Heritage is kabilin in the Visayan. Kabilin is coined from ka, a prefix for a collective noun, and bilin or remains, which is also derived from bili which means worth. Altogether kabilin means a collection of what we inherited from the past that is of greater value at present.
Peter Howard, in his article The Rise of Heritage published in Asian Anthropology (2010), categorized the fields of heritage into nature, landscape, monuments, sites, artifacts, activities, and people.
It is about people who had passed away that Silliman University focuses on its Heritage Builders program, held every August as she celebrates Founder’s Day. The event is designed to honor Silliman missionaries, administrators, faculty and staff members who echoed the generous service of SU President Emeritus David Sutherland Hibbard, and Prof. Emeritus Laura Hibbard.
One of the honorees this year is Dr. Timoteo Sibala Oracion (1911-1990), whose roots is from Tanjay, Negros Oriental. He was fondly called Tiong by relatives and friends, while others referred to him as Lieutenant or Captain Oracion. In the academia, he was Professor, and considered the first Filipino anthropologist from this Province.
I am writing about Dr. Oracion not because we bear the same surname but due more to the legacies he had to contemporary anthropologists at Silliman and elsewhere, particularly with his seminal studies on the indigenous peoples in the Province–the Negritos and Bukidnons or Magahats.
He was one of the foundations of the anthropology program of Silliman that offers baccalaureate and masters degrees.
Anthropology Assoc. Prof. Rolando Mascunana, one of Dr. Tim Oracion’s graduate students, described his teacher as an “ethnographic expert who employed his fieldwork experience–not much from the books — into his teaching”.
I was not surprised to receive an invitation to attend the Heritage Builders program because many people think we are closely-related: that I am an Oracion, and I’m also an anthropologist. In some instances, I would be asked if I were Dr. Tim’s son–reflecting the saying “like father, like son”. (Dr. Tim Oracion, however, never had a child.)
But when asked how I am related to Dr. Tim Oracion, I would always answer without hesitation that he is my great granduncle or lolo. Certainly, there must be some genealogical connection somewhere because my father, Paulo Katipunan Oracion, is also from Tanjay who married and settled in Bayawan.
Dr. Tim Oracion did not start his career as an anthropologist. He first earned his BS in Education from Silliman, and served as elementary school teacher in 1940-41, just before the war broke out. As a graduate of advanced course in ROTC, he was commissioned in the same year, called to active duty, and inducted to the US Armed Forces in the Far East. Among his missions was to assist the escape and rescue of Americans connected with Silliman.
After the war, Dr. Tim Oracion took up MA in Education in Silliman and earned it in 1951. He later went to the University of Chicago in Illinois, USA where he worked for an MA in Anthropology in 1952.
The Magahats in southern Negros, whom he encountered during the war, was the subject of his master’s theses for both degrees. He further dealt with the farming life of the Magahats in his dissertation for his Ph.D. in Anthropology degree, which he earned in 1970 from the University of San Carlos in Cebu City.
In 1954, Dr. Tim Oracion served as head of the SU Department of Anthropology when it was added under the Division of Social Sciences. In school year 1961-1962, he was acting head of the Division.
When he retired from Silliman, he was an appointed member of the Dumaguete City Council, and then became dean of the Graduate School of Foundation University. He was also a Social Studies teacher from 1986 to 1989 of the Dumaguete Science High School (now Ramon Teves Pastor Memorial High School).
I have been influenced by the works of Dr. Tim Oracion. Reading the author’s name similar to mine in an article about the Negritos in the Silliman Journal (1960) actually inspired me to write about this people for my English 25 term paper.
This led me to pursue Sociology for my baccalaureate degree. I also did fieldwork in 1983 with the Negritos for my masters degree. I tracked down Negrito settlements in the mountains of Bais and Mabinay, where Dr. Tim also did his fieldwork. By mere coincidence, I also earned my Ph.D. in Anthropology from USC in 2006.
The only time when I was academically-engaged with Dr. Tim Oracion was when I enrolled in the doctorate program in Education at Foundation University, where I took some anthropology subjects with him.
Earlier in 1989 before he died, I was asked to assume his teaching job at Dumaguete Science High. To his memory, I published in the Convergence (1996) an article on the Negritos which I originally wrote for his class. In addition, I also initiated the Dr. Timoteo S. Oracion Excellence in Social Studies Memorial Award at Science High.
When I was in the US for my United Board Fellowship, I purposely visited the University of Chicago before coming home to complete and connect my academic travels with that of Dr. Tim Oracion’s.
I was thinking, maybe it is in tracing his kabilin that I may also be able to hand down this passion to the next generation of anthropologists. And who knows, to another Oracion….
