“Mountain Spirits” brings Indigenous knowledge, artistry and living cultural traditions to the forefront. (photo courtesy of the Fowler Museum)

The Fowler Museum at UCLA presents “Mountain Spirits: Rice and Indigeneity in the Northern Luzon Highlands, Philippines,” a major immersive exhibition that invites visitors into a living cultural landscape where rice cultivation sustains life, memory and spiritual practices. Opening on April 12, the show explores how the Ifugao of northern Luzon have for centuries shaped their mountainous habitat through agriculture, ritual and ancestral knowledge.

At a moment of global environmental crisis and renewed attention to Indigenous sovereignty, “Mountain Spirits” demonstrates how Ifugao artistic traditions encode ecological wisdom, collective responsibility and spiritual connection to land.

Through carved wooden figures, ritual objects, baskets, textiles, tools and videos, “Mountain Spirits” presents rice not only as food, but as a sacred substance central to Ifugao cosmology, social life, history and identity. Drawing on the Fowler Museum’s holdings, the exhibition foregrounds Indigenous knowledge systems based on reciprocity and long-term environmental stewardship.

The presentation centers on the Ifugao rice terraces – engineering and ecological achievements first constructed in the 16th century as a strategic response to Spanish colonization of the Philippine lowlands. By moving into the highlands and expanding wet-rice agriculture, the Ifugao transformed steep mountainsides into irrigated fields supported by complex forest and water-management systems, ensuring both food security and political autonomy. Today, five terrace clusters in Ifugao Province are recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

“Mountain Spirits” unfolds across three thematic galleries. The first centers on tawid, or inheritance, highlighting how land, labor and knowledge are passed down through farming tools and everyday objects adapted to a demanding mountain setting. The second explores baki, the Ifugao belief system, presenting ritual practices led by mumbaki (ritual specialists) who mediate between earthly and spiritual realms. Carved bulul rice guardians, ritual boxes, rice wine bowls, textiles and offerings echo different stages of the rice cycle, which are accompanied by prayer, chant and ceremony. The final gallery examines social rank and prestige, focusing on the kadangyan elite, whose generosity and sponsorship of major rituals, most notably the Hagabi, sustain community bonds and cultural continuity.

Recent archaeological research has transformed scholarly understanding of the terraces, challenging long-held assumptions that they represent a timeless or isolated past.

For information, visit fowler. ucla.edu.

The Fowler Museum is located at 308 Charles E. Young Drive.