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where does your body end, and the forest begins?











































Revered as healers, warriors, teachers, ritualists, and visionaries, the Baylan (Bailan/Babaylan) of the Talaandig-Manobo indigenous people have long been guardians of the sacred forests of Mount Kaluntungan in the southern Philippine province of Bukidnon, threatened by the encroaching industrial pace since the Spanish and American colonial period.



























Retrieved colonial archives from Dean Worcester from a 1918 November Issue of National Geographic Magazine, “The Non-Christian Peoples of the Philippine Islands” (p. 1250)

Four centuries of Spanish-American rule effectively disempowered the Baylan, while defiling the spiritual beliefs and culture of the indigenous Filipino communities.
   























































Through a thousand drumbeats held by the enduring traditions of the Manobo-Talaandig indigenous people, nature and spirit abide in the Talaandig-Manobo narrative.



For the Baylan, the forest is a sacred site;
a portal,
a threshold.





































The queer kinship of two central figures: a head spiritual leader Datu Arayan, and a Baylan initiate and transwoman youth Krystahl Guina heralds a new generation of shamans as members of the Kulahi Pangantucan Performing Arts Group. As articulators of spirit, keepers of ecological knowledge, practitioners of oral traditions, and protectors of nature, they continue to ensure the spiritual and physical continuum of the Philippine forests.



  
















Special thanks to
Kulahi Pangantucan Performing Arts
Krystahl Guina
Datu Arayan
David Loughran
Miko Reyes