Established in 1992, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts has recognized 25 National Living Treasures, or Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA): masters who have practiced their craft for at least fifty years and passed on their knowledge, ensuring their practice endures. Today, only 15 GAMABA remain spread across the Philippines.
On my first trip to Mindanao, invited by the Tourism Promotions Board, I came face to face with the people who carry the weight of our national heritage. Their works are preserved behind panels of glass in museums but nothing compares to witnessing them in context—made alive by their communities, in the rhythm of the loom, the peals of brass, and stories that are sung, danced, and worn.
To be named a National Living Treasure seems larger than life: an icon more than an individual. But the GAMABA carry their legacy in the quiet multitudes of everyday life: as parents, farmers, and students of rituals older than themselves. They hold fast to the time-honored ways of generations before them, while navigating the modern world that tugs at us all. In the southernmost part of our country, tradition looms large—ever alive.
The Inabal of the Bagobo Tagabawa, Davao del Sur In 1998, Salinta Monon was named a National Living Treasure at age 65. She was the last master of the inabal, the traditional abaca textile of the Bagobo Tagabawa, meaning “woven on the loom.” She passed at the age of 92 in 2009, but her weaving tradition lives on—through her family and the School of Living Traditions (SLT) she helped establish at the foot of Mount Apo, their ancestral home, in Bansalan, Davao del Sur.
The Bagobo Tagabawa believe weaving was gifted to their people through a dream: Generations ago, a hero dreamt of an elderly woman weaving, who urged him to share the knowledge with others. When he woke, he built a loom and taught his sister, who passed it on to her daughters, all the way down to Salinta Monon. Though the craft was first revealed through a man, it is the women who have carried the inabal through time.
To even set up the loom, raw abaca must first be harvested, stripped down to fiber strands, pounded until soft, and hung to dry—labor typically done by men. But Salinta took this on herself alongside the weaving, while raising her children and tending to the family farm. After she was widowed, she continued it all on her own. Because of the SLT she founded, weaving is now a communal practice shared by a dozen weavers in Bansalan.
Salinta mastered the most intricate of the inabal designs: the binuwaya , or crocodile, formed from interlocking diamonds. The pattern demands a combination of technical skill and deep cultural knowledge. To this day, her daughter Rose continues to study her mother’s pieces, still trying to replicate their sharpness and symmetry, having learned to weave only after her mother’s passing. Her granddaughter Love holds up a 112-year-old inabal made by Salinta: the weave so fine that light passes through it, smooth to the point it seems more likely to be printed than an interweaving of individual strands.
Though the community still weaves traditional inabal, they’ve also adapted for modern markets by creating bright table runners and scarves (similar to the tangkulo, the traditional headpieces worn by warriors, but modernized to be worn respectfully around the neck) for the occasional trade show. While government support has helped in sourcing materials, training, and accreditation, demand remains infrequent. The community hopes that by welcoming tourists to the Salinta Monon Weaving Center in Bansalan, they can share the artistry and cultural significance of their weaving, offering visitors a deeper understanding of the Bagobo Tagabawa way of life.
The Tabih of the Blaan, South Cotabato Bai Yabing Masalon Dulo was the foremost mabal—master weaver—of the Blaan people. Weaving for nearly a century, she began at the tender age of 12 until her passing in 2021 at the age of 106. She was honored as a Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan in 2017. Among the Blaan, she was both fu , an honorific for the elderly, and bai , a revered princess in their community.
The tabih, the woven abaca textile of the Blaan, is related to the weaving traditions of their neighbors: the Bagobo, T’boli, and other ethnolinguistic groups of Southwestern Mindanao. For all these cultures, in the dense forests they called home, it was through the sacred art of weaving that their culture took shape and divine forces aligned.
The Blaan tabih, like the Bagobo inabal, is an intricate abaca textile that uses warp-resist dyeing called ikat. The warp threads are tightly bound at patterned intervals—this process alone can take days—then dyed with natural pigments: black from kanalum leaves, red from the roots of the lago tree, while the natural white of the abaca remains untouched.
Weaving tabih is exacting work. While preparing the loom is a communal effort—men and women, young and old—the design itself is entrusted to a single weaver who plans the layout, measures the spacing, and brings the pattern to life. Even the time of day affects the stiff abaca or the weaver’s skin with how the dye clings to the fiber.
In 2003, Fu Yabing helped establish a School of Living Traditions in Lamlifew, Sarangani, together with her grandniece and with support from local government. It was the first of its kind for the Blaan but she long dreamed of a school in her home village. Though she passed before seeing it realized, her dream came true in 2023, when Sitio Amguo in Barangay Lamdan, Polomolok opened a cultural center in her name.
The Bai Yabing Masalon Dulo School of Living Tradition houses looms and serves as a space for communal weaving. Visitors can stay overnight to experience the Blaan daily life—it is the pride of the village that their traditions, cuisine, and healing practices have nurtured at least twenty centenarians.
Fu Yabing’s only daughter, Lamina Dulo Gulili, ensures that her artistry and spirit live on. To grow their community of weavers, the women once guided by Fu Yabing now teach boys to weave gintlo, cotton textiles made on more modern looms. The mabal’s grandson and great-grandson are weavers themselves—a testament that the threads of tradition still bind.
The Temwel of the T’boli, South Cotabato Bundos Fara began honing his craft—temwel or brass casting—at the age of eight, passed down from his father, who learned from his grandfather. In 2023, he was recognized as a National Living Treasure—the first T’boli honored for the metalwork tradition. He is now 60, with seven children and several grandchildren already learning the art.
Bundos moves with a swiftness expected from a man who works with brass and fire but his voice is as soft as wax, surprisingly squeaky. And while his eyesight is going, the toll for decades of staring into open flame, his hands remain steady.
His son Jayson walks me through their workspace, perched just above their shop along the roadside circling Lake Sebu. Jayson had spent the last five days carving a medallion out of wax, etching it with patterns of fronds and waves. The wax will be then casted in clay and baked into a mold for molten brass to be poured into.
The process is painstaking but it cannot be rushed. The brass asks for patience to come out of the fragile wax and clay whole. If you left anger fill you, Jayson says, the clay will crack—meaning starting over. Before casting, they make offerings to Ginton, the deity of metallurgy, and pour one out onto the earthen floor of the workshop. They pray for their materials and themselves to hold strong.
With the support his GAMABA title commands, Bundos finds it easier to source materials that once had to be salvaged from scrap metals. But he still dreams of forging an SLT for temwel to pass the knowledge to more T’boli youth. For now, he teaches informally to those willing to learn. Though the craft has long been gendered, his daughters and other girls in the village have started to carve out their own designs.
When I tell Bundos that his sons take after him, he exchanges a proud look with his wife beside him, grinning wider than when they made all their sales that afternoon. The Fara sons are skilled craftsmen—and even more so, culture-bearers who speak for the T'boli with the same heart as their father.
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