"Eye-Ta's"

I briefly mentioned yesterday my dark skinned (negritos) and afro haired Filipino cousins, the peeps that some anthropologists believe were the very first Filipinos...the Aetas (eye-ta's).

In my one trip to the islands, back in 99', I did get to see actual Filipino black peeps. I thought it was the most awesome thing evah, evah. At first I thought they must have been slaves that jumped ship and tried to get away from those kooky Spanish Conquistadors, err, slave masters, but I was wrong. They are smallish in stature and for lack of worlds and space/time, they are pretty much like the Aboriginal peeps from Australia. OK, let's get down to religion.

From my American perspective their early religion looks just like one would expect from a culture living off of the land, or just like the Native American beliefs here in the states. In the Native American religion there is a deity for everything, like rain, good times bad times, spring, animals, etc...The Aetas believe that good and evil spirits inhabit the world. It could be a river deity, a mountain, valley, forest or sea God.

So much like my brown brothers here in Nor Cal, the Aetas often time prayed before that awesome pig hunt that they would often go on (gotta feed that barangay, right) and when the women gathered shellfish, they would dance to "apologize" to their bounty. Sounds like totally cool peeps.

Unfortunately, in the 60's evangelical Protestants invaded (my word choice) the ranks of the Aetas in attempts to indoctrinate and convert these godless and peaceful savages, and it fucking worked, yo. While not totally saturated, fo sho there are large tracts of Aetas that have converted and are converting the remaining Aetas in the word of Christian gospels. Yuck, yuck, super yuck.

This is the coolest photograph ever, evah of my brown skinned homies, the Aetas.

Yesterday I complained that the indigenous Aeta beliefs were old school and stupid-head and needs to be discarded for the Philippines to advance and thrive in the years to come.  But upon learning about the Christian virus that is spreading thru-out the communities (or barangays) of my dark skinned peeps, I back track. In comparison there is nothing wrong with having a god of the harvest, or praying for your bounty and being one with nature. That's actually cool, right. The thingy about monotheistic Christianity is that it takes one away from nature and after that, what is left.

The power of the feminine is denied in the Christian tradition. The world we live in is second class to the afterlife and the world of heaven NOT on earth. The reality of everyday materialistic being is swept under the rug and forgotten for a made up world not of this time and space. Instead of giving thanks to the wonderful bounty, the praise for efforts for the community, it is replaced with the fear of a God, a God that is not indigenous to the peeps...a God that is not of the earth we live on.

What is left after nature...nothing.