Bukidnon - Orientation

Identification. The Bukidnon people of the southern Philippines speak the Binukid dialect within the Manobo Language Family. "Bukidnon" is a Bisayan word for "people of the mountains," first used by Bisayan-speaking settlers of Mindanao's north coast, on whom its negative connotation for non-Hispanicized (i.e., "non-civilized") mountain people was not lost. The Spanish, who had referred to all upland peoples simply as monteses, adopted it in the late nineteenth century to distinguish Binukid speakers from the Manobo living directly to their south. The nonindigenous origin of the term has occasioned some controversy in recent years, with Bukidnon influenced by PANAMIN, the Philippine government agency formerly in charge of tribal peoples, adopting the name "Higaonnan" (derived from the Binukid gaon for "away from the water") as an alternative. This, however, has not caught on with most Binukid speakers who, grown used to "Bukidnon," steadfastly continue to call themselves by this name.

Location. Bukidnon today is the name of a Philippine province measuring 8,294 square kilometers landlocked in north-central Mindanao. The Bukidnon people for the most part live north of the eighth parallel on the grassland plateau 300-900 meters in elevation that is dominated by Kitanglad Mountain, the second-highest (after Mt. Apo) Philippine peak at 2,938 meters. Rivers rush from Kitanglad and other mountains, cutting precipitous gorges through the adtuyon clay soil. The Cagayan and Tagoloan river systems empty into Macajalar Bay to the north; the Pulangi, which originates in northeast Bukidnon, sweeps south into Cotabato where it becomes the Rio Grande of Mindanao. The plateau's average mean temperature is 23° C and rainfall averages 274.3 centimeters annually. September is the wettest month; the driest period is in March and April.

Demography. The Bukidnon people have been a diminishing minority in the province that bears their name ever since Filipinos from elsewhere in the archipelago began settling there in growing numbers after World War II. Many have intermarried with these newcomers, and their children have grown up speaking Cebuano-Bisayan, the province's lingua franca today, with 65.9 percent of the population now listing it as their mother tongue. In contrast, only 71,007, or 13.3 percent of the province's population of 532,818 in 1975, reported Binukid as their mother tongue, and only 3,351 of these reside in urban areas. Binukid speakers can be found today mainly in small barangay in the northern municipalities of the province. Few possess either wealth or political power.

Linguistic Affiliation. According to the linguist Richard Elkins, Binukid and its sister languages, Kinamigin and Cagayano, represent the first branch in the family tree of Manobo languages within the Malayo-Polynesian language category. Dialects include Banuaon (Banuanon), spoken along the Agusan border, southern Bukidnon Manobo, and Higaonan in the northern reaches of the province.