Kasiyana as Religious Communication among the Kankanaeys in the Philippines
RELIGION AND SOCIAL COMMUNICATION VOLUME 22, NO. 2 (2024)
ISSN 1686-9184
Author
Brandon Cadingpal
Abstract
Indigenous cultures have their belief systems, including the recognition of a supreme being, and with such recognition comes their moral systems, which guide how they live their lives. As for the Kankanaeys in the Cordillera Region of the Philippines, Kasiyana is one of the practices that portrays their belief in the divine and serves as a moral guide in their relationship with other people and the environment. The pervasiveness of Kasiyana in the Kankanaey cultures makes it a viable source of reflection in religious communication. Thus, the paper aims to make explicit how Kasiyana expressions and manifestations are forms of religious communication. The paper started by extracting how the COVID-19 survivor participants perceived, expressed, and manifested the Kasiyana. With the participants’ extracted manifestations of Kasiyana, the paper discussed how the Kankanaey concept of Kasiyana qualifies in some pertinent areas of religious communication. The paper also presented how Kasiyana is intertwined with Christian teachings, making it more sensible to discuss as religious communication.
Keywords
Indigenous, cultural identity, cultural preservation, Kankanaey spirituality, Cordillera
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.62461/BCP041124
Submitted: February 15, 2024; Accepted: April 11, 2024; Published: June 30, 2024