Children taking the stage

For that, we should realize that when children take the stage, it is their time to shine, and I hope their stories will shine on us about solidarity and hope.

October is a month for the children. As a parent, October brings us to school events where our kid joins a United Nations Day event, pre-Halloween show or a stage play.

It is fun and nerve wracking, hoping the days you spent coaching and helping out your kid in his or her costume would make it good on stage. Take for instance my kid with sensory problems and all, makes me hope he will make it good for that three-minute play. Then you realize, hey, your kid can handle it.

Later, my wife reflected and said: the stage is a place where the kid strives to shine.

Then we talked about the local news where there are questions why Lumad joined their parents in a political rally.

We try to think that children should be shielded from these realities. That children should spend time in schools, reading stories and playing on stage.

But what if those elements are missing as in the case of the Lumad? Theirs is a different community and context to our middle class lives. In fact, there is beauty in their communities where the children learn about the responsibility of their tribe as guardians of the mountains and ecological balance. The fact that they are called Lumad, which means “born of the earth”.

We should be familiar with their story, having read the news over the years about their plight as “bakwit” (evacuees) because of the threats of paramilitary and soldiers in their schools and villages. News articles dig deeper, linking militarization to the plans of making plantations and mining take over their ancestral lands.

When government continues to cater to these interest and drive the guardians out, where would the Lumad go? Where would the children go?

Over the years, the campaign such as Save Our Schools have allowed Lumad children to speak to other children, teachers, religious and other groups, and their personal stories opened the eyes of “outsiders” to their pain and their longings. Social workers said this is a way of therapy, a way of sharing their stories to gain not just sympathy, but also solidarity.

In the movie Liway, the life story of director Kip Oebanda, there was a scene where the young Kip spoke at a rally. His speech strikes your heart of innocence lost. It’s the same situation for this Lumad children. They will speak the truth no matter how harsh this is about losing land, life and identity under this situation called Martial Law.

We marvel that at their young age, they show a certain maturity to know the realities. But can we say the same of adults, especially leaders and public servants, who even resort to ridicule them instead of helping them out.