Maglana: They were the kind willing to spend their own resources to take time to visit and listen to Lumads

Historical injustice, Lumads and the work of support groups
By Mags Z. Maglana
September 4, 2015
Published in Sunstar Davao

PART 1

Late August 2015 the Solidarity Action Group for Indigenous Peoples and Peasants (SAGIPP) was relaunched, sparked by the challenge posed by 700 Manobos who had sought refuge in the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) Haran compound in Davao City.

The Manobos arrived in June this year to protest the closure of schools run by the group Salugpungan ‘Ta Tano Igkanugon in Talaingod, Davao del Norte that allegedly were influenced by the New People’s Army. The Manobos claimed that the closure was linked to the heavy militarization of the area. I was among those who supported SAGIP, then focused only on indigenous peoples (IPs), when it was first organized in 1994 and I welcomed the chance to express continuing concrete support for the aspirations of Lumads, the IPs of Mindanao.

There are many development programs that provide assistance to IPs. Some are implemented by non-government organizations, others by government; a few receive official development assistance. In the overall scheme of things, each one claims to promote IP rights. My own view is that among the organizations and offices that assist IPs, support groups, which are usually non-government in nature and have a strong bent for advocacy and quick response, have a distinctive role.

The recent events in Lianga, Surigao del Sur underscore the importance of the solidarity work of support groups. On September 1, 2015 elements of the paramilitary group Magahat-Bagani executed Dionel Campos and his cousin Aurelio Sinzo in the presence of hundreds of villagers. Campos was the chair of the Lumad group Malahutayong Pakigbisog Alang sa Sumusunod (MAPASU) that actively campaigned for IP rights to their ancestral domain, and criticized human rights violations committed against IPs. Related to this was the murder of Emerito Samarca, Executive Director of the Alternative Learning Center for Agriculture and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV), who was found dead after he was taken hostage by Magahat elements.

Soon after word came out, support groups called for public, government and international attention to the brutal crimes, and mobilized support for the thousands of residents who had sought refuge in the poblacion of Diatagon. It was a situation that found resonance with memories of Martial Law in Mindanao when support groups were the first, and sometimes the only, groups to which displaced communities could turn for succor.

Back to the SAGIPP relaunch, the turnout of participants, many of whom were from the religious, academic and professional communities, was heartening. These were people who were not just going to hit "like" on a post in Facebook and then forget about it as they go on with their businesses for the rest of the day. They were the kind willing to spend their own resources to take time to visit and listen to Lumads, so in turn as advocates they could talk to and motivate others to take a stand. These support groups chose to overcome cynicism and could not be deterred by the disinformation that had been sowed to obfuscate the issues of the Lumads, such as the intrigues circulated to discredit the Talaingod Manobos in Haran. I found it striking that Bishop Marigsa of UCCP mentioned historical injustice and the Lumads in his opening remarks at the SAGIPP relaunch. I thought that the recognition of the historical wrongs that were visited on Lumads was another relevant lens from which to view the work of support groups.

Katrina Miriam Wyman posited that historical injustices were wrongs that “a) were committed or sanctioned at least a generation ago; b) were committed or authorized by one or more collective agents, such as a government or corporation; c) harmed many individuals; and (d) involved violations of fundamental human rights, often discrimination based on race, religion, or ethnicity” (2008).

Mindanawon historian Ompong Rodil cites the 1898 Treaty of Paris between Spain and the United States of America as a classic example of historical injustice. By virtue of this agreement and in exchange for US$20 million, jurisdiction over the Philippines and Filipinos was transferred from one colonizer to another. Just like that, territories and communities in the Philippines had a new colonial master; just like that, the Bangsamoro and Lumad communities of Mindanao who had not been conquered by Spain became colonized by the Americans.

