Ibaloi
- Reniel Ilagan
- Aug 14, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 20, 2021
Ibalois are from the southeastern two-thirds of Benguet, particularly the municipalities of Kabayan, Bokod, Sablan, Tublay, La Trinidad, Tuba and Itogon, including the southern portions of Kapangan and Atok. Early in the history of Ibaloi, women did not wear garments and were naked. Since there were no available garments, women had to go to the mambabatek to have the batek or tattoo. (Albano, 2017)
Weaving
Weaving Technique
Just like other tribes’ weaving techniques, Ibalois’ traditional weaving skill include weavers’ body-tension and multi-tasking. They fasten around their waist a back-strap loom with a warp of threads whose ends were attached to a post or a tree and would begin weaving.
Designs
Ibaloi women wear kambal or blouse, and divet or skirt. Their clothing indicates the social class they belong to. Rich women or the bacnang wear colorful blouse and skirt that has black as the emerging color, abiteg or the poor women on the other hand wear black and white blouse and skirt.
Men wear a g-string or kuval, a wealthy man include a dark blue blanket that they called kulabaw or alashang while the rest of the member of the group use a white variant or the kolebao dja oles.
Weaves
Divet
A skirt for women member of the Ibalois.
Kuval
A piece of cloth about two and a half to three meters long wrapped around the waist.
Unlike many of the indigenous groups of the Cordillera, the Ibaloi weaves doesn't have much of a mathematical significance. Most of their designs only depicts alternating stripe designs without symbols and geometric patterns. The lack of information about the Ibaloi people also made it hard to find these type of data.
References
Albano, R. (2017, February 15). The History of the Ibaloi Group from The Philippines. Heritage News. https://www.makeheritagefun.com/who-are-the-ibalois/
Obra, A.B. (n.d.). Ibaloi Women. Wordpress. Retrieved August 15, 2020, from https://abuenaobra.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/ibaloi-women/#:~:text=Ibaloi%20women%20wear%20kambal%20or,skirt(Anonymous%2C%20n.d.).
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