Igorot people

The indigenous peoples of the Cordillera Administrative Region in northern Luzon, Philippines, often referred to by the exonym Igorot people,^[2] or more recently, as the Cordilleran peoples,^[2] are an ethnic group composed of nine main ethnolinguistic groups whose domains are in the Cordillera Mountain Range, altogether numbering about 1.8 million people in the early 21st century.^[1]

Their languages belong to the northern Luzon subgroup of Philippine languages, which in turn belongs to the Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) family.

From the root word golot, which means "mountain," Igolot means "people from the mountains", a reference to any of various ethnic groups in the mountains of northern Luzon. During the Spanish colonial era, the term was variously recorded as Igolot, Ygolot, and Igorrote, compliant to Spanish orthography.^[3]

The endonyms Ifugao or Ipugaw (also meaning "mountain people") are used more frequently by the Igorots themselves, as igorot is viewed by some as slightly pejorative,^[4][5] The Spanish borrowed the term Ifugao from the lowland Gaddang and Ibanag groups.

The Igorots may be roughly divided into two general subgroups: the larger group lives in the south, central and western areas, and is very adept at rice-terrace farming; the smaller group lives in the east and north. Prior to Spanish colonisation of the islands (1565–1898), the peoples now included under the term did not consider themselves as belonging to a single, cohesive ethnic group.^[6]