20/08/2026
๐๐ก๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ซ๐ข๐ง๐ ๐๐จ๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐ฎ๐๐ฌ
๐ ๐๐ข๐ฃ๐ข๐บ๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ'๐ด ๐๐ณ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐ถ๐จ๐ฉ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐๐ข๐ฏ๐จ๐ถ๐ข๐จ๐ฆ, ๐๐ช๐ต๐ถ๐ข๐ญ, ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ต ๐๐ฐ๐ต ๐๐ฆ ๐๐ฐ๐ด๐ต
There is a version of Jessica Barnizo's story that begins with a scholarship. It would not be wrong, exactly, but it would miss the part that matters most: that long before Jessica knew what CHED's Free Higher Education program was, she already knew what it meant to carry something sacred for someone else. She learned it at thirteen, walking beside her grandmother into the homes of strangers.
Jessica is a third-year Bachelor of Secondary Education student majoring in Mathematics at Capiz State University's Tapaz Satellite College, from Barangay Cristina, Tapaz, Capiz. She is Panay Bukidnon, one of only two indigenous communities left in the Visayas, along with the neighboring Iraynon-Bukidnon, whose isolation in the mountain interior of Panay preserved a way of life that predates Spanish rule. And from the age of thirteen until she was seventeen, she was her grandmother's shadow.
โMy grandmother was a ๐ฃ๐ข๐ฃ๐ข๐บ๐ญ๐ข๐ฏ, a traditional healer,โ Jessica says. โI remember helping her prepare and set up offerings for the spirits, calling upon the spirits during the rituals, and offering coconut wine through a bamboo straw to the people and families living in the household.โ
Among the Panay Bukidnon, the babaylan is not simply a healer in the way the word might translate for an outsider. She is the one who speaks with the spirit world, interprets dreams, presides over ritual, and is regarded, alongside a small circle of other traditional roles, as among the most respected figures in the community. To be chosen as a babaylan's apprentice, even informally, even as a granddaughter tagging along, is to be handed a kind of inheritance most people never touch.
It is a striking thing for Jessica to say as plainly as she does: not as folklore explained for outsiders, but as a memory as ordinary and formative as any other childhood chore. Through those years at her grandmother's side, she learned how to prepare food for offerings and how to ๐ฉ๐ข๐ฃ๐ช, or weave, the ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ด๐ฐ packet used in the rituals.
That packet carries more history than its size suggests. Long before Spanish colonization reached the Visayas, communities across the islands wove rice into small pouches from young coconut or palm leaf, a practice that predates Christianity in the archipelago entirely. These woven offerings, known across the Visayas by names like ๐ฑ๐ถ๐ด๐ฐ, were presented to spirits called ๐ฅ๐ช๐ธ๐ข๐ต๐ข to invoke blessings for a good harvest, to give thanks, or to ask for protection, and the skill of weaving them intricately was once considered essential knowledge for women in these communities. What began as a spiritual offering eventually became, in many lowland areas, a familiar street food. Among the Panay Bukidnon, in households like Jessica's grandmother's, its older, ritual purpose never fully disappeared.
๐๐ก๐๐ญ ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ญ๐ฎ๐ซ๐ ๐๐จ๐จ๐ค๐ฌ ๐๐ข๐ค๐ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฆ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ญ๐ฌ๐ข๐๐
Ask Jessica what she would show someone who knew nothing about the Panay Bukidnon, and she does not reach for the rituals she grew up inside. She reaches, instead, for what the eye sees first.
โI would show them the beautiful traditional attire of the Panay Bukidnon,โ she says. โI want them to appreciate the intricate embroidery, vibrant colors, and unique patterns that reflect our creativity, identity, and rich heritage.โ
That embroidery has a name of its own: ๐ฑ๐ข๐ฏ๐ถ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฌ, a hand-stitched art form so central to Panay Bukidnon identity that it has its own fashion showcase in Iloilo City, the Tinubkan. ๐๐ข๐ฏ๐ถ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฌ is not merely decorative. Its patterns are said to carry symbolism tied to nature, status, and community history, stitched by hand into garments worn for ceremony and courtship alike. It is, in its own way, another kind of woven inheritance, not unlike the puso Jessica learned to weave beside her grandmother.
What she is proudest of, when asked directly, is something the whole community holds rather than something private to her own family: the ๐๐ช๐ฏ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฐ๐จ, a dance in which performers imitate the flight of the ๐ฃ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฐ๐จ, a hawk native to the farmlands of Panay. โIt would be the ๐๐ช๐ฏ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฐ๐จ dance of Panay Bukidnon,โ she says simply, of what she hopes young people continue to preserve.
