MICHAEL “XIAO” CHUA
IN last week’s column, I tried to establish that our nation’s story began with a boat. In a new National Historical Commission of the Philippines and De La Salle University coffee table book, Tataya: Documenting the Story of the Ivatan Boat, to which I contributed an essay, I wrote that this maritime culture that still exists in Batanes, was reflected in the spiritual beliefs and burial practices of our ancestors, and in how our heroes imagined the Filipino Nation.