Chanting stories of tradition: A Fulbright student’s experience in the Philippines
Meet David Gowey, a Fulbright student during the 2023-24 cycle. He's pursuing his PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology at the School of Human Evolution and Change in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at ASU. With a Fulbright Open Study/Research Award, he went to the Philippines to study how students, teachers, and parents affiliated with Schools of Living Tradition in Calinog relate to these schools and their curricula. His research focuses on the learning and application of traditional Panay Bukidnon songs, dances, and Sugidanon epics (long chanted stories containing the beliefs, character traits, lifestyles, and practices of Central Panay indigenous peoples).
During his Fulbright journey, he delved into the rich traditions of the Panay Bukidnon community and learned about chanting as a form of ethnic heritage and livelihood. He was also involved in an intricate process of recording and organizing donation drives for traditional clothing.
In this engaging conversation, Gowey reveals the Fulbright program's profound impact on himself and the host community. He shares transformative challenges and insights while bridging academic and cultural divides between the United States and the Philippines.
What inspired you to pursue a Fulbright award?
I was inspired by how open the program is to different projects and cultural exchange rather than just a short-term research project.
Can you share a memorable or transformative moment from your Fulbright experience that shaped your perspective or research trajectory?
It's more of a series of moments, but my recording process for Sugidanon epics will stick with me. I really enjoyed taking time over 5-6 months to listen to the stories performed by a master chanter, ask clarifying questions when he took breaks and discuss plans for the future regarding our recordings. It'll be a long time before any of those stories are published, but I hope that by that time, they'll be helpful to his family and other Panay Bukidnon people.
How has your research as a Fulbright student helped bridge cultural or academic divides between your home country and the host country?
Aside from what I learned, there were also the unavoidable questions I continually got from Panay Bukidnon people about life in the United States, so I spent a lot of time discussing cultural similarities and differences. Some of that was dispelling misconceptions like that Americans don't go into debt or eat rice, which I usually said depended on the person. I hope our conversations helped give people a more nuanced view of the U.S. that they could relate to since sometimes it's perceived as a place without its own challenges or varied experiences.
How have you navigated challenges during your Fulbright journey, and what strategies have you used to overcome them?
When applying for Fulbright and experiencing challenges, I worked closely with the Office of National Scholarships Advisement to polish my application materials and make my project proposal more specific. Once I got to the Philippines, the big thing was communicating with family and friends, including some people I'd known for a long time in Iloilo. I also read many books and took breaks every couple of weeks (e.g., going to the beach). It might sound counterintuitive that breaks helped me focus. Still, one thing about anthropological research is that you're always in research mode, which can get tiring without time to step away and recenter yourself.
Can you discuss any unexpected discoveries or insights from your research or interactions during your Fulbright award?
One unexpected thing was that two of the Filipino School for Living Tradition programs in Calinog, where I'd planned to study, had closed several years before I arrived and I didn’t find out until I got there. This was a great opportunity to work with people in those communities and get the programs running again during my research. It's not an ideal or a long-term solution, but it did give young people an idea of what to expect when the programs are operating full-time. It showed me that the impact of these schools has been very far-reaching in the past and people in these communities remembered the feelings of accomplishment and pride they felt as students even ten years later and wanted to pass those on to their children.
How do you envision applying the knowledge and experiences gained during your Fulbright experience to your future academic or professional endeavors?
I see several ways! The first would be my dissertation, which I'll still work on for the following year. Second, I plan to look into job opportunities that will allow me to use my federal non-competitive eligibility as a Fulbright alumni, which is usually only offered to military veterans or the Peace Corps.
How have you engaged with local communities or organizations in your host country, and how have these collaborations impacted your work?
One project I did as a Fulbright student was to organize a donation drive to buy supplies for kids in the communities where I worked to make their traditional clothing; this included red cloth, different colors of thread, needles and old Philippine coins that they could punch holes in and hang from headbands or necklaces. I'd like the kids to use that project to practice traditional embroidery, make something they can wear, and be proud of when they perform to represent their communities. As far as their impact on my work, I got to learn a lot about not just the struggle that many Panay Bukidnon people in these communities undergo to put together a complete set of traditional clothing but also the willingness they have to learn and pass down their cultural knowledge to future generations.
