The magical and spiritual power of red cloth has a long and complex story in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. The revolutionary reds in flags, banners and amulets that sustained indigenous bodies in colonial struggles have been broadly approached through the lens of history and philology. Depending on political exigency, they are associated with valor or insurrection; when approached as antiquities, they are valued as chiefly markers often mapped to the killing of men. How do these ideas hold up when understanding the significance of red cloth among indigenous peoples in Mindanao? Cherubim Quizon (associate professor of anthropology, Seton Hall University) focuses on Bagobo textile practices, and suggests that the dye plant Morinda sp. when applied to indigenous thread creates conditions that metonymically and procedurally link redness with effort and efficacy that operates within a larger indigenous semantic category of prestige cloths.

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