MLE in Laoag, Zamboanga

NAKEM Conferences, MMSU hold MLE Forum, launch “SUKIMAT”

 

Nakem Conferences Philippines and Nakem Conferences International, in partnership with the Mariano Marcos State University jointly held the first-ever Mother Language Education Forum in Ilocos Norte. The forum was held July 16 at MMSU Laoag.  

 

In that same gathering, the Nakem also launched Sukimat: Researches on Ilokano and Amianan Studies, a joint publication of the Nakem International and Nakem Philippines.

 

Dr. Miriam Pascua, President of MMSU, gave the opening remarks. Provincial board member Hon. Maria Elena Nalupta, representing Governor Michael Keon, gave an inspirational commitment to support the MLE initiative in the province.

 

The forum discussed the urgency of MLE as a new approach to responding to the challenges of Philippine education.

 

Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawai’i, the Nakem Conferences International and the alliance, 170+Talaytayan MLE, delivered a presentation entitled “Mother Language Education, Cultural Democracy, and Social Justice” while Ricky Ma. Duran Nolasco of the University of the Philippines and president of 170+Talaytayan MLE delivered a lecture entitled, “Mother-Tongue Based Education and Sustainable Development.”

 

Earlier, on July 6, Agcaoili and Nolasco, together with Hon. Magtanggol Gunigundo, Atty. Manuel Lino Faelnar, Prof. Ched Arzadon, and Dr. Paraluman Giron were part of the Manila contingent for the first-ever Zamboanga City forum on MLE.

 

Gunigundo is the author of the House Bill 3179 that proposed for a Mother-Language Education until the sixth grade.

 

Faelnar is executive director of LUDABI, a group of Bisayan advocates pursuing the cause of diversity and pluralism and the promotion the Bisayan languages.

 

Arzadon teaches at the University of the Philippines’ College of Education while Giron is regional director of the Department of Education’s MIMAROPA.

 

Sukimat, the 4^th book of Nakem Conferences, and the first joint publication of Nakem International and Nakem Philippines, gathers the essays of 12 researchers who presented their works in during the 2007 and 2008 Nakem conferences held at MMSU and St. Mary’s University, respectively. These essays came from a pool of more than a hundred researches.

 

Meanwhile, those who served as reactors to the presentation were Dr. Norma Fernando, superintendent of Batac City Schools; Dr. Cecil Aribuabo, superintendent of Ilocos Norte Schools; Prof. Araceli Pastor, superintendent of Laoag City Schools; and Peter La. Julian, Philippine Daily Inquirer Northern Luzon bureau.

Other lectures and fora on MLE and related issues where Agcaoili will deliver a lecture or presentation have been slated for Dagupan City; for Tuguegarao City’s St Louis University; for Bayombong’s St. Mary’s University; and for Manila’s Polytechnique University of the Philippines.

 

 

Sukimat, 4th Nakem Book

Nakem Conferences to launch SUKIMAT

 

Published jointly by Nakem Conferences International and Nakem Conferences Philippines, SUKIMAT: RESEARCHES ON ILOKANO AND AMIANAN STUDIES IS the 4^th book of the Nakem Conferences.

 

Edited by Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, PhD, Anabelle Castro Felipe, PhD, and Alegria Tan Visaya, EdD, with a Foreword by Dr. Miriam Pascua, President of Mariano Marcos State University and a Critical Introduction by Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, PhD, President, Nakem Conferences International.

 

The Philippine edition is published by Nakem Conferences Philippines.

 

The Commission on the Filipino Language of the Republic of the Philippines provided partial funding for the publication of the book through a grant it awarded to Nakem in 2008.

 

The book, made up of 12 select essays from a pool of more than a 100 essays presented during the 2007 and 2008 Nakem Conferences held at Mariano Marcos State University and St. Mary’s University, respectively, is Nakem’s contribution to the growing national and international conversation on issues related to cultural pluralism, linguistic democracy, education to democracy and freedom, and mother language education.

