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 written plainly, without exaggeration and without borrowing wholesale from the practices of neighboring provinces, so that it may be read by the children of Besao as a faithful account of how their ancestors kept the peace.

The Moral Foundation- Inayan and Lawa

Before there were penalties, there was inayan. Among the i-Besao, inayan and its companion term lawa form the root of customary law itself. Elders have described inayan as the very embodiment of Besao customary law, a standing command that discourages any act causing harm to another person, to an animal, or to the land, and that forbids the violation of accepted norms. It works first as a matter of conscience. Before a person acts, inayan asks the person to judge for themselves whether what they are about to do is right or wrong, and it warns that Kabunian himself carries out a form of correction upon those who ignore the warning.

This is why the tongtong of Besao cannot be understood only as a court. It is better understood as the visible, communal extension of an invisible, personal law. A grown man in old Besao did not merely fear being caught by his neighbors. He feared the quiet consequence that inayan promised would eventually fall on the one who caused harm, whether to a person, a growing tree cut down too soon, or food carelessly wasted. The dap-ay and the tongtong existed to handle the cases where a person had failed to listen to that inner voice, and where the resulting harm now had to be answered for in the presence of the community.

The Dap-ay, the Ebgan, and the Amam-a

Every household in old Besao belonged to a dap-ay, the socio-political and religious center of its ward, and to the wider ebgan structure that bound households together. The dap-ay served many purposes at once. It was where boys were raised into responsible manhood, where the harvest and planting seasons were announced, where rituals were performed, and where disputes were laid out for judgment. Presiding over this were the amam-a, the elders whose age and long experience in customary law gave them the standing to mediate, counsel, and, when needed, hand down a resolution.

A tongtong was called when a wrong could not be settled quietly between the two parties themselves. Complaints were raised, the parties and often their families were summoned, and the amam-a heard both sides in the open, at the dap-ay or another agreed venue. Unlike a modern trial, the goal was not to identify a winner and a loser. The goal was restoration, repairing the relationship between the two parties, between their families, and, ultimately, between the community and the moral order that inayan protects. This same spirit of dialogue is what elders invoke today whenever a serious matter between communities must be settled, as when elders of Agawa in Besao and of Tubo in Abra sat together in a tongtong after a tragic killing in 2019, working toward a sapata, a solemn pledge that no further violence would follow.

What Counted as a Violation

The offenses that came before the tongtong were, in the main, the same troubles that disturb any community. Disputes over land and boundaries were common, since rice fields, swidden farms, and forest resources such as the batangan, the communal pine forest, were carefully apportioned and jealously guarded by custom. Marital problems, particularly infidelity and concubinage, were brought before the elders because they threatened the stability of the family and, by extension, the peace of the ward. Theft, damage to another family's crops or animals, and personal quarrels that led to injury were likewise matters for the dap-ay. Disrespect toward elders, the breaking of communal work obligations, and careless waste of shared resources such as water and forest wood were treated as offenses against the whole village, not merely against an individual.

The gravest matters, especially the taking of a life, were rarely settled by a single dap-ay alone. These required a wider tongtong between entire villages, sometimes between different ethnic communities, because such a wrong endangered peace on a scale beyond one family. In these graver cases, the process slowed down considerably and involved municipal and even provincial elders and officials, precisely because the risk of retaliation and prolonged conflict between communities was real and had to be prevented through patient, face-to-face dialogue.

Penalties and the Path to Reconciliation

The customary system of Besao did not lean on imprisonment or corporal punishment the way colonial and modern law would later introduce. Its penalties were restorative. A person found to be at fault was typically required to make restitution, whether through the return or replacement of what was taken or damaged, through a fine agreed upon by the elders, or through a public acknowledgment of wrongdoing before the offended party and the community. In cases touching marital fidelity, the elders could require the erring party to provide an animal, often a pig, to be butchered as part of the cleansing and reconciliation of the couple and their families, restoring the household's standing in the eyes of the community.

Beyond material restitution, the heavier penalty was social. A person who refused to accept the elders' judgment, or who repeated an offense after being corrected, risked the loss of standing within the dap-ay and the ebgan, a consequence that mattered greatly in a society built on mutual obligation and shared labor. And underlying every settlement was the belief that inayan itself would still hold the offender accountable to Kabunian, regardless of what restitution had already been paid to the injured party. The tongtong closed the matter between people. It could not undo the deeper moral reckoning that Besao's ancestors believed rested with the Supreme Being.

Daw-es and Sakeb, the Deeper Remedies

For offenses that ran deeper than a simple quarrel or a boundary dispute, the tongtong of Besao could call on two further remedies, daw-es and sakeb. Daw-es was the cleansing ritual. Its purpose was to purify the offender and to lift the spiritual defilement that the wrongdoing was believed to leave behind, restoring the person to right standing before Kabunian and the community even after restitution had already been made to the injured party.

Sakeb, the second and heavier remedy, did not automatically follow daw-es. Whether it proceeded at all depended on the gravity of the offense as judged by the amam-a. When it was imposed, sakeb required the offender to remain inside an empty house for a considerable number of days, with the doors and windows kept closed for the entire period and the person unable to step outside. Someone close to the offender, often a family member or a trusted neighbor, was permitted to bring food during this time. The confinement gave the offender space to reflect in isolation, and it stood as a visible sign to the community that the offense had been serious enough to warrant more than restitution and cleansing alone.

The Role of Ritual

Beyond daw-es and sakeb, reconciliation in old Besao was never purely a legal transaction. It was sealed spiritually. Before undertaking significant decisions, including matters brought to the dap-ay, elders and disputants alike might turn to pidis, the reading of a butchered animal's liver, to discern whether the path being taken was favored or opposed. A favorable reading was taken as a sign that the settlement was acceptable to the unseen world and could proceed; an unfavorable one called for caution or a different course of action. A sapata, a solemn pledge invoked in the presence of elders and, by extension, of Kabunian and the ancestors, bound the parties to honor what had been agreed upon, with the understanding that breaking a sapata invited misfortune far more severe than any human penalty. Where the offense had strained a whole community's peace, the resolution was often marked by a communal meal, a visible and shared act that told everyone present that the matter was now closed and that peace had been restored.

Why This Still Matters

The tongtong of Besao was not a primitive stand-in for a court of law. It was a complete moral and social system, one that measured a person's wrongdoing not only by the harm done to another individual but by the disturbance it caused to the whole fabric of community, land, and spirit that inayan and lawa were meant to protect. Its penalties sought healing over punishment, and its rituals reminded every umili that reconciliation among people could never be separated from right standing before Kabunian.

Much of this way of settling disputes has given way to the barangay justice system and to Philippine law, and rightly so, since these now carry the force needed to protect the whole nation. Yet the tongtong survives wherever elders still gather at the dap-ay, wherever a sapata is still spoken in earnest, and wherever a family still chooses dialogue and restitution over the courthouse. To understand this old system faithfully, and not to caricature it as either lawless custom or as identical to the customs of neighboring provinces, is one way the present generation of i-Besao can honor the wisdom their ancestors built stone by stone at the dap-ay.

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