JOLO, Sulu (MindaNews/ 04 August) — The Sama Bajau or Sama Dilaut have been referred to by various authors such as Fr. Jose Arong (1962), Fr. Pelagio Mandi (Juaini, 2003), Richard Stone (1962, 1974), and others, as Luwa’an, generally taken to mean by all as ‘outcasts.’ According to these anthropologists, they are the pariah, expelled from the polite society.
In developing the anthropology of Luwa’an, my intention is to reconstruct a political anthropology of the Sama Dilaut by decolonizing the concept ‘luwa’an.’ It is to propose different ways of understanding the word ‘Luwaan’ by appropriating paleontological tool of “scraping out” to reveal the originary from the many layers of concealment of the concept luwa’an in the course of language transformations, and hauling it out to allow for new reading and perchance surfacing another sense from the typically unquestioned and generally accepted fact.
Through deconstruction, I propose that there can be three meanings of Luwa’an.
The first one is the commonly held meaning deriving from documentary knowledge of the colonial interpretation of the world. Using Western tools and systems of thought in interpreting the world and environment, the concept of sea as unfathomable and unknown is an unquestioned supposition in the same sense of ‘wilderness’ of the frontiers or of the beleaguering unknowability of unchartered land. The sea, meanwhile, considered by the Sama as home, or ‘Paglahatan Sama’ , is, to this parlance, a wild, wild east. It is unknowable and “outside” of the locus of the sensible and the meaningful by the standards of world of the civilized measured by the yardstick of progress modeled in Western societies.
In the modern ontological politics of identity and security, the existence of ‘Luwaan’ while that could mean ‘outcast,’ is also generalized as outlaw and ungovernable. This sense of the luwa’an is how it has been understood and supposed by dominant ethnicities, such as the Tausug of Sulu archipelago in branding the seafaring cousins as ‘luwa’an.’ Etymologically originated from word, ‘liyuwa,’,\ meaning ‘expelled’ or ‘vomitted out’ therefore, luwa’an is undesirable and unwanted. The Tausug or Sinug being the official and commercial language of the empire – i.e. Sulu empire, to be ‘luwa’an’ or ‘liyuwa’ from Tausug society means to be expelled out from the royal protectorate.
Aside from the usual ways of using and understanding the word, I propose to deconstruct and surface out at least two other uses out of the word, ‘luwaan’ emically from the Sama’s own worlding. In Sinama, the language of the Sama dilaut, a term ‘minluwaan’ is an adverb ‘out of’ or ‘outside’ taken from Sama sense as ‘to opt to be outside.’ Supposing it to be raised as a point of ethno-political consciousness, luwa’an – for the Sama is a form of active resistance as a choice to not to engage, in so saying “Sama min luwa’an kami”: ‘I am outside and having nothing to do with you’. The Sama Dilaut is known to be not confrontational. They evade but they do not feel indifferent towards others.
To be ‘luwa’an’ has been a political position of self-insulation, not only for pariah groups like the Sama Dilaut, but even among special communities like the pirates and outlaws who are usually extra-governmental or outside of the State control. In Sulu, a tradition of ‘paglupus’ or self-exile has been a tradition. Historically, it is a known fact that the class of kasalipan (sharifin religious nobility) were ‘naglupus’ and disassociated themselves from the kasultanan and karatuan (Sulu royal classes) when the latter started to collaborate with the foreign colonizers and became despotic and authoritarian.
To be luwa’an and maglupus are political tactics unique to Sulu tradition. These have been recourses available and opted for to insulate a community to self-preserve itself by refraining from engaging with a potentially contentious political situation. It is also a political tactic to deprive a dominant authority perceived as oppressor and usurper from access to it and cut off the chance of further abuse of the weak.
The second reading of luwa’an is then ethno-political. It is a recourse to an “alternative political space.” In the social-pyschology of the Luwa’an, supposedly to maintain tradition is to create another world as outside and indifferent from the goings-on of modern nation-state.
The third concept is the Sama dilaut option to the “third space.” Here, ‘luwaan’ is an everyday life as natural inclination predisposed by cultural practice itself.
Being luwa’an evolved out of a cultural predisposition of a ‘Parua’. I infer that the term, ‘luwaan’ could possibly be a cognate of “Parua”. Parua is an old Nordic viking (giant race) word that Tamil sailors (of Ceylon) also adopted. Parua is in Sanscrit Malay, meaning vessel or boat. A living language presently still existing and being used in Sinama lexicon is the term “ruwa’an” or “duwa’an” meaning cargo of a boat. The feasibility of boat or parua as among the everyday technology of a maritime Sama life, makes it logical that the act of riding the boat or boarding their bodies inside the boat is “paruwah.” People inside of that boat, the passengers, are also referred to as the cargo, duwaan, hence, ruwa’an or ‘luwaan’.”
Associated to Paruah and ruwa’an is the other name that the Sama Dilaut are commonly known by – Pala’u – so referred for their propensity to be acquainted to the sea and to their boat-dwelling habit and houseboats called lepa or pelang. In Sinama, the name pala’u has been taken to mean as floaters and sea-borne. Pala’u begets hispanic ‘pelagio’ (of the sea) where the English words ‘pelagic’ or sea-oriented and ‘archipelago’ or spanning the ocean/sea come from. The Spanish derivation could very well have been from the sanskrit-malay ‘paruah’.
In closing, there is foretelling of a portentous future for the anthropology of luwa’an as a trail-blazing field of study in Mindanao and Sulu scholarship. It shall be breaking the frontiers among new concepts in decolonial studies especially made more relevant in the context of the present times characterized by increasing “discomforts” among the growing population of educated and middle class intelligentsia among indigenous and minority populations who are engaging, addressing and challenging the mainstream paradigm of dominant politics, criticquing the stifling hegemony and supremacism of majority ethnicity, and actively participating in the beleaguering quandary for a way out of the forced binary of partisanship in the politics of divisiveness. Luwa’an as a viable option. To be luwa’an is to self-decolonize and to opt to flee to a Third Space.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mucha-Shim Lahaman Quiling is Chief Executive Officer and Senior Researcher of Sulu Current Research Institute and Sharif Ul hashim Incorporated. She is also the secretary of the Sangguniang Bayan ng Jolo)
ENDNOTES:
Arong, Jose R. “The Badjaw of Sulu.” Philippine Sociological Review 10, nos. 3-4 (1962):. 11-29.
Interview with OSCC Region IX officer Mr. Edga Juani who personally heard Father Pelagio Mandi relate a story of how the Badjaos became luwa’an (Interview in 2003)
Stone, Richard L. “Intergroup Relations among the Taosug, Samal and Badjaw of. Sulu.” Philippine Sociological Review 10, nos. 3-4 (1962): 107-33.