Cotabato City, November 15. The SKIA College honors national heroes event – Bonifacio Day on November 30 and Rizal Day on December 30 – with a more textured narrative of what makes a symbol animate our country and people with powerful ideas.
Bangsamoro students, faculty and staff at Sultan Kudarat Islamic Academy are set out to explore new research and technological literacy or design of what powerful ideas lay right behind each powerful icon. Avoidance of images in Sunni tradition as a practice shirks iconoclastic signs or miniatures, yet diversity requires that an architect or artist not only should be correct but virtually subtle.
“We will join in-person commemorative activities,” said first-generation Muslim students “as part of our three-phased return to operations on campus.” As a platform for Bangsamoro Heritage Day advocacy, SKIA is proud to pay tribute to its indigenous ancestry with community impacts under modified settings to meet the health and safety needs presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. SKIA’s undergrad students will play as storytellers or narrators of oral history in small group time. Graduate students will engage in independent indigenous research and pedagogy for narrative writing that recounts local history with graphic organizer of the chronology of events.
“. . . Enduring Symbol of Just Peace and Freedom”
“When we were growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s most landmarks on school campus mounted icons of Filipino national heroes and massive building types,” said SKIA’s senior educators. Master mentors now relish instead iconic heritage reflecting: “Just as amazing is a relic of lantaka laid in front of Sultan Kudarat Islamic Academy Founder’s College Hall as memorial to an enduring symbol of just peace and freedom.”
Much like the Peace Monument at Rollins College consisting of artillery shell to commemorate Armistice Day is a relic of lantaka mounted and dedicated as Peace Landmark at SKIA College. This type of brass cannon (cited by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts as an intangible cultural heritage of the country under “traditional craftsmanship” category) equipped Moro seafaring vessels as siege artillery in maritime Southeast Asia.
