Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Studies ISSN: 2663-7197 DOI: 10.32996/jhsss Journal Homepage: www.al-kindipublisher.com/index.php/jhsss JHSSS AL-KINDI CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Copyright: © 2022 the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Published by Al-Kindi Centre for Research and Development, London, United Kingdom. Page | 262 | RESEARCH ARTICLE Heirloom Food Preservation Techniques and Languages of the Indigenous Peoples of Cervantes, Ilocos Sur, Philippines Ranec A. Azarias 1 ✉ Antonette F. Garcia 2 and Virginia G. Garlejo 3 123 Ilocos Sur Polytechnic State College-Santiago Campus, Santiago, Ilocos Sur Philippines Corresponding Author: Ranec A. Azarias, E-mail: ranecaz@gmail.com | ABSTRACT In every society, culture remains to be the primary identity that distinguishes its members from other societies. Two of the ways in which culture is accentuated and manifested are the society’s language and food or cuisine. As such, investigating them revitalizes, promotes, and preserves one society’s culture. In such context, this study was conceptualized and implemented to document the indigenous food preservation techniques and language of the people of Cervantes, Ilocos Sur, Philippines. Through community immersion, interviews, observation, the study revealed that salting, smoking, drying, and fermenting are the common food preservation techniques. In salting, panag-etag and panag-asin are the two identified indigenous food preservation techniques, while panagtapa and panagkiing are the techniques employed in drying. Meanwhile, panagsuob is being practiced under smoking, and panagbubod is done in fermentation. The identified languages are those that are being used in each of the identified indigenous food preservation techniques. The study also revealed that the developed Cervantesian Indigenous Food Preservation Handbook is valid, useful, functional, and informative. Hence, the study concludes that the people of Cervantes still practice and preserve their indigenous food preservation techniques that may be extended to other people through seminars and training for cultural promotion and preservation. | KEYWORDS Drying, Indigenous Peoples, food preservation techniques, food technology, salting, smoking | ARTICLE DOI: 10.32996/jhsss.2022.4.1.26 1. Introduction In every society, culture remains to be the primary identity that distinguishes its members from other societies. As a collective product of the society, it includes members’ beliefs, traditions, conventions or norms, attitudes, and ways of life that they use for survival. It also emphasizes the reality of the lives of the members. As such, one can discern and cope with the development and change through cultural awareness, understanding, and acceptance. In addition, language is one of the reflections of culture. It serves as a tool in expressing one’s thoughts and ideas. Also, it serves as the primary tool for the transfer and preservation of a society's culture. Lucidly, language is also an identity; the loss of language is the loss of one's identity. In fact, Ulibarri (1999) verbalized that language is the living current that joins the individual to a culture, a history, a vital reality; it gives the individual identity and quality. Furthermore, culture is also evident in food preservation techniques. These techniques are considered to be indigenous knowledge that is being transferred from one generation to the other by words of mouth. Indigenous knowledge can be broadly defined as the knowledge that an indigenous (local) community accumulates over generations of living in a particular environment (Rÿser, 2011). Since this knowledge is transferred through language, it can be concluded that language and food preservation as indigenous knowledge go together.