Blog #10: Finding Home
Where are you from?
To answer that question, you might think of a place called home. But what is home?
Is it the city where you were born? Is it the country of your ethnic origin? Is it the house where you grew up? Can it be represented by a person or a group of people? Is it a feeling? What if you’ve lived in multiple places?
These questions overlap and trigger the identity crisis that I experience every time someone asks me where I’m from. As exaggerated as it sounds, I’ve lived in a total of seven different cities during my upbringing in the Bay Area. That includes… Berkeley, then Richmond, then El Cerrito, then Lafayette, then San Francisco, then San Pablo, then Oakland (then back to Richmond). When I say I’m from the Bay Area, I genuinely mean that.
There’s an added layer of meaning to saying you’re from the Bay Area though, because each city has its own unique culture. All my life, I’ve learned to assimilate to those unique cultures. The amalgamation of people, places and ways of life are what make up my perception of home. But the Bay Area wouldn’t mean anything special if it weren’t for my loud and proud family that runs deep throughout. The colorful lines that weave throughout each corner of the BART map hover over the homes of all my favorite people. The Bay Area is my home because my family is my home.
For these reasons and more, I have become quick to answer the question “where are you from?” with “the Bay Area.”
However, if you were to ask me where I’m from in the context of my cultural identity, I would be quick to answer with “The Philippines.”
Understanding what it means to be “Filipino” is just about as confusing as making sense of the “Bay Area” identity. The country of the Philippines was colonized by more countries than you could imagine… China, Japan, Spain, America and more. That means 4+ countries across history imposing their own cultures on the Filipinos and forcing them to assimilate. Filipinos have survived throughout history by abandoning and redefining their culture to save their own lives. By being obedient shapeshifters.
I want to dismantle this narrative because I believe that Filipinos are meant to stand out. We don’t have to be obedient in order to survive anymore. I understand my positionality as a privileged Filipino American saying that, but I feel comfortable stating it because this is the reality I desire for my people. I pray that we may find peace and liberation to someday agree that conformity is not necessary to be tolerated in society. Our uniqueness is what makes us gifts to this world.
The Philippines had a RICH culture before other countries started to take over and erase our ways of life. The indigenous Filipinos lived off the land with only the resources necessary to survive. They told multiple stories and developed an incredible understanding of the spiritual world and how they connected to it through Mother Nature. They were wild and free. That scared the colonizers, who were determined to tame us in every way they could by introducing their own language, religion and culture.
Sometimes I wonder what life would look like if the Philippines were never colonized by another country. How different would our existence be? What would my last name be? What language would I speak? What “religion” would I follow? What food would I eat?
Of all the colonizers, Spain occupied the Philippines for the longest. Three hundred and thirty-three years, in fact. They even gave us the name of the “Philippine Islands” in honor of King Philip II who was the reigning king of Spain when Ferdinand Magellan “discovered” our land.
The Spanish are the reason why Filipinos largely practice Catholicism, speak Tagalog words that are rooted in Spanish, eat certain dishes that have equal Spanish counterparts, and largely have Spanish last names. For example, my last name “Canonizado” is the Spanish word for “canonize” or the act of declaring someone a saint. Filipinos didn’t even have catholic saints to canonize before the Spaniards came to our islands.
In my pursuit of becoming more deeply connected with my indigenous roots, I signed up for a class called “Re-membering Sacred Channels: Rituals for Embodying Intuition.” This sacred learning circle is created and hosted by Jana Lynne (JL) Umipig, a multi-disciplinary Artist, Educator and Activist who is determined to breathe life into the indigenous teachings of our Filipino culture, history and spirituality. The work is all about de-colonizing and re-membering our roots by tapping into our strong intuition, wisdom passed down from our ancestors. It’s about finding home within ourselves.
The program starts in December and I am oh so excited to share more about my learnings throughout the process on this blog. There is truly an abundance of wisdom that’s waiting to be unlocked, and I’m prepared to see it through. In the meantime, I have a question I want you to answer in the comments below…
Let me know, where are you from?
