The Tongtong or Tongtongan System (Traditional Justice in Old Besao)
The Tongtong or Tongtongan System (Traditional Justice in Old Besao) By Ginawang | The Besao Blogger Long before the barangay hall, the municipal court, and the printed law book came to the mountains of Besao, the community already had its own way of telling right from wrong. It was not written on paper. It lived in the conscience of every umili (villager), in the counsel of the amam-a (council of elders), and in the quiet dread of offending Kabunian, the Supreme Being who watches over the affairs of men. This system of dialogue, correction, and reconciliation is what the wider Cordillera calls tongtong, a word that simply means “to talk it out.” In Besao, this talking was never separate from the dap-ay, the stone-paved council ground and the ebgan, the ward system that organized every household into a moral community answerable to one another. This essay gathers what has been documented about this old way of settling disputes among the Kankanaey of Besao. It is ...