Woven Dreams

I have a piece of t’nalak, over five meters in length, woven by Ellen Osman, a student at Lang Dulay’s weaving school. The pattern involves a sawa, or python, a recurring symbol in t’nalak patterns. I wanted to ask Lang Dulay, from whom I got the t’nalak, about the pattern, but we could not understand each other.

Lang Dulay, a Gawad Manlilikha ng Bayan or National Traditional Artist, is one of ten master weavers of t’nalak featured in the monumental book Dreamweavers (Bookmark, Manila 2001, 230 pages). Publisher Lorenzo Tan calls the book a "salvage operation" as t’nalak was "fast becoming a dying art...swallowed up by commercialization and the demands of a cash economy".

Seeing the t’nalak on coin purses, cellphone cases, menu covers, wallets and portfolios in souvenir shops and tiangges, it is easy to dismiss it as just one of those handicrafts foreign tourists can take back home and proudly show off as "handwoven by tribal people". Dreamweavers tells us otherwise.

In thoughtful and informative essays, the book’s writers–Ma. Elena Paterno, Sandra Castro, Rene Javellana SJ and Corazon Alvina–tell the story of the t’nalak. In essence it is the story of a people, the T’boli, and their world of "plants and insects, birds and animals, of mountains and waterfalls, of rock and stream...stamped on every part of our culture, and on the minds and bodies of every T’boli. The sounds of this world are the voices of spirits and they teach us what we must know, what we must do," says Myrna Pula, a T’boli.

The T’boli women are among the most beautiful, their regal bearing enhanced by their clothes, worn with pride day to day and not just on special occasions. It is the women who weave the t’nalak, and they too who sort and tie the threads in preparation for dyeing, according to the patterns taught to them by generations or given to them in dreams.

Dreamweavers traces the life of the t’nalak from abaca tree to finished product. Photographs–by Neal Oshima–fill in where words fall short. It is a long process indeed that commercialization would say is no longer viable: from harvesting the abaca trees to stripping down the threads, the meticulous preparation process before a weaver counts and ties her threads for dyeing, with the k’nalum leaves (for black) and the loko roots (for red). The dyeing process takes days to ensure good color. All that before a weaver even sits down at her backstrap loom.

The patterns she then weaves are so complex, so sophisticated and so precise they are a mathematician’s dream. But the patterns are not recorded in formulas or equations, but in the soul when Fu Dalu, the spirit of the abaca, chooses to indwell a loom. The post-weaving process is painstaking as well; the cloth is beaten, rubbed with beeswax and burnished to achieve a sheen so distinctive to t’nalak.

Dreamweavers gives us a rare privileged glimpse into the secrets of the t’nalak, cataloging "every single design known to the T’boli weavers of Lake Sebu at the end of the millennium". But, the book acknowledges, "it will never be complete because the T’boli continue to dream".

The casual observer will be hard-pressed to recognize in the patterns the python or the bat or leaves. But that is because he looks with the eyes of an outsider. It may also be difficult for an outsider to fully appreciate the value of t’nalak, that it is more than handicraft or ethnic art.

Paterno writes: "Because t’nalak is a product of the circumstances of the weaver and of the community in which she lives, it is difficult for outsiders to appreciate the value the T’boli place on it. We can try and arrive at a monetary value by measuring the hours spent in production, or the value of the materials used to produce it. But that would be inadequate. T’nalak was used as bride-price. A length of it could be exchanged for a horse or two carabaos. The sacrifice of a piece of t’nalak could release a person from the grip of illness. And the ability to weave good t’nalak helped determine the worth of the woman in her community."

The story of the t’nalak is indeed the story of a people, a story that must be preserved and continued, so that the young girls who are now learning to weave it may continue, not just to weave, but to dream.