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@mapmakerdavid
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My islands poster is back for purchase. :)
Hundred Largest Islands of the World
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In the Philippines, we like saying "ingat!" when we part ways with a friend. It means take care.
In Malay, "ingat" means remember. :)
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Don't you find it amazing that in Filipino languages, there seem to be a lack of gendered pronouns. For example, when you say "ikaw" (you), "siya" (that person), "sila" (they/them?), there seems to be no reference to the gender of the person. Is this observation correct? :)
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Printed the map I made, and did an autocountercartography. The archipelago that was called the Philippines is both beautiful and dangerous.
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“You have no history”, says the Western academic to me, while their museums hold the works of my ancestors.
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World Bank, leave Bhutan alone.
71% of
#Bhutan
's territory is covered in forest, but with a contribution of only about 2% to GDP per year, the forest sector remains underutilized. How can the country sustainably invest in its forests?
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It is very important to remind USians & the world that it was the US Empire who propped up the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. And during 1986 revolution, it was the US military who airlifted the Marcos family to Hawai'i. Promoting democracy, you say?
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I still remember the time when I was invited to speak in the Philippine presidential compound about mapmaking, and then I showed a project where we mapped where the President's police were killing Filipinos. I couldn't forget the horrified face of a senior government official.
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I also made minimalist relief maps of the Philippines in sunflower yellow and living coral. :)
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The Filipino urge to give knives to family members who are fighting.
“O ayan, sige, magpatayan kayo! Ano?”
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Beware of the colonial narrative that equates decolonisation with terrorism.
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I am finally convinced that only a revolution will change the Philippines. Prove us wrong.
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Excuse for the Marcos Regime:
“He plundered the country & had thousands killed, but he built infrastructure.”
It should be the other way around:
“He built infrastructure, but he plundered the country & had thousands killed.”
Your values make all the difference.
#NeverAgain
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It would be great to know who are the architects of the networks of disinformation in the Philippines (and abroad).
names, companies, financiers, etc.
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I cannot agree with Philippine national historian Ambeth Ocampo who said that Magellan’s mission was about exploration and not colonisation.
We need to be more honest about history.
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The coronavirus pandemic is exposing a fundamental flaw of the global neoliberal economy: the whole system is built on precarity & exploitation. That flaw is not an exception. Our short contracts, overwork, poor health, low savings, etc. made the world healthy for the ultra rich.
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“The United States liberated the Philippines.”
🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩
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When colonisers deploy the phrase “moving forward”, “not getting stuck in the past”, etc., ask them about what their philosophy of time is. Why do people believe that past is irrelevant to present & future? And who gets to define what belongs in which time? How? Why? For whom?
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Years ago, I asked my students to sketch PH from memory. “The nation is an imagined community” - Ben Anderson. The PH map will never be complete, & we’ve got to “stay woke”. How’s our patriotism defined, & who benefits from & is hurt by that? Happy Independence Day, my love. :)
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This is the Philippines (woo)
Disasters killin’ us (ayy)
Human rights slippin’ out (woo)
Rule of law goin’ out (ayy)
Islands are stolen from us (woo)
Dead bodies everywhere (ayy)
This is the Philippines (woo)
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The Philippine president is ordering the destruction of Indigenous communities. And the US empire is supplying the weapons to him. This is horrible.
#defendhumanrights
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"Homo luzonensis fossils found in Luzon island cave, dating back up to 67,00 years." That's our island! :)
New species of ancient human discovered in Philippines cave
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I still hear folks in the Philippines who say that “ah, colonisation was OK because it brought Jesus to the islands.”
But we lost a lot of land, labour, and life. The friar lands were then taken by richest PH families, who still oppress us today. Even remembering is a struggle.
”The Catholic Church recognizes that it still has to address the “open wound” of its own role in the colonial-era violence that first terrorized the indigenous peoples of the Americas, according to the synod’s working document. -
@ConversationUS
More on
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Filipinos are colonising the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples. Why do we rant about foreigners oppressing us, and then doing the same thing to our brothers and sisters in the archipelago?
On Nov. 5, 2009 a Philippine tribe marched against a dam project that was ultimately cancelled. Now, 10 years later, these communities find themselves fighting a new version of the project.
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When someone insists that Geography and mapping are not political, send them this
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The people who continue telling me "your maps are nice but please don't be political" do not understand the fundamental nature of geography and cartography: space, knowledge, and power. 😂
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This argument is a joke. My ancestors in the Philippines were dispossessed of their lands. Imagine all the horrible things that were part of the colonisation of the archipelago by the Spanish and US Empires (don't forget the Japanese Empire). Customers? Calling BS on this.
