German by birth, Pinoy by choice, Mangyan by vocation

MANILA, Philippines—As a helicopter whirrs about in the sky above a school in a Mindoro town, pupils rush to the windows or dash out of the classroom to catch a glimpse of it.

The teacher, cut off in mid-lecture, yells angrily: "Don't be stupid like the Mangyans! Go back to your seats!"

Anecdotes like this about the Mangyan, the indigenous people of Mindoro who inhabit the island's forest interior, upset Catholic priest Fr. Ewald Dinter.

"Poverty and hunger are themselves painful. But if a Mangyan gets treated as a non-person, that is utmost poverty," says Dinter who has lived with the Mangyans for more than two decades.

Dinter, 71, came to the Philippines in 1967 with the Divine Word Missionaries. He was among the first to respond to the call to serve in Mindoro which was suffering from a dearth of priests.

He speaks and understands Hanunuo, the language as well as the name of one of about eight Mangyan subgroups, better than Filipino.

"I am a German by birth, Filipino by choice and Mangyan by vocation," he says.

Dinter is the executive director of the Mangyan Mission, a Catholic group dedicated to preserving Mangyan culture and improving the lives of the Mangyans.

A gentle people

With the support of other private groups, the mission has built elementary schools and a high school for the Mangyan and maintains a scholarship program which has so far sent more than 200 Mangyan students to college.

He describes the Mangyans as a gentle people, the original settlers of the island, who have been forced out of their fertile lands by lowlanders using force, fraud or both, until nothing was left to them except the rugged and dangerous mountain peaks.

"For them, land is not a commodity. It is their identity. It is their source of food and medicines. For them, land is life," says Dinter.

He understands well the difficulties of the Mangyan, coming as he does from a well-to-do German family that was dispossessed in the aftermath of World War II. His father had left to fight in the war and was never seen again. Dinter, his mother and four siblings were driven out of their land and they experienced the most crushing poverty after the war.

This experience and his interest in anthropology were what drew him to the Mangyan.

"I can still remember the blue sky, the palm trees, the coconut trees and the every day sun. It was like I am in a magazine," says Dinter, recalling the first time he arrived in Mindoro.

"The people were very friendly and warm. There was much smiling, even with poverty," he says.

Original writing system

After assignments in various parts of Mindoro and neighboring provinces, Dinter went to live with the Mangyans in their mountain home full time in 1986.

The Mangyans are highly skilled people, he says. They have their own writing system, which Dinter has patiently learned. He says the "surat Mangyan" is the original Filipino system of writing.

They also have their own justice system which Dinter believes is well-rooted in psychology. The Mangyan practice responsible agriculture, instead of the slash-and-burn style which has ruined much of the country's forests.

But for the Mangyan to be able to protect themselves from oppression, Dinter believes they need basic literacy.

No dole-out

The Mangyan Mission has built elementary schools in the remote communities and created adult literacy programs for older Mangyans. The land around the schools have been opened to the parents of the pupils to plant vegetables to feed their children.

"If everything will be given to them for free, there will be no respect. So dole-out is out," says Dinter.

Finding capable teachers was difficult with public schoolteachers unwilling to brave the rugged terrain to reach the Mangyan schools. And many of them do not speak the Mangyan languages.

To get around this problem, the Mangyan Mission started a training program for Mangyan teachers and soon, Mangyan graduates will be teaching their fellow Mangyans.

According to Dinter, many of the Mangyan who were sent out to study on scholarships return not only as teachers but also as nurses and community leaders.

Empowering and preserving

Aside from promoting basic literacy, Dinter also helps to empower the communities in other ways. He has organized them to build a water system to supply themselves with clean drinking water.

The Mangyans are also being helped to organize so they can ask the government to recognize their ancestral land claim.

The estimated 100,000 Mangyan of Mindoro now have organizations for every tribe and they are all united under the Kapulungan Para sa Lupaing Ninuno.

Dinter has also worked with other missionary priests and private groups to preserve Mangyan culture.

"If an old Mangyan dies, a whole library is lost. We have to have it documented so later on, they can still read about their own culture," he says.

Aside from publishing a book series on Mangyan folk tales, Dinter helped to set up the Mangyan Heritage Center in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro, in 1999. The center operates a website where materials about the Mangyan are stored.

Importance of respect

In all of the projects that he has managed to involve himself for the benefit of the Mangyans, Dinter stresses the importance of respect.

The Mangyan Mission respects the original beliefs of the Mangyans and does not impose the Catholic faith on them, although a few have already voluntarily converted to the Catholic faith, he says.

The group is consulted about each project. They are asked what they need and how they plan to achieve them. There is constant dialogue with community leaders.

"We do not dictate on them. It is their life. They make decisions for their lives. We let them tell us what their priority needs are," he says.

For his work with the Mangyans, Dinter is among the four awardees this year of the The Many Faces of the Teacher Program organized by the Bato Balani Foundation and Diwa Learning Systems.

He says he has been soliciting funds for the Mangyan from his classmates and relatives in Germany, but he admits there is so much more that needs to be done and hopes Filipinos would help their fellow Filipinos more.

Dinter prays for a "beautiful future" where the Mangyans can be proud of themselves and of their heritage.

His dream is for the Mangyans to "have a full life."

Small victory

"When they are cheated, when they have no opportunity to develop their capacity, when they are threatened, they do not have the fullness of life," he says.

He offers a more recent version of the helicopter anecdote.

The class settles down and a small girl at the back of the room raises her hand and speaks: "Ma'am, I am a Mangyan. And I did not go to the window."

It is a small victory that gives Dinter enormous joy.