No. Where are you really from?

Growing up in the predominantly white state of Idaho I was often made aware I was different. Much of my childhood involved other school children making “slant eyes” at me or pressing down their nose to mimic the broadness of mine. It wasn’t until the last day of high school that my school conceded that I did, in fact, speak my native language—English. I was made to feel foreign in my homeland.

When I was a young child, my paternal grandmother would speak about her, and by extension my, indigenous heritage. At 7 I began seeking out information about the various Native groups in North America in an effort to explore things tangential to my heritage. Throughout elementary school, I always seemed to end up being an “Indian” amongst pilgrims during Thanksgiving themed projects. I remember there being one school year where the teacher insisted that we were all to be pilgrims and I refused. I stated very clearly I wanted to be an “Indian.”

My understanding of my heritage and my education about things related to identity during grade school was well, racist. My understanding of what made me was fractions and blood quantum. It’s an understanding prevalent in the US and sanctioned by the government. Only later did I learn that race, ethnicity, and culture were not the same things. If my family’s oral history is correct then I may be a descendant of some of the peoples that created the First Nations in North America, but I had no ties, no socialisation of their cultures. My continued search and education did not grant me their experiences, but as a child, I felt the need to pinpoint where my differences came from.

The early days of dial-up internet allowed me to investigate my heritage further. School also reinforced the process. I remember an assignment from, I believe it was Jr. high, where we were instructed to colour in the countries where our families came from. Still not aware of critical discourse on identity, ethnicity, and nationality I coloured in several countries whose modern borders didn’t exist when my ancestors left them. I moved towards understanding my Asian heritage—the part of my background that definitively led to much ridicule in school (being a chunky nerd also didn’t help). In high school when we covered Asian history, I asked my teacher why we focused on all the nations surrounding the Philippines but said nothing of the Philippines. I was basically told that the Philippines was marginal and that “Philippine culture” mimicked Chinese culture. Another educator tried to inform me that Spanish was widely spoken in the Philippines. While Spain did govern the Philippines as a province of Mexico, the Philippines isn’t actually in Mexico, perhaps that confused them.

I learned early on, that having a foreign-born Asian mother was almost viewed as tainting and it cancelled out the white European from my father’s side. The fact that my mother was also of European heritage was glossed over, because: brown. When asked which one of my parents were American, I would answer that both my parents are American citizens. This, somehow confused people. (I don’t want to jump to racism, but the expectation that my non-white mother with an accent isn’t American seems like racism). My mother being multi-lingual meant that I must be unable to speak English, even though my father, a mono-lingual white-as-sour-cream American man with strong Germanic features would not be able to communicate with her unless she also spoke English.

A fun switch occurred when I moved to the Philippines and was chastised for only speaking English. Why do I not speak any indigenous Philippine language? Why don’t I speak the language of my ancestors? “I do speak the language of my ancestors,” I would protest. “My ancestors are from England!” To be honest that is a strange question. Language of my ancestors? How many languages would I then have to know? How far do I have to go back? Where do I even learn Visigoth?

I spent my time researching the history of the Philippines—not all of the sources were credible. In my teens, I understood myself more as a Filipino, but I only understood Filipino as an ethnicity. Again my understanding of my heritage fell along racist lines. A Filipino was blood plus a list of stereotypes adhered to. Though on some level I knew Filipinos were not a monolith, why was my mother constantly teased about her accent by other Filipinos? Why was her being Bisaya something to be ridiculed? I learned in the hierarchy of Filipinos, Bisayans are on a low wrung, being stereotyped as domestic workers with comical accents.

I moved to the Philippines for university—a “stupid” idea according to several acquaintances in the US. Though in reality, I had more opportunities to further my education in Manila than in Idaho. I studied anthropology under the colonised rather than the coloniser. Moving to the Philippines provided another chance to further confuse my identity. I was now white. My look and name were described as foreign and exotic. I received the same alienating treatment, but for the other aspect of my identity. Belonging continued to be elusive.

