Celebrating Philanthropy
(Photographer: Steph Cullen)
November is National Philanthropy Month and OMG Media Outlet celebrates the incredible philanthropists and nonprofits who give our community so much of their time, talent, and treasure. Every year, we have the privilege of meeting some of these amazing people through our work with Idaho Nonprofit Center as we create their annual video that celebrates philanthropy in our state. This year we got to chat with The Peregrine Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey, Boise Contemporary Theatre, Interfaith Sanctuary, and Heritage Bank. We share our world with truly wonderful people.
(Photographer: Steph Cullen)
As we create content for and about those who give, we also give back to our community and were one of many people honored by The Wassmuth Center for Human Rights on a plaque in their new building. While I knew our names would be shared in that manner, Cary did not, and as we were there capturing footage during their ribbon cutting ceremony for their upcoming Change Your World Celebration video, I surprised him with the news. It’s these moments that can light up our world.
(Photographer: Tobin Rogers)
OMG Media Outlet loves sponsoring nonprofits whenever possible, and this October, we proudly served as collaborative sponsors for the WICONX video ad. We had such a fun shoot with Sheli G. and her team filled with laughter, fog machines, and pink drinks. Later that month, I was deeply honored and surprised when the incredible WICON community presented me with the 2024 Philanthropreneur Award during their WIGIVES moment of giving. This community of beautiful humans shared their support in our mission to create impactful video content for the givers and nonprofits who each drive change in their own unique ways. I am continually humbled and forever grateful for this recognition.
Note from Steph: November is Native American Heritage Month, a month to honor, recognize, and celebrate the traditions, languages, and stories of Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and affiliated Island communities of people. In honor of this month, I present an article that my friend Aella, our YSEALI fellow of 2023, wrote about Native culture, both in the Philippines, and in the US. It is a reminder of our continued connection.
The Swaying Banana Leaves
By Rafaella Potestades
In Filipino culture, banana leaves are usually part of our festive and celebratory meals. We use them to wrap our rice and food, we use them to cover our kitchenware, and one of my important functions, we use them as one giant plate where a group of 10 or more people can all eat together. Traditional meals such as Adobo or Bicol express, mounds and mounds of steaming white rice, and grilled tiny squids and salty red crabs are usually strewn across the large green banana leaf. Once the feast starts, so would the stories, the laughter, and the warmth. The banana leaf then becomes a bearer of memories and culture, and a symbol of the Filipino collective spirit and community-based practices.
Culture has always been a tricky discussion because it is shaped by so many people and institutions from diverse ways of living. Yet, at the center of local and indigenous culture is their value system and the people that define it. Similar to how a tree is, local communities in the country are deeply rooted in their values of bayanihan (communal unity and cooperation), pagkakaisa (solidarity), pagaaruga (care), pakikiramay (empathy), and among many others. These values and the people perpetuating them are what defines culture.
While walking around one of the expansive stores in Harvard University, I spotted a book entitled, “Fresh banana leaves: Healing indigenous landscapes through indigenous science” by Jessica Hernandez, PhD. Pausing to read its synopsis, I was enthralled and immediately grabbed it with my cold shaky hands, no doubt because of the biting autumn breeze in Massachusetts. Holding it near to my heart, my hands felt a bit warmer. When I see banana leaves, I always think of home – the land of the banana ketchup, puso ng saging (heart of the banana tree), and banana leaf plates. Seeing the title and reading some of its content made me reflect on the similarities and differences between the situation of indigenous people in the Philippines and in the United States.
One thought came to mind as I flipped through the pages: indigenous values and knowledge systems. Before coming to the United States and joining the YSEALI program, BAYI, Inc, my organization, partnered with Sulong Peace, Inc. to co-manage and implement a feminist leadership program with 16 indigenous women leaders across the Philippines. Through this program, I realized how indigenous knowledge has always been undermined, undervalued, and invisibilized. Even in feminist discussions in the Philippines, so much knowledge goes under our noses and there is so so much to unlearn. During sessions, debates would arise and good practices would be discussed. Everyone was learning something each session. So, once I came to the US, I asked my host supervisor, Steph, the Founder of OMGFemaleFilmmakers and OMG Studios Boise, to hook me up with learning opportunities on American history and cultural studies through the lens of native Americans.
