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“Tabi tabi po,” I mumbled to the Filipino forest spirits or “duende” around me as we walked down a dark trail on Isla Verde, Batangas City. I was walking with my two year old daughter and six other Filipino American delegates sent by the Filipino American Coalition for Environmental Solidarity (FACES) to the Philippines to learn about the campaign to protect the Verde Island Passage. During our five-day visit, we attended six listening sessions organized by Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ). 

“Tabi tabi po,” isn’t something I tend to say while hiking back home in California, but everyone around me was saying it, with an almost religious fervor. It felt too risky not to say it too. The path from our home base to our next meeting was dark, verdant, and overgrown with densely tangled foliage. This is the territory of the duende from whom we were asking for permission to pass. We ask permission by saying “tabi tabi po,” Tagalog for “excuse me.” 

A few hours before we walked down the dark trail on Isla Verde, our host, Ate Diane, gave me a red bracelet. With urgency, she told me I should wear it for “protection.” I learned that unlike most people, Ate Diane can see duendes. She said some of the duendes took a particular interest in my two year old daughter and as her mother, I needed protection. Rubbing my goosebumps away - because how spooky does that sound, right? -  I wore my new red bracelet and showed my respect by saying “tabi tabi po,” like everyone else.

Growing up in the Philippines, I was taught that duendes are fierce protectors of the land. If you honor their kinship, they can help you find food and water. If you disrespect them or their territory, they can make you sick. I have since learned that many Indigenous cultures ask permission from similar mythical beings.

Forest Spirits and Sacred Sites in the Philippines, Palestine, and Turtle Island

Legend has it that early in the Spanish colonial era of the Philippines, two conquistadors were passing through a town in Batangas. They suddenly felt the need to defecate and without asking the duendes for permission, relieved themselves behind a shrub. The soldiers began to scream because of the rashes that began to spread on their behinds. A native witnessed what happened and shouted, “Lipa, Lipa!” He was trying to tell the Spaniards that the leaves they used to wipe themselves were from the lipa plant, a plant with short stinging hairs. The Spanish soldiers however thought that the native was telling them the name of the place they were in, and ever since, the town was called Lipa City. 

Elsewhere, in Palestine, one must make a direct and loud request for permission before drawing water from a spring. Otherwise, they might be injured by an irritated djinn. In 1929, Taufik Canaan wrote about hundreds of holy oak trees associated with walis in Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine. He reports speaking to a landowner in Jerusalem who asked some villagers to cut off a dying branch from a sacred tree on his grounds. The local villagers refused to help him fearing the punishment of the wali al-Badriyya. Finally, the landowner found and hired a Christian villager willing to cut down the branch. The very next day, the landowner fell sick with an acute attack of articular rheumatism. (Note that it was the person in power, and not the worker, who got punished!) 

Why are these stories passed down the generations? Vanessa Machado de Oliveira suggests in Hospicing Modernity that the “story of the small sentient beings at a very basic level may be trying to move us into a more respectful relationship with the land, with forests, and with other forms of life." With these stories, our ancestors also teach us about people, especially those with power, who don’t love and respect the land. 

Israel’s military and settlers have destroyed or fenced off many holy trees and many shrines in Palestine. Irit Segoli of +972 Magazine, a nonhierarchical nonprofit magazine staffed by Israeli and Palestinian journalists, lists many examples of Palestinian holy sites crumbling under Israeli rule. For example, Israel has managed to completely block Palestinians from worshipping at the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque and the Nabi Yusuf. Those sites were historically considered holy by both Jews and Muslims. However, they have been turned into sites for Jewish pilgrimage only. Now, the sites are only recognized as “Rachel’s Tomb” and “Joseph’s Tomb.” Israel’s mission to erase the memory of ancient shrines appears to be part of its systematic effort to de-indigenize Palestnians. Erasing their heritage makes it easier to deny their sacred connection to the land.