The sort of pseudo-homogeneity of Filipino identity I experienced growing up was shattered in the Philippines. At university, I met people from all over the country who distinguished themselves linguistically and culturally beyond just being Filipino. Filipino was a nationality, not an ethnicity. Through my time living in the Philippines as a foreign-born citizen, I was introduced to various cleavages in society. Filipinos of Chinese heritage were suspect and often not considered truly Filipinos. The Bangsamoro or those of the Islamised ethnolinguistic groups in the Southern Philippines had factions that rejected being labelled Filipino in favour of being called Moro borne of an imagined and constructed ethnogenesis that began under the American Occupation of the Philippines.

During my MA I conducted ethnographic research on Philippine Muslim identity construction. My department was almost entirely Bangsamoro—the professors and lecturers were Tausug whereas the students were mostly Meranao. For the most part, I was the only non-Moro in many of my classes. I was lucky enough that some of the lecturers and students referred to me by my name whereas another classmate who was trying to connect to her father’s Arab heritage by taking classes at the Islamic Institute was often only referred to as “that Christian girl.”

Bangsamoro separatist politics underscored most of my MA degree and my abysmal treatment. When trying to explain that my research on Philippine Muslims extended beyond Moros as Moros are not the only Muslims in the Philippines and should not be considered representative of the rest, I was met with some antagonism from my panel. There was an idea that non-Moro Muslims were marginal or not truly Muslims as they were not “born” Muslim. Unfortunately, Muslim identity in the Philippines is often only viewed through the lens of Moro identity. My critical engagement with the history that lead to the rise of Bangsamoro nationalism also didn’t help, but there’s not much to lose when you’re an openly despised American kaffir.

A bit of history: 300 years in the convent, 50 years in Hollywood

Religious belief in the archipelago prior to the arrival of Islam and Christianity was a diverse mix of anito-ism, shamanism, and Hindu-Buddhist beliefs that tended towards a more matriarchal spirit than the religions that supplanted them. Strong cultural influences from India and China coloured local society. Islam is generally believed to have arrived via trade routes into Southeast Asia in the 13th century and gradually made its way into what is now the Southern Philippines with the interior of Mindanao being Islamized by the 15th century. The Rajahnate of Maynila (Manila), became a satellite state of the Sultanate of Brunei in the 16th century indicating not only strong ties to other Southeast Asian polities but also the continued spread of Islam.

The Spanish conquest and Christianization of the Philippines begins in the 16th century. Due to the Reconquista being a not so distant memory, encounters with Muslims in the region were heavily tinged with religious motivations. The Reconquista, or the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, was a series of campaigns led by Christian kingdoms to recapture Muslim held territory that lasted 781 years. It culminated in the Granada War where Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile conquered the Granada Emirate in 1492, ending Muslim rule and expelling Muslims and Jews or forcibly converting those that remained to Christianity. With the Reconquista complete the stage was set for the Spanish and Portuguese to procure their colonial empires.

The Spanish and Portuguese expansion leaves its mark in the term “Moro” or Moor, a name used during the middle ages for the Muslims of Iberia, the Maghreb, and surrounding areas. A term used when they encountered Muslims in Southeast Asia and an exonym that would later be adopted by the Bangsamoro.  

In 1521, after murdering Chamorro natives in Guam, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan claimed the archipelago for Spain. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos dubs Samar and Leyte “Las Islas Felipinas” after Philip II of Spain (you know, that guy who married that Queen of England that liked to murder Protestants) and the whole archipelago would eventually become known as Felipinas or Filipinas.

Given the Philippines’ distance from Spain, the Virreinato de Nueva España, or The Viceroyalty of Spain (Mexico) handled Manila’s administration and governance. For over two centuries Mexico oversaw the islands up until 1815 when Spain took direct control of the Philippines due to the Mexican struggle for independence. This arrangement led to not just commercial exchange along the Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade route, but also cultural exchange and immigration of Filipinos to Mexico and Mexicans to the Philippines. The Filipino lexicon even retains some words of Nahuatl (Aztec) origin.

During the Spanish-Moro Conflict, Mexican and Peruvian troops were brought in by Spain to fight “the Moros” and to build forts in Mindanao. Colonial subjects sent to murder potential colonial subjects. Spain would have succeeded in their suppression if it was not for Koxinga, Chinese pirate-merchant-commander-badass, who had already kicked out the Dutch from Formosa and was now threatening to attack Spanish territories. This forced Spain to hightail it north and protect Manila. Koxinga died before he could make good on his threat, so Spain took it out on rebelling Sangleys (Chinese), massacring thousands.

