File:Ifugao Youth on Saving the Environment.webm

English: Performance by Ifugao Youth as output of the Cultural Arts Workshop facilitated by Dap-ayan ti Kultura iti Kordilyera (DKK / People's Center for Cordillera Cultural Heritage) held at Wangwang, Tinoc, Ifugao last February 1-3, 2013. With the theme: "Adalen, Padur-asen ken Iyabante iti Nainsigudan nga Kultura nga Agserbi iti Umili ken Panangbaliw iti Gimong," the workshop is part of cultural renewal program of Youth Advocacy for the Environment and Culture (YtADEC). Participants had crash courses in theater, visual art, song writing and music while being aware of destructive impact to life, land and culture of aggressive development projects such as hydropower plants by Japanese and Korean investors. Ifugao is a landlocked province of Cordillera Autonomous Region in Northern Philippines. Its rice terraces in Batad, Bangaan, Mayoyao, Hungduan and Nagacadan are included in the 1995 UNESCO World Heritage List. However, these terraces are also in the 2001 List of World Heritage in Danger due ecological imbalance created by large-scale mining, industrial logging, giant dams and other development projects by multinational and transnational companies. Where these projects proliferate through corrupt government consent, militarization and human rights violation come with the package. Because the land and the people are interrelated, Ifugao's Hudhud chant which is inscribed in 2008 List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity is also threatened. The oral tradition is highly dependent on rice culture, community bond and traditional governance by the natives.