Paghu-bad sa Kainayahan sa Piling Kuwentong Pambata: Pagpopook sa Lumad ng Mindanao (Desecration of Life in Selected Children's Story: Place-making among the Lumads of Mindanao)

Abstract

This study examines intersemiotic translation (from text to image) in three selected radical children’s stories from the Batang Katutubo Series published by Adarna House that depict the conditions of the Lumad communities in Mindanao: Sula Wants to Go to School, Laleng and the Mobile School,  and Defenders of the Ancestral Land. The primary theoretical framework employed is Pereira’s (2008) methodology for translating words into images, which consists of three approaches: the literal translation of textual elements, the emphasis of specific narrative elements, and the adaptation of images to convey a particular ideology or artistic perspective. Roman Jakobson’s (1959) theory of creative transposition also serves as a framework for examining illustration as a process of re-creation. Beyond its linguistic and visual dimensions, the analysis is anchored in legal instruments that protect the rights of Indigenous children, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA, Republic Act No. 8371), and Department of Education Order No. 62, s. 2011. The study analyzes the page layouts through both vertical and horizontal reading strategies to identify counter-hegemonic symbols that foreground the lived realities of the Lumad people’s struggle, militarization, and displacement. The findings reveal that the images and illustrations in these stories function not merely as secondary artistic  elements but as powerful political and radical instruments that challenge dominant social conventions, represent the realities of internally displaced Indigenous communities, and advocate for social and environmental justice for Indigenous peoples.