Islamic expansion was stymied by the Spanish occupier’s forceful evangelizing efforts, but access to the sultanates in the South and their rich resources were still vital. When the British took over Manila between 1762-1764 during the Seven Years War, they freed the Sultan of Sulu, Muhammad Alimuddin I, in an effort to further their commercial interests in Southeast Asia. Another consequence of this brief British occupation was sepoy troops brought with them deserted and intermarried with local women creating other newer Indian-Filipino communities.

The American colonial period started off with the devastating Philippine-American War. Through savage repression, the US was more or less able to gain control over the islands though there were sporadic attempts at resistance. With great efficiency, the US was able to change the cultural landscape of the Philippines. For example, English is widely spoken in the Philippines and it is also, along with Filipino, a national language. Relations amongst Filipinos and US servicemen since the American colonial period have resulted in a sizable group of American mestizos. One of the reasons I exist is because of continued US presence in the Philippines—I am the product of a US serviceman and Filipina mother. And yet with all this European influence and genetics, the Americans didn’t consider the Philippines Westernized enough.

The Bangsamoro

A unified Bangsamoro identity begins to take shape during the US occupation of the Philippines. On June 12, 1898, the Philippines declared its independence from Spain, but with no foreign nation willing to accept the sovereignty of the Philippines the islands were ceded to the United States at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War.

While the common narrative is that the Moros resisted both Spanish and American encroachment, this is not entirely true. This is not to say there was no resistance or mistrust of colonial occupiers, but a unified “Moro” front did not exist. According to the research of Anthropologist Thomas McKenna, a few datus (rulers) of Maguindanao were more than willing to advance Spanish and later American policies in Mindanao in exchange for more power and wealth. McKenna gives the example of Datu Piang, who sought amiable ties with the Spaniards by supplying the Spanish garrison with food in exchange for money leading to increased wealth and influence. Once the Spaniards evacuated Cotabato in 1899 and American forces arrived, Piang sought to ally himself with the Americans:

One of the early significant services rendered by Piang to the Americans was his assistance in eliminating the threat to American policies posed by his son-in-law, Datu Ali, the highborn nephew of Datu Utu. Between 1903 and 1905, Datu Ali led the only large-scale armed resistance to American rule in Cotabato. Ali commanded a large number of armed followers, was skilled in guerrilla warfare, and, as heir apparent to the sultanate of Buayan, seemed capable of mobilizing the entire upper valley in revolt against the Americans. Datu Piang provided the intelligence that allowed Ali, stricken with malaria, to be surprised and slain by American soldiers. Oral tradition asserts that the Americans obtained Piang's assistance only by torturing him. Nevertheless, as Beckett points out, "Ali's death saw [Piang] on the winning side, the authorities in his debt, and his aristocratic rival out of the way"

While the US condescendingly claimed that it needed to teach the Filipino people how to govern themselves before granting independence, the Philippines being a resource-rich and militarily strategic location was more than enough reason for the Americans to hold on to the territory. When Philippine sovereignty became an inevitability after the Japanese Occupation of WWII, there was a strong wish among the Moros to not be incorporated into the Philippine Nation and be governed by the Christians of the North; but to rather remain a territory of the United States due in part to colonial leadership exacerbating cleavages between Muslims and Christians and discontent with authorities in Manila neglecting those in the Moroland.

American corporate interests and Moros alike sought to portray the entirety of Mindanao as “Moroland” despite the fact there were sizable non-Muslim populations within. The Bacon Bill (1926), proposed to remove the “Moro provinces” from the authority of the Philippine legislature leaving the Moroland under the direct control of the United States. What New York Representative Bacon and the business interests he represented envisioned is that if Mindanao came under the direct control of the US, American corporate interests would not have to deal with Philippine land laws and could exploit the fertile, sparsely populated lands of Mindanao for the large-scale production of rubber.

Through the use of the “Moro problem” the US thwarted Philippine attempts at independence so as not to lose out on commercial interests and to further their “mission” of instilling civilized Western ideals and Christianity into the islands—as if 333 years of Spanish colonization wasn’t enough time for Filipinos to get acquainted with Christianity or the West.

