Sagada Death Rituals

Hanging coffins are coffins which have been placed on Mountain cliffs as part of the Igorot indigenous culture and burial tradition of Sagada People. It may not be unique in the Philippines since these old tradition is also being done in some parts of Indonesia and China but this only proves that we have a culture of our own.

Coffins are made of hollowed out log normally carved by the elderly Igorots before they die, each cadaver was smoked throughout the 5-day pre-burial feast to avoid fast decomposition. Hanging the coffins in high elevated cliffs is the traditional way of burying a qualified individual. The indigenous death ritual also involves pushing the bodies into the tight spaces of the coffin for them to fit into the coffin space made from Pine tree logs.

This ancient practice in Sagada was already more than 2,000-year-old tradition. Although it was no longer a common practice for locals of Sagada, the latest addition to the hanging coffins of Sagada was placed there last June 2008.

The Igorot ancestors in Sagada believed that the higher your body is laid – the close they are to ‘heaven’. Another reason was to protect the bodies from natural disasters like earthquakes and floods and also to keep the corpses away from wild animals.

The way how they managed to settle the coffins in this high elevated cliffs was still a mystery for me, In this world of never-ending discovery and new technology, the old way of doing everything seems more appealing to me. The ancient way of burying the dead in Sagada have been slowly disappearing but their descendants are still continuing other traditions and I believe the Igorot hospitality is part of it.