The Lumad struggle in the Philippines, embodied in its various indigenous peoples (IPs), is still situated and differentiated from modern understandings of their plight. Agamben notes that the notion of ‘people’ is always political and is inherent in its underlying poverty, disinheritance, and exclusion. As such, the struggle is a struggle that concerns a progression of freedom from these conditions. Going over such conditions means that one shifts the focus from the socio-political and eventually reveals the ontological facet of such knowledge to reveal the epistemic formation of the truth of their experience. It is then the concern of this paper to expose the concept of freedom as a vital indigenous knowledge from the Mamanwa of Basey, Samar. Using philosophical sagacity as a valid indigenous method, we interview ConchingCabadungga, one of the elders of the tribe, to help us understand how the Mamanwa conceive freedom in the various ways it may be specifically and geographically positioned apart from other indigenous studies. The paper contextualizes the diasporic element and the futuristic component of such freedom within the trajectory of liberation. The Mamanwa subverts the conception of freedom as a form of return to old ways and radically informs of a new way of seeing them as a ‘people.’ It supports recent studies on their literature that recommend the development of their livelihood rather than a formulaic solution of sending them back to where they were. The settlement in Basey changes their identification as a ‘forest people’ into a more radical identity.

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The increasing imagination of crisis within the contemporary scene is set within the state of emergency that is the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In this background, there is the problem of redefining the conditions of normality. The paper aims to take some insights about how to think through this predicament from Arundhati Roy and Slavoj Žižek who are, the authors deemed, subversives against the normal regulatory course of thought. To do this, the study applies the method of textual hermeneutics on both thinker’s oeuvre, particularly those that relate to the pandemic and specifically Roy’s AZADI and Žižek’s Pa(ndem)ic! 1 and 2, and contextualizes their energetic radical visions to one of the co-authors’ compiled takes on various cases during COVID-19. In this paper’s reading, which attempts to succinctly open a leeway for such takes by aligning the implications with both thinkers’ views for thinking forward and enacting possibilities, Roy’s resolve through love and Žižek’s notion of a forced choice can be reflected on in traversing the inevitable portal of the ‘New Normal.’