Independence was finally granted to the Philippines by the US on July 4, 1946 after the US regained control of the Philippines from the Japanese—an independence day no longer celebrated in the Philippines in favor of the June 12 date commemorating independence from Spain. Despite the divide and rule tactics employed by the United States, the Moroland was entwined with the Philippines at independence; but Moro animosity towards leadership in Manila continued to ferment. Northern Christians moving into Mindanao and taking up governmental posts changed demographics and left Moros and Lumads marginalized. To this day foreign corporate interests take up large parcels of land and continue to exploit the region’s resources. Demographic shift due to people from islands north of Mindanao moving in and displacing locals, as well as traditional patterns of leadership and bouts of clan warfare, continue to perpetuate closed hierarchical systems and contribute to instability in the region. This instability and lack of opportunity in their own land laid the groundwork for insurgency.

The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of the Moro Nationalist Liberation Front (MNLF) and its splinter group the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, with its rather saucy acronym MILF. The groups were not only split on ideology, but also on ethnic lines with the MNLF dominated by the Tausug and the MILF with mostly Maguindanaoans. At this time the term Moro gained traction as a collective identity minted with an imagined ethnogenesis built upon Islam and resistance to Spanish encroachment. Bangsamoro nationalists were forging a new nationalist meaning into the term. This along with grievances against American colonial forces and the Philippine State has reinforced an oppositional identity that sees itself separate from other Filipino citizens. But as the Bangsamoro homogenize their diverse identities, the Filipino identity that some Moros are struggling against is homogenized as well.

Philippines: An education

When I arrived in the Philippines for my university degree, all this historical context would help lay the groundwork in navigating my shifting identity in this new locale. I had never been to the Philippines before and now I lived there—ya know, that phase in your youth where you pack up everything you own and leave your home country to feel marginalized in a different country and questioning all your life choices.

In the Philippines, I discovered  I was certifiably gringo. Here I was, taking my father’s advice and experiencing another facet of my heritage and everyone around me was like, “Nope. Not one of us.”  Well then, I discovered I was free to be as American as I wanted because no one was around telling me I wasn’t American enough while pulling slant eyes at me. I never realized how American I was until I left the US and while I acclimated to the Philippines I actively sought out things that reminded me of home that I would never do if I was in the US. I had this sort of uncomfortable nationalism trying to hold onto US cultural traits.

Listening to anti-immigration talk from the US pissed me off even more after I moved—I understood now. It’s hard to learn a foreign language when everyone is mocking your accent and being an asshole. It’s hard to navigate a culture you weren’t socialised in. You miss the familiarity of your home, the culture, the food, understanding what’s going on around you. People see you as a mass of cultural stereotypes. It was a very isolating experience.

Returning to the US was also surreal after residing abroad for years. You’re home, but you’re not. Reverse culture shock is a thing. My best friend took me out to a restaurant and I was shocked by free refills on drinks. Little everyday things were foreign to me. I didn’t expect things to be the same at home, but I didn’t realize how living abroad could change me or my relationships. It’s a very worrying feeling when you fail to navigate your own culture.

I received a degree in anthropology from the University of the Philippines and returned to the US after graduation only to realize I had a better thing going for me back in the Philippines. So I returned to the Philippines to pursue a degree in Islamic Studies, which as I hinted earlier, wasn’t a great experience for me.

For my MA research, I focused on what values contribute to the formation of Muslim identity among Muslims in the Philippines. The people I interviewed were Muslim college students and young professionals from around Metro Manila. Though being perceived as a foreigner caused some difficulty in finding willing participants. The bulk of the research and analysis was done between late 2014 and early 2015. While working on my thesis, I lost my father. So honestly, my mind was elsewhere for much of the time when I was trying to complete my thesis. Can’t say the department was very sympathetic about it and I was forced to learn quite a bit about mourning and funerary practices in the Philippines. Academia, y’all!

