N is for Nakem (Wisdom and More)
ABCs of Recovering Ilocano series (#14 of 26)
I was translating my father’s story in Bannawag, an Ilocano magazine in the Philippines, and stumbled on the word nakem. Growing up, I understood it to mean awareness, such as when we got scolded for misbehaving. “Adda nakemyon.” You should have known better or you’re old enough to understand.
An Ilocano dictionary by Carl Ralph Galvez Rubino defines it as:
Na’kem: n. mind, will, free will, intellect, sense, reasoning, good mental capacity
I searched for books online, and the first that popped up was Wisdom and Silence: Essays on Philippine Nakem Philosophy, by Danilo S. Alterado. The back cover showed a picture and a short bio, indicating that he was a professor at Saint Louis University in Baguio City, Philippines. What a small word! That is my alma mater as well. One of the chapters was written by my fifth-grade teacher.
I found the author on Facebook and started a conversation. He invited me to an event in the US in July 2023. “Why don’t you come to the Nakem Conference?”
NAKEM stands for National Alliance for Knowledge, Empowerment, and Meaning. The conference’s theme spoke to me: 'HERSTORIES' AND 'HISTORIES' OF DIVERSITY: Narrating (Im)migrant and Multiples Lives and Engaging the Community in the Margins.
Unfortunately, I had a schedule conflict and could not attend the July conference.
I have been writing and researching our family tree for a long time and increased the project’s focus and intensity since the pandemic. Before my grandmother passed away, I had asked her what she learned from her mother. She answered, “Agdait ken agabel.”
She learned to sew on the Singer sewing machine and to weave (agabel) using a large wooden loom. She wove cotton to make blankets (ules) and clothing. I loved my inabel blankets. The fabric is versatile and lets the air breathe. In summer, it is airy, and in the colder months, it serves as a cocoon to trap body warmth.
This video shows indigenous weaving in the Cordillera and Ilocos Regions. The colors and patterns represent the different tribes.
SPECIALS: MOUNTAIN SPIRITS | Living Asia Channel (HD)
I searched for examples of indigenous weaving and discovered The Hinabi Project based in San Francisco. I emailed the listed contact, who connected me to Rachel Lozada. We started chatting, and she mentioned having workshops in the Bay Area. “I’m displaying some of my ules (blankets) in the Nakem Conference.”
There it is again. The conference was rescheduled to November, because of a conflict with a Taylor Swift concert in July. All hotel rooms were booked and traffic would be horrible.
This time, I was available. I looked up the conference with more intent. I signed up and was lucky enough to be hosted by my cousins, who live near San Jose.
I did not know what to expect on the first morning of the three-day conference. I signed in, and within minutes, found connections everywhere - from Ilocos, Baguio City, and Saint Louis University (SLU). It was truly a small world.
The first person I sat with was Dr. Sonja Chan, a neighbor of mine from San Luis Village in Baguio City. She taught at SLU and her children went to the same schools as my siblings and I did. She read from her poetry book Listen Dear Heart: Umarasaas ‘Tay Rikna and discussed Ilokano as a literary language. I believed her concept that Ilokano is a romantic language.
I’ve witnessed this lyricism in my father’s tongue, called nauneg nga Ilokano, which means deep. Even my relatives in Ilocos do not use it in ordinary conversation. This written form of the language is commonly seen in Bannawag, the literary magazine of the Ilokano word. It was established in 1934 as an experiment, a counterpart to the Tagalog magazine Liwayway. Bannawag also means the break of dawn, and the magazine was so successful that it still thrives today. A writer in Ilokano has made it if he gets published in the magazine.
Papa wrote for Bannawag and local radio stations from the 1960s to 1980s. Every night, I went to bed with the sounds of the typewriter clacking away. He banged on the key to get through all six layers of onion skin paper and the carbon paper between them. I used to deliver the scripts to the radio station, and each voice actor had a copy for the recording session.
When I hear nauneg nga Ilokano, I think of songs such as O Naraniag A Bulan. In its English translation, the strength of the emotion is lost. I cannot feel the pleading for a mere sliver of the moon’s light to brighten one’s desolate world.
O Naraniag A Bulan
O naraniag a bulan
Un-unnoyko indengam
Dayta naslag a silawmo
Dika kad ipaidam
O naraniag a bulan
Sangsangitko indengam
Toy nasipnget a lubongko
Inka kad silawan
Tapno diak mayyaw-awan
O Bright Moon
O bright moon
My requests hear them
Your bright light
Don't hide it from me
O bright light
My cries hear them
My dark world
Give it your light
So I will not get lost
What was I seeking in attending the Nakem Conference? Maybe I was looking to fall in love with the Ilokano culture, which I took for granted growing up in the Philippines. In elementary school, our teachers encouraged us to speak only English. I still remember being punished for speaking in the vernacular.
