Module 3 1

Colonial Legacies and the IPs’ Stewardship and Usufruct Rights

This module begins with a brief survey of the colonial and post-colonial policies on land
use in the Philippines. The reading about the lumad struggle in Mindanao is the case study
that will show how these colonial and post-colonial land use policies are affecting the
stewardship, usufruct rights, and other IP rights of the lumads as well as the IPs in general.
After reading this module, you should be able to:
1. explain how the colonial and post-colonial land use policies had marginalized the
lumads in particular and the IPs in general;
2. define structural discrimination and development aggression and illustrate them
using the lived experiences of the lumads and other IPs in the Philippines; and,
3. considering the IP and Filipino worldviews in general, propose workable ways
through which the government can attain inclusive economic growth in the IP
areas.

Module 2 had shown that the indigenous peoples adhere to the principles of sharing and
stewardship over their resources. What happened and are happening to these principles under
the colonial and postcolonial regimes is what this module attempts to explore and explain.

Relevant in the discussion of land use policies and land rights are the concepts defined by
RA 8371 (The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997):

Ancestral Domains — … all areas generally belonging to ICCs/IPs comprising lands,

inland waters, coastal areas, and natural resources therein, held under a claim of
ownership, occupied or possessed by ICCs/IPs, by themselves or through their ancestors,
communally or individually since time immemorial, continuously to the present except
when interrupted by war, force majeure or displacement by force, deceit, stealth or as a
consequence of government projects or any other voluntary dealings entered into by
government and private individuals/corporations, and which are necessary to ensure their
economic, social and cultural welfare. … include ancestral lands, forests, pasture,
residential, agricultural, and other lands individually owned whether alienable and
disposable or otherwise, hunting grounds, burial grounds, worship areas, bodies of water,
mineral and other natural resources, and lands which may no longer be exclusively
occupied by ICCs/IPs but from which they traditionally had access to for their subsistence
and traditional activities, particularly the home ranges of ICCs/IPs who are still nomadic
and/or shifting cultivators;

Ancestral Lands — … land occupied, possessed and utilized by individuals,

families and clans who are members of the ICCs/IPs since time immemorial, by
themselves or through their predecessors-in-interest, under claims of individual or
traditional group ownership, continuously, to the present except when interrupted by war,
force majeure or displacement by force, deceit, stealth, or as a consequence of
government projects and other voluntary dealings entered into by government and
private individuals/corporations, including, but not limited to, residential lots, rice terraces
or paddies, private forests, swidden farms and tree lots;
 Module 3 2

Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title — … title formally recognizing the rights of

possession and ownership of ICCs/IPs over their ancestral domains identified and
delineated in accordance with this law;

Certificate of Ancestral Lands Title — … title formally recognizing the rights of

ICCs/IPs over their ancestral lands;

Customary Laws — … a body of written and/or unwritten rules, usages, customs

and practices traditionally and continually recognized, accepted and observed by
respective ICCs/IPs;

Free and Prior Informed Consent — … the consensus of all members of the
ICCs/IPs to be determined in accordance with their respective customary laws and
practices, free from any external manipulation, interference and coercion, and obtained
after fully disclosing the intent and scope of the activity, in a language and process
understandable to the community;

Indigenous Political Structures — … organizational and cultural leadership

systems, institutions, relationships, patterns and processes for decision-making and
participation, identified by ICCs/IPs such as, but not limited to, Council of Elders, Council
of Timuays, Bodong Holders, or any other tribunal or body of similar nature;

Individual Claims — … claims on land and rights thereon which have been
devolved to individuals, families and clans including, but not limited to, residential lots,
rice terraces or paddies and tree lots;

Native Title — … pre-conquest rights to lands and domains which, as far back as
memory reaches, have been held under a claim of private ownership by ICCs/IPs, have
never been public lands and are thus indisputably presumed to have been held that way
since before the Spanish Conquest;

Nongovernment Organization — … a private, nonprofit voluntary organization

that has been organized primarily for the delivery of various services to the ICCs/IPs and
has an established track record for effectiveness and acceptability in the community
where it serves;

People’s Organization — … a private, nonprofit voluntary organization of

members of an ICC/IP which is accepted as representative of such ICCs/IPs;

Sustainable Traditional Resource Rights — … rights of ICCs/IPs to sustainably

use, manage, protect and conserve a) land, air, water, and minerals; b) plants, animals
and other organisms; c) collecting, fishing and hunting grounds; d) sacred sites; and e)
other areas of economic, ceremonial and aesthetic value in accordance with their
indigenous knowledge, beliefs, systems and practices; and

Time Immemorial — … a period of time when as far back as memory can go,
certain ICCs/IPs are known to have occupied, possessed in the concept of owner, and
utilized a defined territory devolved to them, by operation of customary law or inherited
from their ancestors, in accordance with their customs and traditions.
 Module 3 3

Table 1
Colonial Policies and Legacies that Affect the IPs’ Land Use and Tenure

Colonial Goals/Salient Features

Policies/Legacies
Regalian Doctrine considered the entire Philippine archipelago as property of the Spanish crown
except those lands that were titled to private individuals (Hermoso, 1994)
Torrens System, “all lands be registered with the State, and that private land would be issued
or Land titles under the Torrens titling system” (Tapang, 2007)
Registration Act “Privately-owned lands – by individuals and corporations – were registered
No. 496, 1902 and titled” (Danguilan-Vitug, 1993)
“Land registration system in which the government is the keeper of all land
and title records, and a land title serves as a certificate of full, indefeasible, and
valid ownership.” (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/Torrens-system.html)
Philippine Bill of Set the ceilings on the hectarage of private individuals and corporations may
1902 acquire: 16 has. for private individuals and 1,024 has. for corporations.
The Torrens system, which the Americans instituted for the registration of
lands, did not solve the problem completely. Either they were not aware of the
law or if they did, they could not pay the survey cost and other fees required in
applying for a Torrens title. http://www.dar.gov.ph
Land Registration “declared all lands subject to the Torrens system of formal registration of land
Act of 1902 (Act title and empowered the State to issue to any legitimate claimant secure proof of
No. 496) title over a parcel of land. This system turned land into a commodity that could
be traded by the exchange of a piece of paper”
(http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf )
Commonwealth … the Director of Lands shall have direct executive control of the survey,
Act 141 (Public classification, lease, sale or any other form of concession or disposition and
Land Act) management of the lands of the public domain, and his decisions as to questions
of fact shall be conclusive when approved by the Secretary of Agriculture and
Commerce. (C.A. No. 141, sec. 4)
… President, upon the recommendation of the Secretary of Agriculture and
Commerce, shall from time to time classify the lands of the public domain into —
(a) Alienable or disposable; (b) Timber, and (c) Mineral lands, and
may at any time and in a like manner transfer such lands from one class to
another, for the purposes of their administration and disposition (C.A. No. 141, sec. 6)

Commonwealth Section3. All mineral lands of the public domain and minerals belonging to the
Act No. 137 State, and their disposition, exploitation, development, or utilization, shall be
limited to citizens of the Philippines, or to corporations, or associations, at least
60% of the capital of which is owned by such citizens, …
Section 4. The ownership and the right to the use of land for agricultural,
industrial, commercial, residential, or for any purpose other than mining does not
include the ownership of, nor the right to extract or utilize, the minerals which
may be found on or under the surface.
Section 5. The ownership of, and the right to extract and utilize, the mineral
included within all areas for which public agricultural land patents are granted
are excluded and excepted from all such patents.
Section6. The ownership of, and the right to extract and utilize, the minerals
included within all areas for which Torrens titles are granted are excluded and
excepted from all such titles.

Philippine “ordered that all unregistered lands become part of the public domain, and that
Commission Act only the State had the authority to classify or exploit the same”
No. 178 of 1903 (http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf )

Forestry Act, 1904 “to encourage rational exploitation of the forests by installation of an appropriate
 Module 3 4

regulatory environment to prescribe fees and taxes, and to define parameters for
conversion of forest land to agriculture” (Pulhin, 2002)

Mining Law of “gave the Americans the right to acquire public land for mining purposes”
1905 (http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf )

Public Land Acts “opened Mindanao and all other fertile lands that the State considered
of 1913, 1919 and unoccupied, unreserved, or otherwise unappropriated public lands to
1925 homesteaders and corporations, despite the fact that indigenous peoples were
living in these lands” (http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf)

Section 9. (Jones ―Public Property and Legislation on Public Domain, Timber and Mining
Law, 1916) That all the property and rights which may have been acquired in the Philippine
Islands by the United States under the treaty of peace with Spain, …, except
such land or other property as has been or shall be designated by the President
of the United States for military and other reservations of the Government of the
United States, and all lands which may have been subsequently acquired by the
Government of the Philippine Islands by purchase …, are hereby placed under
the control of the government of said Islands to be administered or disposed of
for the benefit of the inhabitants thereof …

Section 11, Jones … taxes and assessments on property, …, may be imposed for the purposes of
Law, 1916 the Philippine Government and the provincial and municipal governments
thereof, …
Forest Law 1917 … “established communal forests and pastures for the use of communities,
though the forest land itself remained under state control” (Pulhin, 2002)
1935 Constitution Stipulated that all forest lands belong to the state (Pulhin, 2002)
Forestry … “residents of a municipality were granted the privilege to cut, collect and
Administrative remove free of charge, forest products for their personal use … issuance of a …
Order No. 14-1 permit by the Bureau of Forestry was needed … in order to harvest timber in the
(1941) communal forest” … (Pulhin, 2002)
Notes: Entries were directly lifted from the cited sources.

Table 2
Post-Colonial/National Land Use Policies that Affect the IPs’ Native Titles

Post-
Colonial/ Salient Features
National Land
Use Policies

PD 705 “declares all lands 18% in slope or over are automatically considered as forestland
and therefore not alienable and disposable unless released from the forest zone”
( http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf )
PD 1559 Presidential Decree 1559 – kaingeros (slash-and-burn dwellers), squatters, cultural
minorities, and other occupants of public forests or unclassified public land shall,
whenever the best land use of the area so demands, be ejected and relocated to the
nearest government settlement area (https://www.academia.edu/1851330/Communal-Land-
Management-in-the-Cordillera-Region-chap02 )
RA 7942 “facilitates the entry of large foreign and local mining corporations to enter the
(Mining Act of mineral-rich territories of indigenous peoples … opens up the mining sector to 100%
1995) foreign control. Most of the exploration permits applications for Financial and
Technical Assistance Agreements (FTAA) and Mineral Production Sharing Agreements
(MPSA), and mining operations cover ancestral lands of the indigenous peoples”
(http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf )
RA 8371 “… recognizes the indigenous peoples’ rights to their ancestral lands and domain,
 Module 3 5

(Indigenous and specifically sets forth the indigenous concept of ownership … recognizes that
Peoples indigenous peoples’ ancestral domain is community property that belongs to all
Rights Act) generations … recognizes the customs of indigenous peoples and their right to self-
governance and empowerment”
(http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf )
RA 7586 “effectively deprived …, living in and around the mountain, of their right to utilize the
(National natural resources that had traditionally sustained them … endeavors to map and
Integrated zone areas to be preserved for ecological reasons … limits the entry of IPs and their
Protected economic activities into areas such as watersheds and national parks … effectively
Areas [NIPAS]) curtails the rights of IPs to utilize the natural resources that sustain them”
(http://arizonajournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Molintas.pdf )
Notes: Entries were directly lifted from the cited sources.

Reading 1 - Excerpt: Alamon, A.P. (2019). Wars of Extinction: Discrimination and the Lumad
Struggle in Mindanao Iligan City: Rural Missionaries of the Philippines Northern Mindanao Sub-Region (RMP-NMR), Inc.
Structural discrimination is a concept that has been present in various literatures from the
social sciences, human rights discourse and international development work. In the social
sciences, the concept is associated with the concepts of systemic inequality and racism. Many
studies on class and race in Sociology, for instance, point out the institutional and cultural
divisions that relegate certain groups to the margins and they use the concept of institutional
racism.
Multilateral international institutions such as the United Nations also recognize structural
discrimination as a reality. Mirjana Nejcevska of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for
Human Rights website defines structural discrimination as:
…the rules, norms, routines, patterns of attitudes and behavior in institutions and other
societal structures that represent obstacles to groups or individuals in achieving the same
rights and opportunities that are available to the majority of the population. …
The use of the concept of structural discrimination has been applied by the government of
New Zealand in relation to their significant indigenous population such as the Maori and Pacific
Islander groups. They have defined structural discrimination as the:
…entire network of rules and practices [that] disadvantages less empowered groups while
serving at the same time to advantage the dominant group.” …
The Philippines’ own IPRA law of 1997 also has its own tacit recognition of structural
discrimination. In Section 2, Declaration of State Policies, it is stated that the State “shall
guarantee that members of ICCs/IPs regardless of sex, shall equally enjoy the full measure of
human rights and freedoms without distinction or discrimination.” Section 21 on Social Justice
and Human Rights expresses a strong recognition to redress structural recognition by requiring
the State to extend to indigenous groups “them the same employment rights, opportunities,
basic services, educational and other rights and privileges available to every member of the
society.” …

