Remembering Resilience: Expedition Background
AUGUST 4, 2022
WASHINGTON, D.C. — I’ve never been to the Philippines before.
I was adopted at birth in Portland, Oregon, USA, thousands of miles away from my birth mother’s home in Cagayan River Valley. Like many people in diaspora, I often feel out of touch from my community and history. Living alone during the Covid-19 pandemic, I felt further isolated from any form of family or community. Quarantines rose and borders closed. After years of thinking "maybe I'll go to Philippines next year" or "the year after that," I wondered if I'd ever get to go at all.
In an effort to reconnect with my roots remotely, I reached out to Filipino (Ibanag and Itawis) researchers at the Cagayan Heritage Conservation Society in the Valley through social media. Culture inevitably shifts over with time, and we bonded over our interest in observing and documenting that shift while recognizing how we are a part of it. The researchers as lifelong community members giving back to their families and ancestors, myself as an adoptee and filmmaker returning home for the first time. We wondered if we could work together to further explore our identities and celebrate local heritage together. Fast forward to this year, and I'm in Tuguegarao City, along the Cagayan River, with my diary, a camera, and a lot of sunscreen.
While developing a collection of documentary short films here, I am meeting with elders to learn about oral traditions, attending LGBTQ+ community gatherings in the region, and gently unpacking my own complicated emotions around adoption and homecoming. My Filipino collaborators bring their own experiences to the project. In my field notes, they may each expand upon who they are, their role in the research and larger Cagayan community, and short and long term research goals for heritage conservation. I will also include fragments of their/our shared and separate observations, reflections, frustrations, and excitements. The expedition itself is a study in the complexities of "theirs" and "ours" and "mine." I refer to these field notes as fragments knowing entries may appear incomplete or in process, bringing up more questions than answers and asking us to engage in conversation and further investigation.
At the National Geographic Society, The Fulbright Program, and in the Western documentary filmmaking field, researchers, academics, and storytellers can either erase or cement history. Whose history gets preserved? Whose is washed away? American presence abroad resulted in my domestic transracial adoption, and now I carry with me the weight of my impact as an American living in the Philippines. I carry the weight of my family separation, and I carry the anxiety and anticipation of reunion -- with my land, my language(s), and my community.
As a filmmaker, I have the opportunity to engage directly with the personal, with my collaborators, project participants, and myself. The resulting collection of films (and any additional projects we envision) will feature their/our kaleidoscopic points of view and allow for Cagayan Valley communities to share their/our distinct identities and cultures, asking us all to reflect on globalization, growth, and change.
(Read this post in my NatGeo Field Notes: Remembering Resilience!)