WE HEARD a top network is offering a new show to Sen. Loren Legarda but she won’t confirm it yet. She’s now busy with the celebration of National Heritage Month and National Indigenous Peoples Month with a special exhibit she organized in the Senate as Chair of the Senate Committee on Cultural Communities. As a daughter of Antique, she put up “Panay: Memory and Enchantment” that showcases the world class artworks, handicrafts and fabrics made by the Ati and Panay Bukidnon indigenous groups, led by Federico Caballero or Tay Pedring, a chanter and one of the 11 awardees of the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan or the National Living Treasures Award. “We have a lot to discover and rediscover in our culture and it’s quite a difficult task to make our people embrace our native culture again, so if they refuse to visit our history, we must let history come and visit them,” she says. “There are 110 indigenous people groups in our country and I believe they constitute the Filipino soul. Let our exhibit in the Senate halls be a testament to the greatness and richness or our Filipino heritage and make the senate a place of inspiration.”
Visit the Panay exhibit open to the public at the 2nd floor of the Senate until June 9. Loren also initiated the “Isang Habi, Isang Lahi” exhibit that displayed various woven clothes from different parts of the country and “Mangyans of Mindoro: Myth and Meaning”, showcasing the artifacts and handwriting of the Mangyan ethno-linguistic group. “This helps us be more aware of the beauty of our land and its people,” she adds.
