday to the forest was aimed at constructing "the simulation model for all conceivable Indians before ethnology" to preserve the "reality principle" of the discipline.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Baudrillard |first=Jean |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9904 |title=Simulacra and Simulation |date=1995 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |isbn=978-0-472-09521-6 |location=Ann Arbor, MI |pages=8–13|doi=10.3998/mpub.9904 }}</ref>
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
{{Commons category}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090621032909/http://www.tasaday.com/ Tasaday Website]
* [http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth210/tasaday.html Pages at Oregon State about the Tasaday]
* {{Skeptoid | id= 4490| number=490 | title=Deconstructing the Tasaday Tribe | date=October 27, 2015 | access-date=}}
* {{YouTube |qXs7MIAFVo0 |I-Witness: "Tasaday," a documentary by Kara David (full episode)}}
{{LumadTribesmall}}
{{Ethnic groups in the Philippines}}
{{Authority control}}
[[Category:Lumad]]
[[Category:Ethnic groups in Mindanao]]