The dance is older than most of its current performers realize. According to community accounts, the Panay Bukidnon came to revere the hawk after noticing that their fields seemed to flourish wherever the bird circled, and they built a courtship dance around its movements: pulsing footwork and hand gestures timed to gongs and bamboo, the female dancer mimicking the hawk's flight while a male partner watches and responds, the whole performance building toward a moment where the woman catches him with a swinging shawl. There are gentler variations too, versions meant purely to celebrate rather than court. All of them trace back to the same bird, the same fields, the same instinct to turn careful observation of nature into art. It is a small answer, when Jessica names it, with a large hope folded inside: that the dance outlives the dancers who currently know it.
๐๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ซ๐ ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐๐จ๐ญ ๐๐๐ญ ๐๐จ
If there is one thing Jessica names without hesitation when asked what she could never bear to lose, it is not a ritual or a dance. It is language.
โI would never want the ๐๐ช๐จ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฌ language to disappear,โ she says, โbecause it is an important part of who we are and where we came from. Our language carries the stories, traditions, values, and memories of our ancestors.โ
Few readers outside Tapaz will have encountered the word ๐๐ช๐จ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฌ before, and it deserves an introduction, because Jessica's worry about its disappearance is not sentimental exaggeration. ๐๐ช๐จ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฌ, also called ๐๐จ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฌ or the Sulod language, is an older, distinct language related to Kinaray-a, and it is the language in which the Panay Bukidnon's great oral epic, the Sugidanon, was originally chanted, a cycle of narratives about pre-colonial heroes so extensive that a full recitation can take more than twenty days. Today, most Panay Bukidnon speak Kinaray-a in daily life; ๐๐ช๐จ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฌ survives mainly in the accent and intonation carried over from it, and among a small number of elder chanters still capable of performing the old epics in their original tongue. Linguists classify it, plainly, as endangered.
To say a language is dying is to say something colder than it sounds. Every language holds a way of describing the world that does not translate cleanly into another. When Jessica says ๐๐ช๐จ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฌ carries her ancestors' stories, traditions, values, and memories, she is describing something closer to a vessel than a vocabulary: lose it, and it is not only words that go missing, but the specific shape of everything they once held.
๐๐ก๐๐ญ ๐
๐ซ๐๐ ๐๐๐ฎ๐๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง ๐๐๐ญ๐ฎ๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐
๐ซ๐๐๐
Jessica's family makes its living from agriculture, the same as much of her community in Tapaz. She does not romanticize what that meant growing up. โWe often face financial difficulties and struggle to make ends meet,โ she says plainly. A university education, for a family working that closely to the edge, was never a guarantee. It was a hope with a price tag attached.
The Commission on Higher Education's Free Higher Education program removed that price tag. โIt lifted an enormous financial burden off my family,โ Jessica says. โWith this program, I can choose any course I want to pursue without having to pay school fees. It also makes information and technology more accessible for everyone, which is a great help, especially for us who can't afford additional financial obligations.โ
Two academic years into her time at CAPSU Tapaz, she has found something the scholarship alone could not buy: a community of fellow IP students navigating the same distance between mountain and classroom, sitting beside her in programs and seminars, proof that she is not doing this alone.
She already knows what she intends to do with it. โI plan to give back to the community in the future by using the knowledge and skills I gain from my education to help others,โ she says. โI want to teach children someday, and also encourage them to value education and pursue whatever goals and dreams they have in mind.โ It is not a distant ambition. It is, in a sense, the family trade continuing in a new form: her grandmother passed down knowledge household by household; Jessica intends to do the same, classroom by classroom.
๐๐ก๐๐ญ ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ฅ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐ง๐๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฌ
Asked what she would say if she could speak to her ancestors today, Jessica's answer carries the quiet confidence of someone who has already thought about the question before it was asked of her.
โI would tell them that we are doing our best to preserve our culture and pass it on to future generations,โ she says. โI would tell them that their traditions, language, and identity are still important to us. We may be living in a changing world, but we continue to remember our roots and share what we have inherited from them with the next generation.โ
Her closing message, offered to other Panay Bukidnon and IP youth across the country, is less a farewell than a directive. โI encourage you to pursue higher education, get the degree, and work towards achieving your goals," she says. "Don't let any uncertainties, doubts, and underestimation from other people stop you from chasing your dreams. Education is the most powerful tool in making change. Through education, we gain knowledge, and knowledge gives us power: the power to improve our living situation and uplift our community, and to become more aware of our rights as citizens and as members of our IP community.โ
The words might sound like inspiration at first, something easy to hear and move on from. But knowing what came before it, the offerings prepared at thirteen, the coconut wine passed through a bamboo straw, the woven puso pouch, the language she refuses to let go quiet, it reads instead like a continuation. Her grandmother carried something sacred into other people's homes for years. Jessica is simply choosing a different kind of house to carry it into: a classroom, full of children who have not yet been told that their culture is worth keeping.
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