The Cordillera of Northern Luzon is home to more than one million people speaking related languages: Bontok, Ibaloy, Ifugao, Ilonggot, Isneg, Kalinga, Kankanay, Tinggian, and lesser-known ones (McFarland 1983). Each group of languages, with distinct geographical boundaries, has its own political and social structures, divisions of land, agricultural rites, feasts, and music.
A wet-rice system of agriculture prevails. The mountainsides are leveled off to form parcels of land or terraces to hold the...