Category Archives: Igorot Achievers

The Noel Sumingwa Story

If you are looking for something to inspire you, this story of Noel Sumingwa dramatized in GMA-7’s Magpakailanman might be the answer. Noel is a gay Igorot karatista who ruled as the regional shotokan-karate champion from 1994-1998.


PART 1: Noel wins a gay beauty title and gets beaten by his dad.


PART 2: Noel tries out for his school’s martial arts team. He makes the team and gets to be his school’s “pambato”.

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Our "Mutineers": Captain Langkit and Captain Guinolbay

Our thanks to Ellen Tordesillas who sent us these photos of our kailiyans, Capt. Ruben Guinolbay and Capt. Dante Langkit, two gallant military officers who are on trial for their alleged participation in the aborted withdrawal of support from Gloria Arroyo in February 2006. [Edited: We originally stated that they are under trial for the Oakwood mutiny which is not correct. Thanks Ellen.]

We have been blogging about Captain Guinolbay, so we’re sure you already know him. In case you missed our previous posts, you can read them here, here, and here.

We initially didn’t know about Captain Langkit so we haven’t done much blogging about him. In fact we only heard of him during the past elections when his twin brother ran for Congress in Kalinga. Thankfully, Ellen has some information for us:
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Quote of the Day: Vicky Tauli-Corpuz

Vicky Tauli Corpuz, chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, on how multinational companies are blocking the passage of a U.N. document that would recognize the rights of indigenous peoples:

“[These firms] were against the declaration because they would like [to keep] their business interests in countries where indigenous peoples wanted to assert sovereign rights on their territories. They were afraid that the declaration would stop them from extracting the resources in indigenous peoples’ communities,” she said.

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Major Dennis Molintas Sr: A Gallant Igorot

We hope you already read our post about “those gallant Igorots” during World War II. And that you also watched the video documentary about some of these Igorot heroes. We plead guilty to prematurely judging the video but we don’t feel too bad (maybe just a bit hehe) because our critique prompted its producers to come to its defense and so we got to learn that the documentary is really more about the 66th Infantry Battalion.

Now, why are we digging back those old posts? Well it’s because they are related to this story about Major Dennis Molintas, Sr. — an Igorot World War II hero and the man who headed the 66th Infantry Battalion. Thanks to our good friend, Danilova Molintas for sharing this article with us.

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