Scholars

Thomas N. Headland

Senior Anthropology Consultant
Adjunct Professor of Anthropology

A Review of Headlands' Research in the Philippines

Thomas Headland is widely recognized as the leading researcher on Philippine Negritos. He and his wife, Janet Headland, lived in the Philippines from 1962 to 1986, under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Most of that time was spent living with Agta Negritos in their small camps in the Sierra Madre rain forest of northeastern Luzon. Their three children were all born in the Philippines and grew up in Agta camps where they also learned the Agta language. Since moving to Dallas, Texas, in 1986, Tom and Janet have made field trips back to the Agta for further research in 1992, 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010. Much of the Headlands' research has been done in collaboration with Professor Bion Griffin, another leading specialist on Agta Negrito peoples. They have written a more personal account of their lives and struggles living with the Agta, titled "Four Decades Among the Agta: Trials and Advantages of Long-Term Fieldwork With Philippine Hunter-Gatherers."

The Headlands were the first outsiders to learn the then-unwritten Agta language. They developed a practical alphabet for the language that was formally approved by the Philippine Department of Education in 1969. The Australian National University published the Headlands' grammatical description of the language in 1974 (in Pacific Linguistics A-43:1-54) and their bilingual Agta-English dictionary, also in 1974. They also translated the New Testament into the Casiguran Agta language, published by the New York International Bible Society in 1979.

The Headlands have published widely on the history, language, culture, and population changes of the Agta people. Their most important paper describes the human rights violations of the Agta and the taking over of their ancestral lands by outsiders. Titled "Limitation of Human Rights ... and Tribal Extinction," it was published in the journal Human Organization in 1997. They have also written on the deforestation and environmental degradation of the Agta rain forests by outsiders. A complete bibliographical list of all academic publications on the Agta peoples, by the Headlands and others, is published on the Internet at https://www.sil.org/resources/publications/entry/7849.

The most detailed ethnography of the Agta, focusing on their culture change, is Tom's 1986 doctoral thesis, titled Why Foragers Do Not Become Farmers: A Historical Study of a Changing Ecosystem and its Effect on a Negrito Hunter-Gatherer Group in the Philippines. This 735-page volume may be ordered from University Microfilms Int'l at http://www.umi.com/hp/Products/Dissertations.html.

The Headlands continue to make field trips to the Philippines (most recently in 2010) to update their demographic on the San Ildefonso Agta population. This population numbered 285 people in January 2010. The Headlands have recorded every birth, death, in-migration, and out-migration of this population since 1950.

In November, 2009, the Headlands published their most important work, titled Agta Demographic Database: Chronicle of a Hunter-Gatherer Community in Transition. It contains a 4,000-page population chronicle of the Agta people based on the Headlands' 48 years of demographic research on them. They consider the sharing of these data their most significant contribution to science.

In September 1998 Tom Headland was invited to give the plenary address at an international environmental science conference at Isabela State University, in the Philippines. That conference was co-sponsored by ISU and Leiden University. He described the environmental crisis of the Philippine tropical forests and the role of the Agta people in agroforestry conservation.

On December 8, 1998, the Philippine Ambassador to the United States hosted a special afternoon symposium at the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC, at which Tom Headland was the invited speaker. Headland's message that day contained a warning to the Philippine leaders of the environmental crisis looming in that nation, and a plea to the Philippine government to maintain the momentum they gained in 1997 with the passage of Republic Act 8371, called the Indigenous People’s Rights Act. Headland's speech is published online at this link.