What advice would you offer future students in similar academic exchange programs?
Research where you'd like to work, what you plan to do and why you absolutely need to do it there. Your application needs to be as specific as possible, especially with Fulbright. Even if you don't have preexisting ties with the community where you'll live, it's important to establish that connection early on.
What advice would you give to students working with ONSA?
Don't be afraid to reach out! There's a whole office of people whose job is to help you and other applicants. They've read lots of applications before and only want you to succeed.
How did living in Iloilo Province and your previous research on Sugidanon influence your decision to pursue this Fulbright project?
I wouldn't have applied for Fulbright and certainly wouldn't have come up with this specific project without that previous experience living in Iloilo Province. Not only did that experience help me make connections that were important to my research, but I also gained enough understanding about Sugidanon epics that I knew some of the right questions to ask as a Fulbright student. There's no substitute for learning about the epics with master chanters and being able to ask them the meanings of words, the motivations of characters in the stories and the cultural significance of what they do.
Your project focuses on Schools of Living Tradition (SLTs) in Calinog. What significant insights or discoveries have you made about how these schools impact the Panay Bukidnon communities socially and economically?
My research with the SLTs showed how interconnected ethnic performance and art forms are with people's livelihoods and dreams for their children. Panay Bukidnon and other Indigenous people around the world face expectations to act in certain (often stereotypical) ways; one of those is that they know how to perform traditional songs and dances or make handicrafts. If they have access to them, they can sometimes turn these into a way to support their families. Teaching and learning traditional knowledge also helps bring generations together as elders share their experiences with young people.
Could you elaborate on the data collection methods you've used, such as photovoice and interviews, and how they have contributed to preserving oral histories and folktales within the SLTs?
My research methods helped me better understand students' experiences at the SLTs by letting them speak about what they got out of their education. What I did was observe and participate as a student in the SLTs every Saturday and then as we got closer to the end of my three months in each community, I asked kids who were willing to be interviewed about their participation in the school and made videos for a contest that I sponsored at the school. Interviews were usually focus groups and lasted 30-60 minutes with questions on what they learned at the SLTs, how they think it might help them, if their friends or relatives had any feedback about them attending the school, etc.
Photovoice is a research method that typically uses pictures, but I modified it a bit to use short videos instead. The kids would either conduct a 5-minute interview with an elder about their childhood or record themselves practicing something they learned at the SLT; this was partly to help them be bold about performing for others since they could record themselves practicing at home with no one else watching. Before I left each community, I put on a film showing for the kids and their parents, which everyone enjoyed.
Your plans for cultural exchange include teaching English and sharing American cultural products. What impact do you foresee on the community's engagement with audiences outside the Philippines?
Social media is huge in Panay Bukidnon communities, as in many places around the world, and many people there rely on it to sell traditional handicrafts like embroidery and connect with organizations that hire them as cultural performers. Sometimes, this communication is done in English since there's been a growing awareness of Panay Bukidnon outside the Philippines. The impact would be that more of them feel comfortable communicating in English because even though many of them learned it in school, they rarely get opportunities to speak it with first-language speakers.
How do you envision continuing to support and collaborate with the Panay Bukidnon communities in areas like cultural heritage preservation and linguistic revitalization beyond your Fulbright project?
I see my support and collaboration continuing through oral literature preservation. I had the opportunity to record 15 Sugidanon epics with one Panay Bukidnon chanter whose family I'd known for over ten years. They reached out to me to see if I'd be willing to record and of course I was, since I'd always wanted to get involved in that but didn't know of any chanters willing to work with me. These epics are excellent sources of cultural and linguistic information, but more than that, they're genuinely entertaining and could really help get Panay Bukidnon's young people involved in the research process if they had the resources and time to do so. As expert chanters get older, it's even more critical for their descendants to have access to recordings like mine and written transcripts so they can learn how to perform the epics in full.
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments, host institutions, corporations, and foundations in foreign countries and in the United States also provide direct and indirect support. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The Program operates in over 160 countries worldwide.