Expression of Community Vision by Ayta Children through the Dream Map

Abstract

Indigenous practices of AytaChildren are important sources of information on various issues such as poverty, inclusion, and education. These indigenous practices provide voices for the Ayta children and their perspective can give rich information not only about their beliefs, aspirations, and identities but unfortunately, they are often ignored and excluded in the development process despite the fact that they are the future of their community. Ayta community is rich with indigenous terminologies such as “Kahampatan” which are sources of cultural heritage but their heritage has little documentation. Lastly, the researchers noticed that most of the state sponsored developments, when compared with the concept of development by the indigenous people, there is a wide gap. For communities, they often study theoretically indigenous culture in school but they are seldom exposed to these indigenous culture. Hence this research can be a source of documented indigenous culture from their perspective and will help understand them. For researchers, this will serve as a source of information on the use of dream map as ethnographic method. This research aims to explore dream map as ethnographic tool in gathering indigenous culture. It also aims to explore children’s perspective in understanding indigenous culture. The scope of this research shall be limited to understanding dream map as ethnographic tool. It shall cover the Ayta children in Botolan, Zambales. Since the Ayta community has their practices, the researchers will ask their elders to choose participants for the dream mapping. Data gathered from the participants will be analyzed through coding to be able to discover patterns of vision. At the end of the analysis, the researchers should be able to document the community vision of the Ayta children. This shall give insights to the gaps between what the researchers know and what they really perceive. This will help the researchers explore thematic analysis. As part of the procedure, researchers will ask for their consent and since children are minors, consent will be sought from their parents and elders.