Welcome to Liyang's Campaign page for "Nourishing Legacies!"
As we move into 2024, Liyang Network honors the exemplary life and legacy of the late Lumad chieftain Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay and urges the international community to strengthen and renew their support for people’s movements based in the Global South for the right to land, livelihood, and self-determination!
The fight for basic human dignity and human rights is strongest when led by front-line communities from the most marginalized and oppressed people. Let us continue to listen and respond to their calls to action!
"What we want is peace and serenity. But now even our children are being arrested or murdered by the military to sell out our ancestral lands. That's why my challenge to the youth is to continue fighting for the environment, for our ancestral lands, not only in Pantaron but all over the world"
— Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay, Lumad Chieftan, 2018
On November 20, 2023, acclaimed Lumad leader Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay passed away surrounded by loved ones after over half a century of resistance to the occupation and theft of her people’s ancestral lands. Her lifetime dedicated to building collective unity now lives on through generations of human rights defenders around the world who are continuing the struggle.
"When I leave here I will become a guiding light for you all. Don’t give up, but continue the struggle."
– Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay in her final days
Join us in supporting two specific initiatives that continue Bai’s legacy at a time when land and human rights defenders including Lumad leaders continue to be targeted, red-tagged, abducted, jailed, and even killed by government and government-backed forces under the name of ‘peace and development.’ Donations to this campaign will support:
- A reprint of a soft-cover novel based on the life and work of Bai, We Call Her Ina Bai: How Strong Women are Made.
- Health and education support for targeted environmental and human rights defenders and their families.
Read more about these initiatives below.
Donate $50 or more for a complimentary copy of We Call Her Ina Bai!
Who is Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay?
When she was young, Bai defied patriarchal expectations in her community such as arranged marriage. Selected to be chieftain by her people, she was entrusted with conflict resolution, leading decision-making circles, and even as a warrior.
Later in her life, she became the founding chairperson of Sabokahan - Unity of Lumad Women.
Read more about Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay’s life here: tinyurl.com/LiyangTributeBai
What does this campaign support?
1. Support our community partner Sabokahan in their campaign to re-print We Call Her Ina Bai: How Strong Women are Made, a novel that immortalizes Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay's legendary life.
In 2021, Liyang was able to support the initial printing of Sabokahan’s first self-published book We Call Her Ina Bai: How Strong Women Are Made. This book further propelled the Lumad people’s victories to be known around the world while providing material support for the struggles of Indigenous peoples, women, peasants, and youth that Bai dedicated her life to.
Sabokahan’s first print run successfully placed hundreds of books into people’s hands across multiple continents. Now, Sabokahan is calling for support to help keep this powerful story alive with a second print run. Without the backing of publishing houses, this grassroots project has relied on the donations of supporters and allied NGOs.
We hope the book will reach even more people who will be moved by the stories of Bai and her grandniece, Sharmaine, and inspired to take actions of solidarity.
We Call Her Ina Bai teaches us about the long history of the struggle of the Lumad people through the eyes of Ina Bai and her grand-niece Sharmaine. The long history of the Lumad is a continuous uprising against the ecological devastation of large-scale mining and monocrop plantations, against the violence of paramilitaries, against the closure of Lumad schools, against the tyranny of the patriarchal state.”
— Liyang Network We Call Her Ina Bai reading group participant
“In this woven story of our collective life, my story is also held. There are women especially, strong women, whose lives are intertwined with mine and, over the years, I have strived hard to include their experiences in the stories that I tell. The story is not finished yet. It is still unfolding, even as I say these words. The tapestry of our story is still being woven by the hands of my people, the women of the Manobo tribe, the friends who have come to know us and ally with us, and even by the blood-stained hands of our enemies.”
— Bai, in "We Call Her Ina Bai"
2. Health and education support for land and environmental defenders facing state persecution and imprisonment, and for their families.
In her lifetime, Ina Bai faced many threats to her life because of her activism. She and her community were forced to evacuate from their ancestral lands to the cities as many as ten times and had been unable to return to her home in Mindanao for the past six years due to militarization. Her family also faced coercion and intimidation from state forces, in an effort to persuade her to give herself up and abandon her struggle.
Bai’s position was not unique: as of late November of this year, there are almost 800 unjustly imprisoned human rights defenders in the Philippines–78 of whom are elderly, and 159 of whom are women. These include activists from all sectors, from Indigenous communities to peasant and worker leaders, to human rights and peace advocates.
Funds from our campaign will support the health needs of many of these persecuted defenders and their families, as well as educational scholarships for their children.
Donating $175 can cover school supplies, medical checkups, and medicine that support one defender and their family.
Continuing Bai's Legacy of Weaving Struggles!
Throughout her life, Bai increasingly related the local struggle of her people to other communities facing occupation, oppression, and exploitation of all forms. She spoke of the interconnected nature of the struggles of Indigenous people, women, peasants, workers because of their shared systemic causes.
Following in Bai's decades-long commitment to liberatory struggles, we recognize Lumad struggle as interconnected with broader fights against exploitation, oppression, and occupation, within the Philippines and globally. In sustaining these struggles that Bai dedicated her life to, we support the creation of the future she envisioned where there are healthy environments, safe communities, and a genuinely peaceful world.
Who is Sabokahan?
Sabokahan Unity of Lumad Women is a grassroots Lumad women and LGBTQ+ organization working for the genuine transformation of the Filipino society and global community by overcoming barriers that preclude women from being at the frontlines of the struggle for Lumad women’s rights and dignity, land rights, self-determination, social justice, genuine peace and prop-people development.
It was founded in 2003 with Bai Bibyaon Ligkayan Bigkay as its chairperson.
Deeply rooted in the communities, Sabokahan works for the emancipation of Lumad women from feudal and patriarchal traditions and practices. At the regional level, it represents the issues of Lumad women in Mindanao. Sabokahan empowers Lumad women through education, organization, mobilization, capacity building, and community development work addressing economic and social injustices.
They also actively represent the voice of indigenous women in various campaigns, advocacy actions to advance women and indigenous peoples’ rights, human rights, economic justice, ecological justice, and other causes that intersect with women’s issues.
*Liyang Network was founded in June 2019 in response to a call that a network be created to consolidate individual supporters of Sabokahan from the national and international community.
Who is Liyang Network?
Liyang is a local-to-global advocacy network that amplifies and supports the struggles of environmental and human rights defenders in the Philippines. We were founded in 2019 in a Lumad evacuation center in Mindanao, at the request of our primary community partner Sabokahan Unity of Lumad Women, to bring together their allies within the Philippines and internationally. We are based in the Philippines and have an overseas chapter in the US, as well as supporters and allies all around the world.
A key part of Liyang’s vision is that we act with the understanding that all struggles for environmental protection are interconnected and that global movements for the defense of land and self-determination can draw inspiration from those in the Philippines.
Where can I learn more?
Visit our website
https://www.liyangnetwork.org/
Sign-up for the Liyang Newsletter
tinyurl.com/LiyangNewsletter
Follow Sabokahan and Liyang on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/sabokahan/
https://www.instagram.com/liyang_network/
https://www.instagram.com/liyang.us/
Follow Sabokahan and Liyang on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/sabokahan.ipwomen
https://www.facebook.com/LiyangNetwork
If you’d like to get in touch with Liyang Network, please email us at [email protected]!