Indigenous Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic 55 Figure 2 Ayta Mag-indi leaders and volunteers at the checkpoint Photo by Violeta Abuque (A few of us were in the mountains when the community quarantine was declared. We were caught flat-footed. We didn’t know what to do. My husband and I even had our two younger children with us. We had to place them inside rice sacks and stacked them in the kulong-kulong [a makeshift three-wheeled vehicle], just so we can go back home and evade questions and scrutiny at the checkpoints. If we were asked, we would have told them, inside the sacks are wild boars, and it would be dangerous to open as the animals are ferocious. We travelled for an hour with fear of being stopped on the road and at the same time, felt pity for our children for what they had to endure.) The community first learned of the declaration of the Luzon-wide community quarantine from mainstream news and social media outlets. They tried to build their understanding of the pandemic from the fragments of information they got from these sources. Nonetheless, the community leaders, upon hearing the news of the pandemic