13/10/2025
Haggiyo, Huwah!
A Living Heritage of the Tuwali Ifugao of Hungduan, An Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
Haggiyo, Huwah! A Living Heritage of the Tuwali Ifugao of Hungduan, An Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity honors a vibrant cultural tradition that continues to shape the identity and social life of the Tuwali Ifugao communities of Hungduan in the Cordillera highlands in northern Philippines.
Rooted in the rhythms of rice cultivation, the Huwah is the post-harvest celebration of three communities—Hapao, Baang, and Nungulunan—in Hungduan, where gratitude is expressed for a bountiful yield and prayers are offered for abundance in the coming agricultural cycle. The festivity is a convergence of ritual, memory, and play that closes the year’s labor on the terraces and reaffirms the ties of kinship and community.
The highlight of the Huwah is the Punnuk, a culminating game and ritual staged in the rushing waters of the Hapao River. Villagers converge, bearing pakid (wooden implements with hooks) and kina-ag (anthropomorphic straw figures) to perform the guyyudan, or tug-of-war. This spirited contest can be seen as a symbolic act of renewal, where human strength, the power of the river, respect for the land, and ancestral blessing converge. The victor is believed to receive the promise of a plentiful harvest, while all participants are cleansed by the river’s flow.
The Punnuk was inscribed in 2015 on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, along with other tugging rituals of Asia and affirming its value as a living heritage of global significance.
The celebration begins with the divination ritual called baki, performed by the mumbaki or Ifugao ritual specialist, who invokes ancestral spirits and deities, reads from a chicken’s gallbladder, and declares the spirits’ blessing for the Punnuk games. This is followed by the inum, the sharing of bayah (rice wine) that binds participants in fellowship and anticipation. Only then do villagers gather at the river for the climactic tugging and games.
This exhibition presents photographs, paraphernalia, and game and ritual materials that embody the spirit of the Huwah and Punnuk—from jars of bayah to the woven attire worn by villagers, from the carved pakid to the ephemeral kina-ag. Each object and image speaks of continuity and resilience, of a community determined to safeguard its heritage amid challenges posed by modern life, climate change, and shifting beliefs.
By entering this space, we step into a living ritual that is at once solemn and joyful, sacred and playful—a heritage that continues to flow, like the river itself, binding land, people, ancestors, and future generations.
Haggiyo, Huwah! will run at the NCCA Gallery until October 31, 2025, G/F NCCA Building, 633 General Luna St., Intramuros, Manila. Admission is free and open to the public. NCCA Gallery is open from Mondays through Sundays, 9:00am to 6:00pm
Photos by BYL: Gallery/IPPS
