Few nations, though, build stories about themselves by focusing on the gallows, on recounting what they have suffered or assembling a heartbreaking record of exploitation and oppression, unsung martyrs and lost leaders. A scaffold would then become the national scaffolding. A black armband would turn into a full black mourning outfit. Polish and Jewish histories, which do not agree on much, do share a focus on pain and anger, revolt and repression.

Nowhere, however, is the narrative of the nation as martyr taken to the same extreme as in the Ayala Museum in the Makati district of Manila in the Philippines.

Where we confine dioramas – history told through toy soldiers – to the Australian War Memorial, Ayala deploys dozens of figurines in more than 50 disparate settings to tell the tale of the Philippines. Dioramas present history in the continuous present tense. After starting with tribals spearing an elephant in the Cagayan Valley and a hunter carting a pig back to the Tabon caves, the story segues into colonial horrors. Booted and armed Spaniards celebrate a first mass (1521) in the presence of seven bemused locals. The "first national hero", Lapu-Lapu, kills the renowned explorer, Ferdinand Magellan. Chinese pirates are repelled. Later, 23,000 Chinese settlers are massacred (1603). Sultan Kudarat defends his lands against Spanish interlopers (1637). A Governor is murdered by an oddly affluent mob (1719). A savage revolt in Dagohoy persists for 85 years (from 1744). Filipinos are put to work in colonial iron mines. Another hero, Rizal, turns his back on a firing squad, while still more leaders are betrayed or assassinated. After the United States seizes the Philippines, locals ambush American forces at Balangiga (1901), then suffer reprisals comparable to My Lai. Japanese invaders arrive (1942) to conduct the Bataan death march, monstrously oppress the local Filipino population and raze Manila. Then, to round out the story, independence is declared (1946). As the song goes, is that all there is?

Not quite all the panels are soaked in blood. A few little bright interludes – the first printing press, a school open to all, Filipinos permitted to visit the presidential palace – are outweighed by the unmitigated misery suffusing most of the narrative.

What might the lessons be for a Filipino visitor to Ayala? Perhaps, never rely on foreigners, for they seek their own interests? Trust in "ourselves alone", as Sinn Fein proclaims? Never give up, despite horror and terror? Those are essentially the same national lessons that the people of Timor Leste, Kosovo and Eritrea have assimilated, and which Irish republicans and Basque separatists alike still propound.

All those events in the Philippines occurred eight hours' flight, or a world, away from Australia No element in the Filipino stories accords with the glib "Whig" or liberal economics notions of history, which hold that nations make steady progress, that rising tides lift all boats, that the powers that be have our well-being at heart, and that we are climbing towards the bright sunlit uplands. By contrast, the history told at Ayala is all about grit, grease, gore, guts – a quartet just sustaining a nation that has often been forced to hang on by its fingernails.

If a purist argued that declaring independence represents only the beginning of a national story, Ayala responds with film of the truly inspiring people's power revolt against the Marcos tyranny in 1986. The pronoun used shifts to "we", as the narrator extols a people's discovery of community, self-worth and power.

This year's anniversary of people power did not quite live up to that rhetoric. Few VIPs attended. Only a small number of ordinary folk, many not even dressed in the trademark yellow of the 1986 protests, turned up. The next day, the memorial site boasted only one political slogan ("stop killing farmers") among dozens of fluttering portraits of the new Filipino Miss Universe. Downtown, a touching monument to people power – depicting demonstrators waving banners on top of a tank – is now the preserve for smokers from an office block.

Mind you, even venerable national celebrations can focus on quite eccentric events. A lethally unruly mob stormed a decrepit prison to release four forgers, two lunatics and a deviant – and France's July 14 ceremonies were born. Fifty-six well-heeled and well-meaning representatives of the bourgeoisie signed a declaration with no immediate effect, during a war which dragged on for another seven years – and the US's July 4 was born. We should pass over in silence the day when 11 ships packed with bedraggled thieves shifted from an arid anchorage to appropriate a cove.

On July 4, though, well away from grandiose rhetoric and lavish fireworks, ordinary Americans in little towns do celebrate. Americans are beguilingly sincere, in a prosaic but rather wonderful way. They organise a parade, eat hot dogs, wave flags, sign their anthem and talk to each other. John Adams, one of the 56 signers of the declaration of independence, grasped only half the point. He observed that, before any shots were fired, the American revolution had been won "in the hearts and minds of the people", in their principles and opinions as well as their sentiments and affections.

A national celebration – whether in Manila, Paris, Culpeper, Chattanooga or even Canberra – needs to attest what matters in a nation's story. That tale must be embedded and cherished in the hearts and minds of the people. A scaffold will not suffice; sentiments and affections must be engaged.

Mark Thomas is a Canberra-based writer.