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Broadcast journalist Howie Severino travels to Mindoro to
investigate the legend of “lost tisoys,” a tribe of Mangyans
called Olandes, mountain people in Mindoro descended from
shipwrecked Dutch sailors.
Various people give conflicting accounts,
including a scholar who proclaims that the “white Mangyans” are
a myth, along with other popular beliefs such as Mangyans with
tails.
But are the white Mangyans really a myth?
In a Mangyan tianggie in the remote town of Bait , Howie is told of
Mangyan tisoys in the local high school. He finds them there and
learns they come from a mountain village called Panaytayan. But it
is not what he expected.
Descending not from Dutch sailors from centuries
ago, the tisoys are actually four children of a Dutch priest who
married a Mangyan and has lived in splendid isolation for four
decades. He is now among the foremost experts on Mangyan culture. In
the village, he has set up institutions designed to teach and
preserve ancient tribal practices such as the script, music and
weaving.
His daughter Anya is a 23-year-old tisay who
proudly calls herself a Mangyan and is following her father’s
footsteps in championing the Mangyan while presenting a new face of
the tribe to the outside world.
She accompanies her bahag-clad, betel-chewing
uncle Anheng as he ventures down the mountain to town, faces of the
old and the new Mangyan. As Anya and her siblings age and produce
families of their own, the myth of the Olandes village may yet
become a reality.
This special I-Witness documentary airs tonight
over GMA 7.
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