The Aeta, also known as the Agta or Ita, live mainly in the mountains in the north of Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. They are Negritos: they are short with dark brown skin, woolly to curly hair, flat noses and, compared to most people in the Philippines, large, dark eyes. Most Filipinos look down on them because they are dark-skinned.
There are 40,000 of them left. They go to bad schools and live in poverty. Only a third of them live to see 15. And of those who live to 15, most are dead by 30.
The Aeta are like American Indians in America: they came there first but newcomers have been pushing them off their land into the less desirable parts of the country. They are seen as near-savages and do not receive equal protection under the law.
The government does not uphold their land rights. It stands by and does little to nothing while farmers, mining companies and others push them off their land. Neither does the government see to it that they have good schools. It was not any better when the Philippines was under American rule in the early 1900s.
The Aeta came to the Philippines from Borneo 30,000 years ago. They walked to the Philippines – because back then you could: it was the middle of an ice age and the sea was much lower. They and other Negritos were the main people in the Philippines till 5,000 years ago when the Austronesians, Asians from the north, began to arrive.
The Aeta have their own art, dance, music, etc. They used to have their own style of dress but that has been disappearing in favour of Western dress.
Some things they have taken on from the outside world: T-shirts, sandals, karaoke, gongs and, despite being short, basketball. Their languages too come from outside: they are Austronesian, not whatever it was they spoke in ancient times.
Religion: The Spanish tried to make them into good Catholics by forcing them to live in mission settlements. That failed. American missionaries in the 1900s did not have much better success. Most Aetas are not Christians. They believe in good and evil spirits that rule nature. They perform religious dances before they go on a pig hunt or gather shellfish.
Some say they eat men. That seems to be a stereotype: there is no proof of it. They also say they have little understanding of law, land rights or money. That sounds like a self-serving stereotype, but since many of them live off in the mountains and do not receive a proper education, it is not out of the question.
During the Vietnam War they were used to train American soldiers on how to live in the jungle.
Not all of them live in the mountains. Some live in towns and cities where they beg, sell things on the street or perform unskilled labour. They are almost never seen doing white collar work. They also do farm work – often on the very land that used to be theirs!
See also:
The child on the far right resembles my cousin. I haven’t travelled to the Philippines in some time, but I have come across some people who knew about the Aetas (pronounced ee-tahs) and looked down on them.
A lot of it has to do with the colonial mentality when the Spanish came in the 1500’s and anyone not white was considered inferior. It’s sad because most Filipinos should remember what the Spanish did to the Filipinos. And they shouldn’t try to be like them (the Spanish) and convert/subjugate the Aetas.
LikeLike
Exactly.
LikeLike
It’s sad because most Filipinos should remember what the Spanish did to the Filipinos. And they shouldn’t try to be like them (the Spanish) and convert/subjugate the Aetas.
That’ the story of history: Different groups persecuting and subjugating those that are different. It never ends.
LikeLike
That’ the story of history: Different groups persecuting and subjugating those that are different. It never ends.
*********************************
Just because it has happened historically, does not make it any more reprehensible. Speaking out about it is the moral thing to do. Using cultural relativistic rationalizing to excuse inhuman treatment is cowardly.
LikeLike
I agree with Mayhue (as I do 90% of the time).
LikeLike
Nice post. From what I gathered from a friend in Papua New Guinea, indeed, the Aetas (Negritos, Itas, Dumagats etc) had been in the Philippines for 30,000 years. They apparently are the kissing cousins of the Papuans (“frizzy” hair) and the Australian Aborigines. An article I read (I forgot where) indicated they may have come from the Andaman Islands.
The Aetas, Papuans, Melanesians etc adapted the Austronesian language. I recently saw a WW2 video about the Philippines, and one guerilla interviewed was a Dumagat lady. She looked like she could have been from anywhere in Melanesia.
I’m not scholarly but my Papuan friend brought this up when I visited PNG.
LikeLike
@ mayhue, ditto.
LikeLike
[…] morning, two aetas, each with a hand of bananas on their heads, passed her by. These indigenous folks troops down to […]
LikeLike
The Aeta’s are the remants of one of the earliest migrations out of Africa. Their ancestors hugged the coast and left pockets of population all along the way. The people in the tiny fragments left from those ancient communities are usually referred to as “Negrito’s.” There are some misues of the term “Negrito” that are confusing … like when the Chinese calling the offspring of different groups “negrito,” or simply using term as an alternative for “mestizo.”
