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Critical essay · Postcolonial literary and cultural criticism

Introduction

Fay-Cooper Cole’s The Bukidnon of Mindanao, published in 1956 by the Chicago Natural History Museum, is an ethnographic study documenting the customs, beliefs, material culture, and everyday life of the Bukidnon people of north-central Mindanao. The work is based primarily on Cole’s field research during the first seven months of 1910. More than a record of Indigenous life, however, the book can be examined as a text shaped by the historical circumstances, intellectual traditions, and unequal relations of power within which Western anthropology developed.

A postcolonial reading asks a fundamental question: Who has the authority to describe a people, interpret their culture, and determine how their history will be understood by others? Through this perspective, Cole’s work becomes an important subject for examining the relationship between knowledge and colonial power, the representation of Indigenous identity, and the preservation of cultural traditions through an outsider’s account.

This criticism does not assume that Cole deliberately intended to demean the Bukidnon. Rather, it examines how a scholarly work can preserve valuable cultural information while also reflecting the limitations and assumptions of the period in which it was produced.

The authority of the Western observer

One of the central concerns of postcolonial criticism is the authority granted to outsiders who study and describe colonized or Indigenous societies. In The Bukidnon of Mindanao, Cole occupies the position of the researcher who collects information, organizes it into categories, and presents his findings to an academic audience. The Bukidnon people, meanwhile, become the subjects whose lives are documented and interpreted.

This arrangement raises questions about representation. Who determines which customs deserve attention? Who decides how Indigenous beliefs should be explained? And whose interpretation becomes accepted as authoritative knowledge?

Cole’s position as an American anthropologist gave his observations access to the institutional authority of a major museum and an established academic discipline. The resulting publication could circulate among scholars and readers who might never encounter the Bukidnon directly. Consequently, Cole’s descriptions had the potential to shape how outsiders understood the community.

This is not, by itself, proof that his observations were inaccurate or prejudiced. Ethnographic research requires interpretation, and Cole’s work offers information that may otherwise have been difficult to recover. Nevertheless, a postcolonial reading reminds us that the power to document a culture is also the power to influence how that culture is perceived.

The crucial question, therefore, is not simply whether Cole described the Bukidnon, but whether the people he described are presented as active interpreters of their own world or primarily as objects of scholarly observation.

The colonial gaze and the idea of a vanishing culture

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of Cole’s preface is his description of the changes taking place in Bukidnon society during the early American colonial period. He explains that American authorities were constructing trails, establishing villages, introducing agricultural equipment, opening schools, and promoting new forms of government. He also observes that traditional leaders known as datos were being replaced by elected village officials and that clothing and religious practices were changing.

Cole’s account is valuable because it documents how government intervention affected Indigenous political, economic, and cultural life. Yet his language also deserves close examination. When he describes the changes as the end of the Bukidnon’s “old life,” he frames the community through the idea of a culture disappearing under the pressure of modernization.

From a postcolonial perspective, this creates a tension between preservation and colonial assumptions. The researcher wishes to record a culture before it changes, but the very changes he describes are occurring within a political environment shaped by American authority. The culture is treated as something to be documented before it disappears, while the institutions contributing to its transformation are presented as part of the historical background.

This raises an important question: Does the desire to preserve Indigenous culture risk treating that culture as a relic of the past rather than as a living society capable of change and resistance?

The Bukidnon were not merely passive recipients of outside influence. Cole himself acknowledges that some communities responded to political intervention by strengthening distinctive clothing traditions and religious ceremonies. These responses suggest cultural agency: people could adapt, preserve, or reaffirm aspects of their identity under changing conditions.

A postcolonial interpretation therefore challenges the notion that cultural change necessarily means cultural disappearance. Traditions may transform without losing their significance, and resistance may take the form of preserving rituals, language, social relationships, or collective memory.

Language, classification, and the construction of Indigenous identity

Another important concern is the power of naming. Cole notes that the people he studied commonly referred to themselves as Higaonan, which he translates as “mountain dwellers,” while the term Bukidnon was applied to them by coastal Bisayan communities. He also discusses the historical use of related labels for other highland populations.