Why is the plight of the Indigenous Peoples of Mindanao an indication that we are a
divided nation? The answer is simple but it is a principle that remains difficult to grasp for many
who have always assumed the legitimacy of the imposed nation-state that is the Philippine
Republic to the inhabitants of this culturally and politically diverse group of islands.
The Filipino nation was born from the rubble of Spanish colonialism, that much should be
clear. It was largely because of developments in the global economy and the consequent
collective resistance to colonial rule, first under the Spaniards and then shortly after, the
Americans, that the birth of the Filipino nation was implanted in the hearts and minds of its first
true sons and daughters. What pushed them to embrace dreams of self-rule and independence
from their white masters was the almost four centuries of bearing the colonial yoke. We are not
 Module 3 6

just talking about tales of yore about the abusive friar or the haughty landlord, but a whole slew
of political and economic arrangements that set the ground for the eventual integration of the
Luzon island’s economy into the global economic order.
There is much debate about how this process took place. Alfred McCoy’s work … on the
Philippines highlights the complex regional dynamics that came into play at the turn of the last
century undermining the economic influence of Spain as a colony. Instead of the direct center-
periphery relations that existed between neocolonies in Latin America and their colonial masters
in Europe and America, McCoy highlighted the intra-regional direct economic relations between
foreign trading houses and local economies in Visayas and Sulu for instance.
Though the history of the country’s assimilation into the global economic order may have
been fraught with various twists and turns and resulted in varying social and economic effects,
this integration is driven by a singular unchanging logic – the marshalling of local resources for
the extraction of profit by a colonial power. Such differentiated political economic realities had
acute consequences to the project of national liberation launched by the revolutionaries from
Luzon according to McCoy.
The first hundred years of Spanish rule was particularly brutal and deadly. With the aim of
exacting as much tributes for the king, the colonial government and friars exacted such a heavy
toll on the local population. It was not even a viable operation and hardly any contribution was
collected for the crown in Spain. However, the re-organization of the political and economic
systems of the conquered peoples of the island into encomiendas and the pueblos for taxation
goals was socially costly. There was a noted decline in the tributary population during the period
1588-1686 indicating the shrinking of the native economy according to OD Corpuz … among
other social consequences.
By the mid-19th century European and American trading houses were established in
Luzon and the Visayas islands imposing feudal relations marked by a system of debt peonage
and sharecropping and orienting these towards producing for the demand of the international
market … and in some instances creating wage-labor relations among weavers in Iloilo ... The
next two hundred years of Spanish colonial rule perfected the transformation of the local
economy from self-sufficient barangay-based economic production to haciendas producing for
surplus which eventually created a “poverty sector of subsistence farmers and a rich class of the
landed gentry” ...
The southern island of Mindanao was relatively isolated from the horrors of these massive
transformations in Luzon and Visayas’ political economies though the war of subjugation and
pacification of Spain reached its shores albeit with limited success. An indication of the difficulty
of the Spanish colonizers in exploiting the southern economy are the scant details in historical
records of the goods they were able to secure for trade from Mindanao whereas large
settlements in Visayas and Luzon as origins of a variety of goods were identified. In the 1897
Spanish census, they were only able to account for less than half of the island’s estimated
population …, which reveal their lack of effective control in most parts of the island.
The impetus was there to eventually conquer Mindanao and exploit its still untapped
resources. But the island was too far and too big to keep within the limited reach of the Spanish
colonial authorities. The successful resistance of the Sulu and Maguindanao sultanates is a
factor in the continuing independence of the island during this period and allowed the Islamized
population of the South to continue practicing their ways and beliefs.
While the Spaniards were diligent in setting up settlements in lowland riverside trading
posts along the coasts in the Northern parts of the island, the non-Moro indigenous population
always had the option to go further into the interior where resources remained untapped and
abundant. In the forests and verdant valleys of Opol, Bukidnon, and Agusan, they could
maintain their traditional ways of life and beliefs and protect themselves from being converted
into Christianized landless peasants working for landlords as what happened to their colonized
counterparts in Visayas and Luzon.
 Module 3 7

It was only the push of the new American colonial ruler to exploit the rich resources of
Mindanao to feed into its growing capitalist industries that saw the belated integration of the
island’s political economy to that of the rest of the colony and the rest of the developing global
economic order. The pretext was an erroneous legal fiat achieved through the Treaty of Paris
that included the unconquered island in the sale of the Philippine archipelago from Spain
to the US for the paltry price of twenty million dollars.
Hungry for the profit to be given by timber, pasture land for cattle ranches, and the
potential rich agricultural land of logged-over areas that the island had to offer, the
Americans were finally able to achieve what the Spaniards for three hundred years failed
to attain – the subjugation of the island of Mindanao and its people. This was secured
through a ruthless military campaign of the new colonial authorities which decimated whole
populations of a gallant Moro resistance ...
But more effective in securing the economic resources of the whole region, more than any
pacification campaign, was the pitting of people against each other in a proxy economic war that
they waged. It was through relentless resettlement policies that saw waves of migrants from
Luzon and Visayas that brought with them the same imposed feudal arrangements that
eventually opened up the Mindanao frontier to colonial economic exploitation and the
transformation of the island’s mode of production.
A hundred years hence, we are still reeling from the consequences of this proxy economic
war within our divided Mindanao of Lumads, Moros, and a migrant largely landless peasantry.
Mindanao historian B.R. Rodil … put forward a strong statement in his assessment of the
various colonial American and Philippine government resettlement policies to the island of
Mindanao. He wrote that the in-migration of people into Lumad and Moro ancestral domains
took place in such an unprecedented scale that it “literally overturned the lives of Indigenous
Peoples.” He makes an interesting conjecture. Though the number of people who formally
availed of the government’s resettlement program may have been few in number, what it did
was to open the once sparsely-populated Lumad and Moro areas to the “spontaneous influx” of
migrants from Luzon and Visayas who followed their relatives to these places. The result was
the displacement of the local indigenous population from areas where they derived their
traditional means of livelihood.
Historically, it was a rice shortage in Sulu and Zamboanga from the period 1911-1912
which prompted then American Governor of the Moro Province, General John Pershing to call
for homesteaders from Luzon and Visayas who will be asked to plant much needed cereals.
There are accounts of Americans enticing Cebuanos to migrate to the South by parading around
the city a thirteen feet-tall cornstalk to prove the fertility of the soil in Mindanao. Interestingly, the
Cebuanos were also required to be skilled in arnis, a local martial arts, which betray the
pacification objectives of the resettlement program. Fifty homesteaders were then deployed to
the first agricultural colony established at the Cotabato Valley where Moro resistance was
present ...
What followed was a slew of colonial laws formalizing the resettlement program of the
American colonial government. The Philippine Commission Act No. 2254 which was passed in
1913 to boost rice production formally established agricultural colonies composed of
migrants from Visayas and Luzon at the heart of Central Mindanao particularly Maguindanao,
Cotabato Valley, and as far as Glan at the Southern part of Cotabato ...
Early on, there was recognition among the colonial authorities that a decrease in food
production incited social unrest and bringing in homesteaders was seen as a mitigating
measure. But the objective went beyond increasing food production as indicated by other
resettlement policies that would follow the first colonial homestead act.
For instance, the Quirino-Recto “Colonization” Act of 1935 was named as such – a tacit
recognition of the unconquered state of the island wherein a resettlement program was
designed to resolve the “Mindanao peace and order problem.” The intention was not just
 Module 3 8

to augment food production but also respond to another government concern – the agrarian
unrest in Visayas and Luzon where many of these landless homesteaders come from ...
By transplanting them from their places of origin, they can now have their own land, land
which they cannot have from the sugar barons and hacienderos from the Visayas and Luzon.
What these resettlement programs, and there had been many after the Quirino-Recto
Colonization Act involving the establishment of various government agencies such as the
National Land Settlement Administration of 1939, the Rice and Corn Production Administration
of 1949, and the Economic Development Corporation in the early 1950s …, really meant was
the transplantation of a whole army of Christianized landless peasants into the promised land of
Mindanao as a colonizing force, providing the context and the continuing motivation for the bitter
conflict that rages in the island up to the present.
To add to Rodil’s analysis, the resettlement plan also worked in placing Christianized
settlers at the frontlines against the resilient Moro resistance, these desperate landless
peasants who are willing to wage war against the original inhabitants of the land so that
they can have their own land to till. Brandishing mint government papers as a testament to their
land ownership, they eased out the Moro from their domain and assembled themselves into
armed bands to protect themselves and their land.
The resettlement program also had an effect on changing the existing economic relations
in Lumad territories. In almost all of these non-Moro indigenous communities, there remains in
their oral history stories of how lowland Christian settlers stole their land through ingenious ways
of first offering gifts only to present a long list of items supposedly loaned. The Lumad could only
pay using the only property they had which was often communal and unsurveyed land. Not for
long, the once mobile and free Lumad who practiced shifting agricultural practices in the verdant
valleys of Bukidnon for instance would now find themselves fenced off from their sources of
livelihood and survival – the once open forest, pasture land, rivers, and agricultural land.
Rodil analyzed the shifts in population characteristics in Cotabato as an example of areas
targeted by decades of both the colonial and Philippine government’s resettlement program in
Mindanao and discovered how towns which had Moro and Lumad majorities at the turn of the
century, had overwhelmingly Christian populations at present ... What proportion of these
figures can be attributed to the assimilation of the local population to the dominant culture
or to the decimation of the indigenous inhabitants are the subject of further studies. But the
effect of the influx of resettled homesteaders cannot be discounted. In Bukidnon for instance,
the population in the province doubled from 28,150 in 1903, to 57,195 by 1932 which can be
assumed to come from the steady flow of migrants from Visayas and Luzon. All these are proofs
of the historical processes of displacement imposed by the colonial and Philippine government
on the Moro and Lumad populations of Mindanao.
Resettlement and the resulting imposition of formal government processes,
counterinsurgency operations, and other forms of containment strategies for the displaced and
resisting Moro and Lumad populations paved the way for the entry of big business eager to
exploit the emancipated resources. …
In the wake of the settlers, or sometimes ahead of them, came the rich and the powerful in
the form of extensive plantations, pasture leases or cattle ranches, mining concerns,
logging concessions, and rattan concessions. The government, too, added its bit:
development projects like irrigation dams, hydroelectric plants, geothermal plants,
highways and so on.

American benevolence and shifting modes of production:

agricultural production in Bukidnon
There is an interesting account of how the Americans describe their entry into the
 Module 3 9

province of Bukidnon at the turn of the last century. In a lot of ways, it reveals the credo of
benevolent assimilation that provided internal logic on the one hand at the same time expose
the clear economic goals that ultimately fuelled the American occupation of the islands.
According to an official government report submitted to the Philippine Commission in
1908, Dean Worcester, who was then Secretary of the Interior of the American colonial
government, went to the province of Bukidnon in 1907 to inspect the area together with a certain
Frederick Lewis and Lieutenant Manuel Fortich Sr., of the Philippine Constabulary. What they
discovered there were the underhanded and usurious business practices of lowland traders who
put the local natives they called the Bukidnons at a disadvantage ...
These traders, who the Americans found out were acting in behalf of their lowland
politician principals from Cagayan de Oro, bought the natives’ abaca at ridiculously low prices.
There was coercion and threats involved with the agents brandishing guns and issuing warnings
of sedition to anyone who did not abide by the imposition. Absentee landlords also from
Cagayan de Oro forced their Bukidnon tenants to sell to them their abaca and other cash crops.
…
The American officials were properly aghast and noted that the “non-Christian Filipinos”
were probably “the most robbed and oppressed” by the lowland traders. To free the natives from
the bondage of such relations, the American delegation ordered the active occupation of the
province of Bukidnon by the colonial government.
This account reveals the pretext for the entry of American business interests in the
province of Bukidnon done in the guise of protecting the interests of the native population. Apart
from coercive trading practices, it is also interesting to note that according to the same account,
the natives also suffered under the feudal relations they had with their landlords who were
mostly based in the coastal towns of Misamis and Cagayan de Oro.
The account disclosed as well that the natives subsisted mainly on hillside-swidden
farming where they planted root crops and relied on their trade of abaca. As a remedy to this
“miserable” situation, the Americans established settlement farm schools for the Bukidnons
where the natives could learn to plant rice and corn as cash crops and from where dependable
supply of food can be sourced. From 16,881 cavans of corn harvested in 1918, the output
increased to 145,894 cavans by 1939.
What took place here was obviously a managed shift in the dominant mode of production
from subsistence farming by the Bukidnon natives to a new economic model introduced by the
Americans - large-scale agricultural production. Under this system, locals were conscripted to
become students and then farm workers in these settlement farm schools.
The entry of these capitalist relations under the benevolent patronage of the American
masters transformed the local economy and further sutured the local indigenous population
into the workings of the new economic order as it responded to the demand for cheap raw
materials for their industries such as corn and timber, and rice for the local food supply. The
entry of a new mestizo landlord class who mediated between the locals, their resources, and the
demands of the new economy was also apparent as the Americans entrusted the affairs of the
province to local leaders such as Manolo Fortich, Sr. who himself established cattle ranches,
engaged in large-scale agricultural production, and basically assumed the role as the proxy
American colonial power in the area.
Cattle ranching in Bukidnon. Bukidnon is not all forests or verdant plains and when the
Americans arrived they also saw that its topography was also characterized by grassy plateaus
and deep canyons. Paired with a favorable climate and abundance of water supply, the province
was an ideal cattle region in the country with the canyons serving as a natural barrier to
contagious animal diseases. In fact, not a few Cagayan de Oro-based cattle ranchers already
had thousands of heads of cattle in some areas of Bukidnon which attracted American colonial
officers … to the prospect of operating their own.
 Module 3 10

