A term referring to the native tribes of central Mindoro,
Panay, and the mountainous areas of Palawan.
Ethnically these people are Negritos. They short and
dark-skinned, with curly hair. They were among the first
natives that the Spanish encountered when they first came
to the Philippines. However, today the term is also used in
a derogative or pejorative sense, meaning ‘little
dark-skinned natives’.
Ang mga taw ang aggoyan ta ati pamansistar ong bokid ig
mga lagem.
The people who are called ati live in the mountains and
are dark-skinned.
Hoy! Sia doro rang pongit mo, magā rang ati.
Hey there, you are covered in black dirt, you look like a little
dark-skinned
native.
magati-ati
To dress up and dance like ati natives during fiestas.
Mga pista ong Abagat pamagati-ati tang mga kabatan.
When it's fiesta time in Abagat, the teenagers dance
around
like
ati
natives.
The ati dancers also traditionally greet important
visitors at the pier by dancing around and beating a drum.
The dancers cover themselves with soot to make their skin
black. They wear torn clothes (in the past they wore
G-strings), and headdresses made out of the tala of the
coconut tree, which is like burlap. The dancers repeat
some lines of verse, which essentially say, “We've come
down from the hills to join the fiesta. We want to eat some
liver and small intestines of the pig.”