In spirited discussions about the merits and validity of various advocacies, one sector is usually conspicuously left out—the Philippines’ indigenous peoples (IP). With their ancestral domain invariably located in far-flung areas of the country, they are most often driven out of their habitats and deprived of their traditional means of subsistence.
By long-established legal precedents, indigenous peoples are considered a quasi-sovereign state that never surrendered to colonial rule and consistently asserted their tribal sovereignty. The 1987 Constitution recognizes and protects the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands, and refers to governing propriety rights and customary laws in determining the ownership and extent of ancestral domain. In Section 2 of Article XII of the Constitution, the State clings to the imperial, regalian doctrine that “all lands of the public domain are owned by the State.”
The IPs’ occupation and possession of, as well as proprietary rights to, their ancestral domain are their exclusive birthright and heritage. For even before the establishment of earthly kingdoms, empires, colonial regimes or territories, the indigenous peoples were already in full occupation, ownership and possession of their landholdings. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South American countries, and even the United States, respect and protect the right of original peoples (aborigines) to their ancestral possessions.
It is time for Malacañang and Congress to address the concerns of our indigenous peoples. The Department of the Environment and Natural Resources and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples should conduct a thorough demographic census and survey of IP landholdings and locate the exact metes and bounds of their ancestral domains, and likewise determine the content and life span of minerals lying underneath these lands. The Cooperative Development Authority should help organize the indigenous peoples into formal cooperatives to enhance their productivity and strengthen the base of their ownership. The government can do no less for the Philippines’ indigenous peoples if it must bring them into the national mainstream.
—ROMULO B. LUMAUIG,
Abante Katutubo,
romylwayi@yahoo.com