Not for long a select group of American military officers and their rancher Filipino friends
were granted twenty-five year leases with minimal rentals in wide areas of the Bukidnon valley.
The Diklum ranch, an American-financed ranch covered an area of about ten thousand
hectares, a violation of ownership limits to individual settlers and corporate ownership under
American colonial law. No less than Dean Worcester, the Interior Secretary to the Philippine
Commission, ran his own ranch in an area near Valencia with thousands of heads of cattle. His
guide when he first visited Bukidnon, Philippine Constabulary Manuel Fortich Sr., put up his own
ranches in Maluko and Maramag and became more successful at raising cattle than his
American counterparts. … His influence on the economic and political history of the province
would be long-lasting.
After Fortich Sr., other Filipino ranchers would follow suit and establish their own cattle
raising enterprises. By 1939, sixty-seven ranches were already established with a combined
58,776 cattle heads … occupying varying expanses of pasture land. What were the
consequences of these colonial appropriations of vast tracts of land for cattle-raising purposes
many of which were within the traditional domains of indigenous communities?
It was the same story of displacement and even violence as the oral histories of the
indigenous communities reveal. To protect their prized cattle, the ranchers fenced off wide areas
threatening trespassers that they would be captured or shot. The Lumad in these areas became
the unfortunate victims of the violence inflicted by the private armed guards or cowboys of the
ranchers. Because of the restriction on land that has been for centuries their traditional
domain, it became difficult for them to access their traditional sources of water and their farm
plots.
Agricultural plantations and the Americans. The enduring legacy of the Americans,
however, was the establishment of agricultural plantations in the province of Bukidnon.
Synonymous with the identity of the province is the image of planted pineapples in grids as far
as the eyes can see. And if there is a brand associated with the province, it is Del Monte, the
canned pineapple product produced from the ancestral lands of the Lumad of Bukidnon. These
green and yellow tin cans famous the world over are also the very manifestation of how the
economy of the province of Bukidnon was now tied to the global economic order.
Faced with problems in production in Hawaii and California, the California Packing
Corporation or CALPAK sought alternative areas for production which they found in Bukidnon.
They established the Philippine Packing Corporation and began to plant pineapple on a
commercial scale in 1928. The company started with a permit to plant on only 1,024 hectares in
keeping with the limits on corporate ownership of land as stipulated in the Organic Act of 1902
and 1916. Soon after, political pressure from the company directed to the Acting Governor
General Gilmore of the American colonial government granted them 14,052 hectares of public
land declared as the Bukidnon Pineapple Reservation through Proclamation No. 230 in 1929.
They would receive another 20,000 hectares when they managed to sublease public lands also
in Bukidnon which have been declared as US Naval Reservations ...
Under the Regalian doctrine that the Americans imposed on the islands, all untitled land
automatically became part of government colonial property to be disposed of according to how
they see fit. The thousands of hectares that became government reservations by virtue of this
declaration and later appropriated by agricultural plantations were integral parts of Lumad
ancestral domains. The effect of all these colonial appropriation of land for logging, cattle
ranching, and plantations is their cultural and economic displacement. These would have the
consequence of the indigenous tribes’ further movement into the margins and interior of
Bukidnon’s economy and society.
By 1935, Philippine Packing was only able to utilize 3,000 hectares of the public land they
have been granted. But given these unprecedented economies of scale, the tons of pineapple
that the company produced using very scientific and mechanized operations, were really meant
for export. They set up a cannery for the export of tinned pineapple in Bugo, Cagayan de Oro as
 Module 3 11

early as 1930 where they were able to produce 277,131 cases valued at $776,000 in the period
1930 to 1935. In the next few years with the steady expansion in their operations, and before
the outbreak of the Second World War, the company was able to harvest 24,159,389 pounds of
pineapple amounting to $1,672,849.00 ...
For the next decades, Philippine Packing and their operations based in Camp Phillips,
Bukidnon would become famous for providing a slice of Americana on Philippine shores. The
executives and officers of the company enjoyed substantial corporate benefits with free housing
and other perks in a compound that was like any in small town America with its own commissary
and famous golf course and club house.
However, just like the outside of the gated homes of the politician landlord class of the
province and the controlled environment of Camp Phillips, there is the even worsening case of
landlessness and poverty especially among the Lumad population. Apparently, the logging,
cattle raising, and large-scale agricultural plantations that the Americans established - and the
local Filipino elite continued - have not been able to contribute to the upliftment of the lives of
the people and the development of the province ...
Ultimately, it was the same desire for profits which was behind American presence in the
province and not really the expressed objective of emancipating the natives from their
backwardness. In hindsight, regardless of how the Americans saw themselves, they were not
unlike the lowland traders out to make a killing from indigenous land, labor, and resources.
Soon, a powerful landlord class would take over from the colonial authorities and reign over
both the business and politics of the province.
Elsewhere in Mindanao vast areas of traditional Moro and non-Christian indigenous
grounds continued to be converted into plantations for palm oil, banana, pineapple, and other
mono cash crops over the decades. In Agusan del Sur and Davao del Norte, agricultural lands
ranging from a thousand to twenty-three thousand hectares in areas customarily owned by the
Lumad have been appropriated for this purpose by both government and private entities ...
Another prominent transnational corporation, Dole, was established in South Cotabato in
1964 following the success story of Del Monte in Bukidnon. Similar to the privileges given to the
latter, Dole was able to acquire territory virtually without limitations appropriating even
homesteaders’ and Lumad ancestral land. A significant portion of the 5,569 hectares that Dole
initially secured came from land awarded to migrants earlier through the National Land
Settlement Administration and B’laan ancestral land. They have since been embroiled in a long
bitter struggle to take back land that was stolen from them for the past decades ...
At present, there is also an ongoing expansion of large-scale agricultural plantations in
Mindanao which have encroached upon areas of traditional food crops such as rice and corn.
An estimated 300,000 hectares of land have been planted for export with monocrops such as
banana, pineapple, coffee, sugarcane, rubber, and palm oil. This number will continue to grow
as the impulse to secure large-scale profit relies on ever-growing economies of scale …

Logging as gateway activity to economic plunder and environmental disaster.

Side-by-side with the arrival of a steady stream of migrants and transformations in the
orientation of the local economy from subsistence to surplus agriculture, was the flattening of
thousands of hectares of Mindanao’s forests. The entry of American logging firms in Mindanao
paved the way for the opening up of vast tracts of logged over land for large-scale agricultural
production ...
But Mindanao timber in itself was a prized resource and they were exported to the US
mainland and also found their way to the Japan, China, Australia and England markets courtesy
of the logging companies and sawmills that the Americans established.
Under the colonial administration thousands of hectares of logging concessions in
Mindanao were granted to American companies such as the Weyerhause Corporation which
had 72,000 has., the Boise-Cascade Corporation which had 42,800 has., and the Georgia
 Module 3 12

Pacific Corporation which had 92,800 has ... These foreign companies usually had Filipino
subsidiaries many of whom were known to be owned by politicians from Misamis Oriental and
Bukidnon who facilitated the logging operations locally. Dongallo, Alvarez, and Roa were just
some of these prominent political families.
Long after the granting of independence of the Americans after the Second World War, the
logging operations were continued by sections of the Filipino elite who were just more than
eager to meet global demand for Mindanao timber. In the 1950s, only five percent of Philippine
exports were forest products. Within a decade, the percentage rose to more than a fourth of the
total national export or twenty-eight percent owing to Japanese demand ... In 1979, 164 logging
concessionaires were operating in Mindanao with access to over 5 million hectares, far higher
than the 4 million hectares of declared commercial forests …
The resulting deforestation was not only disastrous in terms of the ecological balance of
the area but it had direct effect on many Lumad communities who still relied on the bounty of the
forests for their daily sustenance. It is a source of food, traditional medicine, and of high cultural
significance for their indigenous beliefs and practices. The forests were an essential component
of the culture and the economy of indigenous communities who still practiced shifting
agriculture, so were the pasture land, rivers, and streams.
These multiple sources of food, firewood, and other essential materials provided them with
their means of survival and together were all crucial in their practices of old ways and traditions.
There are even instances when the shifting agricultural practices undertaken by Indigenous
Peoples are prevented by the logging companies’ forest guards citing forestry laws ... For many
indigenous communities, the destruction of the forests was the last straw for their forced
assimilation into the mainstream culture. Having been deprived of an integral component of the
indigenous economy, the Lumad had no choice but to seek other means of survival. This is
evident in the painful lessons that the Banwaon of San Luis, Agusan del Sur learned as the case
study in this book elucidates.
This mode of survival provided the impetus for the corruption of their culture and
community. When logging companies enter into a territory, it is usually undertaken through the
application of force. Local politicians, the military, and police are conscripted to help “clear” an
area which often means the management of indigenous communities resisting such
encroachment to their ancestral domain. These can come in the form of paying off tribal
chieftains or the datu or dividing the community between those they managed to convince of the
perceived benefits and those who persist on standing their ground.
Unfortunately, there are many tales that belie the promise of such economic benefits when
logging companies enter indigenous territories. Similar to other forms of development
aggression such as large-scale agricultural plantations or development projects, the indigenous
residents are not given priority in employment since enterprises bring with them skilled and
unskilled migrant workers.
To provide a snapshot of how lucrative logging is, sources cite that the industry earned
$42.85 billion in the period of 1972 to 1988, earning approximately $2.65 billion per year. This
18-year period leveled 8.57 million hectares of forests … . Estimates in 2002 placed Mindanao’s
remaining forest cover including tree plantations at 21 percent of total land area. By 2010,
Mindanao’s remaining forest block alarmingly was just six percent according to Kalikasan-PNE.
…
In 2011, Typhoon Sendong brought devastating flood waters to the low-lying urban cities
of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan in Mindanao which many experts attribute to the decades of
conversion of forest cover in upland watersheds into pineapple plantations ...

Mining in Mindanao
Whereas the search for gold and other mineral resources in conquered territories has
always been the objective of colonialism and the rich mountains of Northern Luzon have been
 Module 3 13

mined by both Spanish and American colonial interests, Mindanao as an untapped mineral
resource haven came in late into the picture for various reasons. The unconquered status of the
island because of the resistance of both Moro and Lumad peoples may have prevented
wholesale access to these mineral rich areas. Or it could be the case that the same
interests were busy plundering Mindanao with logging and large-scale agricultural
enterprises before they finally set their eyes on the lucrative extraction of minerals deep
into the bowels of Mindanao’s mountains.
There were already gold mines in Eastern Mindanao in the so-called “Surigao Gold
District” even before the Second World War ... In Zamboanga Sibugay, the Malangas Coal Mine
owned and operated by the Philippine National Oil Corporation has been producing coal since
the 1930s. But it was only from the 1970s, during the Marcos dictatorship up to the present that
mining achieved a serious presence in the southern island because of the introduction of bulk
mining or open pit mining technology and the entry of transnational mining corporations in the
area. The Caraga region housed many of these copper and nickel mines having the biggest
deposit of iron ore worldwide, largest nickel and gold deposits in the country, as well as
substantial reserves of copper, chromite, and coal …
During the 1980s, Mt. Diwata became a gold rush site when it was discovered that the
mountain in the province of Compostela Valley was the site of the largest gold reserves of the
country - and in the world – producing an estimate of PhP 2 billion annually. … Popularly known
as Mt. Diwalwal, the control over the mining area has been contested by a coterie of small-scale
miners, gangs, politicians, the military, national government agencies and transnational mining
corporations ever since Datu Camilo Banad, a Lumad belonging to the Mandaya tribe found
small gold nuggets on the mountain way back in 1983. The Mandaya Datu who first found gold
in the area has since been relegated to the margins leading a simple peaceful life away from the
frenzy caused by his discovery. The mad rush for gold by these conflicting interests over the
decades has made the small town the murder capital of the country. …
In both these mining sites as well as in many others in Mindanao, it is often the Lumad
who are displaced by these mining operations. Caraga region, for instance, is home to the
Manobo and Mamanwa tribes while Compostela Valley has a sizable Mandaya and Ata
population ... What happened to Datu Banad was reflective of the fate of indigenous
communities whose ancestral domain and territories have been appropriated by mining. They
are displaced, subjected to violence, and essentially excluded from the gains of the valuable
resources extracted from their destroyed mountains, forests, and rivers essential to their
community’s survival.
When the Philippine Mining Act was passed in 1995, even more transnational corporations
established operations all over Mindanao. Among the controversial features of this law is the
granting of 100 percent ownership to foreign investors, mining concessions of up to 81,000
hectares, permission to repatriate fully profits, freedom from expropriation and 100 percent
remittance from earnings and interest on foreign loans. Tax holidays were granted, as well as
water, timber and easement rights. … The enactment of the law can be likened to the opening
of a valve which allowed for the steady entry of transnational mining corporations in Mindanao
henceforth. In keeping with neoliberal policies that allow the entry of foreign investments
especially for lucrative untapped resources, the Arroyo and Aquino administrations courted
transnational corporations to invest either directly or through joint ventures, exploration,
processing and purchasing agreements with local mining companies.
By the end of Arroyo’s term in 2009, 44 Mineral Production Sharing Agreements were
approved covering 103,643.25 hectares comprising half of the total land to be opened for such
agreements in the country … during the period. Existing and planned mining operations in
Caraga involved a number of foreign transnational mining corporations such as Anglo-American,
BHP Billiton, Red 5 Limited, Medusa Mining Limited, Mindoro Resources Ltd., Semco
Exploration and Mining Co., and Century Peak Metals Holding Corporation among others …
 Module 3 14

Andap Valley, where the ALCADEV school is located and the site of the gruesome
murders of school director Emerito Samarca, and Lumad leaders Dionel Campos and Bello
Sinzo, is part of the areas offered for coal operating contracts under the Department of Energy’s
Philippine Energy Contracting Round program. Coal blocks at the Andap Valley have been on
offer since 2005, 2006, and 2009 coinciding with the incidences of intense militarization in the
area. As of 2009, a total of 70,000 hectares have been offered for coal mining in the province of
Caraga alone ...
The Aquino administration pursued the same path as that of Arroyo in terms of giving
unbridled access to transnational corporations to mine and explore Mindanao and the country’s
vast mineral resources. 700 mining tenements nationwide covering a total of 1.14 million
hectares were approved by Pres. Benigno Aquino III. Two years later, 999 mining tenements
have been approved with 1,864 applications in the pipeline. As of 2014, close to half of the
approved financial assistance agreements, exploration permits, mineral sharing agreements,
and mining tenements are located in Southern island comprising of over 296,000 hectares
of land...
For the past decade or so, in the wake of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 and the
demand for cheap sources of raw materials for the high tech industries of the first world,
Mindanao has been the target for the expansion of transnational mining operations and
large-scale agricultural plantations.

