Where T'Boli Bells Toll: Political Ecology Voices Behind the Tasaday Hoax

Kinship, coincidences and the desire to do 'anthropology at home triggered our interest and involvement in the Tasaday hoax and subsequent study on the T'boli. In August 1986 Duhaylungsod attended the International Conference on the Tasaday Controversy and other Urgent Anthropological Issues at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, which was the first professional examination of the controversy. She was then pursuing her Ph.D. from the University of Queensland in Australia and was back in the Philippines for fieldwork at the time the conference was held. During the conference, a group of T'boli from Maitum was presented as witnesses for the hoax side, some of whom are known to the Duhaylungsod family. Duhaylungsod's family through marriage has been residing in Mai tum for more than two decades on account of the family's work with a Protestant mission group. The Maitum community has long dismissed the Tasaday as an Elizalde creation, which accounts for Duhay lung sod's disinterest in the issue from the time it broke the headlines in the seventies. In the course of exchanging pleasantries and discussion with the group, Duhaylungsod was able to arrange a T'boli­accompanied trip to the caves a week after the conference. Unfortunately, she got sick that week, shortly afterwards militarization of the caves region ensued as a result of the escalation of the controversy.