But the original and correct word for many related people from the Andaman Islands to the Philippines and many points in between (and beyond, north and south) is “Negrito”–who may be related to Bushmen, or Pygmy or pygmoid people that never left Africa. There are many theories and genetic researech is beginning to fill in some of the many “blanks” in what is known about them. But what we do know is that there is a genetic relationship between Negrito groups including the Andaman and Nicobar Islanders, the “Orang Asli” people in the Malay Penninsula (with subgroups such as the Bataak and the Semang), the Mani or Goy or “Forest People” in Thailand and about 50 different groups of diminuitive Filipinos. The Filipino Negrito’s including the Aeta, Ita, Agta, and other names that were probably once all one group–before becoming forever separated as other migrations and immigrations of people separated them and isolated them from each other–way before the Spanish arrived and pushed them further inland. One group, the Aeta, lived on Mt. Pinatubo for hundreds of years until it erupted and sent many to refugee camps around the province of Zambales.
The Negritos are either related to or mixed with Vadda / Veddoid people in Yemmen and share some DNA characteristics that stretch as far away as Australia. But the more read on the subject, the more confusing it gets,
Going back in pre-history, most of the various communities of Negritos must have been overrun by the people of subsequent migrations out of Africa, and then by the groups that mixed and settled, always either killing off, starving out, assimilating, or isolating the Negritos. Only the ones who isolated themselves from the newer arrivals survived into the era of photography and ethnography.
Some have speculated that they are they are the descendants of the “hobbit” people [Homo floresiensis] whose tiny fossilized remains were found in Malasia. The Ainu of Japan have folklore about tiny people who lived on the Japanese islannds before they got there. The last two bits may be far fetched, but it is clear and obvious that if a group starts walking from, say, the East African coast, makes it across to to the shore of the Indian ocean, and just follows the shore east [perhaps being pushed after 10 or 100 or 1000 generations by subsequent migrations approaching on their heels from behind], they will eventually come to the corner of Southeast Asia and a lot of Islands to the South, and cold weather to the North … and some more Islands pretty much straight out before them [to be discovered as they fished the warm waters]. While the Japanese small people exist only in the myths of another rapidly disappering group, the Taiwanese still have a “Festival of teh Little Black People” in one town, recalling their now extinct population of Negritos. So it seems pretty safe to say that before other groups flooded into the places they settled first, Negritos must have been everywhere along the coast from Africa, around the tip of the Malasian penninsula, and up at least as far as China, and also south and east, out into most Indian Ocean and Pacific Islands … as far away as Borneo, some say. And some scientists believe that Negrito DNA is found up into the Mongolians … and farther north into …well, everyone else, even among the earliest people to come to the Americas … before the usually cited migrations. Who knows?
Based just on the relative size of the populations that remained when the term Negrito began to be used to describe them, the ones that got to the Philippine Islands were by far the most successful at not getting killed off or assimilated. But, like I said, they are not the only Negritos that still exist … just the one group that is not threatened with extinction.
My own experience with the Aeta’s–besides buying lots of bows, arrows, and spears from them–was an attempt to gather DNA samples from Aeta people in Luzon, in some Mt. Pinatubo relocation camps where they still live. I traded bags of rice for the opportunity to talk with tem, photograph them, and get a sample. My wife and I got 30 samples–each one submitted with a photo of the person–that we sent to a scientis in the Bay Area who never acknowledged receiving them. My wife is a Filipino from that region, and there is ample evidence that she is (and no doubt MANY Filipinos from that region are) partly descended from Aeta Negritos. But that idea–of being “part-Aeta”–is not necessarily a welcome possibility among Filipinos who have been marginalizing the Aeta for hundreds … if not thousands of years. Coming from a Melungeon line [that’s how I found your blog … because of a caption to a photo], I know what that kind of denial is like.
LikeLike
A very interesting article of Curtis. Thanks. Maraming Salamat.
LikeLike
Aetas is not the only instance in Philippines when certain ethnical groups were pushed aside or marginalized. A large scale process of this kind happened in 20 century in Mindanao, where successive governments were encouraging mass migrations of Christian Filipinos, mostly Bisayans, into the areas populated either by local animist aborigines now called Lumads(Manobo, Tboli, Mamanwa, Blaan, Subanen, Binukid, Mansakan and other tribes) or by muslim Moro peoples(Maranao, Maguindanao, Iranun, Yakan, Tausug, Sama Bajau). In the most cases Lumads were turned into minorities. According to some data, the percentage of local Binukid people in the Bukidnon province fell from 64 to 14 percent in the period. Muslim Moro peoples fared somewhat better they were marginalized in some areas but there are still areas where they make majority population.