Anyone caught speaking Tagalog, Ilokano or Igorot had to pay a fine into what I called the jar of shame. Back then, twenty-five centavos were the entirety of my allowance and with it, I could buy banana-que (thick plantain deep-fried in brown sugar) or a piece of pan de sal (salted bread) for my snack. Speaking English was more convenient than having a rumbly tummy.
“It’s a Small World,” can also be described as the concept of Six Degrees of Separation. In attending the Nakem Conference, I was astounded at how I signed in the roster with “No affiliation.” By the end of the conference, I was connected to hundreds of participants. Delegates from Hawai’i, Canada, the Philippines, and many US states attended, all having PhDs except for me. Yet, the topics transcended academia, and I certainly related to the presentations on food, music, culture, economy, education, entertainment, film, immigration, literature, psychology, and politics. Manilatown Heritage Foundation in San Francisco displayed a community weaving project and performed songs using indigenous instruments. We watched a screening of My Partner, a film in the BL, or Boy’s Love genre.
I met professors from Saint Louis University who knew my sisters, brothers, mother, aunts, and uncles. Delegates from the University of Northern Philippines (UNP) knew my paternal relatives in Santa Catalina, Ilocos Sur. Other participants who presented a paper on the efficacy of wells for a community’s well-being and irrigation knew my Uncle Padi, the parish priest of Magsingal, Ilocos Sur, where they conducted the study.
The wildest connection was Manong Filiburth Plana Maybitiun, who is currently the principal of Santa Catalina High School. It was formerly called the Benito Soliven Institute, and my mother taught math there in the mid-1960s. Manong Filiburth went to seminary with my Uncle and another cousin, whom he would visit in Seattle after the conference. He also taught at SLU where I went to school. His mother was an aunt’s co-teacher. His maternal grandfather, also a school principal, was my grandmother Mama Ching’s grade school teacher in Bacsil, Lapog, Ilocos Sur in the 1930s. Senor Plana often visited Lapog and brought his friend Claudio to a fiesta there. He introduced him to his former student, and the rest is history. I wrote about how my grandparents met in a previous post:
I came away from the conference feeling that I am not alone in my search to understand my culture. Since then, I have kept many connections, and often lean on many to enlighten my research. Manong Filiburth helped me with my article on the Bessang Pass (H is for Hapon in this series).
Dr. Aurelio Agcaoili helped me clarify the use of Ilocano versus Ilokano in K is for Kabsat. Dr. Agcaoili (called Manong Agca by the Ilokano world) chairs the Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, the only American University to offer a Bachelor of Arts specializing in Ilokano.
I remember “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” a game that arose from a comment from the actor that he had worked with everyone in Hollywood. The game challenges the players to pick an actor or a film and connect them to Kevin Bacon in less than six links.
In the Ilocano world, Dr. Agcaoili is the Kevin Bacon. Instead of Six Degrees of Separation, many of us find that we are linked by one or two degrees of connection.
What is the Philippine Nakem Philosophy?
In Wisdom and Silence, Dr. Agcaoili describes the Philippines as a colonized nation - first by the Spanish, second by the Americans, and third by the Japanese. The fourth colonization is internal - the imposition of Tagalog as a national language, and the under-representation of other groups such as Cebuanos, Visayans, and Ilokanos.
The relevance, thus, of Nakem philosophy, is this: it rearticulates and reiterates the vision of freedom; the vision of democracy, and the vision of an education that matters.
Aurelio Solver Agcaoili
Ilokano Language and Literature Program
University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, USA
Reading Recommendations:
Inabel: Weaving Traditions of Ilocos and Abra
O Naraniag a Bulan translation
Manilatown Heritage Foundation
My Partner, a movie by Keli'i Grace
Glad to read that the conference was so successful for you! My mom attended an American colonial school in the early 20th century, and also described being punished for not speaking English. Now I'm thinking of learning Bisayan (my dad's side of the family spoke it) from an online course...
Racielle, Nice piece! Wow sana all! One of my poems "The Family Tree" relates my father's experience in the early 1920's "...the teachers would fine us a centavo each time were used an Ilocano word...." So that would have been 20 years into the American English project after the Philippine-American War. I would like to send you an e-mail. I will DM you on Instagram to give you my e-mail. Or do you have it because I subscribe to your blog? I will send you a scan of a vintage Ilocano letter.