So when I visited Duck Valley, a reservation nestled between Idaho and Nevada, one of the discussions that I had with the Vice Principal of Owyhee Combined School, Lynn John, was on the importance of highlighting indigenous knowledge systems and practices of the Shoshone and Paiute communities as alternative educational solutions in Owyhee. For hundreds of years, indigenous people survived and thrived in their ancestral lands through the value of reciprocity with and respect of nature. Their worldview and practices can provide more sustainable solutions to complex problems in health, security, environmental conservation, natural resource management, politics, and so on. Yet, the capitalist and industrialist system merely disregards this knowledge, or worse, exploits it.
Indigenous knowledge holds so much power, and this was showcased in our visit to the Salish Kootenai College in Pablo, Montana. Tim Ryan from the Culture and Language Studies Department talked about the history and culture of the Salish and Kootenai communities in Montana. One portion that caught my interest was the discussion on fire science and how harnessing the power of fire in a certain way can help forests become healthier. Tim shared how indigenous practices of lighting fires within forests were previously banned by the US government due to it “causing” forest wildfires, without really understanding its role in natural resource management. However, in recent times, government agencies have recognized the value of this indigenous practice as it helps the forest release gases and eradicate invasive plants.
Linda Ferris, one of the language studies teachers in SKC, expressed with passion and heart that language is a reservoir and stream of culture. Words hold history, images, experiences, and realities inside of them so they work hard to preserve and promote the native languages of the Salish and Kootenai tribes. Land, nature, herbs, and animals also capture centuries of traditions and culture, such as their Bitter Root and Bisons. She explained that their way of life centered on community-based values such as reciprocity, care, collective decision-making, and so on. She lamented how historically, federal efforts to eradicate their culture left intergenerational trauma on younger generations.
Lynn John from Owyhee Combined School shared the same sentiment as she cried out that the decades-old physical infrastructure of their school holds trauma that their people experienced. The educational system was weaponized to set a “new” cultural standard that basically degraded, dehumanized, and erased their own people, culture, and languages. Even the paintings on the walls–eye-catching symbols colored with red, white, blue, and black–were erased by their very own people in the name of “standardizing” schools. Similar to the Philippines, our educational system has forgotten indigenous cultures–often making it into a list to memorize or an aftermath–and focused on our colonizers’ socio-cultural, political, and economic influences instead.
So as a way to protect their culture, they found it crucial to document it and pass it to the younger Native American generations across different mediums, such as familial and communal traditions, integration in basic education, and courses on Native American cultures. However, both the Shoshone and Paiute tribes from Owyhee and Salish and Kootenai tribes from Pablo highlighted the danger of their indigenous knowledge and resources being exploited. They shared how corporate interests may commodify their culture such as turning their language education into paid online courses or exploiting their medicinal herbs, such as Bitter Root, for mass pharmaceutical production. In the Philippines, indigenous women weavers face the same form of exploitation such as their handwoven textiles being sold by elite fashion designers for little pay or how banana leaves are mass harvested for massages in the country. It appeared that indigenous people were consistently in a limbo: how do they preserve and promote their culture while collaborating with multi stakeholders, and at the same time, ensuring that it is neither exploited nor commodified? This is one question that I have set my mind to reflect on and will be bringing back to the Philippines to discuss it with the indigenous women themselves.
Lastly, one lesson that I’ll be keeping close to my heart is the deep respect for nature as it has welcomed us to its warm embrace, and became a nest for cultures and peoples. I want to end this article with one of the conversations I had with one of the indigenous women leaders I am close with, a great Hanunuo Mangyan woman from Negros Occidental, and she explained that preserving and promoting our culture is very crucial especially for their younger generations. However, balancing interests and values are essential, and it always boiled down to consulting with the tribal members and forming collective decisions in solidarity and towards social transformation.
The Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Professional Fellows Program (YSEALI PFP) is a program of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and is supported in its implementation by American Councils for International Education and the Mansfield Center at the University of Montana. None of these organizations are responsible for the views expressed herein.
Upcoming Events & Classes
Nothing at the moment, but stay tuned for more!