This observation is significant because it reveals that the name used to identify a community may come from outside that community. Names are not always neutral descriptions; they can reflect geographical assumptions, political relationships, and the perspectives of neighboring populations.

Through a postcolonial lens, the discussion invites us to ask whose terminology becomes dominant in scholarship and why. When an externally applied name becomes the standard academic label, it may obscure the distinctions that communities make about themselves and their relationships with other groups.

Nevertheless, Cole’s recognition of the distinction between Higaonan and Bukidnon complicates any simple accusation of cultural erasure. He records information that allows later readers to question the terminology itself. His work thus contains both the possibility of reproducing an external classification and the evidence needed to examine that classification critically.

The appropriate response is not to reject the book automatically, but to read its terminology alongside contemporary Indigenous self-identification, community histories, and linguistic research.

Indigenous spirituality and the authority to interpret belief

Cole devotes substantial attention to the Bukidnon spirit world, ritual specialists, ceremonies, and religious beliefs. His contents include discussions of the baylans, spirits, the Kaliga-on ceremony, and other ritual practices. He also records stories and legends associated with the community.

These sections preserve material that is important for understanding Bukidnon cultural history. At the same time, they invite questions about the relationship between Indigenous knowledge and the scholarly categories used to describe it.

Anthropological writing often organizes spiritual practices into categories such as religion, ritual, mythology, and superstition. A postcolonial critic must investigate whether such categories accurately convey the meanings that practitioners themselves attach to their beliefs or whether they impose distinctions derived from the researcher’s own cultural background.

For the Bukidnon, spiritual traditions may be inseparable from agriculture, health, kinship, social obligations, and relationships with the natural world. If these practices are described only as isolated ceremonies or beliefs, their broader social and philosophical significance may be diminished.

An important question, therefore, is whether the book allows Indigenous spirituality to stand as a coherent system of knowledge or primarily presents it as an object for external investigation.

Cole does indicate that he discussed ceremonies with participants and sought explanations from several people. He also describes his attempts to participate in community activities. These methods suggest an effort to understand practices through direct engagement rather than observation alone.

Yet participation does not automatically eliminate differences in authority. The researcher still selects what to record, decides how to organize it, and determines how the results will be presented. A decolonial reading would supplement Cole’s account with the interpretations of Bukidnon elders, ritual practitioners, historians, and contemporary cultural scholars.

Such comparison would not merely correct the outsider’s perspective. It would recognize Indigenous people as intellectual authorities whose explanations are essential to understanding their own traditions.

Material culture: preservation and the museum gaze

Cole’s study also documents clothing, ornaments, houses, agricultural tools, baskets, musical instruments, and other objects. His preface explains that objects were collected for museum display and that their uses were discussed with their owners.

This aspect of the research presents another postcolonial tension. Museums can preserve objects that might otherwise deteriorate or become difficult for future generations to study. Photographs, illustrations, and descriptions can also provide valuable historical evidence about technologies, craftsmanship, and everyday life.

However, collecting cultural objects and transferring them into museum settings can change how they are understood. An object that originally functioned within a living community may become an exhibit representing a supposedly distant or unfamiliar culture.

A basket, garment, musical instrument, or ritual object is not simply a physical artifact. It may embody practical knowledge, artistic expression, social relationships, spiritual meanings, and inherited skills. If it is displayed primarily as evidence of an Indigenous way of life, those meanings can be reduced to the perspective of the institution displaying it.

This criticism does not establish that Cole’s collections were improperly acquired. That would require evidence about particular objects, their acquisition, and the consent of their owners. Instead, it identifies a broader issue: preserving the physical evidence of a culture is not the same as preserving the community’s authority over its cultural heritage.

A contemporary postcolonial reassessment should therefore ask where the collected objects are now, how they are interpreted, whether their provenance is documented, and how Bukidnon communities might participate in decisions about their representation and care.

Oral traditions and the difference between recording and interpretation

One of the most valuable aspects of The Bukidnon of Mindanao is its inclusion of stories and legends. The contents identify narratives about the founding of Sumilao, the origin of races, the flood, and the Aguio tales, among others.

From a literary perspective, these narratives offer an opportunity to examine the relationship between oral literature, cultural memory, and Indigenous identity.