LikeLike
In general Filipino people could be roughly classified in following groups:
– Negritos(called Aeta, Agta, Ati)
– North Luzon Cordilleran natives often referred to as “Igorots”(Ibaloi, Kankanaey, Bontoc, Kalinga, Ifugao, Isneg, Gaddang, Ibanag and other ethnic groups)
– Christian Filipinos, the mainstream group of Filipino people(Ilokano, Pampangan, Pangasinan, Tagalog, Bikol and Bisayan(the latter consisting of Cebuano, Boholano, Ilonggo, Waray and other groups))
– Lumads of Mindanao(Manobo, Tboli, Mamanwa, Blaan, Subanen, Binukid, Mansakan etc.)
– Natives of some other islands – of Palawan(Molbog, Batak, Tagbanwa etc.) and Mindoro(Tawbuid, Buhid, Hanunoo etc.)
– Muslim Moro peoples( Maranao, Maguindanao, Iranun, Yakan, Tausug, Sama-Bajau)
LikeLike
Yes, I can see that esp. in southern Mindanao. There are many Bisaya speakers in Davao and General Santos, and there are small communities of T’boli and others pushed to the edge. Also many Ilocanos migrated to southern Mindanao, esp. to Maitum in Sarangani, so you run into Ilocano speakers also there.
But, where are people NOT displaced. Look at the aborigines in Taiwan (or anywhere, for that matter).
LikeLike
What regards Taiwan, there was more or less the same process as in Mindanao or like in the USA. In 17 century Taiwan was colonized by Hokkien/Hoklo Chinese(to lesser extent, also by Hakka) who now imagine to be the true Taiwanese and even refer to their Hokkien language as “Taiwanese”, while austronesian aborigines were marginalized. The next wave of migrants to Taiwan were the “mainlanders” after 1949 who spoke different sinitic languages/dialects but had the Mandarin Chinese(mostly of Southern, Nankigese variety) as their lingua franca which they passed to their descendants. The “mainlanders” grabbed the most siginificant clout of power and somewhat pushed aside even the Hoklos(who still make about 70 percent of the population), making Mandarin the only official language in Taiwan.
LikeLike
Yes, Austronesians in Taiwan were pushed off the land, into the mountains or offshore islands by the Hokkien and Hakka, and then they got pushed aside by mainlanders. Any of them pushed off the land would remain poor, and any staying in the cities or on the farming land area either have to remain as tourist attraction curiosities or assimilate into the Chinese population.
But is it really that different from the USA? No wonder Anglo-Americans are so keen to keep their racial and linguistic identity, even banning ethnic studies or pushing for English only / Official language statutes. They must really be worried that they soon will be marginalized and pushed aside by people who look different or speak another language.
LikeLike
I was told by a Filipino co-worker (he’s about 58) that “Aeta” (prounounced e-tah) is a pejorative term that means filthy. He said that these little black people refer to themselves as – Agta, Ayta, Ata, etc. – all which mean The People. He also that the Agta crossed exposed land bridges during an glacier period (ice age) of about 50,000 years ago. They didn’t get their wet at all. Wow!!!
It is noted in Filipino history that a group of Agta people sold a piece of their land to some of the ancestors of the Tagalog-speaking people (whose ancestors arrived from Borneo, Indonesia about two millennia ago) for goods. Unlike the Spanish invaders (who named the beautiful archipelago after Phillip II), there was NO killing, NO land war, no anything among the Agta and Tagalog.
LikeLike
^ Are you sure that that is not Filipino history mythology?
If that were the case, why did the non-Aeta Malay migrants usurp the land of the Aeta and force them live in impenentrable jungle?
It sounds like the mythology of the Dutch and Manhattan. Any American who went to primary school in the US will tell you that Native Americans sold their land to Europeans.
LikeLike
Sounds like schoolbook history to me. Not unlike what V-4 just said on another thread about the US.
LikeLike
Have you ever thought about writing an ebook or guest
authoring on other sites? I have a blog based on the same topics you discuss and would
really like to have you share some stories/information. I know my viewers would enjoy your
work. If you’re even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an e mail.
LikeLike
As a filipino, I’m ashamed that I, too, looked down on them once. I was a kid, I was immature, I didn’t know any better. I was influenced by people who looked down on them and bullied them (I never bullied them but I just looked down on them secretly). I wish I could go back and time and fix it. There are still people who do this, I hope they would act more maturely and stop the bullying.
LikeLike
Reading about the hate this people are subjected to is heartbreaking. People in non white skin are always subjected to bigotry.
LikeLike
Perusing the web and looking at these indigenous people I see beautiful people in brown skin.
LikeLike