Textiles that Wrap the Dead: Some Ritual and Secular Uses of the Binaliwon Blanket of Upland Kalinga, Northern Luzon

The focal points of this exposition are the shifting sacred and secular aspects of a particular upland spirit world cloth—the binaliwon blanket —and its ritual uses within and external to indigenous funeral contexts. Yet there is also a previous journey all binaliwon blankets make as secular mercantile items, threaded and knotted on the weaver’s loom, and bought and sold in the realm of economic exchange.1 Notwithstanding, what I will explore here is the nature of the binaliwon as people bring it into the realm of ritual exchange, and the uses to which people put the blanket specifically because of its taboo nature and deep spirit world connection. Previous ethnographers of the Cordillera have described general characteristics and actions of spirits and spirits of the dead; among them Barton (1930, 1938), De Raedt (1989, 1993, 1996), Dozier (1966), Scott (1969) and Sugguiyao (1990). Barton (1963) and Fay-Cooper Cole (1922) also briefly report on upland funerary practices and mortuary textile use. However, local people’s ritual use of the Kalinga funeral blanket, particularly in regard to its taboo characteristics and the exchange practices to which people adhere, remains to be fully explored. I begin this exploration with a short vignette. Peter is a farmer in his fifties, an artisan and active member of Torcao village. He has never been short on stories of Torcao’s past, or on enthusiasm in detailing aspects of its culture for me over my year-long stay in the community in 2008. He lives with his family in a modest home on the periphery of the village, a wet-rice cultivating barangay of around 150 households in the southern Kalinga uplands. One day Peter spoke to me of Koya, a man from a neighboring village who had many years ago come to Torcao on a hunting raid, but who had himself met with a violent end. People say he had become a miratoy, a fearsome spirit who at nights still comes to Torcao in search of the descendents of those who had killed him. To this day the spirit still carries with it a head axe, and wears a binaliwon blanket—the customary blanket used to wrap the dead in their coffins, and which is then taken with the spirit into the hereafter.