By Gary Pekas
The idea of self-determination for indigenous communities sounds simple: it’s their right to control their own future—their land, their culture, and their way of life. Laws like the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) in the Philippines are supposed to guarantee this right. But in reality, there is a huge problem. The very idea of a single “community” that can agree on what it wants is a myth. Because of deep internal divisions, it is impossible to make a decision that truly represents what everyone wants.
The first reason for this is a major clash of values. Traditionally, indigenous ownership is about stewardship—the land is a living part of the community, held in trust for future generations. It’s communal, not individual. But the government’s legal system is built on Western property law, which is all about individual ownership, written titles, and selling land. So, to prove they own their land, the community is forced to use a system that goes against their own values. This immediately splits the community. Some, often elders, fight to keep the old communal ways. Others, seeing a chance for personal profit or needing money, push to use the new system of individual titles. They can’t even agree on what “owning the land” means.
Second, there is a massive generational divide. Younger people often leave the community for school or jobs in the cities. Even if they stay, their minds have “migrated”—they adopt mainstream values from TV, the internet, and their education. They start to think more about individual success and money. So, when a developer offers jobs and cash for a project, the community meeting is not united. The elders talk about protecting sacred mountains. The youth talk about needing income and development. There is no shared dream for the future. The law demands a “community decision,” but the community is now a room full of people with completely different goals.
Finally, the legal process itself makes things worse. To get their land rights recognized, communities must go through a long, complicated process to get a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT). This process forces them to draw strict maps and assign ownership to specific families for land that was always shared. This creates brand-new conflicts. Families start arguing over boundaries that never used to matter. The government’s solution for protecting the land ends up breaking it into pieces and turning community members against each other.
In the end, the system set up to help them actually destroys the unity it claims to protect. The community is forced to become more like the outside world in order to defend itself from it. The search for a single “community voice” is pointless because that voice does not exist. The painful truth is that the fight for self-determination often ends up highlighting all the ways a community is being pulled apart, making a decision that represents everyone’s desires an impossible goal.**
