Reading 2: Indigenous women's role in resource utilization and management: The

Cordillera experience. Fiagoy, G.L. (1996). In Bennagen, P.L. & Lucas-Fernan, M.L., (1996). Consulting the spirits,
working with nature, sharing with others: Indigenous resource management in the Philippines. Quezon City: Sentro Para sa Ganap
na Pamayanan

Introduction. Indigenous peoples of the Cordillera have been able to conserve and
utilize their resources through sustainable practices. At the base of this is the indigenous
peoples' concept of land: that land and its resources are necessary to the people's survival. As
custodians of the land, indigenous peoples take care of the productive and reproductive power
of the earth and its resources. This harmonious relationship and rational management of the
ecosystem define a people's ethnic identity and also ensure the cultural continuity of the group.
To Indigenous Peoples, land and the environment are valued since these are the sources of
sustenance. The relationship between humans and the environment is also symbiotic and
spiritual. While humans get sustenance from the land, they take the responsibility of caring for it
by extracting only what is needed.
As communities who have resisted colonization and assimilation, indigenous peoples
remain repositories of a broad range of indigenous knowledge which today is recognized as
sustainable and viable. Also the adaptability of these indigenous knowledge systems make
them relevant and useful despite the increasing threats from proponents of profit-oriented
economic growth. Indeed, the influx of the cash economy, state policies that disregard
indigenous peoples' rights and the ensuing development projects have affected the viable way
of life which indigenous peoples have pursued through generations.
Moreover, the relationship between indigenous peoples and the environment is breaking
down as a result of overexploitation of nature's resources as unsustainable practices are
introduced in large-scale economic production. For example, state encouragement of
commercial agriculture brought about massive deforestation and erosion as people converted
forestlands into vegetable gardens. In the same manner, large scale mining operations polluted
the river systems, greatly affecting agricultural lands in the highlands as well as in the lowland
areas.
A major problem confronting indigenous peoples is the state's non-recognition of their
rights to ancestral land. In the Cordillera, 'state laws and policies which require paper titles as
proof of ownership have resulted in the disenfranchisement of the indigenous peoples from their
lands. The laws have also allowed outsiders to own land and exploit the natural resources in
indigenous peoples' territories. Thus, the transfer of control from the indigenous peoples to state
and corporate interests have resulted in irreversible ecological destruction which has severely
undermined the integrity of the indigenous peoples' lives.
In addition, the development framework of the government, which is usually tied to
foreign development policy, calls for massive resource extraction and input-intensive export-
oriented agriculture. This development framework has also helped in destroying not only the
environment but also in undermining tried and tested knowledge and practices. Ecological
degradation and the marginalization of indigenous communities will intensify with the ratification
of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the implementation of the Ramos
government's Medium-Term Development Plan.
In subsistence communities, women as producers and carers are wholly dependent
upon the renewability of natural systems to provide food, fuel, water, and shelter. Thus, they
have collected knowledge on the utilization and conservation of these resources. Women are
responsible for survival tasks which are essential for daily life. They grow most of the food crops
and perform most of the work which sustains the family. The task of the women does not end in
the fields. Among the Kankana-ey and Bontok, when they go home in the afternoon, they bring
vegetables from the swidden and a bundle of camote (sweet potato) leaves for the pigs. Then
they feed the domestic animals (e.g., pigs and chickens), cook for the family and look after the
children.
Among the Kalinga, fetching water is traditionally the women's responsibility. In
communities where water is not piped to the village, the women must walk to the spring to wash
the pots to be filled with water for cooking and drinking. They perform this chore in the morning
and evening. Also, in places where traditional rice varieties are used, the women pound palay
(unhusked rice) at least once a day or just before cooking. Since women spend most of their
time in the swiddens and rice paddies, they have gained considerable knowledge about the
rational use of land and resources. This knowledge ensures continuous supply of food and
materials needed for survival. The methods used adapt to the environment and are
sustainable without long-term damage to the land.
The shift to commercial agriculture has eroded the importance of women's role as food
producers and relegated them to a position where they are no longer in control of production.
