By Joel B. Belinan
October is the Indigenous Peoples Rights Month in the country it being the month when the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) was passed into law on October 27, 1997. Some pundits say there are 12 months in a year and yet we chose only one month and that is October to observe the Indigenous Peoples’/Indigenous Cultural Communities’ Rights (IP/ICCs). Well it just sounds funny or amusing but the statement only reflects what is obvious, that 23 years after the passage of RA 8371 or the IPRA, the government of this country and the mainstream majority just take the law for granted. No wonder implementation of IPRA is considered a failure.
The late Senator Juan Flavier, considered the father of IPRA, might be turning in his grave considering that it was supposed to be a breakthrough legislation. He and IPs’/ICCs’ rights leaders and advocates had labored in the mid 1990s for the passage of the law.
The IPRA when it was passed was acclaimed in the International community all the way to the United Nations as a monumental legislation and everyone was all praises to the Philippines. The so-called historical injustices against us Indigenous Peoples were finally acknowledged and IPRA was meant to correct those. We were even more jubilant when the passage was followed with our triumph in the Supreme Court when it upheld the constitutionality of the law in a petition believed to have been initiated by big business interests to be adversely affected by the law such as mining companies.
I was new in the community journalism practice that time and for me the news was perfect for ZigZag Weekly being the community newspaper of the Cordillera. The jubilation in me however was cut short when the government started implementing the law particularly during the start of the Joseph Estrada presidency. First, they chose to put the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) under the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). The law provides that the NCIP which was the lead agency in the implementation of IPRA should be under the Office of the President so that the highest official of the land will have first hand knowledge of the issues affecting IPs. Such treatment of the NCIP (it having placed under DAR) revealed that the national government looked at the IPs/ICCs as second class people in this country. For how would one explains the fact that they put the commission headed by its chairman under a secretary instead of being a co-equal? Then came the usual budget threats. If I am not mistaken, there were instances that the NCIP was denied budgets for its operation. Such treatment was carried on by succeeding administrations such that the NCIP has always been a wandering commission being transferred from one department to another. Now, NCIP is under the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
Actual implementation on the ground had been met with all kinds of problems. When it started coming up with Certificates of Ancestral Land Titles, these were immediately branded as mid-night ones not only by non-IPs but also by the IPs themselves. Covering this turn of events, one of my biggest question that time was, why was the NCIP putting almost hundred percent of its programs and efforts on Ancestral Land and Ancestral Domain Titling? Yes indeed they have the scholarship grogram but what I was hoping to see were cultural rejuvenation programs that should have resulted in the IPs’/ICCs’ rewriting their own history. It would have been great if museums or research centers were put up highlighting our age old practices to connect future generations to the past. While there might have been a cultural renaissance, at least in the Cordillera and in some other areas of the country pertaining to Indigenous Cultural dances, musical instruments and attires, the same cannot be attributed as an accomplishment of the NCIP.
The worst that happened in the IPRA implementation was how the Indigenous Peoples themselves got corrupted by the money they got from ancestral land claims. That ugly part was witnessed again and again right here in Baguio City, the so called cradle of the concept of “Native Title.” The Native Title Doctrine came into being when at the turn of the 20th century during the beginning of the American colonial occupation, Mateo Carino, a native Ibaloi of Baguio contested the US insular government’s appropriating of his land that is now Camp John Hay. Mateo Carino won the case in the US Supreme Court and thus the doctrine and recognition of the Native Title over lands owned and in the possession of Indigenous Peoples since time immemorial.
Going back to how some of our IP brothers/sisters got corrupted, some claimants started entering into financing arrangements with moneyed individuals. The modus was for financiers to provide the needed funds to be used as grease money and for expenses in the processing of Certificates of Ancestral Land Titles (CALTs) with portions of the land to be given as returns on the investments of the financiers.
Rumors have it also that big money changed hands from these financiers to the officers, commissioners including the chairman of the NCIP. And right after the CALTs were issued, these were registered with the Land Registration Authority through its Registers of Deeds, thus they became regular land titles. The registration however of some CALTs got delayed, either because the concerned Registers of Deeds were following the law or that the grease money given were deficient.
Many of the lands issued such titles are now in the hands of buyers or the moneyed financiers in violation of the law. These are not in the hands of IPs/ICCs anymore. The law is that lands covered by CALTs should not be sold to non-members of the Indigenous Cultural Community where the claimants belong, at least for a number of years.
Then the Supreme Court dropped a bombshell late last year. It voided some CALTs covering prime lots in the city particularly parts of the Mansion House, Wright Park, Forbes Park and the Casa Vallejo Hotel area. The SC decision penned by then Senior Associate Justice Artemio Carpio ruled that the NCIP has no authority to issue such titles in Baguio City. Section 78 of the IPRA law exempts the city from ancestral land claims unless such were included in the original Igorot Claims and were recognized by government agencies before the passage of IPRA in 1997. Then Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan in 2010 led the city government in filing the petition at the Supreme Court through the Office of the Solicitor General against these spurious titles which ultimately was resolved, thus the bombshell. This case is actually a paramount example of how ancestral land claimants and even NCIP officials and functionaries abused and took advantage of the IPRA that ultimately resulted in its destruction. **
