Why we should be envious of Lake S’bu

By Noel Galon de Leon

We should be envious of Lake S’bu, not in some petty, cheap way, but in the deep, urgent envy that comes from witnessing a culture that refuses to be a museum piece and instead lives, breathes, and insists on being present.

After nearly a week immersed at Lake S’bu in South Cotabato thanks to a Room to Read workshop, I realized that everywhere I have ever seen culture preserved, from air-conditioned galleries in Iloilo to glossy tourist brochures, feels vastly different from what I encountered here.

Lake S’bu is an ecological marvel and a cultural hearth carved into the mountains of Mindanao, famous for its beautiful lakes, waterfalls, and more importantly, for the T’boli people who have sustained an artistic lineage that is alive and unapologetically embodied.

When I finally met two of its most revered artists, Barbara K. Ofong and Bundos Fara, I was startled. I had read their names in articles; now I saw their presence, and it was far more exacting and complex than any text.

Barbara Kibed Ofong, born in 1956 from Lamdalag, Lake S’bu, is not merely a weaver, she is a dream-made artist. Her T’nalak weaving, an abaca textile dyed and woven in the ikat tradition, is guided by visions sent through dreams by Fu Dalu, the spirit guardian of abaca.

T’nalak is not just fabric; it is cosmology rendered in thread, patterns passed down and conjured through subconscious communion with ancestral spirits. Ofong has practiced this craft for over fifty years, creating more than ninety sacred patterns that express T’boli cosmology, relationships, and reverence for nature.

In December 2023, the Philippine government honored her with the Gawad sa Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) award, a national recognition reserved for artists who not only master traditional arts but also ensure their sustained practice within their community.

This award is more than a medal. GAMABA, established under Republic Act No. 7355, is regarded as the National Living Treasures Award, the highest national honor for folk and indigenous artists whose skills are at once technically excellent and deeply rooted in cultural continuity.

In a time when the Philippines clamors for identity and heritage, this distinction is not symbolic; it is a lifeline for cultural survival. The award acknowledges that without living practitioners, traditions become archives, not breath.

Beside Ofong stands Bundos Bansil Fara, born in 1965, a master of T’boli brass casting, known locally as kem tau temwel. This is the ancient practice of melting and reshaping metals, often repurposed from broken gongs, into sculptural items suffused with spiritual and communal meaning.

Fara’s work, bells, bracelets, ornaments, is not decorative alone, it is a performative trace of a metallurgical heritage bestowed, the T’boli believe, by Ginton, their deity of metal. His pieces articulate community identity through the very materials of ritual and music.

Together with Ofong, he was named a GAMABA awardee in 2023, a testament to Lake S’bu’s extraordinary repository of living artistic mastery.

Before we left the area of two awardees, our group visited Gono S’bung, a cultural space led by Aunty Linda Weaver, the largest longhouse in the district that functions as a living repository of T’boli culture rather than a static exhibit.

It was here that I saw clearly the difference between conventional museum mode, neat shelves, labels, glass cases, and what I experienced at Lake S’bu: culture expressed through practice, participation, and hospitality.

I spoke with Boi Myrna Pula, a T’boli cultural master, teller of stories, weaver, translator, writer, and community advocate whose work is less documented online but no less crucial. Indigenous custodians like her are the keepers of narrative logic and collective memory.

Myrna’s influence was not confined to walls or objects, it lived in the way she shared stories, walked the land, and invited outsiders into an understanding that cultural preservation is not about display, it is about reciprocal belonging.

We witnessed Gono spaces, not merely as structures but as cultural institutions where guests are invited to share meals, voices, and sweat, because for the T’boli, culture is social and corporeal.

A living, breathing cultural showcase like Gono S’bung is the opposite of a sterile museum. It is an ongoing human presence where learning and performance entwine, where history is not behind glass but thick in the air you breathe.

In someplace like Iloilo, galleries and museums are aplenty, but they often prioritize display over dialogue. They offer viewership without participation, sight without sensory entanglement.

Lake S’bu throws you into culture with no buffer. You step into campfires, loom rhythms, oral storytelling, brass clangs, and raw laughter. Culture here is not curated, it collides with you.

This is what a living cultural showcase offers: access, reciprocity, and transformation. It does not freeze tradition, it invites you to engage it with your whole body and mind.

Its advantages are profound: visitors do not walk away with labels; they walk away with relationships. Instead of reading about culture, you experience it, feel its contradictions, and witness its fragility and resilience.

This matters in an era where cultural identity, especially indigenous identity, is endangered by commodification and erasure. A living showcase resists that by anchoring culture in daily practice and social life, not static artifact.

When communities like the T’boli are given platforms, as happening here through GAMABA awardees, Gono spaces, Schools of Living Traditions, and community cultural workers like Myrna, culture becomes evidence of continuity, not a relic.

Such experiences impose on outsiders a reckoning: museums should not merely safeguard objects, they should facilitate ongoing life forces.

As I stood beside Barbara Ofong’s loom, watched Fara hammer metal, and listened to Myrna’s stories, I understood that cultural authenticity lives in tangible acts of transmission.

This trip was important for me not just because I learned something, but because I was called out by the raw integrity of these traditions to reconsider how culture should function in the modern Filipino imagination.

I owe deep gratitude to Sir Al Santos, MJ Tumamac, and the entire Room to Read team for this opportunity, a rare chance to see, hear, and feel what living heritage truly means beyond the sanitized frames of tourist brochures.

What Lake S’bu taught me is simple: culture that does not live is culture that will die. We do not need more galleries that only show, we need spaces that invite.

Lake S’bu should make every Filipino, especially those who value cultural identity, envious not for what it shows, but for how it sustains and embodies its traditions with pride, complexity, and open arms.