In celebration of the National Indigenous Peoples Month and Museums and Galleries Month, two exhibits of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) showcase Philippine intangible cultural heritage.
Haggi̱yo, Huwah! A Living Heritage of the Tuwali Ifugao of Hungduan, An Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and Community, Creativity and Continuity: The Story of the NCCA Schools of Living Traditions run from 13 to 30 October at the NCCA Gallery in Intramuros, Manila. Both mounted by a curatorial team led by Renee Talavera, chief of the Program Management Division of the NCCA Secretariat, the exhibits show ways on how rituals and traditions endure — through memory, practice, and craftsmanship. Highlighted too is the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next.
Haggi̱yo, Huwah! celebrates an age-old tradition that continues to be practiced by Tuwali Ifugao communities of Hungduan, a town in the Cordillera highlands. The Huwah, the post-harvest celebration of the communities of Hapao, Baang, and Nungulunan, culminates in the Punnuk, a tug-of-war game performed in the waters of the Hapao River.
“The Punnuk,” writes journalist and cultural researcher Roel Hoang Manipon in the exhibition note, “is a convergence of ritual, memory, and play that closes the year’s labor on the terraces and reaffirms the ties of kinship and community.”
It was inscribed in 2015 on the UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The exhibition displays samples of the kina-ag, an anthropomorphic figure used in the Punnuk; a jar where bayah or rice wine is stored and used for the baki or divination ritual; and traditional Ifugao attire. Also part of the exhibition are wooden figures, made by Hungduan carvers, depicting the guyyudan or tug-of-war using the pakid, a wooden implement with a hook.
The exhibit is brought to life by Manipon’s photographs of the communities and the Huwah — the breathtaking Hapao rice terraces, the harvest of rice in granaries, the mumbaki performing a ritual and the guwe or annoucement, the making of the kinaag, the dramatic tug-of-war, the throwing of paraphernalia into the river, and a whole lot more.
Complementing the display is a short documentary written and directed by Manipon, who is also a documentary filmmaker featuring the intangible cultural heritage of the country, two of which were nominated in the prestigious Gawad Urian. It offers visitors an immersive glimpse into the energy and devotion that animate the Punnuk — where the river becomes both a stage and a spiritual cleansing ground for the community.
Running alongside Haggi̱yo, Huwah! is Community, Creativity and Continuity: The Story of the NCCA Schools of Living Traditions, which shows the NCCA flagship program and how Filipino communities keep their traditional crafts and practices alive through teaching and learning.
The Schools of Living Traditions (SLT) are community-managed centers of learning where recognized cultural masters transmit indigenous, folk, and traditional knowledge to the youth through learning by doing. Launched in 1995, the program has implemented over 300 SLTs nationwide in different cultural communities — from the Dumagat Remontado and Kalinga in Luzon to the Panay Bukidnon in the Visayas and T’boli and Mandaya in Mindanao.
In 2021, UNESCO inscribed the program in the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices, hailing it as a model that “best reflects the principles and objectives of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.”
This exhibition showcases crafts and products created by SLT learners — woven textiles, sleeping mats, basketry, traditional attire — alongside photographs by Gerald Marcfred Dillera of cultural masters and apprentices at work. As Manipon writes in his exhibition note, “Each object and image tells the story of continuity — of how elders, youth, and communities together weave cultural memory into everyday life.”
Like its companion show, the SLT exhibition is also accompanied by a short documentary written and directed by Manipon, School of Living Traditions of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts: Safeguarding Philippine Cultural Traditions, Empowering Communities.
Viewed together, the two exhibitions create a tapestry of cultural vitality —one flowing with the rhythm of an Ifugao river, the other pulsing with the craft and creativity of communities across the archipelago. Haggi̱yo, Huwah! and Community, Creativity and Continuity are affirmations of a culture still alive, still moving, and still being taught.
As the exhibitions remind one, heritage is not a relic preserved behind glass but a living current that binds the past and the future, like the rivers and hands that continue to shape it.
Both exhibitions run at the NCCA Gallery, 633 General Luna Street, Intramuros, Manila, from 13 to 30 October.