They are the indigenous peoples, the lumads, who have called the fertile lands of Davao City their home.

They have once hunted its forests, swam the depths and traveled lengths of its rivers and tributaries, and in the process built their lives around the creations that abound. This very home, a heritage so intricate to the IPs is seen only as plain land, measured in square meters and hectares, and placed a value on by the settlers.

And thus the eternal conflict... within themselves for what they have been forced to become... against those who lust for their land, which if we really try to plumb is like lusting for their very soul.

"The IPs cannot separate their identity from the land. Their domain is their culture, their land is their identity," said Jean Marie Ferraris, team leader of the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan (LRC-KSK) in an interview with Sun.Star Davao. "If you take away their domain, you also take away their identity."

This very paradox is difficult for settlers to understand because for people like us, land is a commodity, a possession.

Thus, the conflict brews, lumads are almost always in the center, especially these days when national government is pushing for mining and everyone interested in mining is also interested in getting into the graces of the IP leaders because most mineral rich mountains are lumad territories and the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (Ipra) provides that anyone who wants to operate in the ancestral domain of indigenous peoples should get the IP's free prior and informec consent (FPIC), a term so prostituted, it too has become a commodity.

Again because of the land, which to the lowlanders and the investors is a commodity, but which to the IP is their very soul.

"It's not just about giving them land, it's about giving them what they deserve," Engineer Elvie Jabines, officer in charge of the Ancestral Domain Unit of the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP), told Sun.Star Davao in an interview.

The problem, however, is while there has indeed been moves to recognize IP's ancestral domain, there has been no corresponding resources poured into making the IPs cope with the times.

Most of them lived nomadic lives, moving from one settlement to another, planting, harvesting, and moving on to give the soil time to heal; living off from the gifts of the forests, hunting and cutting trees for their homes and for their firewood. When along came the loggers of the middle 20th century, clearing the forest that has nurtured them. They just moved on, until there was no more place to move.

For City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte, the IPs have to be taught and encouraged make the most of their land otherwise, with the galloping population, there will be settlers who will move in.

"There is enough for everybody to till. Dili nimo maubos na (We cannot till all lands around us), but for as long as there are lands left idle, there will be people who will move in," Duterte said in an exclusive interview last Friday.

But, the mayor said, there has to be a paradigm shift within the IPs themselves. They cannot forever hold on to their ancestral domain without doing anything to it.

This is precisely where the NCIP should have been exerting its efforts on.

"We teach them how to live," Jabines said.

But when you ask the IPs, they know of nothing that has been done to teach them to live.

Like their farthest hinterland home, whatever effort is being done is swallowed by the vastness of the mountains.

The Ipra Law

In 1997, this landmark legislation was passed in the halls of Congress, wherein the hundreds of years of colonial discrimination against our indigenous countrymen were put to a halt. No longer were they being looked down or being frowned upon, they are now treated as equal to the settlers who took their land and ravaged the resources therein.

Even when the foreign colonizers have long gone from the country, it was a no different scenario when the government pushed for people in Luzon and the Visayas to settle in Mindanao with the promise of awarding vast tracts of land.

With the rich soil and overflowing natural resources of Mindanao, it was selling like hotcakes.

Settler after settler after settler came to the island and staked claim on his parcel of land, while pushing the tribal groups further into the hinterlands of the region.

Then there was the boom in the logging industry, wherein a horrendous nightmare of the tribal groups was the cutting down of the trees of their forests, the desecration of their sacred areas, and the loss of their resources.

With the lands where they used to gather food and resources now gone, the indigenous people were lost on how they are supposed to cope up with things, how they were supposed to live.

Now you see them begging in the streets, or planting camote and maize in their barren lands filled with weeds.

The CADT

The Ipra was crafted to stop the land grabbing and allow the IPs to take control of their ancestral domain.

"The Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) is non-transferable, neither can it be sold. It is owned by their tribe and it will be for the future generations to come," Jabines said.

In the Davao Region, there are already 552,498 hectares have already been allocated as ancestral domain lands, most of which are situated in the Province of Compostela Valley.

But 11 years after the Ipra, only the tribes of B'laan and Bagobo Tagabwa were awarded CADTs in Davao del Sur; the Ata Manobos is the only tribe with CADTs in Davao del Norte with their CADTs, and only the Uvo-Manobo in Davao City.

There are more in Compostela, with the Mansaka, Dibabawon, Mandaya, Manobo and Mangguangan having been awarded their CADTs.

There are a hundred more applications which are still currently being processed by the NCIP, and a hundred more are pending before their office.

Does it work?

But just how effective has this program been for the indigenous people?

The NCIP believes it does work, but only if it were properly enforced.

"With the CADT, the community now owns the land, not a single person owns it, and not one can decide for the whole community," Jabines said.

The tribal community, with the consensus of their members, can now utilize the land themselves or can allow a investor to lease out portions of the land.

