On borrowed earth

As I trudged closer to the mountain’s windy peak, the dark jungle slowly broke open. Then, without warning, a million peach-colored flowers surged forward and I was swallowed waist deep in a lush ocean of color. And I thought, what place on earth is this… what undiscovered beauty….

Going up I encountered a moist green snake, insects and leeches, poisonous bulan-bulan leaves. A slip, a fall, a bone-crunching day and a bitter cold night had preceded all these. Now, here, suddenly, the morning of Creation. How wild and how peaceful.

This was not a prelude to paradise, I would just soon realize. A few more upward pushes and the flowers receded. Suddenly I was facing a bare desolate peak, the dwelling place of a small community of B’laans.

Here they lived. Here they had been pushed. Like so many scattered B’laan communities, these tribal folk dwelt, if not on mountain sides, on mountain peaks from where there was no more space to go but the sky. Sad were their faces. Sad was their chanting. Forty, 50 years ago, before the settlers came, these shy but hardy people roamed and owned the Mindanao vastness. Not anymore.

* * *

Those were the first paragraphs of a long magazine feature article I wrote many, many years ago after spending more than a week in the land of the B’laans and the T’bolis in Mindanao.

I have written many feature articles and column pieces on the indigenous communities I have visited and immersed in-B’laan, T’boli, Mangyan, Aeta, Kalinga, native Americans, etc.—and the selfless individuals and groups that work among them. And I have considered compiling these articles into a book. Many years from now their present way of life will no longer be the same, and it is changing dramatically even now.

The United Nations’ International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples was observed two days ago, Aug. 9. This yearly observance is meant to promote and protect the rights of the world’s indigenous population and to recognize their contributions to make this world a better place, environmental protection among them.

In 2004 the UN assembly proclaimed 2005 -2014 the Second International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People. The decade’s goal is to further strengthen international cooperation for solving problems faced by indigenous peoples in areas such as culture, education, health, human rights, the environment, and social and economic development.

Alas, despite all that, the IPs who are the guardians of this planet’s last frontiers, are also the ones who continue to bear the brunt of so-called development for profit.

I commend Akbayan Rep. Kaka Bag-ao for her privilege speech (“Earth Borrowed from our Children”) on Aug. 9. She began by saying, “While the Philippine Constitution and the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) recognize the rights of indigenous peoples (IP), our vibrant ethnicity also chronicles the un-romanticized tale of cultural communities who are historically marginalized by our state policies. The policy, which this representation is referring to, is the state of perpetrated plunder of our national patrimony which we commonly refer to as the Philippine Mining Act of 1995.”

Bag-ao is pushing for the repeal of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 which, she said, allows 100 percent foreign ownership of mining projects which could use up to 81,000 hectares of land and could last for 50 years. Mining companies are given priority access to water resources within their concessions and can repatriate all profits subject only to 2 percent excise tax with tax holidays and deferred payment incentives.

It is as if the government is doing a bargain sale and even subsidizing exploitation, she said. In 2008 the reported contribution of the mining industry to the gross domestic product was only 1.28 percent.

Bag-ao stressed that the Philippines holds the third largest gold deposit in the world, fourth largest deposit in copper, the sixth largest deposit in nickel. She noted that the bulk of the country’s mineral wealth, timber and other raw materials are found in the last frontier inhabited and protected by the IPs.

Citing data from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, Bag-ao said that there are 482 mining applications covering 1,046,350.87 hectares. An estimated 595,058.11 (56.87 percent) will cover IP territories.

Present in the House last Tuesday were Subanen leaders from Zamboanga Peninsula who have filed a petition before the Supreme Court for the issuance of a writ of kalikasan to stop mining in the peninsula.

And while mining corporations rake in billions in profits, the communities that have guarded the resources remain impoverished and are the first to suffer environmental disasters such as ground subsidence and the landslides in Benguet and mercury poisoning in Sibuyan.

The Commission on Human Rights had issued a resolution in favor of the Ifugao tribe in Didipio, Nueva Vizcaya, calling for the revocation of the Financial or Technical Assistance Agreement of Oceana Gold but it was not implemented, Bag-ao said. In 2010, the Ifugaos and the Subanens sent a complaint to UNCERD but the government ignored the recommendation of the international body.

And to cap Bag-ao’s lamentations: “Last June 30 … the paramilitary group Salakawam killed anti-mining lumad (IP) leader Arpe Belayong and his nephew Solte San-ogan in Esperanza, Agusan del Sur, host to several mining applications.”

The IP guardians of the wilderness believe that the land and all its riches are borrowed from their children and should someday be returned for them to enjoy.

There’s blood on borrowed earth. And the bleeding continues.

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