Modalities of the Sacred in the Lumad Struggle for Sustainabilities and Futures

Abstract

Indigenous peoples enact and cultivate local knowledge based on their own developed practices of resource use, which are entwined with their struggle for self-determination. This article seeks to demonstrate how these actions are configured in multiple ways, as in the case of the Lumad of Mindanao, who, like other indigenous groups worldwide, are engaged in the struggle for national liberation. An elaboration of the Lumad-Manobo’s notions of sacred spaces and myths is presented. This includes the production and reproduction of sustenance, resource use, and political mobilization. This article also seeks to trace the movements and modalities of value as an aspiration among displaced Lumad children and the more concrete forms of labor involved in producing these values in indigenous knowledge of sacred spaces.