ALAMAT (LEGEND)
This is an exchange familiar to the children of immigrants whose well-meaning but overzealous attempts to assimilate can create painful rifts. In this case, the “old country” is the remote Kalinga mountain district of the Philippines, home to a warrior tribe whose centuries-old way of life has been repeatedly disrupted by outsiders. First anthropologists took away a band of “savages” (including Patungao’s grandfather) to be displayed at the 1904 Saint Louis World Exposition. Then there were the warring armies of World War II, when Patungao’s father fought with the guerrilla forces against the Japanese and received a medal from the U.S. Army, which he mistakenly believed would bring him respect in his new home. And in 1974 the Philippine government proposed the construction of a dam on the Chico River, a project that would virtually eliminate the isolated mountain tribes.
