Success
Due to Salinta Monon building a solid reputation for the quality of her work and the intricacies of her designs, likewise the continuing demand for her fabrics, her mastery of Bagobo Textile weaving practice made her become a recipient of the National Living Treasures Award. The title is awarded to Filipino citizens engaged in any traditional art that is uniquely Filipino and whose distinctive skills have reached such high levels of technicality and excellence in artistic sense which have been passed on to and widely practiced by generations in their community with the same degree of how the National Living Treasure precisely creates their craft. This makes sense because she’s able to set her own price (but still experiences being underpaid) for her work that takes three to four months to finish. This proves that she puts great emphasis to her textile crafts because it is not only for her to sell her creations, but also to show how her culture’s unique piece of weaving products can live on and showcase if there exists someone who is willing to master the art of creating one. Not only that, throughout her career as the master of the Bagobo-Tagabawa textiles, she was able to build a very heavy and respectable credentials and reputation evident on the huge influx on her fabrics and how her farmer-husband used to pay huge dowry (bride price) for her father’s approval to marry her, and growing and domesticating her own abaca’s for future weaving usage.
In 1998, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) recognized her as a Gawad Manlilikha ng Bayan (GAMABA) to acknowledge her priceless contribution to the country’s art and culture. In 15 January 2021, President Rodrigo Duterte signed Proclamation No. 1076, declaring 12 December 2020 to 11 December 2021 as the “Centennial Year of Manlilikha ng Bayan Salinta Monon” for her unwavering dedication and commitment to her craft by fully demonstrating the creative possibilities of Bagobo inabal at a time when such art was threatened to extinction. A sample of her work is exhibited at the upgraded Manlilikha ng Bayan Hall, National Museum of Anthropology and her backstrap loom will be displayed at the Hibla ng Lahing Filipino featuring Lumad Textiles at the Eastern Northern Mindanao Regional Museum in Butuan City.
Inspiration
The first one that made her curious about the art of weaving was her mother. When she was young, she asked her mother how to use a loom at the age of 12. In few months, she was able to learn how to weave fabrics and was able to start to weave. This marks the start of her journey as a master weaver of Bagobo-Tagabawa textile, one of the sources of pride of Davao Del Sur.
Legacy
When she has work to finish, Salinta isolates herself from her family to ensure privacy and concentration in her art. She does her weaving in her own home, but she wants nothing better than to build a structure just for weaving, a place exclusively for the use of weavers. She looks forward to teaching young wives in her community the art of weaving, for, despite the increasing pressures of modern society, Bagobo women are still interested in learning the art. Salinta maintains a pragmatic attitude, due to intensity of training in becoming master weaver of the craft, towards the fact that she and her younger sister may be the only Bagobo weavers left, the last links to a colorful tradition among their ancestors that had endured throughout the Spanish and American colonization periods, and survived with a certain vigor up to the late 1950s. In her words, “If someone wants to learn, then I am willing to teach,” she says. “If there is none…“, she shrugs off the thought. President Rodrigo Duterte declared a year-long celebration named "Centennial Year of Salinta Monon" from December 12, 2021, in her honor.