October has a funny way of sneaking up on you in North America. The leaves turn, the pumpkins appear outside every grocery store, and somewhere in the middle of it all, usually in a church hall or a community centre or a school gym, someone sets out trays of pancit and lumpia and quietly says, “Happy Filipino American History Month.”

If you came here recently to work, it can sound like a holiday for somebody else, for the kids born here, for the families who have been here for generations. But sit with it a while, kababayan. It is a story that belongs to all of us.

🌊 It starts in 1587

The date the month is built around is 18 October 1587. According to the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS), that is when “Luzones Indios”, men from the Philippines serving aboard a Spanish galleon, came ashore at what is now Morro Bay, on the central coast of California. It is the first recorded Filipino presence in the continental United States.

Think about that for a moment. Before there was a United States, before Canada was a country, Filipinos were already crossing the Pacific, many of them as crew on the Manila galleons, often not by free choice. We were here before we were “immigrants” at all. We are older than the dream.

The month itself is much newer. FANHS founders Dr. Fred Cordova and Dr. Dorothy Laigo Cordova first introduced October as Filipino American History Month in 1992, and the US House and Senate formally recognised it in November 2009. Historians and community members still debate how best to tell the 1587 story, and that is fine. Honest history is allowed to be argued about.

🌾 Names worth knowing

Many of us know the names of our own family’s journey and little else. October is a good excuse to learn a few more. One is Larry Itliong, the Filipino labour leader who headed the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee when its members went on strike in the Delano grape fields in 1965, the action that helped launch the California farm labour movement and, soon after, joined with Cesar Chavez’s organisation. California’s governor signed a law in 2015 making 25 October Larry Itliong Day, a date that falls right in the middle of the month.

The elderly manongs who picked those grapes were far from home, living in labour camps, and many never married or went back. When you hear how tired a night-shift nurse in Houston or a caregiver in Vancouver is, and how she still sends money and calls her mother, it is not hard to hear an echo.

🍚 Where the history actually lives

Here is what I love most about this month: very little of it happens in textbooks. FANHS chapters, universities, museums and community groups across the US hold talks, exhibits and gatherings, and in many of them the real programme is the food table.

A banana leaf spread, a rice cooker on its third refill, someone’s tita insisting you take a plastic container home. That is how our history gets passed on. The newcomer sits beside the family who arrived in the 1970s. The teenager born in New Jersey asks what “merienda” means. Somebody tells the story of how their lolo came over, and for a while, nobody is checking a phone.

🕯️ And then comes Undas

October also leads straight into 1 November, Undas, when families back home clean the graves and light candles for those who have gone. For many of us abroad it is a quiet day, perhaps a Mass after work, a candle on a windowsill, a message in the family group chat. It is our own kind of history month too: remembering the ones who came before, wherever they are buried.

So if there is a gathering near you this month, go. Bring something to share, even if it is store-bought pancit and you feel shy about it. Nobody keeps score. You are not a guest in this story. You are the next page of it.

🇵🇭✨

🔍 Where this comes from

A reflection piece, not a news report. If you know of a Filipino American History Month event near you, we would love to hear about it.