“They asked why the NCIP, whose members include leaders of IP groups, has been tight-lipped about the incursions of mining firms digging for gold, copper, and nickel in their ancestral lands”
It’s a crying shame that the country’s indigenous people or IPs have remained a grossly marginalized sector, a form of injustice that I hope would be corrected sooner than later.
Despite the traditional politicians’ campaign promises over the decades, the IPs have suffered discrimination, abuses and neglect by the authorities supposedly tasked with protecting their rights and uplifting their well-being.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the National Commission on Indigenous People have, in many cases, failed to uphold their rights to ancestral domains.
Republic Act 8371 or the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act mandates that NCIP “shall protect and promote the interest and well-being of the Indigenous Cultural Communities/Indigenous Peoples with due regard to their beliefs, customs, traditions and institutions.”
IPs reportedly constitute 10 to 20 percent of the country’s total population. If we get 15 percent of the current 112 million population, IPs would be over 16 million.
Nearly five million are in the Cordilleras, more than 10 million are all over Mindanao and the rest are in the Visayas.
But much like wildlife’s endangered species, IPs have been driven away from their natural habitat due to denuding of the forests, logging, mining, hunting and real estate development.
Natural calamities have also forced IPs out of their settlements in the mountains, affecting their livelihood.
Several members of one IP group, the Higaonon in Agusan del Norte, Caraga Region, reached my office to air their complaint against mineral ore-mining and quarry operations in their ancestral lands.
They questioned the permits awarded by the DENR to mining companies to carry out their operations in Protected Areas or Indigenous Community-Conserved Areas.
One giant mining company with a DENR permit allegedly hired heavily armed goons and forcibly evicted an entire Higaonon tribe from their settlement.
Aeta, Manobo and Lumad tribes have suffered the same ordeal in different parts of the archipelago.
Now you see them, now you don’t. IPs who are descendants of the islands’ earliest inhabitants have been treated as “invisible people.”
In search of gold, silver and copper, mining companies, as well as fly-by-night miners, did not spare Mount Apo, the country’s highest-peak and home to the Manobos.
They also asked why the NCIP, whose members include leaders of IP groups, has been tight-lipped about the incursions of mining firms digging for gold, copper, and nickel in their ancestral lands.
NCIP’s functions include, among others, “to issue appropriate certification as a pre-condition to the grant of permit, lease, grant, or any other similar authority for the disposition, utilization, management and appropriation by any private individual, corporate entry or any government agency, corporation, or subdivision thereof on any part or portion of the ancestral domain taking into consideration the consensus approval of the ICCs/IPs concerned.”
Does that mean the NCIP itself or any of its officials have anything to do with the questionable granting of permits to mining companies?
I am hoping, as I’ve said, that the country’s impoverished IPs get the protection of the concerned government agencies, like the DENR and the NICP, with regards to their ancestral domain.
Apparently, the authorities give so much importance to the IPs’ concerns that updated data on the 110 or so ethno-linguistic groups are even readily available.
I sure hope change is in the offing for the country’s more than 16 million invisible IPs.