PinoyBuilt — Stories of Filipino America

Philippines • October 2026. Indigenous Peoples' Day Is Also About the Philippines. Philippine Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Peoples' Day 10/12, Columbus Day, Republic Act 8371, IPRA, National Indigenous Peoples Month, Kalinga, Chico River dam, bodong, Cordillera, 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, Igorot, Hanunoo Mangyan script, ancestral domain, Filipino American, decolonization. Indigenous Peoples' Day • October 2026 Indigenous Peoples' Day Is Also About the Philippines On 10/12, the United States argues over Columbus Day. In the Philippines, October is National Indigenous Peoples Month, and the Kalinga, the Hanunoo Mangyan and other peoples have a record every Filipino should know. PinoyBuilt illustration: a crowd in silhouette stands on a riverbank where a gold river runs through a red dam. It pictures the Chico River story at the heart of this piece, in which Kalinga communities outlasted a state dam program and the river stayed a riv...

Whang-od Oggay (born c. 1918) is a Filipina tattoo artist from Buscalan, Tinglayan , Kalinga , Philippines. She is considered as the last mambabatok (traditional Kalinga tattooist) from the Butbut Kalinga people and the oldest tattoo artist in the Philippines. Her tattoo ink is composed of the mixture of charcoal and water that will be tapped into the skin through a thorn end of a calamansi or pomelo tree. This ancient technique called batok that dates back a thousand years before her time is relatively painful compared to other conventional techniques. She uses designs found in nature and basic geometric shapes. Due to her status as the last mambabatok, many netizens are lobbying her to be one of the National Artists of the Philippines . Instead of National Artist, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago urged her colleagues in the Philippine Senate through a resolution that Whang-od should be nominated as one of the National Living Treasures or Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan , which is...