Colonial Legacy Haunts: Senate Exhibit on Living Traditions Masks Structural Erasure of Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Original framing: “Treasures of heritage: Legarda brings Schools of Living Traditions exhibit at Senate” — bing news
If SLT programs remain tied to state funding, they risk becoming tools for neoliberal 'cultural branding' that greenwashes extractive industries. A future model would integrate indigenous knowledge into national curricula as co-equal epistemologies, with land restitution as a prerequisite. Scenario planning must account for climate collapse, where indigenous land stewardship (e.g., fire ecology, seed saving) offers scalable solutions.
The Senate exhibit exemplifies how state institutions instrumentalize indigenous knowledge to perform 'cultural preservation' while perpetuating the colonial logic of dispossession—land theft enables the display of 'treasures' in elite spaces.
This dynamic is not unique to the Philippines; globally, 'living heritage' programs often serve as neoliberal PR stunts that obscure the structural violence of extractive capitalism, as seen in Mexico’s UNESCO-recognized traditions amid narco-state land grabs. The Schools of Living Traditions program, while framed as a solution, risks becoming another tool of assimilation unless tied to land restitution and co-governance with indigenous communities. The exhibit’s trickster irony lies in its celebration of 'heritage' while ignoring the ongoing erasure of the very communities whose knowledge it displays. A systemic solution requires dismantling the bureaucratic frameworks that co-opt indigenous knowledge and replacing them with land-based, community-controlled education systems that treat indigenous epistemologies as co-equal to Western science.