Center for Babaylan Studies
Your Donation Will Support
01
Online and In-person Educational Offerings by leading academics from around the world.
02
The continued creation of the International Babaylan Conference, as a space for community building, cross-cultural collaboration, and incubation for strategies around personal and communal decolonization.
03
Funding opportunities for independent artists exploring decolonization, indigenization, and community empowerment in their creative work.
04
Providing financial aid and resources to Lumad (indigenous) groups and local initiatives in the Philippines and throughout the diaspora to support their capacity to thrive and continue their ancient customs in the face of political adversity.
What People Say
LANE WILKEN
Filipino Tattoos, Ancient to Modern
“Working with CFBS has brought me into contact with many like-minded individuals, people who understand the value of our indigenous practices. Here I have found community and established wonderful friendships. In return, it was within this community that I was able to more deeply share my own research about our cultural histories and further explore my calling in life as a practitioner of our tattooing arts.”
MAILEEN HAMTO
Core Member
“Community is essential to collective learning. The Center for Babaylan Studies offers spaces for inquiry and exploration about our shared history and legacy as people rising from the rubble of colonial and imperial trauma. I am grateful for elders and peers who help us all to envision a different way of knowing and being with all our relations, human and more-than-human.”
LUKAYO ESTRELLA
Educator, Healer, Artist
"I attended the 2010 and 2012 Babaylan Conferences, and the 2015 PAMATI Gathering, all events which have changed my life deeply and, though it sounds dramatic, saved my life… These gatherings connected me to other peoples similar to my ancestry and spurred my solitary and extensive research into pre-colonial Bikol practices and any spiritwork techniques that do not require initiation."