Cordillerans are very rich in culture and tradition. Their actions and the way they communicate towards people who are new to their tribe has been presented in the story. There are various behaviors Igorots portray when dealing with other people.
First, the scene when the father asks the woman if they have a VCD player at their house and what it portrays was, the father was trying to be close to her daughter-in-law because it is the very first time he spoke with her without using his son as a messenger. This scene shows that Cordillerans are not very showy towards their feelings. Though they act very unexpressive, they are still understanding like the scene when they try to make it up to the daughter-in-law because of their shortcomings.
Second, Cordillerans have a very simple and practical living. As she said, Itogon, Benguet is already a rural area for her. It is really because they live in a province and theres no busy streets and buildings.
Thirdly, they value so much their culture and traditions. There were so many of them mentioned in the story. Some of these were, butchering dogs during special occasions, beating the chicken to death with a stick before cooking, beating of gongs during events like wedding, no siblings will get married at the same year, butchering of pigs for a traditional wedding feast and the custom “everything belongs to the community” and “everyone knows everyone”.
As an Igorot myself, I know that these mentioned habits of Cordillerans are still ongoing at present. I appreciate all procedures in our culture and traditions though I wanted to change some of them. The story also noted the wrong notion of other people that Cordillerans are fond of tattoos since they have a long tradition of body art. This is a very hasty assumption which makes it a wrong conception. Long ago, tattoos symbolize that you are a brave man because it is a sign of the wars youve been and the more tattoos a woman has, the more beautiful she is. Cordillerans dont just get tattoo for no reason and its not just a simple body art but the way it is done is very organic because materials used are charcoal, wood and thorn. Also, the only center of these organic tattooing is at Kalinga, Benguet.