"But the whole community has to decide, and we facilitate," Jabines said.

In order for an investor to be able to enter a land registered under a CADT, the company must first seek the permission of the tribal community in the area.

"First we will gather the tribal community, together with the local government units, NGO's, and the NCIP wherein the investor will present and explain their proposal," Jabines said.

"Second, it will be a consultation among the members of the tribe only, they will decide on whether to accept it or not. But the moment they say no, it will be final," Jabines said.

Should the community agree to allow an investor into their land, a negotiation will ensue as to what conditions that the community may have. After which, a memorandum of agreement is inked between the parties, with the NCIP as the witness.

However, this memorandum of agreement is still subject to the approval of the NCIP en banc, who will ensure that the agreement is conscionable and beneficial to both parties.

Victims still

Jabines, however, presents the optimistic side, even Pollyannic.

For a people who are already forever grateful to a person who gives them rice, their FPIC is easily gotten with a small artesian well and a token multi-purpose hall, while waiting on the wings, lusting for the FPIC are giant mining companies and plantations.

"Basically, kanunay na gyud naga-worsen and situation sa IPs kay wala man gyud changes sa government programs sa IP despite pila na ka beses gisulti sa state of the nation address (The situation of IPs continue to worsen because there has really been no change in government programs for IPs despite the fact that the concerns of IPs has often been raised in the President's Sona)," Ferraris said.

"Grabe ang pagsulod sa mining, plantations, and grabe gyud ang militarization (Mining companies and plantations are all moving in. There is also massive militarization)," she added.

Mining has so vast effect, she said, such that a clueless lumad community can in fact be forced to move to a settlement area without them realizing that they have already relinquished their authority over the land to the mining operations.

"Sa Columbio, Sultan Kudarat, six mining companies are claiming 74 percent of total land area, unsa na lang mabilin? Ang Columbio baya kay tri-people na, so 26 percent na lang ang nabilin ka nila. Unya kung kanang sa 26 percent kung naay mining, unsa pud mahitabo sa ilang irrigation (what will be left for the people. Columbio is occupied by tri-people -- Moslem, IPs, and Christians -- who will then have to share the remaining 26 percent. But what will happen to their irrigation systems if mining operations start)?" Ferraris asked.

Columbio is but one of the provinces they have been researching on, although this is the worst example they have so far found. This is just mining. The other threats are plantations and energy projects, which usually accompany mining operations.

In the guise of tapping available energy sources to ensure continuing power supply, energy projects are actually popping up in areas where mining operations are about to start. Which means, this is not about the benefit for the community, but for the energy consumption of the mines.

Ferraris recognizes the efforts made by the city government to help the IPs, but this is still not enough, she said.

"Makita nato ang ka-sincere sa city government nga tubagon ang issue sa lumad (We can see the city government's sincerity in addressing the issue of lumads)," she said, especially during Christmas season when the city provides for the food, shelter and gifts of the lumads.

The root issues remain, she said.

"Dili baya gyud culture sa lumad na mag-carolling. Ni-adjust na lang sila sa ilahang sitwason nga motubag sa ilang gutom (It is not the culture of IPs to go carolling, but they have made this part of their life to address their more basic issue -- hunger)," she said.

The answer lies in the IPs life in their mountain villages, in the massive capability-building for IPs to make heads and tails of what the law provides for them and what they should be protected from, and the basic services like appropriate education that government should have long been giving them.

Very basic

In a visit at Sitio Dalag-ayo in Marilog District earlier this year, residents recalled the times when their children only went to school at least twice a week because the teacher had to walk from the highway to their mountain village and can only arrive usually on a Tuesday and have to walk home to reach downtown Davao by weekend. And when it rains, then multi-grade classes are suspended because the teacher cannot reach their village.

Now, life is better for the children of Sitio Dalag-ayo after they just decided to make Barangay Datu Ladayon as their center.

Sitio Dalag-ayo is in Davao City, Datu Ladayon is in Arakan Valley, North Cotabato. The two are just a step away from each other, the residents not quite sure where the boundary is.

But by moving their children to Datu Ladayon and putting up a shack as their schoolhouse, they got the attention of the North Cotabato government who provided them with a schoolroom.

Best of all, their schoolteachers were residents and so need not go home to Davao every week.

From a village of children who did not quite know when they will have classes, now the children of Datu Ladayon are having their classes in concrete schoolrooms, their Ma'am, their neighbor.

All it took was one teacher who stayed on and a community who pushed for their children's future.

But for other sitios, there may not be such a teacher; there may not be such a resident as they all struggle to even complete elementary grade much less become teachers.

In the meantime, they have to face threats of encroachment for how can they fully comprehend an FPIC if they can hardly read?

* This article appeared on Sunstar.com January 08, 2009 edition.

View the article at http://www.sunstar.com.ph/davao/paradox-lumads