Wars of extinction
We have so far established the following points:
1. Mindanao has been belatedly sutured into the national narrative by virtue of its state as
an unconquered island at the crucial point of the birth of the nation at the turn of the last
century, its Moro and Lumad population relatively insulated from the effects that
colonialism brought to the local economy.
2. The American colonial period brought in massive transformations to Mindanao’s
social and economic landscape by way of a successful resettlement program that
achieved in a relatively short period of time what the Spaniards were not able to realize for
more than three hundred years - the colonization of Mindanao’s economy and its people.
This systemic appropriation of land and resources that followed thereafter is at the root of
the conflict that continues to plague the Southern island.
3. The logging, cattle raising, agricultural plantations, and finally mining, established
in various parts of Mindanao first by American business interests then later assumed by
sections of the Filipino elite caused the integration of the Mindanao economy to the
demands of the global economic order.
In all these changes, the constant feature is the displacement of the original inhabitants of
the island, the Lumad and the Moro populations. This is the historical and political economic
context of their marginalization in favor of a dominant migrant population. Such historical and
systemic marginalization has become particularly worse in recent times for the Lumad with the
neoliberal push to expand agricultural plantations and corner untapped mineral rich resources
within the ancestral domains of the remaining indigenous populations in Mindanao. What has
been taking place is, in fact, a war of extinction, as the mechanisms of the state through its
armed forces and paramilitary groups are now poised to trammel over resisting indigenous
communities or coopting and dividing their unity in order to open up areas to the
unmitigated plunder of profitable resources.
The situation of the Lumad go beyond experiencing institutional arrangements that
disadvantage them. … the situation of the Philippines’ Indigenous Peoples is far worse
than what the concept “structural discrimination” implies. The concerted, systemic, and violent
effort to drive away the Lumad from their ancestral domain and territories point to a far troubling
 Module 3 15

reality. There is an ongoing war of extinction that seeks to displace and uproot indigenous
communities from their ancestral land in the name of extractive industries such as mining and
large-scale agricultural plantations. …
In the past years, the Lumad have been experiencing a host of human rights violations in
the hands of paramilitary groups and state forces. There has been a relentless attack by these
groups on indigenous schools, indigenous communities, and indigenous leaders. In 2015, the
Manilakbayan ng Mindanao, a consortium of groups published a brochure detailing the dire
situation of Lumad communities all over Mindanao ... 87 lumad schools all over Mindanao are
threatened with closure and 3 have ceased operating in tragic and harrowing circumstances
throwing more than a thousand indigenous children out of school. More than 95 cases of attacks
against schools have been recorded within the first three quarters of the year 2015.
A school named after slain anti-mining and Italian priest Fr. Fausto “Pops” Tentorio
operated by the Mindanao Interfaith Services Foundation (MISFI) in Bgy. White Kulaman,
Kitaotao, Bukidnon have been harassed by village officials prodded by the Philippine military. It
was forcibly closed last October 23, 2015, at 10 am by armed men who barged into the school
where 24 students and teachers were holding classes. They destroyed the gate and began
demolishing the school in front of the indigenous children coming from the Pulangion and
Matigsalug tribes, and their volunteer teachers, leaving them in great trauma and shock …
In the early hours of November 12, 2015, armed men burned down another school serving
Manobo high school children in Padiay, Sibagat, Agusan del Sur. The cottage where the
volunteer teachers were housed as well as where equipment such as generator sets, books,
school supplies were kept were razed to the ground. It is an extension of the Alternative
Learning Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV) serving indigenous
youths from the Manobo, Banwaon, Higaonon, Talaandig, and Mamanwa tribes.
Last September 1, 2015 the most harrowing and tragic incident involving the systemic
attacks against indigenous schools occurred. The closure of the ALCADEV, an alternative
Lumad learning institution, was precipitated by the public execution of the school’s executive
director, Emerito Samarca, and indigenous leaders Dionel Campos and Bello Sinzo before a
stunned community rounded up by paramilitary forces the community refers to as the Magahat
Bagani. The two leaders were shot execution style in front of the whole community while the
body of Samarca was later found in a classroom, hogtied and with his throat slit.
There is also a coordinated and systemic attack against indigenous leaders. In the six
years of the Aquino administration, a total of 71 indigenous leaders have been victims of
extrajudicial killings. 56, a great bulk, of these are Lumad leaders from Mindanao …Even
children are not spared from the climate of impunity prevailing in these indigenous areas
terrorized by paramilitaries.
Armed men believed to be members of the Dela Mance group shot to death Olaking
Olinan a 15-year old from the Talaandig tribe and Obet Pabiana while they were undertaking
their daily economic activities in the forests of St. Peter, Malaybalay City, Bukidnon last
September 15, 2015. In another case, the sole witness to the Pangantucan massacre last
August 18, 2015, was a 15 year old boy who saw first hand how his father and relatives were
shot at close range by members of the Army’s 1st Special Forces Battalion. Two of those killed
were minors, together with his 70 year-old nearly blind father. After the incident, the Philippine
military released a statement that those killed were armed rebels.
As a consequence of these attacks on the indigenous communities, whole communities’
social, political, and economic lives have been disrupted. A total of more than 40,000 indigenous
persons in many remote and poor communities have been displaced in the past six years
because of a host of human rights violations against them which range from extrajudicial
killings, harassment and intimidation, occupation of public facilities by the state armed forces,
including sexual assault of women among others.
 Module 3 16

In these evacuation centers, the old, women, and children from these indigenous
communities suffer through difficult and unsanitary living conditions that expose them to illness
and disease, and even death.
There were the Banwaon bakwits of Balit, San Luis, Agusan del Sur last December 2014
who suffered under difficult conditions in the evacuation center resulting to several deaths of the
young and the old. They left their homes because of the intensifying militarization of their
communities that led to serious human rights violations which culminated in the
assassination of their village leader. They only managed to return to their communities last
March 2015 after the successful campaigna of the community and support groups.
And then there was the massacre  of  a lumad leader and two other companions and the
disappearance  of  a woman peasant leader and her husband in Paquibato District, Davao last
June 14, 2015. Military personnel reportedly strafed the home of Aida Seisa, secretary-general 
of  the local peasant association killing Ruben Enlog, the leader of Nagkahiusang Lumad Mag-
uuma sa Paquibato (or Nagkalupa) - a local peasant group, Randy Carnasa and Oligario
Quimbo, local church leaders, instantaneously. …
In Misamis Oriental was the evacuation of 52 families from two barangays of the
Municipality of Lagonglong after the military also encamped inside civilian homes. They
established an evacuation camp at the provincial grounds in Cagayan de Oro City last June
4, 2015 to dramatize their plight and have managed to return home after a month when the
military finally vacated their communities. …
A similar situation took place at the provincial capitol grounds of Bukidnon in Malaybalay
City. Last June 11, 2015 the whole Higaonon community of Dalacutan, Cabanglasan left their
homes to encamp at the capitol grounds to decry the killing of a community leader, Frenie
Landasan, and the harassment they have been experiencing from the Dela Mance paramilitary
group. …
Then there is the news  of  Salugpongan Ta’Tanu Igkanugon Community Learning Center
and MISFI Academy schools, being closed by no less than the Department  of  Education upon
the prodding  of  the military. They intend to replace these schools with institutions that are run
by soldiers acting as para-teachers which prompted no less than Senator Miriam Santiago to
point out the patent violation of the Constitution of such a plan. Schools are zones of peace
which disallows armed groups, most especially State forces, to enter and meddle into their
affairs ...
The 146 Lumad schools all over Mindanao … have been the rallying point and
source of unity of many indigenous communities against different forms of development
aggression threatening their way of life. It is obvious that the reason why these schools are
being targeted is because the perpetrators want to weaken if not break up the Lumad
communities. …
These remote areas where these schools, indigenous leaders and their communities are
located also happen to be rich in mineral deposits or are prime areas for mining or agricultural
expansion. These indigenous communities also happen to declare their opposition to the entry
of these extractive industries that they know will alter their traditional ways of living and
eventually drive them away from their ancestral lands.
The attacks on schools, indigenous leaders, and communities are violent attempts to
weaken the resolve of communities to resist the entry of these destructive extractive industries.
Closing down the schools will result to the weakening of the indigenous community, many of
whom come together or congregate on the basis of the shared desire to provide for the
education of their children. These schools are much needed in these remote areas especially
since public services do not reach their far-flung communities. And yet, for the interests of
extractive industries, these schools are now being closed down, their leaders killed, and their
whole community and indigenous ways of life displaced.
 Module 3 17

Who are the perpetrators of these vile sinister acts? In the Philippines, there is the
phenomenon of the proliferation of paramilitary groups many of whom are composed of
indigenous members. They are further given legality to operate under Executive Order
Number 264. In the guise of creating community-based counterinsurgency units, these
indigenous paramilitary groups now push for ancestral domain claims involving thousands of
hectares that the head claimants consequently offer to mining and agricultural corporations. In
many cases, local government officials and the military act as brokers of these business
interests. Those who resist their grand designs then become the victims of the impunity of
these paramilitary and military groups.
What provides motive and fuels this madness in Mindanao? It is the lucrative potential for
mining development. 500,000 hectares of Mindanao is covered by mining concessions. It is an
island that has extremely valuable mineral reserves relative to other nations. It is 4th in copper
reserves, 3rd in gold, 5th in nickel, and 6th in chromite deposits in the world. The prospect of
mining development and agricultural enterprises’ expansion is so powerful that these create
the conditions for the relentless attack on indigenous communities in the southern Philippine
island of Mindanao.

Cowboys and Ranchers and the Manobo Pulangion of Quezon, Bukidnon

... There are harrowing tales here from what seems to be a removed time in the distant
past and yet the scars remain fresh in the collective memory of this land’s native people. Only
because the trauma cannot as of yet be buried for the sufferings their ancestors endured
continue to haunt the Lumad till the present. …, we remember, honor, and unite with the
continuing struggle of our Lumad brethren for historical justice against the barbaric betrayal of
the politicians, loggers, ranchers, cowboys, landlords and now their armed guards.
It is a story of displacement and violence that can only make sense in a mad world where
the invader’s regard for their entitlements and pursuit of private riches justify the most cruel of
human actions to fellow men and women. If you are scandalized by the tales of human slavery
during the colonial era in Africa and the Americas, you need not look far and go back further in
time to get a fix on what could be the greatest of humanity’s failures - in the midst of so much
abundance and technological progress, all these have been achieved always at the cost of
Indigenous Peoples’ existence and ways of life.
The version of the conquistadors proudly depict themselves as tamers of the wild and
feral, those who brought much needed civilization to the uncivilized. By civilization, perhaps they
mean the barbarity with which self-sustaining and communal ways of life in these areas they
conquered was supplanted with their predatory and self-interested ways. They were not
satisfied appropriating first, the forests and then the land, to create riches for themselves
in the north, they had to go further south to victimize a people and plunder the environment they
rely on so that their kind can amass wealth and power for their progeny.
… From Botong, Quezon, Bukidnon, to San Luis, Agusan del Sur, there were shared
patterns and continuities to their tales of sadness. But from these same narratives of betrayal,
emanate also stories of sustained and valiant resistance among their kind.
The story of Datu Agdahan’s people’s suffering goes way back to the time of the
Americans just right after the turn of the last century in the hands of a Spanish-mestizo class
who pursued business opportunities in areas opened up by the new colonial ruler. They wore
many hats not the least of which was to become politicians in order to facilitate their control over
these resources. Side-by-side with the enterprising Americans who dreamt of timber and
plantations, this Spanish-mestizo class visualized ranches and a people they would rule over.
They came as loggers which toppled the trees and transformed the land into wide arable
spaces. Then they came as ranchers with their cattle and their cowboys. It was bad enough that
the indigenous economy was shattered with the destruction of the forests, but the
 Module 3 18

