CORON, Palawan—Arms outstretched and feet apart, Tagbanua leader Norlito Languyod stands in the middle of a tiny hut and demonstrates how offenders in the village are punished.

If a person is found guilty of violating customary law, his hands are tied and his feet placed inside holes in a wooden contraption where he is made to stand for several hours in full view of the public. Later, a council of tribal elders gives him 30 lashes of a rattan cane as part of their tribal justice system called panglaw.

Since 1998, when the Tagbanua in Coron island got their Certificate of Ancestral Domain Claim (CADC), the community has meted out this punishment to a village leader who did not consult them about a day-care project, a young couple who eloped even though they were cousins, and three barangay councilors who approved illegal activities.

The practice has gone largely unnoticed and ignored until lately, when the Tagbanua began asserting their right to punish anyone who violates tribal law inside their domain.

Last Aug. 9, in a meeting with the municipal council of Coron town, tribal elders gave notice that they would impose panglaw even on visitors after obtaining the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) on the island last February. The CADT completes the Tagbanua’s legal claim to their territory, and gives the tribe practically the same rights as those enjoyed by private property owners.

To be sure, the Tagbanua give all offenders a choice between submitting themselves to customary law and having a court case filed against them. But local governments are only belatedly waking up to the reality of empowered indigenous peoples in their midst, and profess surprise whenever tribes like the Tagbanua come up with what some local officials consider as preposterous proposals.

Tribal communities, however, have come a long way since 1993, when the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) issued Administrative Order No. 2 that gave them a chance to reclaim territories they had lost when colonization and migration swept through their villages.

And even as they continue to be ignored by much of the general population and events such as the church-initiated Indigenous Peoples’ Sunday (Oct. 14) pass without fanfare, indigenous peoples across the country are reviving their tribal practices, especially in areas where the national government has already recognized the ancestral domain claims of such communities, and asserting their rights more forcefully.

“The indigenous peoples have been thirsty for tenurial security,” says the Palawan NGO Network’s Cleofe Bernardino, who has spent much of her life promoting the rights of indigenous people in this province. With their CADC and CADT to back them up, many communities are finding renewed vigor in earning a living from their territory, knowing that they will no longer be driven away and they have greater control over the natural resources in their domain.

In the municipality of Rizal in southern Palawan, for instance, a major victory of the Pala’wan tribe that obtained a CADC for 15,000 hectares was the removal of rattan and almaciga concessionaires who profited for many years from the forest’s resources, says executive director Dionesia Banua of the Nagkakaisang Tribu ng Palawan or Natripal.

Around the island of Coron, kagawad Rey Abella of barangay Banuang Daan reports that their fish catch has more than doubled since their pre-CADC days, when they would be lucky to get five kilos of fish in one day. The community has a patrol boat that they use to chase away fishers who use illegal or destructive methods of fishing, but they do not restrict access to others who employ environment-friendly ways, he adds.

Rogildo Aguilar, barangay chairman of Banuang Daan also says that their tribe has become more cohesive as a result of its CADC. Even municipal councilor Patrick Matta agrees that the CADC grant revived pride in their culture among tribal elders.

Major decisions come from a 12-member council composed of elders who are known as balian, sometimes jokingly referred to as “bawal iyan (that’s forbidden)” because they help dispense justice.

But the Tagbanua are not alone in rediscovering long-suppressed tribal practices. Among the Kankanaey of the Cordillera, the tongtong is a dialogue held to resolve disputes, with the guilty party ending up paying a penalty. Seven cases have been resolved using this system in the Benguet town of Bakun since 1998, when the Kankanaey received their ancestral domain claim certificate.

The Tagakaolo in Sarangani province call their indigenous justice system kasfala, which usually requires a peace offering from the offender. In Kitaotao, Bukidnon, the Matigsalog people are using their customary law called gantangan owey palavian to resolve conflicts.

The revival of indigenous knowledge systems and practices has extended to farming, the environment, spirituality, healing methods, and community institutions. In Bakun, for example, community members have taken renewed interest in developing their muyong or clan-owned tree farms that had been abandoned in the past. In Kitaotao, which is almost entirely covered by the CADC of the Matigsalog and Manobo tribes, the healing ritual known as panubad accounts for nearly 10 percent of preventive remedies despite its proximity to Davao City.

Community structures such as the traditional system for bartering goods and possessions, called balaw in Tagakaolo and saslang among the B’laan, are regaining wider usage after the tribes’ CADC was awarded in the town of Malungon in 1997.

Some outsiders may think the return to such practices and structures are steps backward, but the indigenous peoples know better, and are growing more confident of their rights and abilities as time passes.

It has helped that before then President Fidel Ramos left office in June 1998, the DENR had already issued 181 CADCs covering more than 2.5 million hectares of land and waters in the Philippines.

The biggest chunk went to the indigenous communities in the Cordillera region that got back more than half a million hectares of what were once classified as public or government land. But the Tagbanua people of Coron island — one of the most popular tourist destinations in Palawan — hold the distinction of getting the first ancestral waters claim ever granted.

