“Nobel Prizes of Asia” Spotlight Indigenous Tribal Education

The 2014 Ramon Magsaysay Awards were presented on August 31st in Manila.  (Image: Jeffrey Marlow)

One Sunday evening last month, as the sun set over Manila Bay, six individuals and organizations were honored at the Cultural Center of the Philippines as recipients of the 2014 Ramon Magsaysay Award. The prize, established in 1958 in honor of the eponymous former Philippine president, and officiated by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, seeks to “honor greatness of spirit in selfless service to the people of Asia,” according to the Award Foundation. Over the years, activists, journalists, environmentalists, and other quiet leaders have been honored with what is colloquially known as Asia’s Nobel Prize.

If the setting was somewhat inauspicious – the Center’s concrete brutalist structure was a 200% over-budget public works centerpiece of the heavy-handed Marcos regime – the proceedings were anything but, offering unbridled hope for a new Asia.

Among the awardees was Saur Marlina Manurung, an Indonesian anthropologist and educator who, Humboldt-like, eschewed the comfortable existence of the urban upper middle class for an adventurous life in the rainforest. As a co-founder of SOKOLA, Manurung and her team of volunteers run pop-up schools within Sumatra’s Bukit Duabelas National Park, adapting to the indigenous Orang Rimba people’s hunt-and-gather lifestyle rather than restricting it.

Unorthodox as it may be, Manurung’s job allows her to both enjoy the teeming rainforests that captivated her as a child while enabling their protection through education. “I was a huge fan of adventure films and books,” she says, “and I dreamed I would live and work in the jungle like Indiana Jones.” Her quest for adventure met with a pressing social and environmental cause as she embedded herself with the Orang Rimba. The rainforests they called home were being decimated by illegal logging and corruption, threatening not only a globally relevant carbon sink and biodiversity hotspot, but an entire way of life.

Manurung believes that the governmental and corporate focus on GDP does indigenous people a disservice. The globalized world of outsourcing and niche-based competitiveness isn’t the one that the Orang Rimba belong to, and this gulf often proved debilitating. “They didn’t understand contracts,” recalls Manurung, “they couldn’t protect their homes, and it all stemmed from illiteracy.”

In response, Manurung traveled through the jungle, armed with a mobile blackboard and a deconstructed teaching style, to teach the Orang Rimba how to read. What began as a one-woman show has grown into a vibrant organization, with several different projects responding to both traditionally underserved communities and post-natural disaster areas. Despite the progress and the brightening spotlight of global attention, Manurung bemoans the more general problem of the urban world’s relationship to tribal societies. “It saddens me that we have become so detached from nature,” she says. “The world would be a better place if we afforded indigenous people more influence and more respect.”

The Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership went to Randy Halasan, a young Filipino with a similar vision. He teaches at Pegalongan Elementary School (which is attended by children of the indigenous Matigsalug tribe), and has successfully lobbied for new buildings, more teachers, and innovative public-private partnerships – a remarkable feat given the school’s remote location.

Manurang and Halasan highlighted an increasing awareness of indigenous peoples’ plight in southeast Asia. They may not contribute too substantially to the GNP, but they do possess a cultural wealth that’s unoutsourceable, a unique contribution to the diversity of human experiences that is discounted too easily.

It’s an issue that Philippine President Benigno Aquino III – who was on hand to distribute the awards – also acknowledged. He championed the work of those who have “poured their hearts and souls into indigenous communities,” and promoted the teaching of applicable life skills that can bring them up to speed with the modern world in a targeted and strategic fashion. “Learning must go beyond entrenched methods and curricula,” he explained, “to build solutions that are relevant and replicable.”

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