transformation of the communal forest which sustained the Lumad and their kind for centuries
into private ranches and plantations in the thousands of hectares further brought untold
suffering for the Lumad.
The so-called pioneer ranchers of Bukidnon, Mindanao’s version of the Spanish-legacy
hacienda, fenced out Datu Agdahan’s people from their own land. In the tilted scale of these
new enterprises that operated to generate wealth for their owners, cattle was far more valuable
than the displaced indigenous people who were regarded as less than human and the cowboys
enforced this rule with impunity. Knowing that it is from robbery that they now hold control over
what used to be Lumad territory, the ranchers through their hired cowboys guarded these areas
and their cattle with great zeal. There are tales of Lumad folk, skinned, salted, and hanged on
trees to serve as a warning to others not to enter the fenced off areas.
Nowadays, the conquistadors and their heirs wear the hat of being landowners who have
managed to retain their scandalous control over vast tracts of land for generations despite the
feeble attempts by government to implement agrarian reform and the IPRA law. They want to
have it easy by leasing thousands of hectares of Lumad land to large-scale agricultural
enterprises and receive rental payments without the risks associated with operating the
production process themselves.
If before there were cowboys who protected the ranchers’ cattle, they have now been
replaced by armed private guards whose task is to remove all impediments to the expansion of
pineapple and banana plantations in the area. Their primary objective is to clear the area
of legitimate indigenous claimants, threaten and then eliminate the likes of Datu Agdahan, who
steadfastly stand their ground because according to him, he and his people have nowhere to
go.
So much pride and capriciousness envelop the so-called pioneers who brought their
Spanish-mestizo blood and feudal ways into Lumad ancestral land that their present-day heirs
still strut around with the air of nobility in our midst. What the sons and daughters of these
families must understand is that the privilege and comfort they now enjoy were amassed
through the organized robbery of their class of the resources of the Lumad, all made
legitimate by the embedded neocolonial history of our national and local government. And there
has been no let up to their plundering ways until the present. Those they were not able to dupe
through crates of sardines or a gift of a pair of pants, they eliminated through violence. …
Blood for land. The oral tradition among the Manobo Pulangion trace their people’s roots
to Apo Mamalu who came from the seas with his brother Tabunaway. It is said that when Islam
arrived in Mindanao, the descendants of Tabunaway became Muslims and settled in the great
plains of Maguindanao while Apo Mamalu’s people decided to go further into the center of the
island following the river Pulangi. Their name as Manobo Pulangion came from the Manobo
term “Empulangi,” meaning center of the island, a name they share with the great river which
traverses the center of Mindanao to flow into the plains and marshland of Maguindanao as well.
…
Based on their oral history, the dominion of the Manobo Pulangion tribe, therefore, covers
a wide expanse of land from what is now known as Carmen, North Cotabato to Quezon and
Valencia, Bukidnon. It would be easy to imagine that the ancestral domain of the Manobo
Pulangion spanning thousands of hectares including the whole of present-day Quezon,
Bukidnon and even beyond, especially if one takes into consideration the seasonal economic
activities they undertake which bring them to the forests, their swidden plots, and rivers around
the expanse of Bukidnon.
But their marginalization that commenced during the American colonial period with the
push to extract agricultural resources from areas that the Spaniards were not able to exploit,
saw the entry of prospecting American and Spanish-mestizo businessmen into the territory of
the Manobo Pulangion. The introduction of formal bureaucracy that the American colonial
 Module 3 19

government also brought into the area facilitated further the dispossession of the local
indigenous population’s ancestral domains.
The area of contention is the ancestral domain claim of the Manabo Pulangion that they
call as Kiokong, now in present-day Botong, Quezon, Bukidnon and form part of the former
Montalvan Ranch Estate. Datu Andong Agdahan retrieves from the oral history of their tribe the
story that his forefathers, the two Datus - Mandaghaan Anglao and Manragnas Agdahan, “lent”
the area known as Kiokong first to Manolo Fortich, a Spanish migrant-settler family in what was
ascertained to be the American period. Apart from serving as the first governor of the newly-
constituted province of Bukidnon in 1914 under the American colonial period, Fortich was
also instrumental in transforming the Bukidnon landscape into ranches and agricultural
plantations together with his American principals.
Among the Spanish-mestizo families who also set up ranches and farms in Bukidnon were
the Montalvans. There are accounts that the area of Kiokong where the Bagalbal ritual site is
located was in the control of Manuel Fortich Sr.’s heirs and then the Montalvans by the 1960s ...
There are accounts of locals remembering to have worked for the ranches of these prominent
families by building the very fences that kept their people away from their own ancestral land.
Etched in their memory was how their people were taken for fools by the senior Fortich
who said that the cows within the ranch ate people in order to keep them away. There remain
whispers from within the community that not a few of their kind were accused of stealing cattle
from the ranch, were punished and killed by the cowboys, and were subsequently hanged on a
tree as fair warning to others.
Datu Agdahan’s people soon found themselves barred from their ancestral domain
permanently unable to enjoy the bounty of the rivers, plains, and forests that are now within the
fenced off ranches. Their ritual site, Bagalbal, was rendered inaccessible to their kind while
cows walked freely around because they were considered far more economically valuable than
the people who used to subsist on the land’s bounty. While the Montalvans and Fortiches
established themselves as affluent and influential landowning and political families in the
province over the decades, with the late Robert Montalvan even heading the Bukidnon
Planter’s Association at some point, the Manobo Pulangion found themselves mired in a cycle of
poverty with no land to work on to be able to sustain their children’s sustenance and education.
The memory of this betrayal cut deep and was passed on through oral tales of the
Manobo Pulangion from one generation to another. Such that when their hardships as a people
became intolerable, they came together to take their land back. They used to be a proud self-
sufficient people and yet they are now relegated as seasonal farm workers toiling on land that
was supposed to be theirs in the first place, or forced to farm on rocky mountain slopes.
Through the Indigenous People’s Rights Act of 1997 or IPRA, Datu Andong’s maternal
side of the family under the Quezon Manobo Tribes Association (QUEMTRAS) under the leadership
of Datu Carlito Anglao was able to secure a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title for about 2,000
hectares in 2004. But this did not include Datu Andong’s group and many others.
In 2008, just before the expiration of the Agro Forest Farm Lease Agreement (AFFLA No. 123)
entered into by the Montalvans with the government through the then Ministry of Environment
and Natural Resources from 1983 to 2009, the heirs of the Manobo Pulangion through the
leadership of Datu Agdahan undertook their first steps in claiming back their ancestral land by
organizing themselves under TINDOGA or the Tribal Indigenous Oppressed Group and filing for
an ancestral domain claim. They are joined by eight other head claimants in order to secure 100
hectares from the Rancho Montalvan Estate.
In 2011, in a bold move and a collective conviction shaped by decades of poverty and
oppression, they moved back to the Bagalbal area, occupied and fenced off by the Montalvan
ranch for decades. They were thwarted by the defunct Montalvan Ranch’s private security
guards so they encamped in a nearby lot … This meant establishing makeshift houses by the
busy highway since they remain fenced out by the ranch and its armed guards.
 Module 3 20

From 2011-2014, the people of Bukidnon saw the encampment of the Manobo Pulangion
when they traversed the busy road connecting the province to adjacent Davao. It was a jarring
sight, rickety shanties by the roadside in a rural area known for its vast arable land. But it
presented the historical truth of the Lumad’s marginalization. Amid the visible productivity and
natural bounty of Bukidnon, the Manobo Pulangion and their fellow Lumad have been relegated
to the figurative and literal margins because migrant-settlers and their business of ranches,
mining, and agricultural plantations have taken over their ancestral domains.
The unity of the Manobo Pulangion to assert their rights in reclaiming their ancestral land
through visible collective action reaped them dividends because it forced local politicians and
government agencies to respond to their issues. It also consolidated the Lumad and taught
them the valuable lesson that holding on to their unity produces results.
But such moves also earned them the ire of the Montalvan heirs who still wanted to
maintain their hold over the land despite the expiration of their Agro Forest Farm Lease
Agreement in 2009. After the death of the patriarch Robert Montalvan, the management of the
ranch was passed on to nephew Pablo “Poling” Lorenzo who was even more ruthless and brutal
in his ways. He employs armed private guards to keep the legitimate Lumad claimants out
of the area that is for all intents and purposes not anymore under Montalvan ownership.
When a portion of the ancestral domain claim of the group was granted recently, Poling
Lorenzo sought to divide the claimants by convincing the awardees to lease back the land to
him for a minimal yearly fee per hectare. This is so that he can facilitate the expansion of Del
Monte’s pineapple plantation into what were formerly the hundreds of hectares of the former
Montalvan ranch.
Among the Manobo Pulangion, there were those who acquiesced and accepted his terms,
no doubt aided by the fear that his private armed guards brought to the community. Poling will
front for the CADT owners, pay them a minimal yearly fee, but he will collect a lion’s share from
the pineapple plantation who will agree to such unscrupulous schemes because of the
economies of scale that expansion brings. This is the reason why the claimants are presently
divided into two groups, Team A is comprised of Lumad who have agreed to Poling Lorenzo
terms while Team B includes Datu Andong and the rest of the TINDOGA group who prefer to toil
on the land themselves instead of leasing these to unscrupulous businessmen like Poling
Lorenzo who are fronting for pineapple plantation expansion. As a result, Team B has become
the target of harassment and intimidation and even murder by Poling’s armed guards.
These schemes are not new to Bukidnon. Most of the fortune that launched political
careers in the province or made riches in nearby Cagayan de Oro came from variations of land
speculation and grabbing, often at the expense of the indigenous population.
Speculating landlords and enterprising government employees who have access to land
documents connive to change land classifications or details in order to open land to plantations.
… As a consequence, it is the likes of the Manobo Pulangion and the other Lumad groups who
are pushed to the literal margins and steep slopes while the absentee landlords and plantations
harvest from the rich and abundant farmlands of the province.
This is the waking nightmare that Datu Agdahan and his people have endured for
decades. Before they still had the interior and the slopes to run to but even these have been
taken over by the expansion of large-scale agricultural plantations. Now, they have nowhere
else to go but to reclaim the ancestral land that has been taken away from them.
But they learned all these the hard way through years of struggle when their moves to get
back their ancestral land were met with noncommittal response from government agencies and
even violence from Poling Lorenzo’s armed security guards at every turn.
In September 20, 2012, they held a protest outside the office of the National Commission
on Indigenous People’s (NCIP) in Malaybalay City, Bukidnon. Last March 2013, they attempted to
occupy the 28 hectare lot that was awarded to their group under the CADC. They were in
formation, with the men carrying their makeshift homes by the roadside on their shoulders.
 Module 3 21

Suddenly, hundreds of armed guards arrived from trucks sent by Poling Lorenzo and began to
hack away and destroy their shanties with the women and children barely escaping the carnage.
Shots were also fired to drive them away. They have also camped out at the Department of
Environment and Natural Resources Regional Office in Cagayan de Oro from October 16 to 21,
2013 to press for their installation.
After years of struggle, Datu Agdahan and TINDOGA taught they have finally won when
they were set to be installed by officials of the NCIP on their claimed land on April 23, 2014
under Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (number R10-QUE-0712-159) together with eight other
claimant groups. But they discovered on that day that it was a sham. … First, their group which
lay claim to 622 hectares within the Montalvan ranch were only given 70 hectares which had to
be distributed among eight claimants while the rest of the fertile and arable land were
suspiciously reclassified as forest land. On the day of the supposed installation, the TINDOGA
group found out that their share of 28 hectares was located in a rocky and mountainous
terrain. They rejected the site and insisted that they be placed on arable land near the Bagalbal
ritual area site.
Finally, after living as virtual squatters on their own ancestral land and working as
seasonal workers for the plantations for many decades, they can now have their own plots from
where they can eke out a simple but sufficient living for their families and community. For Datu
Agdahan, that day was a victory as their tribe was standing again on the sacred grounds of
Bagalbal where their ancestors used to offer rituals for their gods. But the sense of
accomplishment and celebration were short-lived.
That very afternoon, about 200 men, some armed with bolos and guns, arrived at the site.
They just let the NCIP and government officials leave before unleashing carnage. They forcibly
demolished the hastily built shanties and unloaded their guns before the stunned community.
Nuns from the Medical Mission Sisters witnessed the impunity of Poling Lorenzo’s guards
because they were there when the strafing took place. The women and children of the
community witnessed the violence and were in shock. It was not the first instance of strafing.
Every now and then, guards along the perimeter of the ranch would fire their guns keeping the
TINDOGA community in a state of fear. But it was portent of the escalating violence and
impunity of the land speculator’s armed guards against the members of TINDOGA for the
coming months.
The first casualty of the TINDOGA struggle for land and life was Mabini “Tata” Beato. With
seasonal farm work at its ebb with the long drawn drought of 2014-2015, the community was
hard-pressed to expand their collective farm to be able to feed their families. Since March 16,
2015, they have engaged in a “bungkalan” activity to assert their right over portions of their
ancestral domain claim that is still fenced off by the Montalvan ranch. 200 members of the
organization had been crossing the fenced off perimeter to expand their cultivated farms as a
desperate measure for food in a time of drought and also as a defiant protest action to the
continuing claim of Lorenzo over their ancestral land. While on their way to their farms on the
morning of March 24, 2015, about 30 armed men opened fire at them killing Beato and
wounding two others. The incident was reported to the police but just like the previous cases
of strafing and harassment, no arrest was ever made.
Collective struggle and Lumad values. A militant Lumad political awareness is the
hallmark of the TINDOGA community. The heightened political consciousness of Datu Andong
and his fellow Manobo Pulangion were acquired because of their long and bitter struggle to get
back Bagalbal and the rest of Kiokong from the defunct Rancho Montalvan Incorporated (RMI).
Politicians, landlords, and the dominant Christian public who are used to the docile and
submissive Lumad are scandalized when they see the assertive members of the TINDOGA
community including the women and children in protest actions. They have come to the
conviction that their struggle for land is righteous and just that is why they can stand up before
prominent politicians and landlords in public fora to make their case. The children also
 Module 3 22

exhibit this new pride and confidence to the surprise of those who look down on the Lumad.
The premium that they placed on their collective unity accounts for their strength as an
organization. It is this emphasis on their shared collective interests that allows them to withstand
the violent attacks of Poling Lorenzo’s armed guards. Datu Agdahan believes that their recourse
to the power of their collective unity is a reflection of their values as members of the Manobo
Pulangion tribe and to collectively work on the land is a natural manifestation of this trait.
While other Lumad groups who were able to secure ancestral domain titles were quick to
subdivide the land amongst themselves and have these leased for large-scale agricultural
plantations, Datu Agdahan and TINDOGA are heeding the lessons of their long and brutal
oppression. Land is life and giving it up for momentary monetary gain will also bring about the
extinction of their tribe.

