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The Development Saga of the Tasaday:
Gentle Yesterday, Hoax Today, Exploited Forever? In the 1970s the Tasaday captured popular and
anthropological imagination as the archetypal hunter-gatherers
of the twentieth century. Although Manuel Elizalde, Jr., was
portrayed as discoverer and savior of the Tasaday, as the head
of the Philippines Presidential Assistance on National Minorities
(PANAMIN), he actually created "Tasaday consciousness."
After the initial avalanche of international interest, the Tasaday
have been reported as living quietly in a vast protected zone
created by PANAMIN and Marcos. Rather, they lived in T'boli
communities because they are indigenous. T'boli people who
have suffered PANAMIN-abused militarization and economic
development by invasion of their lands and resources. Following
the assassination of Benigno Aquino in 1983, Elizalde was among
the first of the Marcos cronies to nee the Philippines. In response to mounting public awareness of the hoax
exposed through national and international media, the
University of the Philippines sponsored the International
Conference on the Tasaday Controversy in 1986, and the
Philippine Congress held an inquiry in 1987. International
debates have since been hosted by the International Con-
gress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in 1988
and the American Anthropological Association in 1989.
Meanwhile, Elizalde returned to the Philippines in August
1987 and started manipulating his Tasaday creation again.
Continuing exploitation of those who posed as the Tasaday
has, unfortunately, bypassed the important struggle of the
T'boli for indigenous rights to their ancestral domain and
self-determination. by David Hyndman and Levita Duhaylungsod *
Introduction The Tasaday first came to international attention in 1971
when Manuel Elizalde, Jr., the head of the Philippines Presiden-
tial Assistance on National Minorities (PANAMIN), announced
discovery of a cave-dwelling, Stone Age people in South
Cotabato Province in Mindanao (figures 1 and 2). Elizalde 1
found it remarkable "that this vast and undulating sea of tropi-
cal rainforest could be inhabited by man." As the press in the
Philippines picked up on the story, American reporter John
Nance 2 began a campaign to establish the Tasaday as the greatest
discovery of the century in anthropology. From the pages of the
National Geographic, MacLeish and Launois 3 captured inter-
national attention when they described descending with Elizalde
in a helicopter over this expansive rain forest and finding near-
ly naked people who "stepped out of the Stone Age into the year
1971 A.D." Evidence now indicates that "Tasaday consciousness" was
created, and the gentle, cave-dwelling, Stone Age hunter-
gatherers who swept academia and media alike were actually
local T'boli and Manobo peoples. In recent years several inves-
tigative teams have traveled to the fabled Tasaday caves region,
including a Philippine congressional committee and in-
ternational media. The disturbing consequence of this attention
is continuing exploitation of those T'boli who posed as Tasaday,
threats to the personal safety of other T'boli who appeared as ____________________
| * | This paper is an expanded version of a paper presented to the Fifth Con-
ference on Hunting and Gathering Societies, held in Darwin, Australia,
in August 1988. The original paper has been supplemented with findings
obtained during two weeks of fieldwork in Maitum, South Cotabato, the
Philippines, in February 1989. Much has come to light since then, and
the authors are covering this in an article they are writing for a forthcom-
ing book edited by Thomas N. Headland, The Tasaday Controversy:An
Assessment of the Evidence (Washington, D.C.: American Anthropologi-
cal Association [AAA]). See also Gerald Berreman, "The Incredible
Tasaday:"Deconstructing the Myth of a 'Stone Age' People, Cultural
Survival Quarterly (Cambridge, MA, U.S.A.), vol. 15, no. 1 ( Jan. 1991 ),
pp. 1-38. | | 1 | M. Elizalde, The Tasaday Forest People:A Data Paper on a Newly
Discovered Food Gathering and Stone Tool Using Manobo Group in the
Mountains of South Cotabato, Mindanao, Philippines (Washington,
D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Center for Short-Lived Phenomena, 1971 ). | | 2 | J. Nance, "The Tasadays", Manila Times, 8-12 June 1972. | | 3 | K. MacLeish and J. Launois, "The Tasadays:"Stone Age Cavemen of
Mindanao, National Geographic, no. 142 ( Aug. 1972 ), pp. 219-49. | -38- | |
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