Louward Allen Zubiri - " The Lives of Mangyan Scripts"

Mangyan scripts are among the few Philippine Indigenous writing systems that have endured into the present and have been recognized as National Cultural Treasures. Yet their histories, uses, and writing practices remain underdocumented and underdescribed, while contemporary revitalization efforts continue to navigate broader language policies and changing patterns of intergenerational transmission.

Drawing on field-based ethnographic and archival research, this talk traces the lives of Mangyan scripts through communities, collections, and contemporary revitalization initiatives. I focus particularly on the luka, a bamboo container associated with Mangyan writing, as a material object and site of script memory in Mindoro. By following the luka across community and institutional contexts, I examine how Mangyan script knowledge is transformed, sustained, and reclaimed through diverse forms of language work.