Alternative paradigm for indigenous peoples

On April 24, 1984, soldiers of the Marcos regime killed Macli-ing Dulag, the leader of the Cordillera communities’ resistance against the construction of dams in the Chico River. Thirty years later, attacks on indigenous peoples (IPs) have become more and more blatant amid heightened conflict over resources.

On one side are corporations grabbing land and taking control of resources that are not only economically important to ethnic communities but also sustain the very core of who they are and how they have lived. On the other side are IP communities defending their ancestral lands, their cultures, their very lives.

In the reigning culture of impunity in the Philippines, still unsolved are the extrajudicial killings of Judy Capion, the pregnant wife of Dagil Capion, a tribal leader accused of being a rebel/bandit, and of their two sons in October 2013; of two children of Anteng Freay, a B’laan leader whose house was strafed by gunmen in August 2013; and of the 11-year-old son of Subanen tribal chief Lucenio Manda in an ambush by motorcycle-riding gunmen in September 2012. The killing of the Capions was allegedly perpetrated by soldiers, and the case has not moved because the crime scene was cleaned up before police investigators arrived.

There are other IP leaders and their family members who have been harassed, injured, or killed in recent years as they defended their lands and communities against corporate mining enterprises and other forms of development aggression.

The expression of indignation and the mobilization for political actions to seek justice have not abated, especially because of the absence of a decisive response from the government. But while these are critical steps, the fight for justice will not be complete if we claim it only in terms of the killings.

We may commemorate Macli-ing Dulag and protest the killing of indigenous peoples, but we continue to marginalize their life principles, cultures and histories—their main motivations in defending their lands and resources. The marginalization, the refusal to understand an alternative paradigm borne out of the IPs’ praxis, the failure to make those connections—these are what sustain corporate-led aggression in IP communities and the culture of impunity. IP lands—and way of life—still seem to us distant geographies, especially from where we live our lives in the urban centers.

It is imperative that we remember Macli-ing Dulag and what he continues to stand for, as well as those who have fought for their ancestral lands against corporate domination and greed, with an expanded awareness of what their struggle and death represent—an awareness inspired by  vivir  bien (or  buen  vivir), a Spanish phrase that means “living well” or “knowing how to live.”

According to the publication “From Latin America to Asia, Learning from Our Roots: A Conversation on Vivir Bien” (Focus on the Global South, 2013), this way of life should be understood, not “as a utopian return to the pre-colonial past,” but as the “merging of lessons from the past with those of today to build something new.”

This philosophy is in stark contrast with the way of life bred by the capitalist system; living better is not brought about by living with more material things. The so-called right to development is interrogated; the idea that the capitalist system’s way is the only way to development is challenged. Vivir bien is a way of life underlined by certain principles—such as “bio-society versus human society, humanism vs individualism, complementarity vs competition, harmony vs growth, integrality vs materiality”—which stress that the goal of humans “is not to control nature but to take care of it,” and that our place is not at the center, as we coexist with nature. In the South American countries of Bolivia and Ecuador, this principle is not just a proposition but is embedded in their respective constitutions (https://www.focusweb.org/publications/).

This alternative paradigm also resonates with IPs in the Philippines. When a forum on buen vivir organized by Focus on the Global South was held in Manila last year, the Subanen women who participated in the event immediately explained it in their own terms; they were able to relate to the idea that humanity is not at the center of things. They explained their practice called  maguras, a ritual performed to seek permission from guardian spirits to utilize Mother Earth’s resources. They stressed that there should be no dichotomy between the practice of their culture and progress, and that a good life for many can only be sustained if

nature is not used in harmful ways.

But for many who have been so habituated to a consumption-oriented, anthropocentric life, this view is strange, even laughable.

Even among the politically progressive sectors, the IP way of life as something to build on in engendering alternative paradigms is often not considered, or becomes a mere afterthought as a way of giving credence to claims of being democratic and politically correct. We still carry within us the colonial thinking we so much

despise: that theirs is a backward conception of life and the universe, and that to use their paradigm is some form of recidivism.

We must heed what the Avidasi of India claim about their egalitarian communities, where there is equality not only among humans but also between humans and the forest: “We are not 200 years backward, we are 200 years advanced.”

Clarissa V. Militante works with Focus on the Global South and is the author of the novel “Different Countries” (Anvil, 2010).