But back to the research, sometimes I would throw in a question about national identity—mostly for my own curiosity. I discovered that many of the Meranao informants identified as both Moro and Filipino and did not see these as oppositional identities. One young Meranao man said, “The Philippines is made up of many tribes. I am from one of those tribes.” An interesting find when everyone assumes the opposite, but that seems only to be assumed because the groups that make up the Bangsamoro are viewed as a monolith. In Turkey at least, I’ve been told that there is a concerted effort to show a unified front.

My research was not concerned with national identity because I knew that any question related to Bangsamoro identity would need to have a certain conclusion for my research to be palatable. The fact that most of my interviewees were Meranao, already raised eyebrows with my entirely Tausug panel. Inter-Moro tensions, I guess. The other issue was I interviewed converts and Filipinos of “foreign” ancestry who were raised as Muslims. Apparently, it was a faux-pas to not promote Bangsamoro nationalism and that was made obvious during my defence.

I can’t say I was ever particularly interested in studying Moro identity, as much as I was in studying manifestations of Islamic religious identity. I never looked at Bangsamoro identity as a venue to help interrogate my own identity even though my interest in identity studies stems from self-exploration. Nor did I see what is now called the Bangsamoro as the sole bearers of Muslim identity or history within the Philippines, which is why I sought to interview those outside the Moro label. Focusing on the Bangsamoro experience ignores other Muslims in the Philippines. Though in a way by being or feeling so exterior to the identity it did help me affirm the borders of my own. Persecution does exist, but in a recent conversation with a friend, they felt discrimination had more to do with being Muslim than being clocked as Moro.

Though it’s difficult to divorce the term “Moro” from “Muslim.” A term derived from a name used in the classical period by the Romans for Berbers in North Africa, then to Muslims of North African heritage in the Middle Ages to an antiquated way of referring to Muslims in general. There is some drive to divorce Moro from Muslim by some, to include Lumads (un-Islamized, un-Christianized indigenous people of Mindanao) as part of the Bangsamoro. But to subsume the Lumad under this umbrella erases their identities and disparate histories. The Lumads have also suffered displacement due to land claims by Moros.The politics are complex and to be Moro is to be Muslim for many people.

The way non-Muslim Filipinos understand Islam and Muslims is often through Islamophobic media filtering in from around the world. On top of that, Muslims’ history of armed struggle in the Philippines against colonial and later government forces is reframed as terrorism. The history of warfare, piracy, and slave raiding by Muslim polities is understood as violence inherent in the Islamic faith despite the fact that fervent religiosity was not a hallmark of these groups in the past. So in this way, the “monolith” of the Bangsamoro is understood through the “monolith” of Islam. Different Islamic ideologies making their way to the Philippines are creating new Islamic identities that erode traditional cultural characteristics as un-Islamic and bidah (innovations). In effect also asserting a sort of homogenized Islamic identity under the belief of a “true” Islam of the Sahaba (companions of the Prophet). In short the new is replacing the old by claiming it is the “real-authentic-old”. Labelling someone Muslim doesn’t relay as much information as people think.

When I arrived in Turkey to pursue my PhD and eat copious amounts of baklava, I noticed the Moro vs Filipino discourse was more polarized. Here I was thinking I could get away from the tensions in the Philippines, but it’s here too. (US imperialism is going to follow me everywhere I go. Though, without it I wouldn’t exist or have the opportunities I do). Within Turkey there is a pro-Moro Islamic Liberation Front leaning amongst the Moro students I meet, and many are more than ready to draw the lines between who is Moro and who is Filipino depending on the latest party line. Despite the aggravation and severed ties that this has led to I never reflected on what that means in relation to my identity here in Turkey. It feels like I occupy a space outside this discussion despite being engaged in it.

I’ve been in Turkey for a couple of years now. It’s an interesting shift to be in a predominantly Muslim country where being Muslim isn’t taken as some sort of personality trait. It’s not even something usual remarked upon unless by ignorant tourists on their exotic, orientalist escape, upset that the call to prayer happens more frequently than they like. I mean, I still get weird looks when I go into a mosque, but it’s nice not having to ask if there’s pork in everything. The thing is, I don’t think I will fully realize Turkey’s impact on me until I leave.  As for my identity in Turkey well, for the Moros I am a Filipino, for the Filipinos I’m an American, and for the Americans, I finally get to be a fucking American. At least the Turks were consistent in labelling me a yabancı.