DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/26 October) -- The Ateneo de Davao University credits Dr. Heidi K. Gloria for seeing through the birthing of the Tambara, the university journal. For 17 years, Dr. Gloria steered as editor-in-chief, with the able assistance at some point of Fr. Bob Hogan, Fr. Pasquale Giordano and later, Pam Castrillo. Former Assistant to the President Lourdes O. Mamaed also sat as business manager. The Tambara is proof of the university's commitment to invigorate Mindanao studies and document significant developments in the academe.

The earlier volumes edited by Dr. Gloria are a veritable treasure trove on Lumad studies, Mindanao graduate education, ADDU history, and Jesuit undertaking in the region.

In 2001, Dr. Gloria passed on the editorship to Palanca-award winner Macario Tiu. In keeping with the university's widening academic base and the vibrant changes occurring in the Mindanao intellectual landscape, Tiu promised not to be very strict about scholarly writing. Substance, relevance, and readability were the main criteria set for consideration and inclusion in the next six volumes that Tiu put out.

Mainly because teaching does not leave ADDU instructors much time to sit down and write, Tiu and his editorial team, Gail Ilagan and Rex Rola (with Bel Actub and Renante Pilapil coming on board in 2004), found that very few within the university would respond to Tambara's call for papers. Much pleading, cajoling, and bargaining yielded very little results, leaving the editorial team no recourse but to widen the call to the bigger Ateneo community - Grade School to Graduate School alumni, former instructors, guest lecturers, Jesuits detailed in other campuses and units, and affiliates of the various ADDU research and community service consortiums.

The next six years would find Tambara putting out articles on a variety of issues, to include Mindanao literature, Lumad education, ancestral domain, Moro concerns, regional economy and industry, peace and development, and internally displaced persons.

In 2005, Tambara first featured articles that engaged issues of national concern with the work of Gen. Ricardo Morales, a Davaoeno, on transforming the Armed Forces of the Philippines and this writer's seminal retrospect on Philippine military rebellion of the eighties.

Soon, Rola left the editorial team to help get ADDU ready for the 2006 PAASCU inspection. Pilapil also left for further studies in Europe. Mac Tiu, eager to translate the stories in his head to more award-winning work in Philippine literature, gladly turned over the editorship reins to poet-artist-anthropologist Fr. Albert E. Alejo, SJ in 2007.

Fr. Alejo expanded further the Tambara's foray into breaking ground in  providing the venue for marginal voices in the region to sound out their concerns. Today, the Tambara continues to live up to its mission to chronicle intellectual developments in Mindanao, by showcasing articles and notes that are relevant to the academe and to the emerging regional and national realities.

On its 25th year, the journal offers adventurous, perhaps even precocious, attempts at evolving an alternate national security strategy (from guest writer PCU professor Dencio S. Acop) and an alternate peace and development framework for Teduray women in the highlands of Maguindanao (from former ADDU lecturer Sheilfa Alojamiento). Ateneo Grade School alumnus Tito Ilagan examines the prospects for marine fisheries in Mindanao. Cagayan de Oro artist Elson Elizaga essays the travails of cultural heritage conservation activists in the fight against rapacious political interests. Karl Gaspar, 2008 ADDU alumnus of the year, shares his reflection on the Filipinos in diaspora.

Indeed, the silver edition promises a glimpse of Mindanao in the future. It comes with an accompanying 25-year index of articles, paying homage to all writers who have over the years weighed in on the intellectual discourse through the Tambara. (Wayward and Fanciful is Gail Ilagan's column for MindaViews, the opinion section of MindaNews.

Ilagan teaches Social Justice, Family Sociology, Theories of Socialization and Psychology at the Ateneo de Davao University where she is also the associate editor of Tambara. You may send comments to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it "Send at the risk of a reply," she says.)

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