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FEATURE
GENEWS
October 2020
The Peoples The archipelago is home to various groups of Sama, who usually identify with their island origins, for example the Sama Pangutaran and Sama Bangingi’. These Sama groups show linguistic diversity and are often recognized by their unique speech characteristics. Upon gaining some grasp of the Sinama language, I noticed how the intonation and vocabulary choice among its speakers tend to vary as we moved from one island to another.
Exploring DNA Origins and History in the Sulu Archipelago by JAE JOSEPH RUSSELL RODRIQUEZ (Ribozymes)
I
have spent most of 2019 and the early months of 2020 in field expeditions in the Sulu Archipelago and Zamboanga in the southern Philippines. Together with a field team, I collected saliva samples from indigenous inhabitants to study the genetic origins and history of a unique region. Traversing the island chain through countless boat and ship voyages, I often found myself in unfamiliar territory without leaving the political boundaries of the Philippines. But I was never alone. Such an enormous task was possible with the help of locals and institutions who trusted in the value of the work we do. The field season culminated with a collection of more than 2,000 DNA samples from more than 100 villages spread from across Zamboanga City to Sitangkai municipality near the Malaysian border. This is to date the largest indigenous genetic sampling of a Philippine region. Through the process, I learned to speak Sinama, the language of the Sama Dilaut, more commonly known as the sea nomadic Badjao. I was immersed in cultures shaped by the region’s diverse island environments and by its complex history unfolding through the centuries. I myself was also changed by the sea-world of Sulu.
The Geographic Setting The Sulu Archipelago is a chain of more than 800 islands connecting Zamboanga Peninsula in Mindanao and Sabah in Borneo. The outlying Mapun Island is located about 400 kilometers west of Zamboanga. The chain has been an important migration route for humans and fauna which continues to the present. Today, the archipelago is divided to the three Philippine provinces of Basilan, Sulu, and Tawi-Tawi. This region at the southernmost tip of the country has figured in many significant demographic and political changes in the past. Like steppingstones, the island chain was the conduit of ancient human migrations into and out of Philippines. The Sama-Bajaw languages spoken in the archipelago are thought to originate from the Barito river basin in south-eastern Borneo. With the arrival of Islam, the Sultanate of Sulu formally rose as the seat of maritime power over a region that at its maximum extent included parts of Borneo and Palawan. Sulu then was a thriving ecosystem ruled by the Tausūg elite who made subjects of the locals and slaves captured from all over the Philippines. Today, modern-day nation boundaries largely restrict freedom of movement in what used to be a larger network of coastal settlements connected by trade and kinship.
While the Sama are generally adapted to coastal living, the Sama Dilaut, literally Sama of the sea, stand out as the most maritime oriented. They used to live entirely in houseboats before the socioeconomic changes of the last half-century drove their transition to stilt-village living. They thrive by diverse ways of fishing and seafood collecting. The most adept are capable of breath-hold diving without sophisticated equipment. The Tausūg, since the reign of the Sultanate, has been the politically dominant group. Their language is now the lingua franca of the region. Originally from Jolo Island, they now settle in most parts of the archipelago. Further north in Basilan are the Yakan, whereas Mapun Island west of Zamboanga is where the Jama Mapun reside. Both are land-dwellers with unmistakable cultural and linguistic connections to the Sama. In common practice, field geneticists would look for sample donors who are unadmixed or of so-called “pure” ancestry. However, we found that ethnic identities in the Sulu Archipelago are often not as neatly boxed as we wanted it to be. For example, Tausūg and Sama intermarriages are common, resulting in children who may identify as both. In Tawi-Tawi, we’ve visited entire villages historically founded by Tausūg or Bangingi’ settlers who mixed with the local Sama. A person’s ethnic identity may sometimes have little to do with ancestry. In Mapun, locals who descended from Joloanos may identify as Jama Mapun, having spent their entire lives in the island and primarily speaking Pullun Mapun. Later, we learned that “Jama” means “person” and there-fore “Jama Mapun” literally means a person from Mapun. Ethnic identities should thus be interpreted with nuances of histories and etymologies.
