Blaan

The Blaan are an Austronesian people of southern Mindanao in the Philippines, settled around Lake Sebu and Sarangani beside their Tboli neighbors. Their name may combine bla, meaning opponent, with the suffix an, meaning people.

They speak their own Austronesian language and preserve a pantheon headed by Melu, a white-skinned creator with teeth of gold. Their women join abaca strands by hand without a spinning wheel and weave tabih cloth by the ikat technique mabal; smiths cast brass bells and the brass-handled long knives called fais.

The Maitum burial jars of the Sarangani coast, dated roughly 5 BC to AD 370, attest ancient settled communities and far-flung contacts. In 1543 the Spanish explorer Villalobos sailed past Sarangani Island; the coast later entered the Maguindanao Sultanate's orbit, while the Blaan kept to inland hills and ancestral rites as the lowlands turned to Islam.