Culture | Binitay Documentary

April 10, 2020

27th Anniversary

It’s been 5 years since my last post. I was more active on my personal account on facebook until it was disabled.

Today (Good Friday) — or this weekend of Holy Week marks my twenty seventh anniversary of being brought to the United States.

Yes, my adoptive parents and me are well aware that Lent and Holy Week changes every year. This however doesn’t change the lasting impact of the historical moment for all of us where my adoptive mother went to the Philippines during Holy Week of 1993 and came to the Philippines to finally meet me.

So much has happened that I cannot lump into one post today to bring you all up to date since my last post in 2013.

This film has been low-key shown in many spaces. The films have mostly been open between academic circles for higher education and I hope to show them in certain classes such as Sociology for secondary education .

I have given the rights of the Department of Social Welfare and Development to screen the film, “BINITAY: Journey of a Filipino Adoptee”, for their adoption training department in order for a better understanding of transnational and transracial adoption. However, I criticize and see that they find my transnational/racial adoption as a success story built upon their backs when there were many struggles that have been endured without their aid and guidance to my adoptive parents. Lastly, I’ve learned some themes such as for transracial adoption, in order for opportunity to be granted, the sacrifice can be a cultural death (birth culture).

In recent news, obviously a novel corona virus (covid-19) has affected the world globally. My ever changing self perception of what it means to be a transracial and transnational adoptee is in constant flux due to living here in America and although to some people I do not appear to look Asian, I still have a watchful eye for myself and others whom may face violence from others due to xenophobia. With an unnamed family member, combating their usage of saying the word #ChineseVirus and their unjust perception on immigration , I instead just put them into perspective how America is almost like a centralized place for a globalized economic hub and how diversity and multiculturalism is the paramount of America’s “exceptionalism”; however, I do not use those exact words and just frame it to stop their xenophobia and let their perception go outside of the box.

Negative rhetoric from the media of course is pervasive for those who give into scapegoating other racial backgrounds. With any epidemic worldwide this is what we the human race needs to transcend for our survival.

April 14, 2016April 14, 2016

Losing my mother tongue.

I remember the first few moments attending the Philippine American Community Center of Michigan (PACCM). There were many different languages of the Philippines being spoken back and forth, sounds and phrases that were familiar and alien to me as well. It was when I heard someone speaking out of the sea of other languages in the crowd had entranced me to this forgotten language that was once mine and that hearing the Cebuano or Bisaya language once again was eerily nostalgic.

It is documenting the loss in cultural and ethnic identity, and currently where I find these moments past, present and future moments most precious to keep and capture of how I’ve come to be seen and/or accepted as a member of my biological family in the Philippines very crucial and important.

Join me in my journey and let’s paint this picture together of reunion and reconciliation.

I invite you to join me on the rest of this journey to reach back as I move forward.

–> Visit my Indiegogo campaign at https://igg.me/at/OnceUponAnOchia-/x

–> Follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/binitaydoc

–> Join our Facebook community at http://www.facebook.com/binitaydocumentary

April 12, 2016

Diary Entry [Thurs, August. 22, 2013]

After meeting my biological relatives in Tabogon, meeting my sister, and seeing my mother’s grave, a sadness washes over me. I’ve made so many people happy because I didn’t forget about where I came from & it showed to them that a part of me values them and places them somewhere in my heart although we are strangers. When I met my ninety-four year old grandmother, she hugged me and would not let go. I was her grandson she has been longing for.

They had hoped I was able to stay but it’s saddening of both cultural and language barriers we will have. The Department of Social Welfare (DSWD) made it very clear to them about the kind of person I am now and that my objective was to search for Elizabeth Ochia, my only key person who “found” me and just so happened to be my very own biological mother.

The opportunity to forgive her is not there since she has passed four months before I arrived here. It saddens me more that she had passed without knowing her own biological son has been searching for her too. I have learned to forgive the past and won’t forget.

I just hope that everything is okay after leaving my home once again.

I invite you to join me on the rest of this journey to reach back as I move forward.

–> Visit my Indiegogo campaign at https://igg.me/at/OnceUponAnOchia-/x

–> Follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/binitaydoc

–> Join our Facebook community at http://www.facebook.com/binitaydocumentary

April 11, 2016

Oral history and Lineage

As the years pass I’ve grown fascinated with this relationship and kinship of my biological family back home. After building my relationship with my biological extended relatives through the power of Skype video chats, Facebook messenger, and Viber calls, it’s my recent trip in May, 2015 where staying with my biological cousins’ place in Caduawan and Danao for five weeks found me most intrigued with this post-reunion and birth family search.

It is through the intergenerational dialogue and spending time with my biological relatives that I learned more about myself and had to unlearn in my case study papers that I was a “foundling”. When speaking with my 94 year old lola at the time, I asked her if I was given a birth name by my mother. She replied, “Isagani”.

A friend of mine who works for the InterCountry Adoption Board (ICAB) -Philippines told me the translation of my name. She said it translates from Bisaya; one of the major language groups in the Philippines, where “Isa” means one or only one and “Gani” in the Bisayan language is a term for affirmation or a yes. So the name all together loosely means “Yes you are my only one” or “Yes you are my one and only”

Each discovery while large or small helps me piece back together a part of my ethnic cultural identity which I had lost, because it is too easy to learn what people call “American” or “Western” culture when you’re surrounded by it everywhere you go and have nothing that reflects your own roots. Documenting this experience makes these experiences immortal allowing me to physically reflect upon it.

Help me continue to document these stories in my next film as I put together these collective narrative of my biological family.

I invite you to join me on the rest of this journey to reach back as I move forward.

–> Visit my Indiegogo campaign at https://igg.me/at/OnceUponAnOchia-/x

–> Follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/binitaydoc

–> Join our Facebook community at http://www.facebook.com/binitaydocumentary

April 6, 2016April 6, 2016

The Centipede

In the past two trips to the Philippines that I made in 2013 and 2015, before I made the journey to the motherland I have encountered or have been visited by a centipede that would come across my path. It was this Monday morning that we have met again.

“Lane Wilcken explains that the segments of the centipede’s legs represent the chain of ancestors extending back in time, with each pair of legs representing a paternal and maternal line. The centipede suggests the continuity of life and responsibility of perpetuating lineage.” (p.84, Apostal)

Although I may not be of Kalinga descent; as far as I know, I’ve found this as a prelude symbol of my journey.

Out of coincidence or superstition, this may be some sort of sign for my past trips and my upcoming trip as I continue to document the next segment of my journey of as a Filipino adoptee, or what I call a “FilAmpon” – A play on the words Filpino American and the Filipino word “ampon,” which translates to adoption.

Join me on my journey as I learn more about my biological family and our collective narrative of where I came from at my latest film project, “Once Upon An Ochia”.

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I invite you to join me on the rest of this journey to reach back as I move forward.

–> Visit my Indiegogo campaign at https://igg.me/at/OnceUponAnOchia-/x

–> Follow me on twitter at https://twitter.com/binitaydoc

–> Join our Facebook community at http://www.facebook.com/binitaydocumentary

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Apostol, Virgil Mayor. “Chapter Two: Shamanic and Spiritual Practices and Beliefs.” Way of the Ancient Healer: Sacred Teachings from the Philippine Ancestral Traditions. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic, 2010. 84. Print.

By unknown, published by Harper & Brothers of New York, written by Thomas Wallace Know (1835-1896) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons