Aftershocks, Ancestors, and Survival: Mindanao’s Indigenous Communities Rekindle Earthquake Resilience

When a 7.8 magnitude quake struck Mindanao early Monday, the ground trembled and a wave of shocks rippled across the island. Municipal officials now see the death toll, currently 37, climb further as bodies are recovered from collapsed homes and schools.

Throughout the disaster, emergency responders visited coastal towns that have these places called villages, for the Tugala peoples in Davao Occidental and the Tinuo of Lanao del Sur. Their elders told rescuers that these villages have long stable, steep slopes that guide homebuilders, reducing landslide risk. The shelters that were opened are a mix of mortuary‑age bamboo and last‑week earth‑filled structures, which the Tinuo say amplify any tremor by a fraction. Rescuers have witnessed mortar‑free walls that sway but do not collapse, a feature that modern seismic prototypes are now studying.

The Lumad activists, traditionally tied to shifting riverbanks in central Mindanao, pulled out “paluumith,” a line of stone stones placed in shallow trenches. These stones act as shock‑absorbers for quake shocks and are also used in communal rituals. During the first Oslo‑ket atmosphere of rescue, Lumad caretakers guided injured children toward beams that were built to flex. These practices have saved lives and taught outsiders that traditional building methods respect the earth’s pull.

Natural healers from local villages used the mushy root of the alpukat plant, which their ancestors have harvested for analgesic and warming properties. Rumoured to reduce bone fracture pain, the plant is quickly pressed into poultices for those injured in crumbling streets. The healers tell the truth that their tribe has kept these plants with the same potency for five centuries, and they say their knowledge aligns with modern fast‑acting cranioplasty methods.

District officials from the national disaster agency Kathieri are consulting the Indigenous Council of Mindanao. They plan to merge the Council’s community‑watch strategies with drone‑based relief distribution, which was flown into a town that only half its road remains open after a landslide. Because the Council’s mapping includes topographic and vegetation data as drawn by elders in carved diagrams, the drones know exactly where to land to minimise further risk.

In villages such as Silesoy, already famous for their “no‑rope” techniques—tied by vines instead of modern steel—residents wake to aftershocks in the evening. These people recount the 1976 quake off the Cotabato Trench, when the elders walked on the hillside, chanting “kanasano” to keep the vines steady. Today, the age‑old chants are carried through courses to youth who will carry the teachings to future flood and cliff‑fall seasons.

The Philippine president rallied the entire government machinery to the island. Yet the government’s rescue teams leaned heavily on the indigenous way of mapping. The fast‑moving trains of the ambulance units were steered through the pre‑seasonnal roads mapped with the help of the indigenous commemoration markers that refer back to the era of the “Ketbin” tribe, a group whose names grew in the gardens of these hills. In the face of disaster, history becomes a lifeline this is quickly turned into a living planet’s resilience.

In Davao Occidental, a mayor said that nearly all goods had to be flown across steep hills into isolated barangays. He noted that bartered goods—rice, root vegetables, and medicinal herbs—were exactly what the community needed to keep subsistence. This was a direct nod to the “simbahasa”—a village barter economy that has survived for centuries through isolation and a deep bond with natural medicine. In many villages, the resale of these goods is now part of the memorial recovery and the community can reckon with internally supported healing cycles.

United Nations Observers note that the disaster is an inclination for the community to pivot toward a long‑term stewardship that includes building a network of reliances between natural medicine, land respect, and shared resilience. The account ends there, but the calmness that has returned to the barangays can still echo the ancient hum of a bell that once faded after the tremors. The hope is that people can survive, not only from the ground below, but also from the earth’s wise teachings.