Being Canadian is being Filipino

This speech was delivered on June 18, 2010 at the Manila to Manitoba Filipino-Canadian Oral History Exhibit opening. ANAK wholeheartedly wishes to thank all its supporters, volunteers, and well-wishers over the years.

Magandang gabi po sa inyong lahat. Good evening.

I want to thank you all for coming out tonight to celebrate the end of our two-year journey in research, design and development for this first-ever exhibit on the Filipino-Canadian community in Winnipeg.

Right now, as you look around you’ll get a chance to see the portraits, quotes, and artefacts from some of the people we were so honoured to interview. But, when you take a walk around this exhibit, I want you to also keep in mind some of the things you cannot readily see. This exhibit was created by the youth of our community, your mga anak– your children, with the hope of creating a lasting understanding of who we are as Filipino-Canadians. So, we can carry this message forward into the future with a sense of pride, unity and hope that one can only gain from listening and learning from each other.

This exhibit is a connection between generations where the stories of our pioneers, our recent immigrants and our Canadian-born Filipinos come together with an understanding of commonality. Everyday more and more Filipinos leave the Philippines with hopes of finding a better life abroad. We in the Diaspora realize that, after 50 years as a community in Winnipeg, our lives abroad still connect us home to the Philippines. As the youth who will spend half, if not all, of their lives here in Winnipeg as Filipino-Canadians; we stand in the middle of our two cultural identities where our reality tells us that being Canadian is being Filipino.

Darlyne Bautista is a founding member of ANAK. She is a graduate of the University of Winnipeg where she also completed a one-year practicum in the Philippines. In 2008, she completed her MA in Southeast Asian Studies (Philippine Studies concentration) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Visit ANAK online at www. anak.ca.