When the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the hotly-contested Indigenous Peoples Rights Act last December, the Tagbanua Foundation of Coron Island Inc. also became one of the first recipients of a CADT. The instrument covers 22,284 hectares that include the entire island and a portion of the seas surrounding it.

The hopes of the indigenous peoples (also called indigenous cultural communities in the constitution) got a further boost last July 23 when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, during her State of the Nation Address, promised to award 100 ancestral titles in one year.

In the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997, a native title “refers to 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.”

Most supporters of the law hail it for bridging the centuries-old gap between oral tradition and written history, as well as customary land claims and the concept of private property introduced by Spanish and U.S. colonizers to the country.

“By recognizing and interfacing the concept of native title and the primacy of customary law into the national legal system, as these concern indigenous peoples rights, IPRA has formally made us full citizens of the Republic of the Philippines,” writes Florence Umaming Manzano of the Coalition for Indigenous Peoples Rights and Ancestral Domains in the book Guide to IPRA.

Elena Damaso, secretary general of the Center for Living Heritage, also says the law is “an attempt to restore the legal status of the archipelago’s ‘first peoples’ to their ancestral homelands, thus, to right 500 years of historical error.”

Based on 1997 statistics, Guide to IPRA says there are some 12 million indigenous peoples belonging to 110 ethnic groups in the country. In response to critics who question the exclusion of many ethno-linguistic groups from the definition of indigenous peoples, the book’s authors, who have worked on indigenous people’s rights for years, have this to say: “While all Filipinos are indigenous to the Philippines, current and sharp differentiation occurred from their different responses to western colonization.”

Hence, the Filipino majority who adopted the laws and practices of colonizers are seen as separate from those who asserted the integrity of their ancestral territories, pre-Hispanic native culture, and justice systems.

The gains made by some indigenous peoples have inspired other tribes to apply for their very own native titles. Among the latest to succeed in getting one is the Molbog, based in Balabac, the southernmost town of Palawan.

Last February, the Molbog Indigenous Cultural Community Association Inc. (MICCAI) was granted a CADT for 34,400 hectares of land, mangroves and ancestral waters in Balabac. Their territory covers the historic Cape Melville and remaining forests in the southern part of the island. The title gives the 473 families — mostly pure Molbog — inside the ancestral domain both control over, as well as the responsibility for, protecting its resources.

But the Molbog are aware that their task will not be easy. In the past, the municipal government has blocked their deputization as forest guards and chided them for allegedly failing to report destructive activities.

Balabac is notorious for being one of Palawan’s few “lawless” places. Police and environmental law enforcers have been known to shy away from assignment in the area, where illegal logging and fishing are rampant.

MICCAI chair Sannol Casim, however, says they never condoned such activities. He argues that the Molbog withhold the names of violators only “because we have learned from experience that when the government knows who the suspects are, they often manage to escape.” He also says that MICCAI has tried to assist in environmental defense efforts through a radio system it obtained from the NGOs in 1998, but failed to get support from government officials.

The island’s original inhabitants, the Molbog have a special affinity to mangroves as their name is derived from malubog na tubig or the muddy water where the trees thrive. Government statistics show that much of Palawan’s remaining 40,000 hectares of mangroves are found in Balabac.

Casim recalls nearly crying when he saw some people stripping the bark from an upright mangrove tree a few years ago. The tree literally bled to death as red sap oozed from the trunk and flowed down to the muddy sea.

“If I were God,” says the tribal leader in Tagalog, “many of these environmental violators would have been dead by now.” But at that time, he could only report the incident to authorities without much hope that anything would be done about the lucrative trade in mangrove tanbark, which is widely sought in Malaysia, where it is used to dye cloth.

These days, armed with the CADT, Casim figures his people would have more leeway in protecting the natural resources of Balabac.

As it is, getting such a certificate carries huge responsibilities for indigenous communities. Each organization that holds one has to produce and implement a management plan for the area. According to Natripal’s Banua, among the typical components of such a plan are the creation of paralegal teams trained to enforce laws; enterprise development such as agriculture, gathering and marketing of non-timber forest products, and other livelihood activities; organizational development or institutional strengthening to enable the community to repel outside influences; and resource management.

At the same time, the tribes still have to live and work with local officials who may not always see things their way or resent any changes. Even those who have already made significant headways continue to struggle to earn respect and recognition from local government units.

The Tagbanua, for example, have complained that they never got their share for the prize of P250,000 for Kayangan Lake as the “Cleanest and Greenest Body of Water” that Manila awarded to the municipal government in 1998.

Kayangan Lake is a major tourist come-on in Coron island. Today, it is also the center of a brewing dispute that pits the tribe against tour operators and government officials who are protesting the recent imposition of entrance fees and restrictions in gaining access to it.



Copyright © 2001 All rights reserved.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM