Kankanaey

The Kankanaey are an Austronesian people of the Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon, counted among the Igorot peoples. Their ancestors came with the Austronesian expansion out of Taiwan around 3000 BC. They built villages around steep wet-rice terraces cut into the mountains.

Society centered on the dap-ay, a men's dormitory and council house, while girls lived in separate ebgan dormitories. The highlands produced gold traded down to Pangasinan markets.

When the Spanish pushed into Benguet from 1572, drawn by gold and the aim of converting the highlanders, the Kankanaey and their Igorot neighbors resisted from fortified mountain settlements and were never fully brought under colonial rule, keeping their priests, rituals and terrace economy through the Spanish period. Their language belongs to the Northern Luzon branch of Philippine Austronesian, and lowland Ilocano spread among them through trade and migration.