Sagada is a municipality in the Philippine Cordillera Central mountain range in the northwest of Luzon Island. Throughout much of its history, Sagada’s Northern Kankanaey indigenous community practised subsistence farming. Today, living traditions in Sagada remain closely interwoven with indigenous knowledge and engagement with the land, traditional practices and rituals, conservation of indigenous places and cooperative community approaches. The rituals associated with the begnas —a collection of agro-cultural ceremonies and a community feast—are still practised but face the risk of discontinuation or being performed with compromised integrity. The article presents three types of indigenous sacred places integral to the begnas . These places comprise a landscape of ceremonies, rituals and customs of Sagada Kankanaey life and identity. The dap-ay is a stone-paved council meeting area within villages, the patpatayan is a sacred tree or grove on a hilltop and the babawi-an is used for omen observation during rituals. The study illuminates their role in the begnas and the broader cultural landscape, as well as varying approaches to conserving these sites. Safeguarding these tangible places is essential to safeguarding the intangible cultural practices and indigenous knowledge, ultimately ensuring the well-being of the Kankanaey community.
Haenraets et al. (Sat,) studied this question.
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