But historical injustice is not merely a grievous event in the past. Many historical injustices have been carried forward until today although expressed in more contemporary forms, or underpin the many faces of injustice of the present times. For instance, the unjust annexation of the unconquered communities of Mindanao during the American colonial period has been continued in the sense that the Philippine Republic that succeeded the Americans automatically subsumed these communities. Moreover, the injustice over the large-scale loss of Bangsamoro and IP territories seem no longer an issue today by virtue of the issuance of a series of property and resource tenure laws.

Not all historical injustices can be easily redressed but nevertheless they have to be viewed critically and not accepted as a matter of fact. There might be practical constraints to seeking redress from Spain and America for what Filipinos experienced under them during the colonial periods. But it doesn't mean we should just take our colonial past as a given. We can continue to critique the colonial injustices that were inflicted on us, and also resist attempts to perpetuate foreign interests through neocolonial forces.

Specific measures like the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) were enacted with the perspective of promoting IP rights and redressing historical injustices. The commitment to make amends for historical grievances would also have been a more appropriate way of viewing recent efforts to pass the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).

But there are historical injustices that we unwittingly could be party to today, even though we claim to be on the side of those who suffered.

PART 2

THE thinking that the natives of a place can be dispossessed because they have failed to develop or bring progress to their locality in the eyes of modernists, or have not conserved it to the standards of the naturalists underpins encroachments that are fostered by colonial, conservationists and other forms of agenda (Drayton 2000; Murray Li 2008; Peluso and Nevins 2008). From this point of view outsiders are deemed justified in stepping in, and correcting the weaknesses and failings of these indigenous communities.

A variant of this mindset is one that insists on treating indigenous peoples as inherently "unfortunate" or "victims" and needing to be "uplifted", “developed” or "rescued", belying blindness to the richness of the economic, political and cultural resources of these communities. While these descriptors could be handy for fundraising and public relations purposes, they ultimately do an injustice to the katutubo.

Images of indigenous peoples rankle mainstream views because they present another reality, which in many respects are in direct contrast to what contemporary institutions like the educational system, media, churches and even our families, broadcast as the ideal: modernity and the adherence to standards set by the west.

Small communities that still engage in generally subsistence-oriented economic activities, who connect to nature in non-commoditized ways, whose references are ancestors and ancestral territories can sometimes be considered an affront to societies that have long ago been conditioned to accept physical integration in settlements, and regard more money, power and prestige as the metrics of a good life, who view nature as resources that can be owned and mainly exist to be utilized by humans, and whose references are laws, organized religion and related domains.

Indigenous communities show ways of living that people like you and me have been taught to consider as “backward” and therefore needing to be “modernized”. The few times that mainstream institutions cast a positive look at indigenous communities, it is with the objective of "eroticizing" them so they can be made markers of the past, or featured as special "commodities" hauled out for festivals.

But the indigenous peoples are not in our past; they are part of our present. Featuring their dances and traditional attires is not the same as knowing and honoring their cultures. Being made into replicas of the “progressive us” is also not necessarily the only model that IPs want to achieve.

Indigenous peoples in Mindanao have long borne and resisted systematic encroachments on their territories and against their ways of life. Sometimes their resistance takes open forms, an example being the actions the Talaingod Manobos to protest the closure of Salugpungan schools. At other times they have taken recourse to traditional forms such as the 1989 Dyandi solidarity pact that the 10 tribes that considered Mt. Apo as sacred entered into when they swore to protect the mountain from development aggression. There are also many examples of how Lumads assert themselves within mainstream mechanisms to make these more responsive to their aspirations, such as in the case of alternative and indigenous educational institutions under ALCADEV and Salugpungan.

Far from romanticizing the situations of Lumads, and promoting the isolationist view that we leave them alone to their own devices, the point I'm trying to make is that indigenous communities are different from but not necessarily inferior to the ones that are celebrated as developed and ideal communities.

Thus, the call is to stand with IPs and support them in their struggles and the achievement of their aspirations. Not because IPs are kawawa, but because they are taking steps to address their own condition, and we can learn from them about addressing historical injustice.

Go join a support group for Lumads today.