 

The production of a liberatory form of knowledge based on linguistic diversity and cultural pluralism in a country that has grown so accustomed to both external and internal colonialism is one of the challenging cultural works in our globalized world. It demands the deployment of critical tools and the engagement of culture advocates in the effort to evolve a new form of consciousness that is ready to announce the good news of cultural and linguistic democracy. Sukimat—the work of scholars, academics, and cultural workers committed to the exchange and diffusion of knowledge and information on Ilokano and Amianan Studies—offers a way to rethink of education to democracy and freedom.

 

 

Sukimat-Foreword

Excerpted from the book, "Sukimat" (Nakem Conferences Press 2009). Eds. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, Anabelle Castro Felipe, and Alegria Tan Visaya. 

To Name Ourselves Once Again—

and To Know Why We are Doing It:

A Foreword

 

 

Miriam E. Pascua, Ph.D.

President, Mariano Marcos State University

 

 

             When the Nakem Conference based at the Ilokano Language and Literature Program of the University of Hawai’i proposed that we at Mariano Marcos State University hold the 2^nd Nakem Conference at our university, I had it in mind of one thing, clear and simple: that it is high time we named ourselves once again and claim this name as our way of looking for our self-redemption as a people of the Philippines and of the world. In the interest of a political project to render us all “Filipinos”, we have forgotten that there have been other ethnolinguistic groups that have existed prior to this political identity we call the Philippines. These ethnolinguistic groups, we now know, come close to the broad notion of “nation”.  

 

Given this kind of a premise, we know deep in our hearts as a people of the Amianan that we have had the Ilokano nation, as the other nations have had that kind of identity and self-knowledge, before we ever thought of claiming our new political identity as Filipinos as a result of the outsider—and invader and colonizer—naming us. At the 3^rd Nakem Conference held at St. Mary’s University, the Honorable Carlos Padilla said that we are not to imagine that we have an Ilokano nation but make this nation work because there is, indeed, the Ilokano nation beyond our imagination. 

 

             When I took over as President of MMSU, I have always been cognizant of the holistic way to produce human knowledge by that productive union between the scientific and the artistic, between the empirical sciences and the cultural sciences, between the hard sciences and the sciences of the human, as the interpreters of human knowledge tell us today. In the many innovations and initiatives that we do at this university, I insist—as do all our university researchers and instructional faculty insist—that the kind of knowledge that we do produce and are able to validate is a kind of knowledge that we can diffuse because useful for our local communities and for our end-users. We are aware of our university’s commitment to the cause of the people of the Ilocos and Amianan.

 

When that opportunity for us to host the 2^nd Nakem Conference came, the first outside the United States, we took it seriously. There were no ifs and buts, even if we knew that the task was not easy. 

 

We were to take part in this idea whose time has come, this idea that in the act of resisting our homogenization in the interest of an abstract project of Philippine nationhood, we ought not to lose our names, we ought not to lose our sense of self, we ought not to lose our nation in an ethnolinguistic sense, as it were. We know that cultural diversity and the political agendum towards cultural pluralism are terms that cannot be used for selfish ends but are to be pursued to ascertain that the ends of cultural and social justice are being served. Indeed, we are a nation among nations, as some scholars on Ilokano and Amianan life have asserted. We must make a vow to make it happen that the “nations” in the equation in the bigger notion of the “nation” are not to be left out but are included as terms in that equation. In failing to do that, we shall have failed our people, we shall have failed our communities, we shall have failed the Ilokano and Amianan nation, we shall have failed the Philippine nation as well.

 

              Through this anthology, we get a glimpse of the kind of engagements of our various intellectuals from our various colleges and universities that have aligned themselves with the cause of Nakem Conferences. These engagements provide a backdrop to the kind of knowledge that we need to deploy in order to resist our homogenization, in order to make meaningful our quest for knowledge, and in order to announce to ourselves the less-traveled road that we have taken to name ourselves once again. 