Heeding Lessons of History: the Banwaon of San Luis, Agusan del Sur
What would make a thousand indigenous men, women, and children, evacuate their
homes and farms in the hinterlands to camp out at an abandoned hospital at the center
of town leaving their farm animals and means of livelihood? It is months of military
operations and harassment.
In an attempt to flush out suspected rebel sympathizers, soldiers and their
paramilitary guides swooped down on the hinterland communities of the Banwaon in
San Luis, Agusan del Sur in the last quarter of November 2014 supposedly as part of the
military’s Community Organizing for Peace and Development.
A subsequent solidarity mission documented 93 cases of human rights violations that
include indiscriminate firing, restriction of movement, gun-touting, destruction and divestment of
properties, use of public facilities for military purposes, use of civilians as guides or human
shields, fake surrenders, threats, harassments, and intimidation during this period that caused
the Banwaons to evacuate...  
But it was the killing of the Barangay Captain of Balit, Necasio “Angis” Precioso Sr., an
anti-mining advocate, on December 22, 2014 that became the final straw that caused the
Banwaon to collectively flee their homes and descend into the abandoned hospital compound
where they endured desperate conditions for two months.
On January 23, 2015, 174 Banwaon families went on a massive exodus from their
ancestral lands to the village center of Balit. They came from 14 sitios from four barangays of
the Municipality of San Luis. The evacuation conditions caused the deaths of three children and
the spread of various illnesses that afflicted hundreds of women, the elderly, and children in the
evacuation center.
After months of encamping in their evacuation center where scores have died and gotten
sick, the Banwaon bakwits of Balit, San Luis, Agusan del Sur were able to return home only on
March 18, 2015 as military officials promised to pull out from civilian facilities and cease
camping near populated areas. This, after the display of the tribe’s unity and the support of the
church, civil society organizations and progressive groups regarding their plight. It can be
interpreted that the “bakwit,” in this instance, can also be a political act that dramatize the high
degree of political organization and consciousness, collective unity, and wide external support
group that the larger Banwaon group enjoyed ...
Entry of logging operations. It was the second time for me to visit the Banwaon in Balit.
The first time was during the international solidarity mission staged last March 9, 2015 where
there were about a thousand of them in the abandoned hospital just beside the school formerly
operated by the RGS sisters. Hundreds of religious, human rights advocates, doctors and
nurses, joined the mission and what was otherwise a sleepy rural village was teeming with
activity with programs, a medical mission, and documentation of human rights violations. …
 Module 3 23

The Banwaon consider themselves a subtribe of the far larger and older Higaonon tribe.
What has been recorded in their oral history is the formal recognition of the Banwaon tribe by
the Higaonon council of elders in a gathering they term as “Dumalongdong” convened by
Higaonon Datu Apo Bayo around the year 1846 as a separate and distinct tribe.
In this special gathering, the council recognized the Banwaon’s evolved own set of laws
entitled “Ipoan Ko Pinaglaw Daw Kiayala Ha Batasan” as well as their territory the center of
which was identified as the river Tagpangi and surrounded by the territories of the Manobo,
Higaonon, and Talaandig. Apo Anggowaning was also recognized in that “Dumalongdong of
Tagpangi” as the elder and most senior Datu of the Banwaon tribe.
For the longest time, the Banwaon lived in the same manner as the other indigenous
tribes in the island of Mindanao before the advent of the Christian migrant settlers and
the Spanish and American colonial rulers. They lived off the bounty of the abundant forests and
rivers and tended to small family plots in a sustainable self-sufficient manner. They practiced
their own ways of life and followed their own beliefs and laws with hardly any need to deal with
outsiders.
There was already a complex system of social organization with differentiated roles and
tasks for community members whose cohesion and harmony was the primary task of the
appointed community leader, their datu, and they maintained this system even during the
Spanish occupation. The Spaniards had limited inroads into Banwaon territory since the tribe
was quick to defend the integrity of their territory against outsiders.
According to their oral history, tribal wars were waged by Datu Bagani Ginambayan
against the Spaniards at the latter end of the 18th century when Spanish authorities and their
baptized Christianized locals who occupied the plains of Talacogon and Nuevo Trabajo,
Previous spread:
174 Banwaon families left their hinterland communities last January 23, 2015 to encamp
at the abandoned hospital in Balit, San Luis, Agusan del Sur after experiencing intense
harassment and militarization from both paramilitary groups and government forces for many
months. But it was the killing of their Barangay Captain last December 22, 2014, Necasio
“Angis” Precioso, that was the last straw. They endured difficult conditions for months resulting
to the death of three children and the spread of various illnesses that afflicted hundreds
of women, elderly, and children in the evacuation center. (RMP-NMR)
Esperanza, Agusan del Sur. Eventually, these conflicts were settled through a blood-
compact ritual with the Spanish authorities and the reason why these areas are now outside the
ancestral domain of the Banwaon. But the tribe refused to be assimilated to the ways of the
Spanish and maintained their autonomy and independence for a good number of decades after,
even thwarting the American and Japanese colonial authorities. The strongest and most
formidable challenge to the autonomy of the Banwaon began when logging operations entered
into their territory. Balit used to be a forested area until private logging firms began operations.
Jolito explains that according to Tagdumahan records, it was in the year 1957 that the
Bargas, Philippine Packing or PhilPack, Calilid and Agusmin logging companies began to enter
Banwaon territory. It was during this time when the forests, which was a source of their
indigenous sustenance, began to be decimated.
Relying on the forest for their sustenance, certain sectors of the community resisted and
incurred the ire of the private logging firms protected by the military. The Banwaon families of
Manloweg and Manggadol bitterly resisted the entry of logging firms and various incidents of
violence were recorded. These memories of violence experienced in the hands of military and
then later para-military groups are engraved in the collective memory of the Banwaon because
this was the mode of their first encounter with government and outsiders.
Jolito shares that the logging operations persisted many decades after and escalated
during the time of the dictatorship in the 1970s. Twenty three Banwaon community members
were salvaged in this period by the precursor of the present-day CAFGU, the Community Home
 Module 3 24

Defense Unit or CHDF, civilians armed by the military for their counter-insurgency operations.
The accusation that the Banwaon are sympathizers of the NPA because they were staunchly
against logging and mining is apparently an old script that justified the violence that resisting
communities faced even before.
The killing of the twenty three Banwaons all took place in a single day by recruited
Higaonon CHDF members from neighboring Esperanza town. They were used by the logging
company to open up forests within the Banwaon ancestral domain. The pressures of
militarization forced some members of the community to work for the logging operations. But the
continuing resistance of the community even led to a few ambuscades against the logging
operations led by Datu Saling-unga.
Apart from the violence they endured from paramilitary forces that facilitated the entry of
logging that date back to the time of the dictatorship, the transformation of the way of life of the
Banwaon was also a consequence of the entry of logging operations. From self-sufficient and
abundant ways of communal living relying on the bounty of the land and the forests, they began
to adopt the practices of dominant culture.
This transformation is manifested in their adoption of the word “sector” to refer to the land
that their family has economic rights over. Before logging, such a concept was an alien
construction. But the logging company dangled the benefit of royalty payments in exchange for
the trees that will be harvested, which provided impetus for traditional leaders to claim dominion
over land that used to be communal. At present, a Banwaon datu and his constituent enjoys a
“sector” of land that they can plant on or lease if they so wish.
Instead of practicing their traditional forms of livelihood hunting for game in the vanishing
forests or tending to their small farm lots, a significant number of Banwaon men became
integrated into the cash economy by working for the logging company in exchange for wages.
The construction of logging roads deep inside their territories also meant their community’s slow
integration into the body politic. Whereas before their houses were spaced far apart, and there
were just traditional long houses where they gathered as a community in special occasions,
they were now forced to live in grids close to political centers of power such as the barrio or the
barangay for easy monitoring by the government.
The logging boom did not last long. When the trees were all cut and the centuries-old
virgin forests were all but decimated, many Banwaon found themselves without the meager
royalties and wages that they relied on. By the late 1980s, they had to return to their old
ways and a significant portion of their tribe who refused to the entry of logging operations were
vindicated. However, the corrupting effects of logging left a deep imprint among the Banwaon.
The corruption of Banwaon leaders. The 2015 evacuation was not the first time that the
Banwaon left their communities because of militarization. They have done this before in 2007
when the communities of Tabon-tabon, Nakadayas, and Kimambukagyang also of San Luis left
their communities because of the terror tactics undertaken by Mario Napungahan, a Banwaon
datu who has filed for an ancestral domain claim covering the entire San Luis municipality and
beyond. In order to convince his fellow Banwaon to support his claim, he has conscripted and
armed fellow Banwaons and they sow terror among the local population.
Local sources reveal that Napungahan was once considered a respected and senior
community leader until he violated the tribe’s enshrined standards for leadership. Among his
betrayals include conniving with the military in their counterinsurgency operations and
appropriating the thousands of hectares of the Banwaon’s collective ancestral domain claim as
his family’s own private claim.
He is behind the planned entry of mining and plantation interests within the Banwaon
ancestral domain. Napungahan’s partnership with the military led to the founding of the Rebel
Returnees or the Mabantag paramilitary group now headed by Narding Pascual and Noel
Napanguhan, the son, after his death. As early as 2001, there had been reports detailing the
 Module 3 25

abuses of this paramilitary group who represent the same business interests bannered under
counterinsurgency. They have burned schools and forced the young Banwaon to be recruited
into the CAFGU ...
In 2007, it was reported that Noel Napungahan threw a grenade at the house of former
Balit Barangay Captain Marcelito Precioso. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
The recent push to clear San Luis of insurgents, according to the displaced Banwaon, the
same motive behind the killing of Balit Barangay Captain Angis Precioso Sr., is due to the
planned entry of the Malampay, Makilala, and Tambuli Mining companies into their ancestral
domain that is being pushed by the Napungahan paramilitary group in the area. The
circumstances surrounding his assassination reveal as much.
Precioso figured in a heated argument with a certain Msgt. Andres Villaganas of the Army
a day before about his opposition to the military encampment within their community. On his
way to the municipal hall to file a formal complaint the next day, he was shot by two men riding
in tandem and wearing ski masks which, in turn, led to the evacuation which lasted for months.
The said argument has a loaded history that goes back to the opposing positions of Precioso
and Napungahan regarding mining.
Mario Napungahan used to be a respected member of the Banwaon community. In fact
his children were schooled under the RGS Tribal Filipino Ministry. His daughters became a
midwife and a teacher but his son Wilfredon “Boyboy” Napungahan entered the military. After
Mario’s death just recently, Boyboy took over his father’s activities and continued to cause
problems for the community just like his father did. It is a problem that has been recurring for
decades.
The motive for the December 2015 bakwit was that they were forcing the entire
community to be part of the CADT that the Napungahans were pushing. And behind the
Napungahan’s claim, backed up by the military’s Oplan Bayanihan and COPD’s are the
mining explorations of three companies who want to enter Banwaon territory – Tambuli Mining
Corporation, Makilala Mining Corporation, and Metro Luxury Mining Corporation. If before the
motivation was to profit from the forests, now the objective of business was to excavate and
mine from the Banwaon land.
The rise of the Napungahans and the problems their ancestral domain claims caused the
community can be traced to the weakening of traditional leadership practices among the
Banwaons because of the corrupting influence of businesses such as logging and mining. For
instance, according to their traditional practices, a datu is elected as a leader of the community
because of certain standards. He must be a role model and holds the interests of the community
at heart.
Under the datu are the bagani, elite warriors, and the alimaong or troops. It is the datu’s
task to lead the attack or defend the community. There had been instances in the past when
tribal wars occurred between rival indigenous tribes who each have their territories within the
region. The Banwaon are known to be fierce warriors and oral history indicate that, despite their
small number relative to bigger groups, they have never been beaten in any such tribal war or
“pangayaw.”
It is this aspect of the Banwaon culture also present in other Lumad groups that the
military and extractive interests exploit. They corrupt indigenous leaders such as Napungahan
and use them to divide the community. They arm the datu and his followers in the name of
counterinsurgency and they evolve to become paramilitary groups wreaking havoc in the rural
areas. The spate of recent extrajudicial killings of resisting Banwaon members under the
Tagdumahan people’s organization is suspected to have been perpetrated by the Napungahan
paramilitary group.
The corrupting effect of military counterinsurgency operations and external business
interests to the traditional role of the datu figures greatly into the current situation of the
Banwaon. Apart from the mining companies who intend to enter the Banwaon ancestral domain,
 Module 3 26

there are also existing logging concessions within the territory that account for the increasing
economic and cultural vulnerability of the Banwaon. Wood Domain Incorporated controls 50,000
hectares while JAKA controls 5,000 hectare of tree plantations together with 32,070 hectares
under Provident Tree Farms Incorporated all within the domain of the Banwaon.
As a consequence, the Banwaon community is now divided into opposing camps - the
Napanguhan paramilitary group who push for and protect existing mining and logging interests
in the area and, on the other hand, the far larger group of traditional leaders, such as the fallen
Angis Precioso Sr., who belong to TAGDUMAHAN, a grassroots organization of the Banwaon
opposed to the entry of mining and logging into their ancestral domain.
Since its establishment, scores of the organization’s leaders and members have been
killed by Napungahan’s paramilitary group beginning with the killing of Datu Aladino Badbaran in
2009, Genesis Ambason in 2012, Angis Precioso Sr. in 2014, Lito Abion in 2015, and Jerry
Layola and Jimmy Barosa in 2016 according to Tagdumahan. The sacrifices that these gallant
defenders of the Banwaon tribe are rooted in their enduring faithfulness to their indigenous
beliefs.
Indigenous notions of development. Without the corrupting influence of business, the
Banwaon community believes in the collective ownership of land. That is why a significant
number of Banwaon people rejected the entry of logging and mining firms under their leader
Datu Saling-unga at the onset. The problem of the community began when logging was able to
enter the picture nevertheless and more recently when Mario Napungahan applied for an
ancestral domain claim representing himself as the tribe’s Supreme Datu.
There is the view that the titling process is something alien and even oppressive to them.
Giving individual rights to land would allow non-Banwaons to enter their territory. However, if
they don’t have it titled, government would assume that their ancestral domain is public land.
The IPRA law would have provided remedy but the moves of the likes of Mario Napungahan
and his family to use the CADT process for their own gain make the Banwaon suspicious of
such government-sponsored processes.
Moreover, the community frowns upon the practice of having their family plots titled. A
Banwaon family can plant on small family farms with crops such as bananas, root crops, corn,
and mountain rice and passed this on to family members based on tradition; but it is another
story if one has it titled because it can then be disposed of. It is their preference to maintain their
ways of life, living off what their environment can provide for subsistence.
Bae Emil, one of the traditional woman leaders of the Banwaon in Balit, spoke before a
gathering to share her experience when she was called to a dialogue with the military
commander. The official supposedly dangled the prospect of having a Jollibee in the area once
mining development takes place within their ancestral domain. To this, she bravely replied that
they do not need such fast-food chains if it meant that they would be driven out of their
communities. She added that they were happy with their sweet potato as long as they
held on to their economic, political, and social way of life.
Even though they did not have the trappings of modern life, they said that they never went
hungry. Their surroundings did not fail to provide them with their daily sustenance. It was also in
their culture to share with the rest of the community whatever they found in the forests. When
someone from the community were to catch a wild board, it will be cut up in equal portions for
the whole community to share.
Not a few voiced their fears that with the plans of the Napungahans to claim the
community’s ancestral domain and when the mining companies come in, they will lose all the
bounty coming from their environment. They note that even small trees are now already being
harvested for money and it would not take long for the forests to be decimated completely
especially when outsiders and extractive industries are allowed in. If the mountains and the
trees were to be flattened, they are sure that their Banwaon culture is also sure to vanish.
 Module 3 27