Similarly, in the United States, colonizers have destroyed hundreds of sacred sites. For example, in Northern California, when the Shasta Dam was built, the Winnemem Wintu were flooded out of their sacred land along the McCloud River. For thousands of years, the Winnemem Wintu had been caring for the land, the water, and the Chinook salmon. To the Winnemem, the salmon are sacred relatives. They believe that the salmon follow the stars to swim upstream to lay eggs in colder water. To help salmon complete this journey, the Winnemem would light fires along the river to mimic the stars. They also transported the salmon in baskets across natural barriers like waterfalls. But in the 1930s, the Shasta Dam also displaced the Chinook salmon by completely blocking their migration path. Now, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation operates the Shasta Dam and hosts a Visitor Center to share the history of the Dam’s construction and purpose. There, tourists can learn about Frank Crowe, an innovative engineer who built some of the world’s largest dams including the Hoover Dam and the Shasta Dam. What the history excludes however is any mention of the Winnemem Wintu. Scholars and Tribal members say this exclusion is intentional. Again, denying their history helps deny their legal claims to their ancestral waters. 

Nearby, in the San Francisco Bay Area, many Ohlone tribes built hundreds of sacred sites. They ate shellfish and discarded the shells in piles, some growing as high as 60 feet tall. Sometimes, ancestors were also buried there. These piles were called shellmounds and dated back thousands of years. When the Spanish arrived, there were about 425 shellmounds circling the bay. Settlers flattened the shellmounds and developed over them. In West Berkeley, settlers destroyed a sacred shellmound shovel by shovel and sold it as fertilizer, chicken feed, and grading material for roads.

Colonization has violently severed Indigenous land relationships in the Philippines, in Palestine, on Turtle Island, and all over the world. Capitalism has turned land into a commodity to be exploited, and has made most people landless – as a way to exploit our labor. The dominant culture does not have space for duendes, djinns, walis, and tree spirits. There’s no space for the sacred when land is just a commodity. 

The Struggle for Land in Present-Day Philippines, Palestine, and Turtle Island

In our listening sessions in the Philippines, I learned from local activists and organizers that the Verde Island Passage is the most biodiverse marine habitat in the world. It is a source of livelihood and sustenance for millions of Filipinos. Dirty energy companies, like Shell, are expanding the fossil fuel industry in Batangas, right along the Verde Island Passage. Ironically, although Batangas has five out of the six natural gas power plants in the country, the people of Isla Verde have no access to electricity. 

We met with organizers who have embarked on a campaign to kick Shell and its gas project out of Batangas. We met fisherfolk engaged in class action lawsuits and policy campaigns. We met former power plant workers advocating for health impact studies. We met a bereaved mother whose deceased child’s health was impacted by the local power plants; she reminisced, teary-eyed, about how Isla Verde used to be a literal paradise. Together, they formed a coalition to prevent more oil spill disasters, power plant expansion, and land grabs from power companies. They also fight for clean energy and green jobs through a just transition framework. 

Between listening sessions, we enjoyed barbecues, snorkeling, and karaoke parties. (There’s something about the participatory aspect of karaoke that lends itself to leftist activism – it’s one way our Community Democracy Project (CDP) team recruits volunteers for our campaign to bring a people’s budget to Oakland.) We also traded stories of encounters with forest spirits, ghosts, and curses.

Land defense and continued rituals on land extends from the Philippines to Palestine. On holidays and special occasions like weddings, Palestinians make pilgrimages to maqams and celebrate in the surrounding sacred woods or parks. Maqams are tombs or shrines built on a site for a religious figure. The al-Qatrawani shrine for example is currently surrounded by a vibrant public garden where locals cook and eat together. The al-Qatrawani shrine has two origin stories, both of which highlight the sacred traditions followed by the Indigenous people of Palestine for millenia, even across different religions. According to the first story, the shrine is named after a Muslim holy man named al-Qatrawani who spent his life in prayer and self-mortification. He was from Qatra, an ancient village depopulated and destroyed by Israel in the Nakba of 1948. When the holy man died and was being carried for burial, his coffin flew up and floated until it landed where the shrine stands today. 

According to the second story, the shrine is named after “Katharina,” a Christian saint. St. Katharina (or St. Katherine) was of Greek origin and became a Christian after having visions of the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus. She protested against emperor Maximian for persecuting other Christians and she defeated 50 of his best pagan philosophers in a debate about religion. The emperor sent her to prison and her legend tells that while imprisoned, she was fed by a dove from heaven and her wounds were tended to by angels with salve. Palestine is home to many religious monuments and shrines sacred to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The land bears the unmistakable imprint of all three faiths. By continuing to pray at their sacred sites and refusing to forget the legends connected to them, Palestinian Muslims and Christians are resisting Israel’s campaign to eradicate their communities, archaeological sites, cultural heritage, and cultural potential. 

