This article discusses the importance of understanding Mindanao as a place of history, memory, and struggle, highlighting the need to right the narrative and give voice to the marginalized. It emphasizes the role of books, journalism, and community engagement in shaping a more accurate and just understanding of Mindanao.
Mindanao is often described from a distance, sometimes as conflict, poverty, danger, or exotic. It is not a footnote, but a place of memory, struggle, faith, beauty, grief, and courage.
This is why the second word in the theme matters: righting Mindanao. Some stories need to be corrected, silences broken, memories recovered, lies confronted, and voices heard again, especially those pushed to the margins. Dr. Patricio N. Abinales' talk on 'Mindanao as Historical Center' invites us to shift our gaze, moving away from the center of power and towards Mindanao as the starting point of the story.
Books are vessels of memory, carrying voices across time and helping us listen more deeply than headlines allow. In a time of disinformation, falsehoods can travel faster than truth, confusing people, damaging trust, and dividing communities. The Ateneo de Davao University gathering brings together communities that defend truth: writers, journalists, historians, archivists, librarians, teachers, publishers, students, researchers, artists, religious communities, and readers.
The festival addresses important themes: disinformation, access to information, independent publishing, climate justice, community voices, BARMM elections, Marawi, journalism, photography, archives, and historical memory. These topics are connected by one question: Who gets to tell the story? Journalists documenting what others want hidden can bring accountability. Independent publishers taking risks on local voices open new spaces of imagination.
When students read deeply, they become harder to fool. MindaNews celebrates 25 years of journalism, photography, archives, and public-interest storytelling. The festival is an invitation to read widely, ask better questions, listen to elders, learn from communities, be suspicious of easy answers, and check your sources before posting online. The festival honors Mindanawon writers, both living and departed, who wrote in difficult times, against forgetting, from the wounds of war, and injustice. They tell us that Mindanao is not one story
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