 

             We continue to plumb the promise of the Ilokano and Amianan nation to the Ilokano and Amianan people to offer alternative ways for our self-reflection and self-knowledge, alternative ways to make us realize our duty to offer something more substantive because meaningful knowledge to our people and eventually to make us commit our intellectual energies and resources to the pursuit of a liberating form of knowledge that we can proudly offer to our Amianan nation and to the Philippine nation.

 

             In this sense, this anthology culled from the papers presented at the 2007 and 2008 Nakem Conferences, is a testimony and a testament to that kind of intellectual engagement we wish to sustain among the colleges, universities, organizations, and independent scholars who share the vision of Nakem Conferences International and Nakem Conferences Philippines, a vision for cultural pluralism, cultural democracy, and linguistic justice.

 

            The task ahead will be full of challenges.

 

            But these essays here give us a clear clue to where we are going. 

 

 

 

 

Sukimat-Acknowledgements

(Excerpted from the book, Sukimat, Nakem Conferences Press 2009, eds. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, Anabelle Castro Felipe, Alegria Tan Visaya)

Acknowledgements

 

This anthology, the fourth in the series of Nakem publications since 2006 and a combined publication effort of Nakem Conference Philippines and Nakem Conferences International, would not have been possible were it not for the financial and moral support of the Commission on the Filipino Language of the Republic of the Philippines.  

The Commission, then chaired in an acting capacity by Dr. Ricardo Ma. Duran Nolasco, provided partial funding for the publication of its publication.

 

Dr. Nolasco made it certain that Nakem Conferences—even at its initial stages in the Philippines, when the cause of cultural democracy and social equity in language was still an intellectual discourse that is not worth the time of many academics, even those espousing nationalism and freedom—would get the necessary support from the Commission. During his watch at the Commission, Nakem Conferences was able to learn the ways to organizing work and to identifying issues that matter to the people of the Amianan. He also made it a point to come and inspire the Nakem participants in the two conferences held at Mariano Marcos State University in Batac in 2007 and at St. Mary’s University in Bayombong in 2008.

 

             We wish to acknowledge the help of two university presidents who made it sure that the Nakem Conferences held in their places were to be the best that they could offer: Dr. Miriam E. Pascua of Mariano Marcos University and the Rev. Fr. Dr. Manuel Valencia of St. Mary’s University. We can only thank them enough for opening the doors of their “intellectual and academic homes” to the pilgrims of Nakem Conferences.

 

The first Board of Directors of Nakem Conferences Philippines deserve our thanks for making this organization a reality to reckon with in the advancing of the cause of Nakem, of the cause of cultural pluralism and diversity, and of the cause of advancing the promotion, protection, and perpetuation of the mother, first, and native languages of the Amianan. In particular, we owe our thanks to the following members of the board: Nancy GB. Balantac (Mariano Marcos State University), Zacarias A. Baluscang Jr. (Apayao State College), Carmen P. Centeno (Department of Education), Josephine R. Domingo (MMSU), Edil H. Duran (DepEd), Norma L. Fernando (DepEd), Andres Malinnag Jr. (University of Northern Philippines), Bonifacio V. Ramos (St. Mary’s University), Marie Rose Q. Rabang (UNP), Jaime G. Raras (UNP), Noemi U. Rosal (University of the Philippines), and Elena C. Toquero (Isabela State University).  

 

            So many have made Nakem Conferences happen: the teachers and academics who began to believe that, yes, together we can explore the ways to rethinking about ourselves as a people of the Amianan and to revisiting the ways in which we have to know ourselves; the cultural workers who tirelessly supported our conferences including the working committees of both the 2007 and 2008 Nakem International Conferences; the individuals and political leaders who came to support us even when we have yet to show our force; and to the education leaders and thinkers who believe in what Nakem stands for in the area of education to freedom and democracy. To all of you, our endless utang a naimbag a nakem, our endless gratitude and thanks.

 

 

Aurelio Solver Agcaoili

Nakem Conference International

University of Hawai’i

 

Anabelle Castro Felipe

Nakem Conference Philippines

Mariano Marcos State University

 

Alegria Tan Visaya

Nakem Conferences Philippines

Mariano Marcos State University