Many women, especially those who do not have enough land, become part of the labor force in
commercial agriculture. In the vegetable industry, for instance, they not only get exposed to
dangerous pesticides which affect their health, but they are also given lower wages.
In the struggle for survival, the women suffer multiple burdens. Aside from biological
reproduction, they have to ensure that their families have enough food. The women have to
spend so much time in the fields and pregnancy does not deter them from working daily. Among
the Kankana-ey of Besao and Sagada, Mountain Province, women who are about to give
birth bring extra clothes to the fields in case they will deliver before reaching home.
Indigenous women are further marginalized by gender-blind development which fails to
recognize their role in production. Training programs are usually participated in by men because
the call is for heads of families. This prevents the women from contributing their expertise and
knowledge gained from years of working the fields. The non-participation of women in
development programs has undermined ecologically sound indigenous agricultural practices.
As active participants in economic survival, the women also become repositories of
knowledge on sustainable practices. Their exclusion from the economic sphere as a result of
corporate and state development programs has led to the decline of women's role in resource
use and management and in the erosion of indigenous knowledge which the women have
developed through time. Women have become invisible in the western, male-dominated
economic framework which considers cash and profits as measures of productivity.
Statistically, women are not considered active participants in food production and the
economic development of the nation. The problem lies in the fact that only women who
participate in wage labor are counted. Those who engage in subsistence agriculture and other
food production activities which do not entail wages are not recognized.
In recent years, however, development agencies have rectified this error by integrating
the women issue in their programs. However, the danger lies in women's involvement in
projects which train them to become a cheap source of labor or which endanger their health in
activities requiring the use of hazardous chemicals.
In addition, this recognition of and support for women does not guarantee that
development projects will result in social transformation. The interests of the poor women will
not be carried by the elite who usually dominate projects. Moreover, some development projects
require that a beneficiary must have a sizable land area. This immediately disqualifies the
majority in the community who have small or no landholdings at all.
Resource Management Practices. Agriculture is the major industry in the Cordillera
where most of the communities engage in subsistence food production. When the cash
vegetable farming was introduced, some communities, especially in Benguet, completely shifted
to this industry. In the other Cordillera provinces, many areas still have rice paddies and
swiddens although they also engage in cash vegetable gardening.
 Food production in subsistence agriculture directly depends on the environment and the
management of its resources. For instance, among the Kankana-ey of Besao, Mountain
Province, paddy field preparation is mainly the women's task. After loosening the soil with a
wooden hoe, they gather cut grass and leaves of the wild sunflower growing around the
paddies. They spread these in the fields and, with their feet, push these under the loose soil.
In some communities, the women also add to the paddy recycled old thatched roofs as organic
fertilizer.
Another type of organic fertilizer used is the lamud or tadug. Women dig in certain
places in the mountains for this rock-like soil to be pulverized. The powder is then scattered in
the paddy. An analysis of this soil shows that it contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium
which further enrich the paddy soil.
Seedbed preparation is also done by women who plant selected seeds in a small plot.
This ensures that the seedlings to be transplanted are of good quality. The women, while caring
for the paddy field through weeding and keeping rodents away, continue to gather food. One
type of weed which they remove from the paddy is the saksakong. It is an edible plant which
serves as food for the family and at the same time is also used as animal feed.
In the past, women used to gather small fish and snails in the paddies. The introduction
of the golden apple snail in the seventies by the government resulted in the disappearance of
many native aquatic food sources. Originally intended as an additional source of protein, the
golden apple snail caused havoc in the fields. It multiplied rapidly, competing with the smaller
native snails, and also led to the decrease in rice harvest since it thrived on the young rice
stalks.
The proliferation of the golden apple snail in the rice fields forced the farmers to use
molluscides, further depleting the native aquatic food sources. In the commercial rice producing
area of Tabuk, Kalinga-Apayao in 1989, the Department of Agriculture recommended that the
farmers use Aquatin to get rid of the snails: The women and draft animals suffered as the strong

