Original Source : https://www.forumzfd.de/en/when-translating-indigenous-languages-more-words-are-lost
Languages in the Philippines
It is August 2021 and members of the international peacebuilding organization forumZFD are passing lush rice fields on their way to a Manobo indigenous community in the mountains of Agusan del Sur, Philippines. Together with their partner organization, Panaghiusa Alang sa Kaugalingnan ug Kalingkawasan, Inc. (PASAKK), translated as Unity for Self-Determination and Liberation, the team has been working with the community to strengthen indigenous methods of conflict transformation and complement these with non-indigenous methods of addressing conflicts and their roots. Today, they are invited to witness one of these indigenous conflict transformation methods – a tu’dà. The aim of their visit is for the non-indigenous forumZFD team to gain a deeper understanding of indigenous methods by experiencing them first-hand.
As the forumZFD team gathers in the meeting venue – the community’s senior citizen hall, a building elevated on stilts because of frequent flooding from the river close by - PASAKK staff and community members attempt to explain to them what a tu’dà is. Even though they are used to working with both indigenous and non-indigenous persons, our partners struggle to find the right words.
Tu’dà literally means piercing food like sweet potatoes with a skewer, usually a cleaned and pointed bamboo stick, to test whether it is done. In the Manobo justice system, tu’dà is an integral part of indigenous dispute resolution whereby tribal leaders separately or sequentially visit conflicting parties to gather data regarding the case, hear out their narratives and perspectives, and most importantly check their readiness to talk about the issue and willingness to undergo husoy, the part where the dispute itself is settled. Usually done by trusted and perceived-to-be neutral indigenous leaders, tu’dà facilitates a smooth conduct of the actual dispute settlement.
Pinning down the right translation from the Manobo tu’dà to other Philippine languages or to English proves difficult as no other word seems to fully capture all that a tu’dà entails. We find that it is more than the English concept of negotiation, more than so-called shuttle diplomacy and soon have to realize that attempts to find the right translation are not only futile, they are also harmful to both the indigenous community and our relationship with them. Translating the concept would automatically mean losing an aspect of its meaning and forcing it into the pre-made categories of international peacebuilding language. It would not be in line with our own aspiration of being conflict- and culturally sensitive, of complementing, rather than replacing indigenous methods of conflict transformation, and of not doing harm or adding to the marginalization already experienced by indigenous peoples in the Philippines.
Marginalized Diversity
The Philippines is home to approximately 110 distinct indigenous peoples – each with their own culture, customs, governance structures, and languages. In fact, there are over 100 different languages actively spoken across the archipelago. While evidence of great cultural diversity, Philippine languages are also a space of power struggle and colonization. The government recognizes two languages as the official languages of the country: English and Filipino (a standardized form of Tagalog). These are the languages in which laws are drafted, court processes are held, and the main media outlets communicate. This means that additional to their mother tongue, most Filipinos speak two more languages that they learn in school and that are a requirement for participation in public life. Apart from Filipino and English, there are a number of other dominant languages that are widely spoken and that have been introduced as instructional languages in school under the mother tongue education program. In Agusan del Sur - historically a Manobo, Ata Manobo, Higaonon, and Banwaon-speaking area – the influx of settlers from other Philippine regions and consequential displacement of indigenous communities meant that Bisaya, the language of most of the settlers, became the dominant language.
As a consequence, for the indigenous peoples of Agusan del Sur speaking Bisaya is a prerequisite for participation in all aspects of life including educational institutions, the local economy, and political decision-making structures. For indigenous languages this means increasing marginalization with some languages at risk of dying out.
Drawing attention to the loss of indigenous languages globally, the UN General Assembly declared 2022 to 2032 the Decade of Action for Indigenous Languages during which steps should be taken to preserve indigenous languages and ensure related rights of indigenous peoples. In the Philippine context, the state’s main means of protecting the rights of indigenous peoples is the 1997 Indigenous Peoples Rights Act or IPRA. The law recognizes indigenous languages as one of the markers of indigeneity, as a means of ensuring the accessibility of protection regimes such as the process of free, prior, and informed consent which needs to be conducted in a language understandable to the indigenous community, and as part of indigenous culture that is entitled to special protection. There are a number of efforts to keep indigenous languages alive including so-called Schools of Living Traditions in indigenous areas and educational activities of forumZFD’s partner organization PASAKK.
Complementing, not replacing
Recognizing the decades-long marginalization of indigenous peoples, forumZFD places importance on ensuring local ownership of its projects in an attempt to contribute to decolonization and to center indigenous methods otherwise made invisible by the dominant culture. Consequently, respect for the integrity of indigenous methods of conflict transformation - and the way they are expressed in indigenous language - must be at the heart of any type of peace promoting engagement with indigenous communities.
As with the term tu’dà, the forumZFD team went through a more general process of understanding the importance of indigenous terms and translating this appreciation in their project work. Most strikingly, the name of the project underwent several changes since its inception and following an adjustment of the strategy from mid-level network building to immersive community strengthening, followed by bottom-up expansion. The project started in 2014 under the name “Community of Practitioners” and aimed to build a network of multipliers from different civil society organization trained in methods of conflict transformation. Over the years, the focus of the project shifted to a more immersive, community-based approach, a closer relationship to the indigenous people’s organization PASAKK, and a more conscious approach of strengthening what is already present in the community. With these changes, the project name also changed to maghuhusay. Maghuhusay is a Bisaya word describing the concept and approach of conflict transformation specific to the Manobo and at the same time the person responsible for it. Following additional reflection processes in 2021, the project name changed once again to manghuhusoy, the Manobo word.
As evident with the words tu’dà and manghuhusoy, indigenous words are not merely elements of a distinct language, they are linguistic expression of the indigenous people’s cultural heritage. The words themselves carry indigenous knowledge that is lost when it is translated to other languages. As put by Minnie Degawan, indigenous people’s activist and Kankaney-Igorot from the Cordilleras, Northern Philippines: “For indigenous peoples, languages not only identify their origin or membership in a community, they also carry the ethical values of their ancestors – the indigenous knowledge systems that make them one with the land and are crucial to their survival and to the hopes and aspirations of the youth”.[1]
Understanding this importance of indigenous languages means recognizing that the imposition of English “expert” language and of Western, hegemonic “standards” of peacebuilding constitutes a form of continued colonization of indigenous spaces of conflict transformation and community engagement. Rather than forcing indigenous methods into the categories of Western paradigms, peacebuilding organizations should contribute to existing efforts of preserving indigenous concepts of conflict transformation. This should be done by supporting an environment in which they are actively practiced and by making these methods the reference point for any external intervention. To contribute to decolonization therefore means to keep indigenous methods visible. This must also mean that these concepts are reflected and promoted in their original language and therefore their full meaning in the internal and external communication of international organizations.
