Abstract

The Ibaloys are among the indigenous people of Cordillera in the Philippines who resisted Spanish attempts of Christianization for almost 300 years (Scott 1974), and thus were able to retain many of their traditional practices. I focus on the Ibaloys from Loakan, one of the barangays of Baguio City, which was one of the early Ibaloy settlements and formerly part of the municipality of Tuba located in the southern part of Benguet Province in the Northern Cordillera region of the Philippines. This paper examines the traditional death rituals of the Ibaloy people of Loakan, using Van Gennep’s (1960) concept of rituals as rites of passage subdivided into rites of separation, rites of transition, and rites of incorporation or reintegration.

As an Ibaloy born in Loakan where I grew up, I have observed Ibaloy death rituals in the community, deriving information from my participation in the rituals held for close family members. I also conducted the death rituals for my parents in Loakan. Key informant interviews with the only manbonong (traditional priestess) in Loakan, ritual practitioners and directors in my locale and other parts of Baguio City were also done to provide additional data and further clarification on specific aspects of the ritual. In addition, written sources on practices similar to the Ibaloy rituals in Loakan were used to corroborate and provide additional explanations to funerary practices common among the Ibaloys. Here, key terms referring to processes undertaken and objects used in the ritual are examined to reveal the function of the Ibaloy death ritual as a means by which to ensure the well- being of both the living and the dead.

Keywords: Rites of passage, death ritual, Ibaloy belief, funerary customs