The Badjao

The Wandering People of the South
In our province, whenever I board on a bus, there is always a specific person I look at.
It is not the conductor of the bus collecting the fares of the passengers, but the usual trio or
duo of people who would just ride on to ask for alms before they get off the nearest bus stop.
In other times when I ride on a jeepney, I would see a young boy hang on at the back of the
jeepney with an instrument that produces sounds similar to those Filipino produced songs I
would usually hear in fiestas. These people I would see on public transportations is what
others in my province would call ‘the Badjaos’.
Interestingly, the Badjaos are an ethnic group in the Philippines found scattered in
houseboats along the coastal areas of Tawi-tawi, Basilan, Sulu, and some areas in Zamboanga
del Sur (“Badjao”, n.d.). They have been called “sea gypsies” or “sea nomads” which come
from their nomadic lifestyle in the sea and their traditional occupation of fishing and free
diving (Journeyman Pictures, 2011; Valle, 2015). Nowadays, it seems that they are not only
nomads of the sea. Near our municipality, the Dagupan City government has reported
fourteen (14) families of Badjaos living in barangays in the city in 2011. The Public Order
and Safety Office (POSO) of Dagupan City forced these families to leave the city because
they posed as an inconvenience to the cleanliness of the barangay they lived in (Tulagan,
2011). There were even viral posts in social media in 2016 of 13-year-old Rita Gaviola (or
popularly known as ‘Badjao Girl’) who was begging in the streets with her family in a town
in Quezon province. She and her family were among those thousands of Badjao residents
who have been displaced from Zamboanga City because of the armed conflict between the
government forces and rebels from the Moro National Liberation Front in 2013 (Conde,
2016). These situations made me think about the social conditions of the Badjaos.
The documentary posted by Journeyman Pictures that I have watched reveals the
hardships dealt by the Badjaos from the past and the present. These threats to the existence of
the Badjao are the piracy in the Sulu Sea, the discrimination by other people in places they
live in, the influence of Muslim on the traditional belief systems, and the effect of dynamite
and trawler fishing methods on their source of food and income (Journeyman Pictures, 2011).
Conde added that another threat to the existence of the Badjaos is the difficulty of state
assistance to reach them due to their nomadic nature that therefore, they live in destitution
(2016). Macalandag also remarked that the Badjao is the “most marginalized among all other
indigenous peoples in the Philippines” (2009). It is because of the history of discrimination
and prejudice by other neighboring indigenous peoples (like the Tausugs and Maguindanaos)
and the societal connotation labelled of being a Badjao which results in the state exclusion
and social othering (Macalandag, 2009).
As a frame of reference, Blumentritt, who wrote descriptive ethnographies of the
Philippines in the late 1800s in his work, The Philippines: A Summary Account of the Their
Ethnological, Historical, and Political Conditions, never explicitly mentioned the Badjaos. It
is hard to say whether he identified the Badjaos since he did not describe the structure of their
houses or the location of such structures which could have at least given me a hint that these
are Badjaos. But he does mention Mohammedan Malays specifically the Sulus who live in
the Sulu sub-archipelago and Malay “gypsies” which could plausibly pertain to the Badjaos
(Blumentritt, n.d., p. 21-22). Somehow, the contemporary portrayal of the Badjao could be
likened to how Blumentritt characterizes the Negritos especially when he said:
Their social condition and roving habits remind us of the gypsies scattered throughout
Europe, although they are not so homeless as the European wanderers. Their roving is limited
to a definite area, so that it may be said that, although they have no fixed habitation, they still
have a home, or rather a hunting ground, within the limits of which they roam about seeking
food. (Blumentritt, n.d., p.13).
This is what I think the description of the Badjaos which persisted from the past to the
present.
I find it intriguing how Macalandag examined the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act
(IPRA) of 1997 of the Philippines and found problems in the scope of definition when
applied to the Badjaos. In other studies cited in her research they argue that it is problematic
to include the Badjaos in a definition of indigenous peoples who have land-based territories
because the Badjaos view the sea-world as a borderless and they must have that inviolable
right to freedom of movement (Macalandag, 2009). This had me questioning the inclusivity
of IPRA and its success in protecting the rights of the indigenous peoples in the Philippines. I
suppose if there is more governmental support and policies in protecting the rights and
aspirations of the indigenous peoples in the Philippines and more respect for diversity, then
we would have less discrimination among ourselves and we could all appreciate and dance to
the upbeat sound from the instrument of the wandering people of the south.
References:
Badjao. (n.d.) Badjao. Ethnic Groups of the Philippines.
www.ethnicgroupsphilippines.com/people/ethnic-groups-in-the-philippines/badjao/.
Blumentritt, F. (n.d.). The Philippines: a summary account of their ethnological, historical,
and political conditions. In D. Doherty (Trans.). Cornell University Library.
Conde, C. H. (2016). Dispatches: the Philippine picture of Badjao displacement. Human
Rights
Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/05/27/dispatches-philippine-picture-badjao-
displacement.
Journeyman Pictures. (2011). The sea-faring Badjao of the Philippines are under threat.
[Video]. https://youtube.com/watch?v=HphLEefjDlA.
Macalandag, R. E. (2009). Otherizing the Badjao: A Spatial Imagery of State Exclusion and
Societal Otherization. International Institute of Social Studies.
Tulagan, A. (2011). Mga grupo ng mga Badjao na paklat-kalat sa Dagupan City, pinaalis na
ng
city government. GMA News.
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/ulatfilipino/230287/mga-grupo-ng-mga-
badjao-na-pakalt-kalt-sa-dagupan-city-pinaalis-na-ng-city-government/story/

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