Inclusive bill for IPs

They come to mind whenever the holiday countdown begins, but mainly as mendicants roaming the city for alms. Because despite a law, Republic Act No. 8371 or the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (Ipra), being passed 25 years ago to uplift their lives, members of the country’s native tribes continue to exist in the margins: impoverished, ignored, and forced to seek seasonal help from urban folk at tremendous cost to their dignity.

Aside from fully implementing the Ipra, resource centers that would bring social services closer to indigenous peoples (IPs) might be one way to advance their rights and welfare. Or so suggested Sen. Sonny Angara, who notes that while “we have over a hundred IP groups comprising anywhere between 14 to 17 million indigenous cultural communities … they continue to be among the most disadvantaged” in the country.

Angara has filed Senate Bill No. 1167, or the proposed Resource Centers for Indigenous Peoples Act of 2022, that seeks to establish such facilities in strategic places as determined by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples. The centers would focus on three major service areas, namely statistical, human development index, and domains management.

The statistical service area will take care of the documentation and recognition of IPs and their indigenous knowledge, systems, and practices through census and baseline reports, among other appraisal methods. “The absence of reliable public data on [IPs have led] to situations where they are neglected in the delivery of basic, social, technical, and even legal services,” Angara said.

The human development index service area will meanwhile address the IPs’ need for necessary services through link-ups with government agencies that would provide training programs, scholarship grants, employment, livelihood and enterprise assistance, and health services.

Helping IPs participate in programs and activities meant to maintain ecological balance, restore denuded areas, and ensure the implementation of the law developing and protecting ancestral domains, among other sustainable efforts, is the domains management service area.

Earlier this month, senior lecturer and University of the Philippines legal associate Raymond Marvic Baguilat lamented in a letter to the Inquirer Opinion page how the government’s celebration of October as National Indigenous Peoples Month had been mere “token,” with activities focused only on pageantry.

“The stark reality on the ground is that we remain vulnerable because we are disregarded and given the least priority,” Baguilat wrote, citing the 2023 budget proposal for Indigenous Peoples Education (IPEd) under the Department of Education (DepEd).

He noted that the IPEd budget for 2023 has been slashed by more than 63 percent compared to that of 2022, with more than P90 million removed. “The budget proposal now stands at only P53 million, from P144 million. This means that out of the DepEd budget, less than 1 percent goes toward implementing IPEd. In context, the IPEd budget is just a third of the unnecessary DepEd confidential intelligence funds worth P150 million,” Baguilat pointed out.

The meager allocation is also limited to maintenance and other operating expenses, with no budget set aside for personnel services and capital outlay, he said. This means that despite repeated pleas, there won’t be more IPs hired to develop a culturally sensitive curriculum, no provision for salaries, wages, and other compensation for personnel, and no outlay for the purchase of goods and services, noted the lawyer from the UP Law Center Institute of Human Rights.

Baguilat had previously bewailed in a 2019 research forum in Australia that, despite the supposed normative effects of the Ipra, it had failed to realize social justice for the IPs.

In that forum, this Tuwali from Ifugao province presented ways on how government and private institutions can help IPs move into the mainstream, including providing them legal aid to educate them on their rights and how to claim them. Just as important is pushing for corrective measures in the educational system and even in the media to address prior misconceptions on IPs, while explaining their distinct culture and demolishing the harmful stereotypes that have limited their participation in public life.

In a recent UP forum, “Indigenous Peoples and Learning Spaces in the Academe,” Baguilat cited how academia can help advance the rights of IPs. Aside from scholarships for them, educational institutions can include courses on IPs in the curricula and hire IP teachers to teach these while also developing culture-based learning materials.

With Congress expressing its intention to pass the 2023 budget before its session ends in December, Baguilat is pinning his hopes on our lawmakers recognizing “the importance of empowering us IPs to move out of the margins.”

As it should. With IPs comprising from 12 to 17 percent of the country’s total population, any diminution in their culture arising from economic want and social invisibility would mean shedding a part of our rich Filipino heritage.