'Toy napigket nga daga
Pitpitenmi nga umuna
Danggayanmi't kankanta
Takkiagmi a napigsa
Kettang ken bannogmi
dikam igingina 

     Mannamili
     Ilokano Folk Song

KEYNOTE

          ‘Amianan’ is an Iluko term to refer to the ‘North’. But even in Pangasinan, ‘amian’ is a term which has a denotative meaning referring to the ‘norte/north’ (Diccionario Pnagasinan-Espanol by Lorenzo Fernandez Cosgaya, 1865).

Using our own language and category, the ‘amianan literature’ is the confluence of all literatures from the north: the Iluko, Pangasinan, Bolinao, Benguet-Ifugao-Bontoc-Kalinga-Apayao or the Gran Cordillera, Abra, Cagayan, Isabela, and the Nueva Vizcaya.  To refer to it as ‘regional literature’ as we have been wont to call it, is to confine the configuration into the limited political subdivision of Region 1. The Iluko literature, for instance, defies political territorial boundaries (and it cannot be found in region 1 only) since it springs from different corners of the archipelago and the world, with the peripatetic Iluko’s transplantation everywhere.

          ‘Regional’ as a taxonomic reference from the point of view of the state, remains a narrow, inaccurate, essentializing category that reduces the cultural into the political. While ‘amianan’ may still refer to a geographic space (the ‘north’) whose point of reference is the Manilacentric view, it is nonetheless, more encompassing than ‘regional’ because it is sympathetic to ethnic origins and language rather than on territoriality alone. This means that writings by the Iluko, Pangasinan, Cordilleran folk abroad is still ‘amianan literature’ regardless where they are as long as these so-called ‘exilic narratives’ remain rooted to its native soil.

          In fact, ‘amianan literature’ may even include works written by the migrant Chinese and their descendants in Lingayen and Dagupan as well as the American, Japanese, Tagalog and Visayan migrants who intermarried with the Iluko during the early American period. Blood ties and/or consanguinity and indigenous tribalism are no longer the sole bases of works to be considered as ‘amianan literature’. Transcending territory, blood ties and tribalism, ‘amianan’ as in the concept of a ‘nation’ becomes more dynamic, pragmatic, and evolutionary. This was actually how our national hero Rizal viewed the ‘nation’ in the 19^th century borrowing heavily from the post-Enlightenment German thinker Johann Gottfried Herder. Rizal himself was a descendant of the Chinese trader Domingo Lam-co from the Fujian province of China. Rizal was cognizant of the multiracial multicultural matrix of the emerging Filipino nation with the creoles, the insulares and the mestizos comingling with the rest of the indio population.

          Thus, with the multiethnic polyvocal character of people from the ‘north’, the term ‘amianan’ embodies the lingua franca of the locale. With its diverse language, literature and culture, ‘amianan’ serves as the intersection or confluence of all these. More importantly, ‘amianan’ is not a static, unmediated, intolerant category of literature from the regions. It is an evolution of culture of different ethnolinguistic groups and thereby has the capacity to respond to the challenges foisted by the dominant Manilacentric culture and even to the expansive globalization. But, for clarification, ‘amianan literature’ does not intend to impose itself as an ethnocentric canon of literary works vis-à-vis the National Literature (Panitikang Pambansa). In fact, ‘amianan literature’ is contributory to the development and advancement of our national literature.     

Nakem Centennial Conference Secretariat
E-mail: nakemconference@yahoo.com or precye@aol.com
Phone:  808-956-8405.  FAX:  808- 956-5978
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