page_title: Culture of the Philippines
section_title: Indigenous groups
hierarchical_section_title: Culture of the Philippines / Indigenous groups
caption_attribution_description: English: Ms. Julie Mantang Fanulan is a multi-skilled T'boli from Lake Sebu , South Cotabato. The T'bolis are most famous for their dream-inspired and spirit infused T'nalak weaving, an art form perfected over decades of practice by T'boli women. The T'nalak weavings were on display on Monday ( Dec. 10, 2018) during the Philippine observance of the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), held at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Pasay City.
context_page_description: The culture of the Philippines is a combination of cultures of the East and West. Filipino identity was created primarily as a result of pre-colonial cultures, colonial influences and foreign traders intermixing and gradually evolving together. In pre-colonial times, the Philippines was a divided set of nations, islands and tribes being ruled by their own kings, chieftains, lakans, rajahs, datus and sultans. Every nation has its own identity and some are even part of a larger empire outside of what is now the Philippines. Manila, for example, was once part of the Islamic Sultanate of Brunei, and the Sulu Archipelago was also part of the Hindu Majapahit. The advent of colonial rule in the islands marked the beginning of the Philippines as an entity, a collection of Southeast Asian countries united under Spanish Empire.
  Chinese influence has been felt throughout Southeast Asia through trade, specifically by the Ming dynasty and other earlier dynasties from as early as the 9th century. The blending of indigenous, colonial and external influence is very evident in the historic arts and traditions of the country.
context_section_description: The Indigenous peoples of the Philippines consist of a large number of Austronesian ethnic groups. They are the descendants of the original Austronesian inhabitants of the Philippines, that settled in the islands thousands of years ago, and in the process have retained their Indigenous customs and traditions.
  In 1990, more than 100 highland peoples constituted approximately three percent of the Philippine population. Over the centuries, the isolated highland peoples have retained their Indigenous cultures. The folk arts of these groups were, in a sense, the last remnants of Indigenous traditions that flourished throughout the Philippines before the Islamic and Spanish contacts.
  The highland peoples are a primitive ethnic group like other Filipinos, although they did not, as a group, have as much contact with the outside world. These peoples displayed a variety of native cultural expressions and artistic skills. They showed a high degree of creativity such as the production of bowls, baskets, clothing, weapons and spoons. These peoples ranged from various groups of Igorot people, a group that includes the Bontoc, Ibaloi, Ifugao, Isneg, Kalinga and Kankana-ey, who built the Rice Terraces thousands of years ago. They have also covered a wide spectrum in terms of their integration and acculturation with Christian Filipinos. Other Indigenous peoples include the Lumad peoples of the highlands of Mindanao. These groups have remained isolated from Western and Eastern influences.
caption: A Tboli woman weaving t'nalak from South Cotabato.
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