Daniel Kaufman and Mary Louise Pratt _"The three lives of Ilongot field recordings: from ritual to nostalgia to heritage in the northern Philippines"

While the Ilongot people of northern Luzon in the Philippines are not very well known to their countrymen at large, they have an outsize reputation among anthropologists due to the highly influential work of Renato and Michelle Rosaldo, who spent several years doing fieldwork among the Ilongot between the late 1960s and 1970s. They were inspired to study the Ilongot by Yale anthropologist Hal Conklin, who guided and mentored their work. The Rosaldos published detailed ethnographic accounts of different aspects of Ilongot traditional culture. Michelle Rosaldo also recorded a large archive of audio tapes, and Renato Rosaldo built a large collection of photographs.  In this talk we report on the afterlives of these materials, first during a return visit the Rosaldos made in late 1981, then in recent gestures of outreach made by the Ilongots themselves in 2024-25. These contemporary encounters with newer generations provide fascinating insights into Ilongots’ changing relations with their past, and into the continuing generative potential of ethnographic work over time.

Daniel Kaufman is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Queens College, CUNY and co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance. He completed his BA in Linguistics at the University of the Philippines, Diliman and his PhD at Cornell University in 2010. Kaufman works primarily on grammatical and historical aspects of Austronesian languages with a focus on the Philippines and Indonesia. As a founding co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, he has been involved in a number of language documentation projects in collaboration with indigenous and immigrant communities in New York City, as well as public-facing efforts to educate the public about the causes and consequences of language endangerment. 

Mary Louise Pratt is Renato Rosaldo’s partner of 43 years. A well-known scholar in Latin American and postcolonial studies, she is Silver Professor (emerita) at New York University, and Olive H. Palmer Professor of Humanities (emerita) at Stanford University.  Pratt is also known for her engagement with anthropological writing, including essays in the volumes Writing Culture, The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy, Indigenous Experience Today, Antropologia Ahora, and others. Along with Renato Rosaldo, Pratt has been reflecting on the Ilongot’s recent engagement with ethnography and the category of indigeneity.