01/03/2026
SUGILANON | Woven Women
By the shores of Lake Sebu, where mist settles gently over still waters, a quiet revolution has long been unfolding. It does not roar. It does not march. It moves through thread, through story, through hands steady enough to hold a people’s memory.
In South Cotabato, three Indigenous women have transformed tradition into testimony. Lang Dulay, Yabing Masalon Dulo, and Myrna P**a did not simply preserve culture. They redefined what it means to be Indigenous, female, and modern in a world that once dismissed them as relics of the past.
Their tools were simple. A loom. A needle. A voice.
Their impact, anything but.
Dreams on a Loom | For Lang Dulay, weaving was never a craft to be commercialized. It was a calling.
Inside her modest home in Lake Sebu, strands of abaca became sacred cloth known as t’nalak. Each pattern was revealed to her in dreams, passed down through generations of T’boli women who believed that design was not invented but received.
For years, outsiders saw t’nalak as exotic décor, stripped of context and sold as trend. But Lang Dulay resisted dilution. Recognized as a National Living Treasure under the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, she insisted that every motif carried story, spirit, and identity.
She broke the stereotype of the “silent tribal weaver.” She spoke firmly about cultural ownership. She trained young T’boli women to weave not for mass markets, but for continuity.
In a fast-paced, factory-made world, she made patience powerful.
Beads of Identity | In Polomolok, another woman stitched resistance into fabric.
Yabing Masalon-Dulo’s embroidery shimmered with beads and intricate designs, but her artistry carried more than visual beauty. It carried the B’laan worldview.
At a time when Indigenous attire was reduced to festival costume, she asserted it as cultural language. Each garment she crafted declared that B’laan identity was neither outdated nor ornamental. It was living.
Her recognition as a National Living Treasure challenged a national narrative that modern success requires assimilation. She stood before institutions wearing the very tradition others once tried to sideline.
Through workshops and mentorship, she empowered younger B’laan women to wear their culture with pride, not apology.
Her needle did not just decorate cloth. It rewrote perception.
The Voice that Remembers | While cloth can be folded and stored, stories must be spoken to survive.
Myrna P**a, a T’boli oral historian, carries epics that trace ancestry, belief systems, and moral codes. In her voice lives a history not found in textbooks.
For generations, oral tradition was dismissed as informal, lesser than written scholarship. But when Myrna chants, listeners encounter a sophisticated worldview encoded in rhythm and metaphor.
She bridges generations, performing in cultural gatherings and educational spaces, ensuring that the young hear what the elders once whispered by firelight.
In a digital era where attention is fleeting, her storytelling demands stillness. It reminds audiences that knowledge existed long before microphones and manuscripts.
She dismantles the myth that progress means forgetting.
Beyond the Stereotype | Indigenous women have often been portrayed as background figures, photographed but unheard. These three women shifted that frame.
They claimed authorship over their craft.
They safeguarded intellectual and spiritual heritage.
They shaped conversations on cultural rights and identity.
Their recognition did not erase struggle. It amplified it. Land pressures, commercialization, and cultural appropriation remain pressing realities. Yet through loom, embroidery, and epic chant, they transformed vulnerability into visibility.
They proved that tradition is not the opposite of modernity. It is its foundation.
A Legacy Still Unfolding | Today, young Indigenous artists in Mindanao speak boldly about ownership, sustainability, and cultural pride. Their confidence is rooted in the labor of women who came before them.
Lang Dulay dreamed in patterns.
Yabing Masalon-Dulo stitched identity into being.
Myrna P**a keeps memory alive in every note she chants.
They broke barriers not with confrontation alone, but with continuity. Not by abandoning heritage, but by elevating it.
In South Cotabato, culture is not fading into history. It is being woven forward.
And in the steady hands of these women, the threads of the past have become the voice of the present.
