THE TRIBAL COUNCIL OF THE BAGOBO TAGABAWA CONFERRED HONORARY TITLES TO US
By Datu Pugawang (aka Dann Pantoja)
For more than four decades, Joji and I have walked together as partners in life and peacebuilding. Our roots are in the Tagalog tribe of Southern Luzon, though colonization nearly erased our Indigenous identity and reshaped our families through foreign names, imposed religions, and fractured relationships. In recent years, however, we have been rediscovering the redemptive power of our Indigenous heritage. This journey took on new depth when the Bagobo Tagabawa people of Mindanao welcomed us into their community during National Indigenous Peoples’ Month. In a sacred ceremony, they conferred on us honorary leadership titles: Joji as Bai Kasunayan, meaning Peace, and myself as Datu Pugawang, meaning MindSetter. These titles are not honors to display, but responsibilities to fulfill—calls to nurture holistic peace and to mentor the next generation of Indigenous leaders. They remind us that our Indigenous identities, long suppressed by colonial powers, can now serve as sources of healing, transformation, and hope. This is our testimony of gratitude and commitment as we walk forward in kinship with the Bagobo Tagabawa people.
We, Luis Daniel Alba Pantoja and Joji Felicitas Bautista-Pantoja, come from the Tagalog people of Southern Luzon, the region where Manila is located. Our tribal identity, however, has been scarred by centuries of colonization. Spanish rulers nearly erased our Tagalog roots, imposing on us the surnames of our colonizers. Later, American colonial rule introduced us to Protestantism, which widened the gap between our families and the Catholic majority of our clan.
Worse still, our Tagalog tribe was historically used as a tool of conquest—deployed by both Spanish and American powers in wars against the tribes of Mindanao, whether Islamized or non-Islamized Indigenous Peoples. To deepen this colonial wound, the Tagalog language was eventually declared the national language of the Philippines, imposed across the archipelago while sidelining the concerns, and fueling the resentment, of other Indigenous nations.
It was against this backdrop of fragmented memory and colonial distortion that, in October during the closing ceremonies of National Indigenous Peoples’ Month, we were profoundly humbled to be embraced by the Bagobo Tagabawa people of Mindanao. The tribal council not only welcomed us as members of their community but also conferred upon us honorary leadership titles—a sacred trust we receive with deep gratitude and reverence. By the Creator’s grace and mercy, we commit ourselves to live out the duties and responsibilities these honors entail.
The titles we were given are more than names. They are callings.
Bai Kasunayan
Joji was entrusted with the name Bai Kasunayan, which means Peace. The community recognized in her a holistic embodiment of peace in its four interwoven dimensions:
- Peace with the Creator — a call to nurture spiritual and ethical transformation, guiding communities to walk in harmony with the divine will.
- Peace with One’s Being — the pursuit of psychological healing and physical wholeness, encouraging individuals to care for their inner selves and bodily health.
- Peace with Others — a commitment to social and economic transformation, fostering justice, reconciliation, and equity in human relationships.
- Peace with Creation — the integration of economic and ecological transformation, ensuring that development does not destroy but instead restores the land, waters, and forests entrusted to us.
Through these four aspects, Bai Kasunayan serves as a living witness to the Creator’s salaam—an inclusive, life-giving peace that touches every sphere of existence.
Datu Pugawang
I was given the name Datu Pugawang, which means MindSetter. The tribal council discerned in me the role of mentoring the next generation of Indigenous leaders to face the challenges and opportunities of modernity and globalization without abandoning their roots.
The elders remain the keepers of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices (IKSP)—deepening the youth’s understanding of their spirituality, worldview, values, and customary laws. My entrusted task is to help harmonize these Indigenous roots with the demands of the 21st century:
- Showing how technology can preserve culture rather than erase it.
- Guiding economic engagement toward community well-being rather than exploitation.
- Encouraging participation in political systems as active agents of ancestral wisdom rather than passive recipients of imposed policies.
- Demonstrating that Indigenous values are not outdated, but prophetic—urgently needed in global struggles for peace, justice, and ecological care.
In this way, the elders cultivate the roots, while I help shape the branches—ensuring that the Bagobo Tagabawa youth grow deeply grounded in who they are, even as they reach outward to engage with the wider world.
Our Shared Calling
Together, Bai Kasunayan and Datu Pugawang embody the Creator’s call to us: to walk alongside the Bagobo Tagabawa as kin, not outsiders; as servants, not masters; as companions, not mere consultants. Our lives are now woven into their story.
Though we were raised in a colonial educational system that taught us to forget our Indigenous identities, this sacred embrace reminds us that our truest selves can, in fact, be a source of healing:
- Healing our being through psycho-spiritual transformation.
- Healing our doing through active, non-violent societal transformation.
- Healing our having through inclusive growth and reconciliation-driven development.
This is the path we now walk. This is the sacred trust we carry. And this is the testimony of our lives as Bai Kasunayan & Datu Pugawang.
