A dozen women are gathered around Colleen Almojuela’s dining room table making lumpia, a Filipino delicacy.
They place a pinch of meat and diced vegetables in the center of a paper-thin wrap, deftly fold the edges in and seal each small roll with a dab of flour paste.
Fingers fly, and so does banter and laughter among this group of friends and relatives, but their meeting has a serious purpose.
They are planning the first-ever Indipino Festival, to be held Feb. 15 on Bainbridge Island. And the food they prepare – lumpia and fry bread, chicken adobo and clam chowder – mirrors the event being planned by these bi-racial descendants of Filipino fathers and “First Nation” mothers, most from Canadian reservations.
“It was (islander) Rudy Rimando who approached me about having a celebration to honor the Indipinos,” said former Bainbridge resident Gina Corpuz, who returned from Arizona, where she coordinates the Northern Arizona University’s Applied Indigenous Studies department.
“The reason that I agreed to help organize the event was to honor our ancestors and the sacrifices they made so that we could live our lives in a good way,” Corpuz said. “These women helped their husbands work the soil, clear the land, plant and harvest the berries. They bore their children.
“They are, in fact, the ones we’re honoring in this celebration.”
As many as 60 Coast Salish women came from Canadian reservations to Bainbridge Island in the 1940s to pick berries; they stayed to marry the Filipino men left to run local farms after Japanese American farmers were interned during World War II.
Most of the Filipino men had emigrated from a single province, and many were related.
But there was no immigration of Filipino women during the war, and law forbade the men from marrying Caucasians.
Romances flourished between the Filipino men and First Nation women. In a single summer, 12 couples married.
When they became the Filipino farmers’ wives, many First Nation women, already deprived of their heritage through being forced into white-run boarding schools, were disenfranchised from their tribes by Canadian legislation.
Living at a geographic remove from their culture became a third dispossession, and the effects were felt by their Indipino children.
“Because our mothers were in boarding school, we lost the teaching generation,” Corpuz said.
In fact, the Indipino children lost the Filipino tongue as well as their native language, because their fathers, eager to have the kids assimilate, didn’t teach it.
While Filipino culture dominated within the home, the First Nation women were fiercely devoted to their husbands and children, and many Indipinos have happy memories of their early childhood.
The community – more than 50 families strong, often with half a dozen children – clustered on large farms in Island Center and around Lovgreen Road.
Houses were left unlocked, and it was understood that a neighbor in need of an egg or some sugar would simply let themselves in.
The hall
The women formed the Filipino American Wives Auxiliary, turning out doilies and other craft items to sell at church bazaars, furnishing the Filipino American Community Hall on High School Road with the proceeds.
And the hall formed the backdrop for some of their happiest times, the Indipinos say.
After a week of planting, on a warm Saturday evening, the strains of “I Found My Thrill on Blueberry Hill” might waft from the building, while couples within clung and swayed.
Whole extended families turned out for picnics and barbecues. Passersby would catch the mouth-watering scent of roast pig or chicken adobo.
The large strawberry and raspberry farms formed an island within an island, isolated from the white society surrounding them.
But when Indipino children entered public school, they encountered the white world, a system of education that reflected a way of being that was inimical to the youngsters.
And the children encountered racism. Colleen Almojuela remembers as a child hearing people being advised to avoid Island Center, the unofficial Indipino reservation, at night.
“I had to leave Bainbridge Island,” Teddie Almojuela said, “to find out I was not inferior.”
Many Indipino children had to come to terms without the support of a mother – half of the women died or divorced, and the men rarely remarried.
Turning inward, Gina Corpuz said, the Indipinos developed their own culture, “one of integration, tolerance and acceptance.”
But the process of internally reconciling the two very different heritages has been a personal, often decades-long journey for each Indipino.
Gilda Corpuz describes the dilemma: “So who do I disown, my mom or my dad?”
Almojuela says that the process of reclamation that culminates in the celebration Feb. 15 began, for her, in the 1970s with the formation of Seattle’s Filipino Youth Association. She writes:
“During the civil rights movements of the early 1970s, I, like many others, was challenged to access my true identity and find meaning for myself…What was my authentic voice? I was very angry, caught between two selves, between two unintegrated worlds… Once I grew more comfortable as a Filipina American, I began to struggle with my identity as an Indigenous woman…my story is not unique.”
Mabuhay, a Bainbridge-based dance group of Filipinos and First Nation members, sponsored “Honor Thy Mother” in 1995, the first Native American gathering on the island since 1865.
Now it is time, the Indipinos say, to publicly celebrate their full heritage.
As Daniel Rapada packs away the last of the lumpia – the women have rolled more than 500 in an hour – the group gather around a low coffee table in the living room, where photographs from the community’s past are scattered.
Colleen Almojuela, points to a face.
“That’s Joe Pagemolo. We used to call him ‘Big Joe.’”
Doreen Rapada picks out another.
“Oh, look, that’s Paul Tabafunda that just passed on,” she says.
Nina Hernandez, the only woman at the meeting born in the Philippines, examines the image.
“He looks good.”
Rapada lays the old photograph carefully on the table.
“They all look good.”
The elders are passing, and the Indipinos know it is time to honor them before they’re gone.
A bi-racial heritage has meant coming to grips with, reconciling, and, ultimately, celebrating both sides, First Nation mothers, as well as Filipino fathers.
“I just want to celebrate…what it means to be biracial,” Almojuela says, “that you don’t want to give up either part of who you are.”
Rapada holds up, in one hand, a formal photograph of several dozen women and, in the other hand, a corresponding image of men.
“There’s our moms in 1947 – and there’s our dads.”
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Bainbridge Island’s first-ever Indipino Festival will be held Feb. 15 at the Filipino American Community Hall. The day begins with a private blessing and honoring ceremony for the families at 10 a.m. The public is invited to join the festivities, which include Native American and Filipino food and entertainment from 1-7 p.m. Call 842-7402 or 842-7842 for more information.
