Gio Lugo Miole, Ph.D.

I am a Filipino transmasculine scholar based in Tokyo, Japan. I identify myself as an openly queer scholar and advocate for Indigenous peoples, and LGBTQ+ rights, inclusion and visibility.

However, I am not an Indigenous person, nor do I belong to any Indigenous ethnolinguistic community in the Philippines as described in the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997. While I identify ethnically as Bisaya, with family roots tracing back to Visayas (Bohol) and Mindanao (Surigao del Sur) regions and having assimilated into the dominant Tagalog communities in Manila, I am writing as an ally of the Indigenous peoples’ movement, co-advocating for their self-determination and human rights.

While as someone who has a privilege to be trained in neoliberal, westernized models of anthropology and international studies based in the Philippines and Japan respectively, I have been following, involved in and working in the Lumad peoples’ movement since 2015. My involvement included volunteering as a tutor for bakwit school students and alumni and supporting their advocacy efforts to sustain and lobby for the reopening of the schools. While I research about Indigenous education in the context of internal displacement, I do not claim expertise in the Lumad people’s knowledge systems and I acknowledge that I do not speak on their behalf ​(Smith, 2021)​. Given the privileges and accountability I have as a researcher of Indigenous studies, I aim to collaborate with and amplify the voices of the Lumad people and advocates to shed light on their experiences with education in a displaced context. As echoed by fellow anthropologist ​Sophie Chao (2024)​, I aim to promote a more hesitant way of writing ethnography, considering the stakes of writing violence. Thus, my role is to support the broader understanding of their stories and challenges in academic and policy discussions, while being mindful of the research ethics protocol and consent from the study participants.