Cornerstone and Catriona Gray will stop accepting new applicants for Nas Academy course.
On Sunday, Cornerstone Entertainment, Catriona Gray, and Nas Academy officially announced that they would hit pause on what would have been the “Catriona Gray Academy”.
In a statement on social media, Cornerstone said that the company, its talent, and NAS Academy have agreed to stop accepting new applicants for the “Catriona Gray Academy” until the issue of Whang-Od had been fully resolved.
Around the same time, Nas Academy officially announced that it would be pausing operations in the Philippines following the issue surrounding a course that featured traditional tattoo artist Whang-Od.
Whang-Od’s grandniece Grace Palicas said in a now-deleted post last August 4 that the “Whang-Od Academy” was a scam and Nas Academy’s team didn’t sign a contract with the 104-year-old.
Nas Academy then responded to Grace’s post, insisting that it had Whang-Od’s consent as the company shared a video of Whang-Od affixing her thumbprint onto a contract as proof.
However, securing permission and consent when it comes to indigenous peoples’ traditions wasn’t that simple as a Philippine anthropologist had pointed out that permission must be secured from the tribe and not just Whang-Od herself.
READ ALSO: Nas Academy Halts Operations In PH Following “Whang-Od Academy” Issue
Earlier, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples – Cordillera Administrative Region (NCIP-CAR) announced that it was reviewing the alleged contract between Whang-Od and Nas Academy.
Whang-Od was revered as one of the country’s last living artists practicing the art of traditional Kalinga tattooing – a hand-tapped method using thorns and charcoal for ink. Last 2018, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) gave her the Dangal ng Haraya Award for Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Miss Universe 2018 Catriona Gray was supposed to launch the “Catriona Gray Academy” via Nas Academy. She had not yet spoken out about the issue hounding Nas Academy but shared Cornerstone’s statement on her own Instagram Stories.
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