After a week of sharing stories, celebrating and connecting on land, and paying respect to the duende, I returned to California and a work calendar full of deadlines. Gradually, the spooky homeland vibes disappeared. What stayed with me is the message from the forest spirits: hold the land sacred. Luckily, I’m returning to a badass group of co-workers, clients, and partners who are all rising to that challenge. Together, we recognize the immense loss from having severed the roots of our sacred bond to the land. 

Now, people are seeing the healing that will come from returning land to the landless, to Indigenous people, to itself… and to the forest spirits! We know communities working in harmony with each other and the earth to create and control their own sources of energy, food, and housing. They’re growing stronger together and more resilient to the onslaught of governments hostile to their people. 

For example, at the Law Center, we have two long-term clients, both of whom are organizations led by Indigenous women rematriating land. Against all odds, they are resisting the dominant culture and using prayer as a strategy for land return. Corrina Gould shares about a time when she and the Sogorea Te' Land Trust asked for the lives of 38 redwood trees before cutting them down. They needed the trees to build the first ceremonial arbor on Lisjan territory in 250 years. After a decade of protesting, and after building and praying at the ceremonial arbor for a few years, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust enjoyed the largest urban sacred site victory in California’s history: they rematriated the West Berkeley Shellmound, a historic site of burial and ceremonial grounds dating back more than 5,700 years. In a Street Spirit interview, Corrina Gould says, “I think we all need hope right now. And I think that this came at a very good time, that the world is in pain and a lot of our relatives around the world are suffering. I believe in prayer and magic. And I believe that our ancestors have held us all along this time.”

The spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, Chief Caleen Sisk, shares that their tribe’s name means “middle river people.” Their origin story begins at a sacred spring on Mount Shasta. At the sacred spring, there was a doorway with a sacred fire inside. From this sacred fire came the Winnemem Wintu people, and all of their “spirit beings” such as the trees, fish, birds, deer, and bear. Chief Sisk says “the old way was that this water is precious, this water is life, you take care of this water. You don’t go throwing things in there. You pray to this water.” In 2016, Chief Sisk started an annual spiritual journey called Run4Salmon that follows a 300-mile trek on foot, bike, canoe, and horse. Every year, over the span of several weeks, Run4Salmon participants pray to restore their sacred salmon and bring them home. 

In 2022, we helped the Winnemem Wintu form a religious organization called “Sawalmem,” Winnemem for “sacred water.” In 2023, on Indigenous People’s Day, after many years of prayer, the Winnemem Wintu enjoyed a major victory when Sawalmem rematriated 1,162 acres of land! Now, Chief Sisk is continuing her work to bring back their sacred salmon to the McCloud River. Her tribal knowledge helps partners at UC Davis fill gaps in their scientific understanding of salmon. Together, they’re working on constructing Chief’s invention to incubate salmon eggs. Last year, my co-workers and I were honored to attend the Winnemem Wintu’s salmon egg ceremony. We saw first hand how Chief’s invention nurtured young salmon that are healthier, stronger, and more prepared for life in the McCloud River than the salmon grown in Western science-based heath trays. Her invention was nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Unlike our clients and many of my co-workers, I’m not one to pray or even meditate regularly. I also caught myself completely forgetting to say “tabi, tabi po” while hiking in Oakland. In writing this blog post, I even had to look up the word "sacred." The definition I resonate with the most is "something that inspires awe and respect." Fighting the dominant narrative that land is a thing to be bought and sold is one way I'll hold land with awe and respect. I'll also carry on the generations-old rituals of respecting invisible land protectors with my daughter. I'll continue to share stories about groups that inspire awe in me like the Winnemem Wintu Tribe and Sogorea Te Land Trust. These groups are doing groundbreaking work that so often make me and so many others say, "wow!" They are doing sacred land work. I’ll also keep working with groups like FACES to Protect the Verde Island Passage (an awe-inspiring body of water in paradise), CDP to fight for community control of local resources, and the Law Center’s Land Return Circle to help envision just ways of living with land and each other. I hope you join me!

For this blog post, I gratefully acknowledge the editing assistance of my insightful, astute, and super patient co-workers, Elizabeth Burnett, Tobias Damm-Luhr, Erika Sato, and Veryl Pow.