Thammasat University students are cordially invited to participate in a webinar on Wednesday, 7 April 2021. Presented by the University of the Philippines (U.P.) Center for Women’s and Gender Studies and the UP CIDS Decolonial Studies Program, the subject will be “Healing Power of Postcolonial Indigenous Women: Lessons from Aeta Women Healers in the Philippines and Implications.”

The Thammasat University Library collection includes several books about indigenous populations of the Philippines and folk medicine.

At a time of world pandemic, it is especially interesting to look at folk medicine traditions/

The speaker will be Dr. Rose Ann Torres, an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Science at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John.

She received her BA and MA from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, MEd and PhD from the University of Toronto in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. She teaches courses in Sociology of health, work, gender, quantitative research method and introduction to Sociology.

The event will be held from 10am to 11:30am Bangkok time by Zoom.

Students are welcome to register at this link.

As TU students interested in sociology, traditional medicine, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) studies know, Philippine shamans, commonly known as Babaylan were shamans of the various ethnic groups of the pre-colonial Philippine islands. These shamans specialized in communicating, appeasing, or harnessing the spirits of the dead and the spirits of nature. They were believed to have spirit guides, by which they could contact and interact with the spirits and deities and the spirit world.

Different ethnic groups had different names for shamans, including shamans with specialized roles. The Aeta people are one of the dozens of such groups.

As The Health Ritual of “Pag-aanito” among the Aetas of Nabuclod, Pampanga, Philippines, a 2019 article by Dr. Rudolf Cymorr Kirby Palogan Martinez of the San Beda University College of Nursing in Manila points out, 

A defining characteristic of an indigenous group is that it has preserved its unique traditional ways of living, belief system or pertinent rituals amidst the presence of modernity. One of the indigenous group residing in the Philippines are the Aeta people, found scattered in the archipelago and is often described as its earliest inhabitants. Aetas are pygmy people, nomadic in nature and are traditionally animist. One of the unique beliefs of the Aeta people is the anito, a benevolent, environmental spirit believed to inhabit the river, sea, hills and various other places. They believed that the anitos are the original dweller of the earth and living in harmony with them is an essential part of maintaining their people’s health and well-being. For the Aetas, a break in this balance will bring about illness to the individual. In time of illness, therefore, a healer, the mang-aanito, is often called to help in restoring the harmony with the anito and return the individual back to health…This curing séance, the anituan, [is] a dramatic performance which involves trance, dances and dialogues between the healer, the anito and the audience.

In 2016, Dr. Torres coauthored an article about Aeta Women Healers in the Philippines, published in the International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies.

The abstract follows:

This article is based on a research study conducted in the Philippines. It explores the experiences of Aeta Indigenous women healers on how power becomes deconstructed through their stories and practices. This study employs the Talking Circle as a methodology to legitimate the voices and experiences of Aeta Indigenous women healers, and draws on this knowledge to remedy the systemic exclusion of Indigenous knowledge in the academy. These stories unveil the contribution of Aeta Indigenous women healers to the discourse of power.

Its conclusion:

In conclusion, this article identifies diverse and multiple ways through which Aeta Indigenous women healers exercise power. In contemporary society, the belief is that power is domiciled at the top of any political state structure. This totalising power discussion sees power as coming from the top. Anything from the edges is considered as powerless. This Hobbesian way of power analysis has been complicated by the Aeta Indigenous women healer from Cagayan Valley in the Philippines. To them, power can also come from the margin. This kind of power is communal and meant to benefit all within and without the community. Healing is such a power. They heal people as a way of exercising their power and as such benefiting the community. Foucault states that power should not be seen like a commodity. Power cannot be possessed. It is a fluid concept. This means that power flows through a capillary in such a way that those who may seem marginalised, they are able to exercise their agency and resistances through their practices and knowledge production. This was manifested by Aeta Indigenous women through deciding the kind of methodology that they wanted to be used. This kind of resistance disturbs colonial research practices present in most academic spaces. It troubles totalising Eurocentric narratives of research process. Discussions of this level, allows us to seek gaps and not wrongs in any discourse. The work of Aeta Indigenous women healers is to identify that which is oppressive with an intent of bringing social justice in knowledge production and practices. Power politics is not all about dislodging the leviathan but rather identifying structural imbalances that condone injustices. The fact that Aeta Indigenous women healer decided to be interviewed in a circle expresses more about power invested within a community. It is power build out of responsibility, respect and relationship building. When producing knowledge, a sense of respect and responsibility is paramount. This was key element within the Aeta Indigenous women healers during the interview. The knowledge produced within the community is meant to benefit all. Researchers in the past have identified margins as a space of powerlessness and in need of a saviour. This kind of theorisation denies the agency and power that those in the borders wield. It makes marginalised people question themselves. This internalisation of powerlessness renders them more of victims rather than victors. Today, the work of Indigenous peoples is too often characterised in informal settings as devoid of sense and, thus, marginalised. Furthermore, its expertise is under-represented and presented as tacit informal practices within the academic circle. We may be promoters of equal justice and fairness in society, but if we do not recognise our roots and cultures in our teachings, anything we proclaim about justice will be an incomplete epistemic. We need open exchanges since they are the heart and soul of what is generally understood as “ethics,” open discourse, and “bias free” inquiry. Our academy is still involved in the colonial beliefs that tend to deny that the Indigenous peoples’ knowledge belongs in a safe space. In fact, we have ended up imposing a death sentence on would-be scholars by claiming that choosing this area limits job prospects. This is a Eurocentric mentality in its most plain, apparent form, and the prejudice has manifested a bias that has been taken to levels bordering on disgrace… Consequently, this article identifies the strengths of Aeta Indigenous women healers by bringing to fore diverse ways through which they exercise power as a community.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)