In our Literacy Centers in Sabah for “undocumented alien” children we teach literacy and numeracy. These are basic skills that provide the foundation for other subjects that we will teach. However, we have also added an additional subject that we believe is important, namely, traditional dance.
I realized that the people that we were helping were really marginalized. They lost their identity when they left their ancestral homes in southern Philippines. They lost their dignity when they had to eke out a living doing the lowest menial jobs. Their kids have lost their language. And they’ve all lost hope of everything except surviving!
When we started the literacy centers in their kampongs, a little glimmer of hope was placed in their communities and in their hearts. But I realized that education is a long term investment and it will take years of hard work before visible results are seen. In the meanwhile, I felt that they should be allowed to retain an important part of their identity, namely, their traditions.
Needless to say, they had lost much of their traditions – their traditional kampongs, their traditional means of earning their livelihoods, their family structures, their festivals – in their new environment. But there was one tradition that they could preserve in their new environment – traditional dance.
When we first introduced traditional Tausug dance in the first literacy center, many little girls readily took up the lessons and excelled in it. At school functions when they proudly displayed their skills, I noticed how the parents looked pleased as their children danced their traditional dances. Since then we have made traditional dance a subject for the little girls in our Goducate centers.
