Abstract des Autors

A project approved by the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC), the Indigenous Tribal Games (ITG) advocates for indigenous empowerment through traditional sports. To accomplish this, a requisite for participating in the ITG is belonging to any indigenous group. Since the audience includes non-indigenous spectators, bringing indigenous players to the fore transports the ‘Other’ to the colonizer’s consciousness that the indigenous player can not only play, but even excel, in Olympic-patterned sports. This article focuses on two ITG competitions participated in by 43 Iraya-Mangyan players of Abra de Ilog and Puerto Galera, Mindoro (2013 and 2014). The findings suggest that ITG enabled a space for the players’ performative (dis)play. Transgressions through neocolonial impositions were necessary in awakening the players’ indigenous consciousness. The ITG advocates sought to empower their contested and tentative performative identities but it has also led to their disempowerment; that is, their ‘inclusion’ has unwittingly, yet also forcibly, ‘excluded’ them.