Kara Nepomuceno’s Fellow Support Fund Update

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, several Shansi Fellows did not get the opportunity to travel to their host sites. They worked remotely for two years, demonstrating immense dedication to their students and colleagues without having met them face-to-face. In 2021, Shansi created the Fellows Support Fund, which was designed to give these fellows the opportunity to travel to Asia on their own terms - for an academic project or artistic exploration. Fellows Support Fund recipient Kara Nepomuceno discusses how the FSF funded a meaningful artistic exchange to the Philippines upon which she embarked in 2022.

Dear Shansi Friends and Supporters, 

As an Indonesia Fellow to Yogyakarta from 2020-2022, I conducted my Fellowship entirely online. However, the Fellows Support Fund through Oberlin Shansi made it possible for me to travel to Southeast Asia after my Fellowship, in order to experience dance, music, and ritual arts in Sulu and Mindanao, Philippines. 

At Oberlin and as a Fellow, I studied and performed different Philippine arts to better understand my role as second-generation Filipino American. The Fellows Support Fund advanced this journey by allowing me to attend the highly selective Tribu Tur, organized through KULARTS San Francisco. 

Alongside more than twenty Filipino and Filipino American artists, educators, and community leaders; I traveled from Sibutu to Sitangkai, Cotabato, and Lake Sebu. I learned from master artists and culture bearers of Tausug, Sama, Maguindanaoan, and T’Boli arts and ritual. Along the way, we had critical discussions about our responsibilities in the Philippine diaspora.

It was incredible to finally experience, in-person, the dance and music I had studied through a screen. In Sibutu and Sitangkai, I experienced pangalay and igal in settings beyond the “representational” – festival, wedding, ritual, and more. I was able to better understand how pangalay and igal are so much more than “dance,”-- how dance, music, and ritual work together to manifest a community’s intention for the future.

Traveling through Mindanao and Sulu also deepened my understanding of indigenous social and political issues in the southern Philippines. Artist and culture bearer Myrna Pula shared songs and stories about the T’Boli struggle against tourism and pollution in Lake Sebu, emphasizing how collective effort is needed to effect change. Raffy Al-Harun, a lecturer and artist, guided us through his hometown of Sitangkai, sharing his initiatives to promote literacy and cultural pride. 

Their work continues to inspire me as a volunteer educator for Filipino American youth, sharing the history and present of people’s resistance in the Philippines. This experience in Mindanao and Sulu has given me intangible lessons beyond my work in education and Philippine arts and has been a cornerstone of my post-Fellowship transition. Along the way, I even met in Manila with Independent Fellow Isaak Heller, and used the Bahasa Indonesia learned during my Fellowship to talk with artists and workers traveling regularly between Sulu and Malaysia. I am so thankful for the support of the Shansi community, and I hope FSF continues to fund meaningful experiences for Shansi Fellows in the years to come.

Sincerely,

Kara Nepomuceno