Heeding lessons, maintaining independence. The staunch stance of the Banwaon at

present against mining, a principle that not a few of their kind sacrificed their lives for in
the hands of paramilitary groups who also painfully come from their own ranks, is a product of
the bitter lessons they learned when their leaders allowed logging to enter into their territory.
Apart from destroying the land and forests from where they subsisted, the entry of logging
also corrupted the social fabric of the tribe.
It is not the desire of the Banwaon to isolate themselves from the outside world although
they value their cultural and economic independence from their historical experience versus the
exploitative and violent incursions of external interests. They have experienced living with
operating logging companies within their midst and they have not seen development, the kind
that benefits all, to have taken place. They are sure that with mining it will be the same, if not
worse. The conviction is strong among the Banwaon to protect their community against
incursions into their ancestral land because they nearly lost the identity of their tribe and their
accompanying indigenous ways of life with the corrupting effects of logging. They also believe
that their struggle for autonomy at present will ensure their tribe’s existence and their children’s
future.
At the core of this political consciousness is a return to Banwaon values of old where
personal interests take secondary importance to the primacy of communal goals. There is
also resurging appreciation of the importance of the environment. Their adamant refusal to
succumb to the terror tactics of paramilitary groups who are pushing for mining interests to enter
their domain is a manifestation of this belief. The organized evacuation of 2015 in Balit was a
manifestation of this community solidarity.
After our long conversation, there was one thing that Jolito Otakan, secretary general of
Tagdumahan, said that struck me. He shared that the lessons of history for the Banwaon were
clear: “Ang Banwaon man gud naa kanunay pagsabot, tungod kay nakita man niya nga kami
mabuhi bisag wala mo.” (The Banwaon have achieved an understanding that we as a people
can survive without you.)

The Lumad Present: Accumulation by Dispossession

Karl Gaspar … makes a number of important arguments in his landmark work The
Lumad’s Struggle in the Face of Globalization. He traces how the fate of the Lumad as a
marginalized and dispossessed people can be traced historically to both the colonial and
neocolonial period’s political economic features and their powerlessness is bound to continue
unless these deep-seated social configurations are challenged.
He writes:
It thus seemed inevitable that what began in the post-1946 scenario would continue
through the post-1986 period. Despite the promise of people power, the indigenous
people remain powerless. The grip of neo-colonialism – on the country’s mode of
production, the political economy, the reins of government, the business conglomerates,
the landlord clique and on the majority of the Filipino people – has become tighter, if
anything.
Accumulation by dispossession: a theoretical lens for the Lumad experience. In the
march of modernity towards abundant rational societies, it is given that the global economic
system will relegate certain geographic sectors as sources of raw materials. It is through these
arrangements that they are able to siphon off from the West much of the wealth and abundance
that is now in display in the first world leaving many of these neo-colonies as showcases of
great poverty or if there is apparent wealth, scandalous inequality.
David Harvey, the Marxist geographer, has labeled this as the New Imperialism … where
over accumulated capital seeks new frontiers for cheaper access to resources. There are two
predicaments inherent to capitalism according to Harvey’s analysis. Following Rosa Luxemburg,
apart from the problems of underconsumption which is related to the phenomenon of
 Module 3 28

overproduction wherein there are more goods produced for existing markets to absorb, there is
also the problem of overaccummulation which responds to the lack of opportunities for profitable
investment of accumulated capital. Capitalism is a profit-making machine and there are
opportunity costs if idle capital is not reinvested to generate even more profit. …
In the face of stagnant demand, capital will find ways to reinvest and make profit by
lowering the costs of production via the process of what Harvey calls as “accumulation by
dispossession.” There is, he says, “an organic relation between expanded reproduction on
the one hand and the often violent processes of dispossession on the other…” … These new
frontiers are opened up for the free and unmitigated exploitation of still untapped resources in
what is revealed to be a continuing process of contemporary primitive accumulation through
dispossession.  “What accumulation by dispossession does is to release a set of assets
(including labour power) at very low (and in some instances zero) cost. Overaccummulated
capital can seize hold of such assets and immediately turn them to profitable use.” …
It was, of course, Karl Marx, who first put forward the concept of primitive accumulation. It
was his prediction that capitalism will violently transform social relations from one that is defined
by patronage arrangements related to land to one that is predominantly characterized by an
emancipated labor power dependent on wage-labor. He predicted the proletarianization of
peoples all over the world and the conversion of social relations to two distinct classes primarily
– the capitalist and the working classes in a process that he labeled as primitive accumulation.
This historical upheaval is also characterized by a host of other mechanisms which
Harvey, interpreting Marx … identified as the following: “the privatization of land and the forceful
expulsion of peasant populations; conversion of various forms of property rights (common,
collective, state, etc.) into exclusive property rights; the suppression of rights to the commons;
the commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of
production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of
assets (including natural resources); the monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of
land; the slave trade, and usury, the national debt, ultimately, the credit system as radical means
of primitive accumulation.” Note that Marx was describing here the processes undertaken when
societies shift from feudalism to capitalism which was suppose to take place a few hundred
years ago in he wake of the Industrial Revolution.
But in the history of capitalist evolution, there had been many twists and turns and one of
these is the continuing preponderance of feudal arrangements in semi-feudal semi-colonial
contexts.
The social processes, in reality, were not as cut and dried as Marx imagined them to be
but rather one where a kind of political economic lag that was integral to the development of the
global economic system actually occurred. The case of Mindanao and its belated colonization
and the rest of the economy of the country given its designation as producer of raw materials for
its colonial principal may provide examples of this nuance.
These may be the reasons why primitive accumulation, a set of conditions that should
have occurred in the transition from feudal to industrial society 400 years ago, is curiously
applicable to modern day realities especially in countries like the Philippines that went through
colonialism. As one scholar observed:
Though primitive accumulation is a process that some have considered a historical phase
through which societies pass on the way to more fully proletarianized social structures
based on expanded reproduction, the current state of global affairs makes it evident that
primitive accumulation has maintained or even increased its salience, meaning either that
it is in fact central to capitalist accumulation in general or else has a much longer period of
historical ‘dissolution’ than previously imagined. …
It is in this context that the Lumad can be seen as the contemporary victims of capital’s
violent onslaught for cheaper raw materials to raise the rate of private accumulation.  Especially
 Module 3 29

in the periodic capitalist crisis of overproduction and overaccumulation, the drive to conquer new
frontiers where the indigenous communities reside has been the recourse of transnationals and
their local counterparts. It is this global economic context that provides logic to agricultural
expansion and the mining boom that in turn cause the killings and displacement of Indigenous
Peoples not just in the Philippines but also worldwide.
This important political economic angle has not been given emphasis in current
discourses regarding the Lumad and Indigenous Peoples. They have been idealized as
repositories of a non-existent and idealized pre-modern cultural truth when in fact they
are the most contemporary showcase of the economic and political violence of global capital
made possible through the facilitation of their local agents.
In the contemporary period, accumulation by dispossession take place in the context of
the onslaught of a rapacious global neoliberal order pressuring neocolonies to submit to their
demand or in the case of the Philippines, the acquiescence of a pliant political elite that has
been ideologically captured by the same forces. The contemporary Philippine State is the nexus
of all these forces that make all these happen. David Harvey writes:
The primary vehicle for accumulation by dispossession, therefore, has been the forcing
open of markets throughout the world by institutional pressures exercised through the IMF
and WTO, backed by the power of the United States (and to a lesser extent Europe) to
deny access to its own vast market to those countries that refuse to dismantle their
protections. …

Dispossession through State-sponsored Wars of Extinction

What Marx, a hundred a years ago, and Harvey, just a decade ago, were able to do was
to provide us with the theoretical language to understand the motives and operations behind
global capitalism. But how does this reality actually occur on the ground; through what social
mechanisms does it operate; and how do these elements impact on the history of dispossession
and current war of extinction being waged against Mindanao’s Indigenous Peoples, the Lumad?
…
However, the picture would not be complete without outlining the other forces that make
this process of marginalization occur. How does this accumulation by dispossession really occur
on the ground? … There are forces that have brought the Lumad to their historical and current
plight and these actions have been undertaken for a common reason – bolstering the strength
of the dominant political and economic order of the colonial government and after, an
elite-led democracy.
There had been a host of apparatuses that helped achieve these goals but it is the
Philippine State which is the most organized and consistent among these. First, the
resettlement program, as a colonial imposition, undertaken through the force and imposed
legitimacy of the state was crucial in creating the eventual conditions that would make the local
economy pliant to the designs of the new order. Following the wake of these resettlement
programs, it must also be noted that the whole apparatus of the State including its armed forces
and police came in to enforce the new regime.
They also set up parallel governance structures separate from the traditional and
indigenous political systems. When the migrant settlers faced resistance from the original
inhabitants of the lands they have been awarded, the State through the police and military
took the migrants’ side which is not surprising since the military and police came from the ranks
of the migrants themselves.
All these indicate that the entry of formal structures of governance in many parts of
Mindanao took place as an imposition to indigenous and Moro communities. The first and
lasting experience of the State for the indigenous in these areas, and this has cut deep into their
community’s collective memory that remain fresh, is that the State is an occupying force who
appropriate their resources, modify their local economy, and in many instances apply violence
 Module 3 30

in doing so. Throughout the regime of logging, cattle raising, plantations, and mining, the
experience of these communities has been that of displacement and violence courtesy of the
apparatuses of the State. A complete understanding of the current plight of the Lumad would not
be possible without an interrogation of the role of the Philippine State in this regard.
As a primary conduit of colonial interests at its emergence, the Philippine State was
characterized by the practice of accommodating the goals of their American masters through the
maintenance of the same Spanish political and economic elite. Despite the promise of
modernization and liberating the Filipinos from feudal backwardness, the Americans did not
improve the existing economic relations and, in fact, as far as the Lumad and other indigenous
populations of Mindanao were concerned, actually exacerbated their condition with the
appropriation of their ancestral domains. The Philippine State maintained its colonial character
arising from a feudal base where a landlord class dominates.
The existing Spanish mestizo landed class maintained their ownership and control of land
and thus enjoyed the same feudal advantages of having a peasant class generating income
from their land and labor. Neither was the situation made better for the hordes of migrant
settlers who moved to the new frontier that was Mindanao. A section of the migrant peasants
who cornered homestead lots played the role of being masters to other migrants. They played
the role of being protectors to the new homesteaders versus the Moro resistance to their
encroachment and soon became the political warlords and landlords who have been dominating
the economy and politics of former Moro lands.
In other words, the Americans made use of the same landed political leadership from the
Spanish era, give or take a few changes owing to conflicting interests and the effect of the
resettlement program, to do their bidding. This was achieved primarily through the mechanisms
of the newly-established commonwealth government and later on the neocolonial state in the
post-war era. By maintaining the economic structure of feudal Philippine society, the Americans
also established a Philippine State that had the same landlord class at the helm that held a
predatory desire for the land and resources to benefit themselves and their colonial
masters.
Simbulan … in his study of the nature of the Philippine ruling class from 1946-1963
identifies the longevity of the landlord-tenant relationship that was at the base of the Philippine
State during the American colonial period. Instead of breaking this down as the promise of
modernization would imply, the Americans encouraged its growth instead. He wrote: “In a
master-ward relationship, it is much more convenient for the master to be dealing with a few
bosses than many wards.”
As a consequence, the cultural practice of bossism, borrowed from the cacique relations
of former Spanish colonies, became even more embedded in the workings of the Philippine
State. It is characterized by a penchant for Filipinos to approach politics in terms of a principalia-
non-principalia dichotomy: “of big and small, of superior and inferior, of leaders and followers” …
Simbulan traces the roots of this tendency to relate to political power in terms of this
dichotomy from the intermediary role that the Spaniards assigned to the cabeza position. Given
the tight and centralized hold on power by the colonial authorities, the cabeza became the
important go-between, the dispenser of favors, the fixer between the indios and the Spaniards
and they used this position to amass influence, power, and wealth in colonial Filipino society ...
The nation’s political elite would emerge from this class relying on their mastery of the culture of
patronage learned under Spanish and American colonialism to keep themselves in power up to
the present.
The maintenance of the landlord-tenant relationship during this stage would have far
reaching consequences to evolution of the modern Philippine State. The ties of the political elite
to colonial business interests, predatory regard for the nation’s land and resources, and its
proclivity to sponsor activities that result in accumulation by dispossession at the expense of
indigenous and Moro peoples for private profit are enshrined at the onset upon the
 Module 3 31

founding of the Philippine Republic.

