Sacred Talisman from the Islands of Gold

By Lady Kyla Balibagoso for Kikik Kollektive

Do you sometimes have this longing to be transported back to the past, way before the colonizers?

Sometimes, on the most random of days, I can’t help but imagine myself surrounded by the old soil. I imagine hearing the sound of the river and the trees, full of life and wisdom. I would place my mind in a sense of belonging with my ancestors, gathered around a fire, listening to stories as if for the first time. I then imagine asking them, “Who do you think the land’s riches belong to?”

In the Art for Everyone exhibit at SM City Iloilo, this very question was explored by Kikik Kollektive through 20 artists and their artworks. Kikik Kollektive is an independent artist collective cultivating local projects amid global homogeneity through socially engaged collaborations, zines, exhibitions, and public art. In the exhibit, an insight into the ancient Visayan “object-soul” was explored, inspired by National Artist for Literature Resil Mojares. It is believed that everything has a soul, thus rejecting the norm of seeing objects as merely disposable commodities.

There is an awakening of our innate relationship with the nonliving when we see them through the lens of the human undertakings required to create them, their provenance, and the stories gathered or sifted through every hand that once held them.

Once, archaeologists unearthed an interesting truth. It turns out our country and gold were old, old friends. Back then, gold was commonplace. Small-scale mining got going around 1000 B.C., and locals quickly turned what they found into jewelry, chains, and ingots for trade or as heirlooms. It even found its way into dagger handles, dishes, and tooth plating. Gold was shared; it was freely circulated — not monopolized.

Even in the afterlife, gold would accompany the dead, bringing with it the land’s warmth and protection and making sure life continued and became an enduring spark in the universe. This is evident in the death masks that have been found, a reminder of how sacred gold was.

It was also used by the babaylans as adornment for ceremonies and offerings to the spirits. They would dance and hold it with such reverence that the olden trees would sway with every chant, while the moon mirrored the heart of the community.

It has been evident that gold wasn’t considered an object alone, but a nonliving thing with a soul — a protector, like a talisman.

But then, if we look around our communities, our world, and the agencies at work, we can see where and when alienation crept in and cracked us apart.

Centuries of conquest and colonization have set in motion an ongoing cycle of exploitation that now runs deep through global supply chains, turning our ancestral resources into commodities for far-off markets and reinforcing entrenched political powers. Both our territories and our imaginations are being taken. As mountains are gutted and Indigenous stewards displaced, those in power erode our capacity to honor the sacred.

Gold was made into beautiful crafts and used for things that actually mattered to all of the people. Yet now, gold is clothed otherwise and forced to act like a key to acquisition. It birthed cruel bureaucracies and thirsty innovations, and it stripped the land of its abundance. It also paved the way to intensify the four horsemen of the apocalypse — famine, pestilence, war, and death.

Once, there was gold and its people. Now, there is gold, the greedy, and the gluttons.

Looking back, when gold mirrored our spirits and held a soul of its own, we were able to have kinship with the wild. We embraced wilderness, and it became us. Now? Along with soulless gold are the charred tongues and burnt hands of leaders and rich people living off our being.

What rot and malevolence does a person have to have to kill even the nonliving?

Confronting the gold, we grieve a world stripped bare, recognize the scars carved into our land, and reclaim the brilliance still alive in our shared imagination.

May our ancestors hear our plea — to let the sacred talisman from the island of gold mend our souls and entwine once more the glowing thread that made us together and whole.

Sometimes, on the most random of days, I can’t help but imagine myself surrounded by the old soil. I imagine hearing the sound of the river and the trees, full of life and wisdom. I would place my mind in a sense of belonging with my ancestors, gathered around a fire, listening to stories as if for the first time. I then imagine asking them, “Who do you think gold belongs to?”

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Lady Kyla is the communal activation lead of Kikik Kollektive. As an environmental activist, grassroots community leader, and writer, she carries a wild love for a wild world. Growing up in a town that unfurled from old mud and being nurtured by artisans of the fields and the sea, she has learned to consider the earth as kin. Stripped of every accolade, she is just a lady trying to create a softer future for all beings by being present. She believes that her present mind and heart can create a life of widening circles. She hopes that everyone will treat wildflowers as a sincere existence, moss as a teacher of wisdom, and the world as a sacred space.