What is Bari Bari?
“…the Bari Bari is more than just a simple ritual or chant, it’s what bolsters physical and spiritual wellbeing. The Bari Bari is recited when one is ill with anything—from a slight sniffle to full blown tumors. It’s also recited when we depart from our elders. Whenever I am sick or simply saying goodbye, I would kneel and place my head between my grandma’s hands. As she rubbed my forehead, my chest, my stomach, and the tips of my shoulders she would recite something akin to “Bari Bari, ta pumukankami… daddy (referring to my grandpa) please watch over your granddaughter, help her finish school and keep her safe and well”. As explained by my grandma, the Bari Bari is a way to acknowledge the presence of our ancestors whether they are currently present or will be visiting in the future. She says, ‘their spirit might be with us, and want to just talk to you, that’s why you feel sick’ [quote from audio above]
Where my grandparents are from, they believe that ancestors’ visits can cause physical illness. There is no mal intent to this illness, it is simply a consequence of the tensions within the dimensions. It’s your ancestors’ way of telling you hello and that they are watching over you. By reciting the Bari Bari, we acknowledge our elders, pay them respect, and ask them for protection and safety.
Based on scant scholarship, I found that western researchers classify the Bari Bari as “mythology”. However, for some Indigenous Filipino people, it has been referred to as sacred practice offered to us by our Ilocano ancestors. According to Filipino researchers, artists, and writers the Bari Bari was once considered a chant that inhabitants of Ilocos would say before cutting down trees in the mountains. The translation of Bari Bari is “do not feel bad my friend for we cut as we are ordered” (Gaverza, 2017). The people of Ilocos would recite this to the Mangmangkik, the anitos (secondary gods or spirits) found in the environment, so that they would not be offended (Baglieri, 2021). If the anitos were offended they could inflict illness on the human (Anderson, 2013). Although the tradition of the Bari Bari may have shifted in its purpose over generations, it is far from being a mythological practice. The ritual continues to remind us that we are all connected to the land, to the ones before us, and to each other. It reminds us that knowledge is created by sharing stories with each other and passing down lessons to generations that come after us.
“Our stories are beyond what some might consider mythology, they are intertwined with our physical realities, our material conditions, and the ways we both view and exist in the world. Thus, theory is not inextricably tied to Western science, nor does it exist solely in the imagination of our captors—the ones who try to entrap us and force us into categories of the unknown or the abnormal. Just as the Bari Bari blends the lines between our dimension, the afterlife, and the liminal space between—approaching research and theory with relationality in mind holds space for and encourages complexity. It establishes new ways of learning together through recollecting memories and sharing lessons. It reconceptualizes forms of care and protection that are rooted in community and encourages presence and vulnerability. Theory and research start with who we are, and what we are aiming to offer the world and each other.“
- Victoria Copeland in Abolitionist Praxis and Black geographies in social work published in New Approaches to Inequality Research with Youth.
The Bari Bari Initiative & Black Radical Traditions
Though the BBI is named after and honors an ancestral Ilokano practice, it is also deeply informed by other traditions including Black Feminist and Radical Traditions as well as Healing Justice. ETC acknowledges the impact of the transatlantic slave trade and the afterlife of slavery, both which aimed to violently cleave the passing down of ancestral traditions and knowledge. The BBI centralizes the importance of dismantling the genealogies of violence that stem from slavery, and aims to honor and uplift the stories of Black Americans and the larger diaspora.
Black Radical and Feminist Traditions — Relationality, Dialogue, and Lived Experience.
The BBI is influenced by Patricia Hill Collins ideas in Black Feminist Thought, particularly the way in which she conceptualizes “lived experiences” as criteria of meaning and the significance of dialogue as a form of collective empowerment. Although the phrase has been used and co-opted by others, Collins’ conceptualization of lived experience makes a distinction between knowledge and wisdom. She refers to knowledge as adequate for those who are usually in power, but insufficient for those who have been impacted by structures of oppression and violence. She states that wisdom is a way to think about knowledge that can only be gained through lived experience. The BBI holds firm to this belief that those most impacted by oppressive systems have life-changing and life-saving wisdom. Additionally this initiative also believes that dialogue can help share and create collective wisdom as practice of resistance, healing medicine ,and survival technique.
BBI is also influenced by Katherine McKittrick’s ideas about theorization and relationality, particularly how she asks us to think about “how we come to know, where we know from, and the ways in which many academic methodologies refuse black life and relational thinking” as written in Dear Science. McKittrik tells us, that “part of our intellectual task then, is to work out how different kinds and types of texts, voice, and geographies relate to each other and open up unexpected and surprising ways to talk about liberation, knowledge, history, race, gender, narrative, and blackness” (p.121). The role of epistemology, or the ways in which we “assess knowledge or why we believe what we believe to be true” thus becomes essential for how we value knowledge from community sources.
Healing Justice — Re-Envisioning and Reinvigorating Communal Responses to Harm
Lastly, BBI is influenced by the Kindred Southern Healing Collective which states that through their Healing Justice framework, they are learning “about a legacy of healing and liberation that is meeting a particular moment in history inside of our movements that seeks to:
• regenerate traditions that have been lost
• to mindfully hold contradictions in our practices
• and to be conscious of the conditions we are living and working inside of as healers and organizers in our communities and movements
• Healing justice is being used as a framework that seeks to lift up resiliency and wellness practices as a transformative response to generational. violence and trauma in our communities.”
What is Pakasaritaan?
“I am using the indigenous Ilokano word pakasaritaan (pakatsaritatan) to contextualize and capture a framework that offers a public space in conducting and presenting a research rooted in the knowledge and experience of the Ilokanos and their descendants. The Ilokano word sarita means story, saritaan as talking story, and pakasaritaan as history. It is the sarita that comes out in the saritaan.
–Julius Bajet Soria in PAKA(SARITA)AN: ON ILOKANO LANGUAGE, IDENTITY, AND HERITAGE EDUCATION.