BONTOC, Mountain Province – Members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan have approved an executive order (EO) declaring July 30 as a Day Against Human Trafficking, commemorating a dark chapter in history when some people from the province were taken abroad and displayed as human exhibits over a century ago.

The EO, issued by Mountain Province Governor Bonifacio Lacwasan, is titled “Declaring July 30 as 'Timicheg Day Against Trafficking in Persons' in Mountain Province.” It also enjoins educational institutions to include the 1904 St. Louis, 1909 Seattle, and 1913 Ghent Expositions in local history instruction and to integrate human trafficking and illegal recruitment awareness into school programs.

In 1904, 400 Filipino Indigenous Peoples (IPs), including Bontoc Igorots (people of the mountains) from Mountain Province, were brought to Missouri, United States, and exhibited at the St. Louis World’s Fair — widely considered the largest “human zoo” ever staged. The American colonial government used the exhibits to depict Filipinos as primitive, justifying their continued colonization of the Philippines.

The Igorots were again displayed at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle in 1909 under similarly exploitative and dehumanizing conditions. These exhibits reinforced colonial ideologies portraying Igorots as an inferior race, used as tools to validate foreign domination.

In 1913, a group of 60 Bontoc Igorots, including a young man named Timicheg, were taken to Belgium and made to simulate tribal life in a fabricated “Igorot Village” at the Ghent International Exposition. They were displayed for the entertainment of European audiences.

After the exposition, the recruiter abandoned the Igorots, having profited from their exploitation. Left impoverished and helpless, the group struggled in the harsh foreign environment. Timicheg later died from emotional trauma and hypothermia. The remaining Igorots were eventually repatriated by the U.S. government.

According to the EO, the forced transport and exploitation of the Igorots clearly falls under the present-day definition of human trafficking.

“...Rectification is long overdue, not only for the grave injustices suffered by Timicheg, but for many other Igorots who were trafficked, displayed, and dehumanized during colonial expositions, and whose stories have been erased or ignored in official narratives of our nation’s past,” the EO states.

In 2007, the City of Ghent, Belgium passed a resolution naming a tunnel after Timicheg, formally inaugurating it in 2011 as a symbolic act of remembrance. While the Mountain Province government acknowledged the gesture as well-intentioned, it stressed the need for historical accountability and educational redress.

Governor Lacwasan emphasized that the EO is an act of historical rectification.

“The memory of Timicheg and other indigenous Filipinos who were trafficked and exploited during colonial expositions must not be relegated to silence. Through public education, cultural recognition, and community mobilization, we reaffirm our collective dignity and our commitment to truth, memory, and justice,” the EO stated.