chemical corroded the carabaos' hooves and the women's toenails.

In addition to taking care of paddy fields, the women also work in the swiddens (uma).
Though men usually do swidden preparation, regular care is still the women's task. While
waiting for the paddy rice to mature, the women spend time in the swidden, the source of root
crops, beans, and fruits. In the early morning, the women go to the swidden which can be a long

distance from the village. They then plant camote and other cultigens, and remove weeds and
vines to allow the plants to grow. By the late afternoon, they go home to the village, carrying on
their heads baskets of vegetables and fruits harvested from the swiddens.
In some communities, camote plots are located near the house. These are mainly used
as livestock feed while those planted in the swiddens or in the paddies drained after harvest are
for human consumption. Communities with pigsties near the house are supplied with a regular
flow of organic fertilizer. The pigsty, usually a wide hole lined with smooth river stones, is ,a
veritable factory for organic fertilizer. Traditionally, among the Bontok and Kankana-ey, this
serves as a toilet. Dried rice stalks are thrown into the area where pig and human waste are
collected to hasten drying. When the waste matter and rice stalks have mixed well and dried
up, these are collected by the women and used as fertilizer in the adjacent camote plots.
Seed selection is also done by women during the harvest season. The seeds are kept
for the next planting season.
Water is a resource necessary for domestic and agricultural use. Among the Kalinga,
water fetching is taboo for men. Therefore, in communities where water still has to be taken
from the springs or communal pipes, the women are burdened with the said task. In
communities where there are rice paddies, irrigation water is allocated to the paddy owners.
Women and children sometimes sleep in the ricefields to prevent other paddy owners from
diverting the water supply to their fields even when it is not their turn to get the water.
During the American regime, the colonial government established agricultural schools to
ensure that the highlands will be able to produce sufficient temperate vegetables for the
colonizers. Demand for these vegetables increased in the 1960s when the Chinese took over
the industry. Subsistence farmers in Benguet shifted to cash vegetable cropping. Communities
in Mountain Province and lfugao also followed suit. Those in the vegetable industry became
wage-earners but women are paid lower wages than the men although they have the same
workload. While both are subjected to health hazards due to intensive use of chemical inputs,
the women expose not only themselves, but also the children that they bear.
Responses and Political Actions. Early anthropological literature shows the Cordillera
male as the warrior and the female as the food producer. Recent studies show, however, that
the women are also active in territorial defense because, without land, the women will not be
able to perform their task as food producer. Examples would be the opposition of Kalinga
women to the construction of the Chico River Dam and the Bontok women to corporate mining
intrusion into their villages.
Also in the Cordillera, the warrior societies persisted because the women were the major
food producers while the men guarded the villages from marauders. Among the Kalinga, an
inter-village war can be postponed if the women refuse to collect or produce the food needed by
the men during the conflict.
Women recognize that the survival of the community depends on the people's ability to
have control over their resources. Food sufficiency is ensured if these resources are managed
by the people whose indigenous knowledge and socio-political systems lead to equitable
distribution and conservation of the resources.
In traditional Cordillera communities, the women do not have a direct role in the
community decision-making process. The council of elders is composed of male members.
Also, a female peace pact holder has no participation in discussions and decision-making, her
position being hereditary. Only the male members of her family possess an active role.
However, the women have shown that non-inclusion in the formal decision making process
does not deter them from defending land and resources. It follows that those with the most
immediate interest in natural resources should be the ones to control their development and
protection, ensuring that their needs are met in the process.
In the early seventies Benguet Consolidated, Inc. attempted to build tunnels in Mainit,
Bontok. The people knew that this activity would affect the water system which was the lifeline
of the paddies. The Mainit women drove the firm's employees away by baring their breasts and
challenging them. In the local culture, this meant that the women had no respect for the
outsiders whom they could also harm physically.
The resistance to the construction of the Chico River Dam was a resistance to the state's
attempt to disenfranchise the Bontok and Kalinga of their ancestral lands. Not wanting to turn
over their lands and resources to destruction by the state, the women dismantled the tents of
the National Power Corporation (NPC) employees in Tomiangan, Kalinga and brought
these to the NPC office in Tabuk. The attempts of NPC to survey along the Chico River were
thwarted by people patrolling the area. Surveyors were driven away.
During the American colonial regime, the women in Talubin, Bontok stopped the
cadastral survey of their community which would have led to the parcelling and privatization of
ancestral lands, beneficiaries of whom would have been outsiders.
In response to ecological degradation caused by deforestation, the Ngibat women in
Kalinga initiated agri-forestry activities such as planting of fruit trees in woodlots and other
arable areas designated by them. They also helped enforce traditional rules on the gathering of
fuel such as cutting only tree branches.
 These cases show how Cordillera women mobilize themselves to assert their right to
land and resources in order that the community can survive. In the face of ecological
degradation, some women can also group themselves and come up with a plan to reverse the
situation.
External factors like cash economy, development projects and state laws impinging on
indigenous peoples' land rights have gradually eroded traditional resource sharing practices and
also reinforced the concept of private property. This has led to marginalization of the people by
way of disenfranchisement and differential access to resources. However, the persistence of
indigenous practices can still be perceived despite changes brought about by these external
factors which have attempted to transform communities to cash-based activities. The idea that
those who depend on the environment and its resources should control their development
and conservation is a focal point in indigenous ideology. It has been a basis for the defense of
ancestral land. For the women, this is a rallying point of resistance against domination, whether
of gender, class or ethnicity, to enable them to continue their role in production and
reproduction.