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Do you buy a notebook when you feel your life is out of control? 😂
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The archipelago that was called Las Islas Filipinas/The Philippines/Pilipinas, may you never oppress your indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, urban poor, farmers, workers, migrants, & all ethnic groups that make you who you are. May you never do what was done to you by the colonisers
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A 1952 map of Mindanao, the Philippines. Several areas were marked by the Coast and Geodetic Survey as “unexplored”. Not from the perspective of the indigenous peoples, of course. :)
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3 ways colonisers use environmental talk:
rural nostalgia - settlers long for the "good old times" in the farm on stolen land
hippies - the obsession with "natural" purity
crisis - Indigenous sovereignty is pushed aside to "save the world"
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I’ve made a map of the 100 largest islands of the world. Which ones would you like to visit? And please support me on Patreon! I’d love to share a high-quality version of it with you here:
Also, pls. message me if you're interested in getting a print. :)
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I'm perplexed by the fact that people are annoyed by protests, rallies, and dissent just because they're inconvenient. They've forgotten that minimum wage, 8-hour work day, and the right to vote was due to people fighting for those rights. Power concedes nothing without a demand.
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The Philippine Army is so paranoid that they killed the top botanist of the Philippines. Never forget.
Leonard Co was a Filipino botanist famous for his taxonomy efforts w/ native Filipino plants. He was killed in 2010, but his legacy remains.
Check out the first episode in a miniseries about his life from our grantees
@aquino_tricia
&
@PumaPodcastPH
:
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Had a call with my mama. She said, “son, just submit your PhD because only you, supervisor, & examiner will read it. Do you think others will read it? No! So just go.” 😂
She has a PhD, 2 masters, & heads a government science agency. 🥴
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That trend in the Philippines where folks don't listen to you until you get a foreign degree, even if you have been saying the same thing.
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I get into trouble for doing this. And my parents keep telling me to shush, so I tell them, "but you made me and then I looked like Rizal the national hero and you also named me David. What do you expect?". lol 😂
Kidding aside: when you can, speak truth to power. Until victory.
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People already live here, you colonisers.
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Welcome to our archipelago, where speaking about and mapping difficult issues is deadly. But we need to continue to make space for human and environmental rights, even if the costs are high, even if the struggle is long, while we figure out how not to get killed in the process.
At least 30 environmental activists were killed in the Philippines last year, and 48 in 2017, making it the deadliest country in the world for eco-defense.
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In the Philippines, we must stop glorifying mega projects & their planners who displace Indigenous communities, urban poor, & many marginalised peoples. Duterte’s violence is not unusual. The Philippines as a “neocolony” is designed to extract, dispossess, & annihilate life.
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Decolonisation is fun for academics until the moment you mention returning stolen land. Then the academics say byeeeeeeeee
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For us Filipinos, the climate crisis means stronger, Category-5 hurricanes. A typhoon like that can wipe out whole coastal houses and soils. It's a real fight to survive. Did we cause most of the emissions? No. Do we bear much of its cost? Yes, and the cost is paid in lives.
I think what a lot of people don’t understand about millennials and Gen Z’ers in the climate justice fight is that this is not a career to us. It’s not a come up. It’s a literal fight for our lives. So, of course we’re passionate.
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@AlyyceM
If Spain repays us Filipinos in terms of the land loss, etc. (with interest) and issues an unconditional apology and also helps us fight the current colonisers (US, who paid Spain 20 million USD to purchase the Philippines), then may be I will stop complaining. Maybe.
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A lot of projects entitled "decolonising" are actually recolonising.
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It’s been almost 3 years since I made this. It will be available again as an updated poster soon. :)
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There is no place in the Philippines that is completely safe. Rather, there are only places of varying risks and vulnerabilities - and hugot.
#feelippines
(Here's a quakes map I made in 2017 for my MSc disso)
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Yihee when the leader knows how to use maps, so no one gets left behind. 😍💕
#LeniForPresident2022
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Hello, Metro Manila. This is a friendly reminder from a mapmaker. We are more than 12 million people in 1 of the densest urban areas in the world. And there’s a fault system in the middle. Let’s work w/ our city hall officials re: disaster plans, & have our bug-out bags ready. :)
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My past work about population density in the Philippines. I love being sociotechnical. :)
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Philippine elites: laws are there; it’s just a matter of compliance. It’s up to people to decide & follow, change mindset & behaviour. Filipinos, the power is yours!
Marginalised folks: ok good give us genuine land reform; time to organise & take the power!
Elites: oh not that.
