By: Ferdinand Ammang Anno
Union Theological Seminary, July 2014
The Bagos are a people whose traditional homeland is the long strip of land traversing the Ilocos Sur and La Union Highlands in the central-to southwestern fringes of the Cordillera mountain range. This homeland included Southeastern Ilocos Sur, some four highland municipalities in La Union and several hill villages in the municipality of Sison, Pangasinan. These are the territories where the Methodist, the Evangelical United Brethren and Episcopalian missionaries worked and established churches from the turn of the 20th century. The Bagos in its second diaspora also established communities in Kalinga, Apayao, Mindoro, Nueva Ecija, Nueva Viscaya, Aurora and Mindoro provinces. A significant population of Bagos were also part of the mass of Ilocanos who migrated into Mindanao from the 50s.
This essay raises for the first time the possibility of some convergences in peoples’ mytho-narratives of ‘beginnings’ that may reinforce neotribe suggestions in the prayers of a significant section of the Kankanaey-Y-golot population.