I just want to share my family's story. I'm half-Igorot. My mom's side is from a mountain village near Bontoc, by the Chico River. It's weird seeing this gaining traction on Reddit.

It seems like the Wikipedia experts have already chimed in but I would like to explain some of the cultural practices of my mother's tribe as I heard it from my grandfather.

Head-hunting is deeply ingrained in the culture of the tribe. It is a rite of passage for boys, a coming-of-age to cut-off another tribesman's head. Basically, if a person does not follow through with this, finding a mate becomes close to impossible. It is also a way to please the "anito," the spirits of the dead tribe members or clan. The more heads a person collects, the more tattoos that person earns. I don't know why the old man in this photo does not have any which I find very odd. If you look up photos of Igorots, most of them have tattoos. These tattoos are patterned after the scales of a centipede. They believed that it provides protection when fighting against another tribe. This fierce warrior culture is the main reason why Mountain Province in the northern part of Luzon was never fully conquered by the Spaniards.

My grandfather told me the story of his father, my great-grandfather, of how he got his name... which is now my middle name. When my great-grandfather was young, he chopped-off another man's head from a nearby tribe because of the tradition. He broke the cultural norm at the time and decided not to keep the head and returned it to the family of the man he killed. The family was very grateful and named him "Omaking," which meant "good-natured" or something along those lines. He became popular in the region because my great grandfather's family helped the resistance group and the Americans during WWII. They fed the soldiers. When the Japanese soldiers found out, they raided my great-grandfather's farm and dragged him out. They made him walk from the village all the way down to Bontoc, about 15-20 miles and beat him up along the way. The Japanese killed him in the middle of the town.

When the war ended, my grandfather told me of how he played in the roads and seeing the dead bodies of soldiers and the bullet casings that spread throughout the meadow. Then he was educated by Anglican missionaries and became literate. He moved to Manila with my grandmother and started his family.

I wish I heard more of these kinds of stories but Alzheimer's took his memories away. All I remember are stories I heard as a child. I wish I asked for more. He passed away three months ago. I wish I could've been there, but because of my immigration issues, I couldn't. His family from the village all came down to Manila and wanted to bring his body back to get mummified. Yes, Igorots sometimes mummify their dead. But my mom's family in Manila decided not to bring the body to Bontoc and have a regular funeral with a casket.

Seeing the comments here, I am glad that I will have shitloads of hair as I get older.