“We cannot always build a future for our youth, but we can always build our youth for the future.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt
The lady from Fiji, Diyan, Mumbaki Lagitan–different people, different walks of life, but I learned something important. Love your people. Look for them, talk to them, and love them hard. There is still so much more to do for the Filipino community, but we need to stand in solidarity with each other in order to move forward and to create change. It is through our people, our indigenous people, and our Filipino values that will allow us to build a stronger foundation for our nation to stand on.
Gossip, competition, animosity, greed, and lots of friction between its members, are some of the things that I’ve witness come alive in Filipino communities. It was what started my bitterness and my shame in our kapwa. We don’t do enough to bring us together. And I failed in this too, as I didn’t do anything. I’ve only become a mere bystander as opposed as an advocate for solidarity. I’ve looked into some of the Filipino organizations and many of them are headed by older Filipino members of the community who think that galas, golf tournaments, and showcasing wealth and beauty through pageants are the best way to solidify our community. But the beauty of the Filipinos lies in our values of kapamilya, katapatan, positibong pananaw, pananampalataya, katatagan, and lakas ng loob. Old school Filipino organizations exist as a platform to show who is better than whom through beauty and wealth.
But there’s hope. I’ve come to realize that instead of becoming frustrated and feeling stuck, I have to look at the good in everything. I’ve realized that there is hope to topple this cycle of nepotism, egotism, and greed in the Filipino community. And you don’t have to look far to find the answer.
Youth. As cliché as it sounds, the youth are our future to the Filipino diaspora. We need to teach and to apply the true values of our kapwa and we need to act as role models. If we continue to teach that beauty, whiteness, pagibig, competition, and showbiz are the only ways to find happiness, we will only find ourselves in the same position. We cannot rely on celeb-turned-politicians or famous actors and actresses showcasing westernized lifestyles to fight poverty, malnourishment, social inequality, drug trade, human trafficking, and so much more social injustices. Sometimes we forget that children and youth emulate what they constantly watch. If their lives are all about love stories and showbiz–that will continue to be the mindset for our future.
But I’ve seen a change…
If it’s something that I’ve learned when I was at the Kultura Festival, it is the fact that Filipino youth are rediscovering and reclaiming what was taken by the colonization periods of the Philippines…and they’re thriving. I’ve never seen so many people–just like me–flaunting their dark black hair and our beautiful brown skins. I felt like I belonged and that I didn’t have to hide. This connectedness was felt through the food, the people, the music, the dancing, the cheering, and the comradery. I’ve never been to anything like it, even though I have been to plenty. It’s just the feeling was different–I felt like it was an authentic and genuine experience. I witnessed young people, my age or possibly younger/older, using their talents, their passions to help our Filipino community evolve through the arts and giving the youth an opportunity to find role models in the community, as opposed to their television screens.
And maybe that’s the answer. The Arts. Whether it’s the fusion through the culinary arts, music, dance, visual art, or theater, I saw how we can learn to adapt. There are people out there that want to keep our kultura alive, but we also need to do our part to recognize that we need to continually participate and support each other.
Theater. At the Carlos Bulosan Theater booth, we had met Mia and Holi, two theater management students from the Philippines. Upon meeting, we briefly talked about who Carlos Bulosan was and the role he played in the Filipino diaspora as a poet and writer. And it is his name that they used for theater to showcase various works by contemporary Filipino playwrights. And it is in his struggles and in his activism that we find hope in the theater community, that is much overlooked by the Filipino communities. But it is here we find young Filipinos trying to reconcile their identities with this binary of Filipino-Canadian and trying to put their experiences onstage for people to witness. And it is in Mia and Holi’s conversation with us that I realized that there are people trying to make things work, but we are not doing enough to spread the word.
The Bruha of all Bruhas. When I first saw that shirt on someone, I chuckled, because bruha has always had a negative connotation in my life. It was a form of criticism on how people looked. And to see it on someone, made me laugh, because I thought it was a humorous way of resisting the word. Victoria Marie is the mastermind behind the Bruha clothing line and when asked about her choice of the word bruha she said, “My mom used to call me bruha, because of my hair in the mornings And when I researched the word, it turns out it was the word (meaning witch) that the Spanish used to call women who were strong, resistant, and independent.” And it is this word that inspired Victoria Marie to create a clothing line to change the meaning of this word and turn it into something empowering–especially for Filipino women.
Creativity, independence, adaptability, resistance, and resiliency are the words to describe Kultura Fest Toronto. And it is all thanks to Kapisanan for helping me see that these are the words that embody the Filipino community. They are doing so much to empower Filipino youth through the arts. And they are helping to guide young people into a future where the Filipino culture will remain to astound people in its rich history and in its traditions. And this is what we need to do, we need to invest in our young people. We need to show them that there is more to what the media shows us. We need to show our youth that we are proud of who we are and our kapwa. And we need to support these community organizations to not just build a future for our youth, but to allow our youth rediscover what it means to be Filipino. There has been so much taken away from us and we are only starting to finding our voices in the global community. And these voices will only fade away if they do not find a platform to stand on. So, let us continue to find ways for the Filipino in us to thrive and to support the people who have made this their life’s work.
Salamat,
Want to check out the organizations or people mentioned in this post? Check out the links below.
Carlos Bulosan Theatre
The XX Collection (Bruha by VM)
Kapisanan
A Moreno Blogs 