In the Philippines, where political and economic power are concentrated in the hands of a
few, the probability of bureaucrat capitalism to exist tends to increase. The power-
wielders, as has been pointed out, are clothed with a highly centralized formal authority.
The social and cultural norms recognize a built-in superior-inferior relation between the
elite and the masses. The sovereign people are mostly ignorant and inarticulate while the
power-holders are skillful individuals. Under these circumstances, the power-holders who
are not subjected to an effective restraint from the people tend to become arbitrary in the
exercise of official power. And the direction is towards the building of private fortune. …
Mindanao became the new political and economic playground of the Philippine political
elite parceling its resources to their appointed cronies, transnational corporations, and local
warlords. This can be seen in the history of logging, agricultural plantations, and mining that
have plundered Mindanao through various mechanisms. Various cronies of succeeding
administrations have done this to Mindanao. The Benedictos, a known Marcos crony who
appropriated land from the Manobos of barrio Paitan of Quezon Bukidnon in order to establish
the Bukidnon Sugar Industries Co., or BUSCO in 1975 … is an example of how the
Philippine State was utilized in order to dispossess and accumulate for the sake of private profit.
The establishment of the Agus Hydropower plants in Lanao is another which may have
benefitted lowland populations at the expense of the displacement and exclusion of significant
Maranao populations. All these activities by the State are undertaken with the veneer of
legitimacy provided by various legal instruments that justify the dispossession of the Lumad and
other Indigenous Peoples, and the Moro population of their ancestral domain. Rodil … draws
attention to the progressive provisions of the 1987 Constitution, particularly Article XII, Section 5
which declares that the State shall “protect the rights of indigenous cultural communities to their
ancestral lands to ensure their economic, social and cultural well-being.” And yet in Article XII,
Section 2, of the same constitution, it states that “all lands of the public domain waters,
minerals, coal, petroleum, and other mineral oils, all forces of potential energy, fisheries, forests
or timber, wildlife, flora and fauna, and other natural resources are owned by the State. With the
exception of agricultural lands, all other natural resources shall not be alienated” nullifying the
previous progressive provision.
For Rodil …, this sweeping appropriation in the Constitution of the definition of what
constitutes the public domain was in contradiction to the established rights of Indigenous
Peoples on ancestral lands based on three grounds: 1) they have been living in these areas
since 1596 until 1898, throughout the three hundred or so years of Spanish Occupation; 2) they
have practiced communal ownership of these areas throughout this period; and lastly, 3) they
have continuously occupied these areas without interruption.
The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997 or the IPRA Law of the Philippines was
considered a landmark document when it was signed into law by then Philippine President Fidel
V. Ramos on July 28, 1997. The Philippines became the first country in Asia that recognized the
struggles and aspirations of its Indigenous Peoples by way of a legal instrument that spelled in
black and white an acknowledgement of their historical marginalization and provided access to
mechanisms of redress.
At the heart of the IPRA law, following the draft promulgations of the United Nations
Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) from 1983 and 1995 until it was
adopted overwhelmingly in a UN General Assembly in 2007, is the insistence on the principle
of securing free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of indigenous communities when third party
entities such as business or government deal with the group. The law also granted the right of
these communities to ancestral domain claims and tasked a government entity, the National
Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), to oversee these processes.
Almost two decades since the IPRA Law’s implementation, the indigenous groups in the
country are nowhere near achieving the stated aims of the law. The State was tasked to
 Module 3 32

guarantee the full enjoyment of the human rights and freedoms of these marginalized groups
and yet the spectre of social, political, and economic displacement continues to hound
indigenous communities.
In an unfortunate development, these hard-won mechanisms of redress such as the IPRA
Law have actually become instruments for the continued marginalization and in many cases
provided the imperative for the spate of extrajudicial killings and forced evacuations of
indigenous leaders and their communities.
As early as 2003, a study … which looked into the implementations of the law in the
province of Bukidnon noted the institutional incapacity of the NCIP to properly implement
the principle of free, prior, and informed consent. Apart from the “poor performance” of the
agency in its important policy-making and adjudication duties, there were also indications that
the FPIC process related to the issuance of mining and other business-related
certifications in indigenous areas “have been compromised if not corrupted.”’
The case of the killing of the anti-mining Matigsalog tribal leader Jimmy Liguyon of Dao,
Quezon, Bukidnon reveals the deadly consequences when the very mechanisms that are
supposed to guarantee redress provide the very imperatives for the murder of indigenous
leaders and the displacement of the whole community. Liguyon was shot at close range with an
armalite rifle in front of his children by a known paramilitary leader Alde “Butsoy” Salusad on
March 5, 2012 according to witnesses. Salusad belongs to the New Indigenous Peoples Army
for Reform (NIPAR) paramilitary group with strong military backing, and who stands behind an
ancestral domain claim that seeks to open up 52,000 has. of indigenous land to large-scale
mining operations. Liguyon was killed for his resistance to the paramilitary group’s designs to
force the community Liguyon leads to acquiesce to the planned expansion of San Cristo Mining
in the area.
… All over the Southern Philippine island of Mindanao, cases of big businesses with the
backing of the Philippine military and conscripted paramilitary groups sponsoring ancestral
domain claims enabled by the IPRA law have brought murder and anguish to once peaceful
indigenous communities. In many cases, either the NCIP has stood idly by or has even
facilitated the ancestral domain claims of bogus tribal leaders and fake tribal organizations in
serious violation of the spirit behind the principle of free, prior, and informed consent enshrined
in the UNDRIP and the IPRA Law.
These cases indicate the bastardization of formal mechanisms established to supposedly
protect the interests of indigenous groups but end up in reality as platforms for their historical
and continuing political, economic, and social displacement. The IPRA Law, has become in
reality, a tool employed by the very forces that it was supposed to protect the indigenous groups
from. The experience of Indigenous Peoples with the IPRA Law is evidence of how a
progressive legal mechanism can actually be corrupted by the political and economic context.
…

Necessary decouplings
What does the Lumad narrative tell us about the journey of the Filipino nation? The true
story of the Filipino nation is yet to be completely written. But the major narrative threads of this
story are already well-established. A century ago, our colonizers came and conquered; and co-
opted the local elite. Since then, our political and social culture has been a reflection of the
distortions of an economy ruled by foreign interests in cahoots with a landed local elite. The
consequence of which for majority of the Filipinos is their continuing economic marginalization
and suffering in revolving regimes of predatory elite rule. But there is an important aspect to this
story, one that we may have missed to account for in our attempts to understand the whole
tapestry of narratives of the Filipino nation. 
Within this nation that, by all accounts remains to be flawed and deeply divided, there are
those who have been pushed to the margins of national life, their culture and resources
 Module 3 33

appropriated for the goals of national development that ultimately benefit the few. Our continuing
complacency and incapacity to understand the Lumad manifest our ignorance and collective
scorn over our shared history as a people oppressed. Their narratives of oppression and
their contemporary plight as the dispossessed are glaring omissions in the dominant national
consciousness.
The Lumad and the State War Machine. Some matters need to be stated. The Lumad
and other Indigenous Peoples of Mindanao are the most disadvantaged sector historically and
in the present, the on-going state-led era of accumulation by dispossession. Their fate as
victims of this historical and systemic process of marginalization is tied to political and economic
shifts emanating from the global to the local. The moves to render them extinct through the state
war machine indicate what we may irretrievably lose amidst this neoliberal onslaught.
There are concerted efforts to erase them ideologically and physically from the national
imaginary. The attempt to divorce them from their struggle over their land and resources through
the formation of state-backed Lumad groups and other sectors creating fissures among their
ranks is one ploy. Another is to discard what the term Lumad has come to mean by decoupling it
from their historical struggle over land and resources.
The Lumad from Mindanao is good only as a cultural marker of an ideal time that has
gone by. They are of no use asserting their rights against big businesses or even as activists
who have come to embrace a more comprehensive and political view of their situation and that
of others.
The Lumad and Land Ownership. Their experience has, in fact, a lot to teach us in
terms of how we could imagine an alternative national order. One of the long-lasting and
structural consequences of colonization was the imposition of private property relations
to the local economy. From a regard for land that was a “trusteeship or stewardship” …, this
was supplanted with individual ownership rights during colonization and became the base of
landlord-serf relations.
One cannot underestimate the importance of such an imposition for it would have
ramifications to the development of the local economy even after the period of colonialism. By
awarding ownership rights to the cabezas or the go-betweens, the Spaniards were able to
modify the disposition of the local leaders who once acted as custodians of their community’s
interest to that which prioritize their own private interest and their colonial master’s.
This trait would endure even after the departure of the Spaniards, tolerated and even
strengthened by the Americans, and essentially defined the dynamics between and among the
members of the modern principalia and the Filipino masses in the post-war era up to the
present.
There is a contrary view presented by a number of scholars who assert that our
Indigenous Peoples have private property concepts on land and therefore challenge the ”myth
of communal land tenure” … It is their assertion that the Manobos, for instance, hold private
land ownership concepts that may be contrary to the implied assumptions of the 1997
Indigenous Peoples Rights Act. One of the arguments cites the prevalence of Datu or
community chieftains who are allowed to own more land than the rest of the community. …
Gaspar, however, cites various studies comparing Manobo and Kalinga land laws where
the communal nature of land ownership is shared. As a possible riposte to such assertions by
Gatmaytan et.al., Gaspar cites the study of Martinez … among the Hanunoos of Mindoro
wherein culture contact between indigenous and lowland culture have led to the articulation of a
semi-feudal semi-capitalist mode of production and the incursion of private land ownership
practices ... Our own case study among the Banwaon of Agusan del Sur shows their resistance
to adopt private ownership of land, a cause of their bitter struggle with their Datu who wants to
appropriate it for himself and his family’s gain.
Whether communal land ownership was a myth and never took place remains a
contestable position. But the damage of what OD Corpus … called as the landlord-serf double
 Module 3 34

economy imposed by colonialism, in hindsight, has been enduring and deep, and has clearly
played a role in the historical marginalization of the Lumad.
A judicious study of Lumad culture is now pointing us to alternatives. The struggle of the
Lumad versus the attempt of the State and private interests to assimilate their way of life can
point us to recover what is on the verge of extinction or at least to imagine an alternative that
has always been there ready for us to give birth to.
Beyond Industria. There is also the tendency among many to look at the situation of
the Lumad in Mindanao and Indigenous Peoples in general through rose-colored lenses. There
are those afflicted by a hidden romanticism in understanding Indigenous Peoples’ plight …, they
are seen as noble savages that deserve to remain untouched and uncontaminated by the
vagaries of this modern life.
There is a rich social subconscious behind such impulses. Many feel for the Lumad
because they represent an idealization of the innocent and pure amongst us and the desire to
come towards their protection is at once a function of guilt over what we have done to
the most marginalized in society at the same time our subliminal pining for collective flight to an
imagined bygone era. …
There is such a thing as state-sponsored capitalism whose aim is to generate surplus
from available resources at the expanse of the Indigenous Peoples and the environment. There
is also the neoliberal onslaught that appear to occur in a far larger scale and in many instances
imposed with such impunity. Such dilemma will surface if the horizon of our political imagination
is limited only to the model of “Industria,” the Western prototype of industrialized societies, that
certain kinds of Left and Right thinking are still hung over ... A hundred years hence, such vision
has only created a world with three kingdoms – the first world, the Global South, and within
these spaces, the underclass among the underclass, the Indigenous Peoples of the world
against whom are waged mechanisms of structural and historical marginalization, or …, wars of
extinction. …
… The Lumad in particular and Indigenous Peoples in general do not really comprise a
special category of people that intrinsically distinguish them from the rest of the oppressed
population. Their otherness originates from the fact they are global capitalism’s most
marginalized contemporary victims.
In his book, The Lumad’s Struggle in the Face of Globalization …, Karl Gaspar laments
the social upheavals that the Indigenous Peoples of Mindanao face as their politics, culture, and
economy are violently transformed by the coupling of the local economy to the global economic
order. He wrote:
Subsistence may have to give way to surplus production. Kinship relations that previously
determined both the forms of access to resources and labor processes might have to give
way to class relations. Local barter systems may have to give way to a more complicated
system over which they have very little control. A more community-oriented way of sharing
resources may have to completely give way to individual accumulation of wealth. A
manner that respects the rhythms of the eco-systems may have to give way to an
extractive form of exploitation that will ultimately spell big trouble for all creatures of the
archipelago.” …
The emancipation of the Lumad involves a necessary process of decoupling from the
vestiges of colonialism and neocolonialism that tied Mindanao to the global economic order,
which necessitates as well a withdrawal, violent or otherwise, against the hold of a violent
predatory state of the elite.
To reverse Gaspar’s lamentations and hopeful of an emancipated future through the
Lumads and all oppressed peoples’ practices of resistance and the achievement of their right to
self-determination, we can now imagine an alternative future where: surplus production may
have to give way to food security; class relations might have to give way to communal relations
in providing access to labor and resources; the complicated trade system may have to give way
 Module 3 35

to a system that is within the communities’ control; the individual accumulation of wealth may
have to give way to a community-oriented way of sharing; and the extractive form of exploitation
may have to give way to a manner that respects the rhythms of the ecosystem. …