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Long-term environmental planning should include returning stolen land
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Climate change means higher chances of stronger storms every year in places like the Philippines. I've seen a whole beach and settlement that was washed away overnight because of a super typhoon. Climate action means survival for Pacific peoples.
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And now the son of Marcos, while their family holding the stolen money, is back to run for President in the context where many human rights violations are unresolved & continuing. This colonial s**t takes generations to fix.
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The cure for colonialism is not inclusion and other forms of assimilation. The cure is the return of stolen land.
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For folks who wonder why I have a spanish name, east/southeast asian looks, and an american accent. Imagine your country being passed on from one empire to another, with serious implications until now.
How the US has hidden its empire
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Colonialism turns everything and everyone into a frontier - space, time, the body, knowledge, seafloor, the galaxies, etc. - and I wish more academics are aware of this (and are doing something about it).
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Instead of treating colonial explorer’s accounts as primary sources, we should just treat those works as ethnographic material that is not about the native or Indigenous group, but about the coloniser’s culture.
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Typhoon Mangkhut as it approaches the Philippines this morning. Catastrophically powerful.
#OmpongPH
(By Himawari-8 satellite, shown by NOAA)
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My full name is David Jonathan Cruz Garcia. It still baffles folks during dinners why I look like this lol. American first names, Spanish middle & last names. When folks ask, I just say "we can start in 1521, but I want to to enjoy this food instead."
Go google, my friend. 😂
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Somewhere in the disputed areas of the West Philippine Sea, 2005 and 2016.
#10yearchallenge
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And let’s not get started on what my family had to go through to live through such difficult times. Empire is still here, like the US military’s toxic waste in the aquifers & water that flows under our house back home. This is why we oppose Empire because Empire is death.
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Beauty, according to the ruling class.
Violence, because your house had to be demolished to make the lines straight.
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prepping an interactive map for the Philippine elections tomorrow :)
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There’s something very racist with those documentaries and journalist work that say “the peoples of the Pacific navigated the Ocean without technology.”
Who gets to define the scientific and technological?
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How can we kindly but clearly communicate the message that earthquakes happen despite our religious performance? It’s so difficult to communicate science in PH ‘coz reactions are very polarised, emotionally charged. But our mindset, emotions have real effect on our disaster prep.
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It is imperative for you Americans to dismantle your Empire asap. You have been bringing death to every corner of the world for a long time.
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They marry a local of a native culture, and then they tell the people of that culture how they live by publishing a book. Then, they get tenure and become a professor of that culture.
In my case, I plan to marry an American so I can write an Ethnography of the US Empire.
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The current number is 187, according to Ethnologue. 187 ways of providing meaning to the world. :)
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Pretty worrying that there are generations of Western environmentalists, humanitarians, academics, technologists, etc. who are taught (implicitly or explicitly) that is their job to save the world instead of dismantling systems like imperialism.
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Filipinos are colonising the lands of Indigenous peoples in the archipelago. The practices that Spaniards, Americans, and Japanese did in past colonisation are being continued by the PH elite in the name of a monocultural idea of being "Filipino".
“Apart from the place’s natural habitat being disrupted and the rice fields being bought off from its farmers, more alarmingly, indigenous people (IP) have been forced to give up their lands by BCDA and their local government units.”
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Maybe, you’ve noticed that I’ve used indigenous names in maps I made. I intentionally do that.
My country, the Philippines: we didn’t even had the chance to choose how we’re called. We’re named after some Spanish king who thought his empire owned whatever land they “discovered”.
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The irony about the Philippines is that while we're (nominally) independent from former colonisers (Spain, UK, US, Japan), the Philippine state & corporations still use colonial laws & practices. Just look at how Filipinos treat Indigenous peoples & lands. But it's not hopeless.
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Today, despite the climate catastrophe and the terrorist attack in the city, the children of Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand were showing the world what true strength is: diversity, tolerance, and caring for each other and the planet.
Kia kaha, Aotearoa. 🇳🇿
Pls RT!
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(Got this pic from RA Siy)
Louder for people who reduce the Manila’s traffic congestion problems just to “the lack of discipline”.
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We need more movies where the US Empire is not saved by anyone. It just finally collapses and that's it. Hurray!
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Geographers, journalists, academics, etc. still use words like remote, far, distant, etc. without citing where is the centre of their map. We have imagined audiences when we write. We also have imagined maps.
Far, but for whom?
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Got an offer of a research fellowship that could help me fund my 4th year of the PhD study yiheeeee.
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Western education is so perverse that students are not taught that US, UK, France, etc. still have colonies in the Pacific. In 2020.
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