Pabaruon taku de Papatoyan: An Ethnolinguistic Study of Ilubu Tribe’s Sense of Justice

Author: Daryl Q. Pasion (University of the Philippines Los Baños, The Philippines)
Speaker: Daryl Q. Pasion
Topic: Anthropological Linguistics
The (SCOPUS / ISI) SOAS GLOCAL CALA 2020 General Session

Panel Abstract

The indigenous people of region of lkalinga, in the Philippines, have long observed themselves as caught within the dispute of modern criminal law and their indigenous conflict resolution processes. These processed have been labeled ‘bodong.’ The Philippine National Police (PNP) system have long urged the Kalinga communities, and more so their leaders, to settle cases of conflict through the modern legal systems. However, the Kalinga communities have firmly adhered to the belief that such cases shall be settled through their bodong, a system which the Kalinga groups have considered and suggest as proven to be more effective and reliable than modern legal systems patterned and based on Western frameworks.

This study observes and draws form a sizeable literature review, and news articles, which reveal that, the Ikalingas locate justice through bodong, and not through modern criminal law. The study employs an ethnolinguistic framework to explore the semantics of ‘justice’ for the Ilubus, an indigenous subgroup of Ikalingas. For this, the study explores these semantic notions of ‘justice’ and its related concepts.

The study reveals that a sense of justice within Ilubu communities is expressed though the word ‘bumaruon’, a word rooted in its etymological form ‘baru,’ which translates to ‘beauty’.

Keywords: bumaruon, justice, Ilubu, Kalinga, semantics, ethnolinguistics