Oral traditions are not merely stories collected for academic interest. They can transmit moral values, explain relationships between people and the environment, preserve historical memories, and communicate ideas about community, spirituality, and belonging.

A postcolonial critic should therefore consider whether the narratives are presented as meaningful intellectual and artistic works in their own right or mainly as examples of a cultural system being studied.

There is also a question of translation. When an oral narrative is transcribed into English, the original performance may lose elements such as rhythm, intonation, gesture, audience participation, and the social circumstances in which the story is told. Translation can preserve meaning, but it can also alter emphasis and interpretation.

Cole’s written versions are consequently valuable records, but they should not automatically be treated as complete substitutes for the oral traditions from which they came.

A fuller literary analysis would compare his versions with contemporary performances, other recorded variants, and community interpretations. Such work could reveal differences in narrative structure, symbolism, characterization, and cultural meaning.

This approach would move the discussion beyond the question of whether Cole accurately recorded a story. It would ask how the transformation of an oral narrative into a published ethnographic text changes its status, audience, and authority.

The limits of the book and the possibility of a counter-reading

A responsible postcolonial criticism must also acknowledge the historical value and methodological strengths of Cole’s work.

In his preface, Cole describes his attempts to participate in everyday activities, discuss cultural practices with community members, compare information from different individuals and villages, and record ceremonies. He acknowledges that the material was gathered in 1910 and that the resulting study was primarily descriptive, lacking some lines of investigation that later researchers might employ.

These admissions matter. They show that Cole understood at least some limitations of his research and that his book should not be mistaken for a comprehensive account of all Bukidnon communities across all periods.

The fact that the study was published in 1956, decades after the fieldwork, further requires readers to distinguish between the conditions Cole observed in 1910 and the circumstances surrounding publication. The book is not a direct description of contemporary Bukidnon society.

A postcolonial reading should therefore avoid two opposite mistakes. The first is accepting Cole’s account as a complete and neutral authority simply because it was produced by an academic institution. The second is dismissing the entire work because it was written by a Western researcher during a colonial period.

Instead, the book can be read both as a record of Indigenous cultural life and as evidence of how Western scholarship documented Indigenous societies.

The most productive counter-reading would place Cole’s descriptions alongside Bukidnon oral histories, Indigenous scholarship, local historical records, and contemporary community perspectives. This comparison could identify what the book preserves, what it overlooks, and which of its interpretations require reconsideration.

In this way, the text becomes not the final authority on Bukidnon culture but one historical source among several.

Conclusion

Fay-Cooper Cole’s The Bukidnon of Mindanao occupies a complicated position in the history of Indigenous representation. It preserves descriptions of Bukidnon traditions, social organization, material culture, spirituality, and oral narratives that remain valuable for historical and cultural research. Yet it also invites scrutiny because its knowledge was produced through the perspective of an outside researcher, within the institutional setting of Western anthropology, during a period of significant political and cultural transformation.

A postcolonial reading reveals that the central issue is not simply whether Cole represented the Bukidnon positively or negatively. It is how the process of representation distributes authority: who observes, who interprets, whose terminology is adopted, and whose knowledge becomes part of the historical record.

The book’s discussion of American intervention, changing political leadership, religious responses, and cultural practices offers grounds for examining the relationship between colonial power and Indigenous agency. Its documentation of material culture and oral traditions likewise raises questions about the difference between preserving cultural evidence and recognizing the people who give that evidence meaning.

Ultimately, the strongest criticism of Cole’s work is neither an unqualified rejection nor an unquestioning celebration. It is a critical engagement that recognizes the book’s historical contributions while examining its limitations and returning interpretive authority to the Bukidnon themselves.

The most important task of postcolonial criticism is not merely to read what an outsider wrote about an Indigenous people, but to create space for that people to interpret, challenge, and expand the historical record in their own voices.

References and further reading

• Cole, Fay-Cooper. (1956). The Bukidnon of Mindanao. Chicago Natural History Museum, Fieldiana: Anthropology, Volume 46. Read the book through the Internet Archive.
• Said, Edward W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
• Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. (1988). “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg.
• Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books.