The Ifugao Tribe

Ifugao, a province in northern Luzon and one among the six of the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) that covers about 251,778 hectares of territory, 81.77% of which has a slope of over 18 degrees. It consists of 11 municipalities—Banaue, Hungduan, Kiangan, Lagawe, Lamut, Mayoyao (Mayaoyao), Alfonso Lista (Potia), Aguinaldo, Hingyon, Tinoc, and Asipulo—with Lagawe as the provincial capital. It is Endowed with rich vegetation which is famously known for its rice terraces that are found in nine upland municipalities, where mountainsides are sculpted like giant steps as created by the Ifugao people from the time they formed it as a system of irrigation where water from the high mountains gets filtered to the lower terraces, creating rice cultivation and dry cultivations for other crops like sweet potatoes.

The word Ifugao is composed of the prefix 'I' meaning "people of" and pugaw "the cosmic earth", the group is famous for its very complex indigenous religion marked by a cosmology that includes hundreds of deities along with their woodcarving traditions-associated with rituals and weaving. For instance, three subgroups of this group are distinguished by differences in culture and language: the Tuwali, found primarily in the communities of Kiangan and Lagawe; the Ayangan who are largely found in the communities of Banaue, Hingyon, and Hungduan; and the Henanga, in Mayoyao and Aguinaldo.