This is a must-read for those who want to know and understand the history of the Lumad’s struggle to preserve their homeland as seen by a Mindanawon deeply-rooted in engaged anthropology and theology. Another triumph of Karl in committed writing.

Karl Gaspar takes us right into the intricate grounds where the tensions and conjunctions of the distinctive knowledge fields of anthropology, theologly, and religious missions are far more discernible - the squalid villages of indigenous Lumad peoples in Molmol and elsewhete in the mountain regions of Mindanao. Karl, himself an anthropologist, a theologian, and missionary who engaged Lumads as social science scholar, a Christian servant, and an advocate embody these tensions and conjunctures in the way he mobilises these triad of helds to elucidate as weil as raised concern about the extraneous strain confronting indigenous communities. In so doing, Karl reveals and laments in lucid but disturbing accounrs the depths of desperation facing a swath of humanity in our midst that demand immediate collective action.
Jose Jowel Canuday
Ateneo de Manila University
Bakwit: The Power of the Displaced
National Book Award 2009