It Takes Modern Means to be Traditional:

On Recognizing Indigenous Cultural Communities

in the Philippines

Frank Hirtz

ABSTRACT

The main thesis of this essay is that being recognized as traditional or

indigenous requires the employment of modern means. A form of Bureau-
cratic Orientalism has been devised, constructing and reaffirming the Other
through the minutiae of administrative procedures and contemporary repre-
sentational processes. These procedures exist for the twin purposes of estab-
lishing the right to act as an indigenous group, and of circumscribing the
obligations of the state, and possibly of other institutions of governance. The
entire debate is the expression of a dilemma that has no solution but is
actually an expression of modernity. The three pillars upon which indigeneity
is affirmed are a national (internationally legitimized) legal system, the
contemporary world of NGOs, and the institutions of local government.
Thus, through the very process of being recognized as indigenous, these
groups enter the realms of modernity. The Philippines provide a case study
for these explorations.

INTRODUCTION

It is the folly of conquerors to want to give their own laws and customs to all peoples they
conquer. This accomplishes nothing. (Montesquieu, Considerations sur les causes de la
grandeur des Romains et leur decadence)

This article explores the interrelated questions of how to capture the process
by which indigenous peoples obtain recognition from existing authorities;
and how to adequately address the seemingly obvious fact that indigenous
people seek to have their understanding of themselves in their differences in
norms, lifestyles, and practices appropriately distinguished and (administra-
tively and legally) secured?

I am grateful for help, critique, encouragement and useful comments, to Warren Armstrong,
Ted Bradshaw, Franz und Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, Eric Casino, James H. Hafner,
Babette Resureccion, Edsel Sajor, Michael J. Watts, Ben White, Diane L. Wolf, and Aram
A. Yengoyan. The comments of the three anonymous reviewers were invaluable. Any errors
remain my responsibility.
Development and Change 34(5): 887914 (2003). # Institute of Social Studies 2003. Published
by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St.,
Malden, MA 02148, USA
888 Frank Hirtz

The world has become increasingly sensitive about issues of indigenous

peoples issues that had, for a long time, been the exclusive preserve of
anthropologists and other social scientists (Wolf, 1982). This sensitivity
spans a wide range of human activities; from the United Nations and its
International Decade of the Worlds Indigenous People (19952004),1 it
extends to embrace specialized studies about tree uses in Tanzania (Hines
and Eckman, 1993), philosophical and constitutional essays (such as Tully,
1995), popular and classical music (we might think of Paul Simons Graceland
and Yo-Yo Mas Silk Road Project); it includes contemporary fashion, the
direct marketing of indigenous peoples wares through the Fair Trade movement
or the network of World Shops in Europe, as well as the use of photogenic
advertising of oil explorations.2 In short, the issue of indigenous people has ceased
to be anyones exclusive terrain, and has entered the mainstream conscience.
What makes a group of people indigenous? How does such a group come
to be represented on a geographical or mental map? How is it recognized
in our modern system of governance? Anthropological studies of specific
groups in their social, cultural, and political environment originally formed
the bulk of writing about peoples outside the industrialized nations of the
North. These contributions described difference and thus constituted an
awareness of differences (Perry, 1996: xii; Wallerstein, 1973). A later concern
in academic and (especially) advocacy literature has been the recognition of
a group as indigenous. In essence, the issue of recognition constitutes an
ethical debate about norms and ultimately about the laws that delineate the
parameters of recognition. Recognition goes beyond attesting to a pure
difference, into the realms of securing practical consequences. In our contem-
porary understanding, the normative consequences of these differences
the recognition of indigeneity and concomitant privileges are the
manifestation of the development of human rights, the ethical treatment
of individuals as persons of difference and as members of a distinct group
(Kymlicka, 1999, 2001; Rothschild, 1981). This debate is based on the long
history of the subjugation of peoples (Mommsen and Osterhammel, 1986).
The early advocates on behalf of the suppressed, exploited and subju-
gated, such as Fray Bartolome de Las Casas (Casas and Sullivan, 1995;
Gillen, 1995), find their modern equivalent in the establishment of the
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), in the proposal
to establish a Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues under the auspices of
the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, and in numerous solidarity
groups.3 The awareness of the international community about the plight
of indigenous peoples has been greatly extended through the UNs Decade
of the Worlds Indigenous People, while individual UN organizations have

1. Proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in its resolution 48/163 of 21 December 1993.

2. See, for example, the web page of Royal Dutch Shell: http://www.shellnigeria.com/
frame.asp?Page PeopleHome
3. See, for instance, Sanders (1977); also http://www.unhchr.ch/indigenous/forum.htm
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 889

produced wide-ranging conventions,4 or have tackled complex and intricate

concerns such as intellectual property rights and indigenous knowledge
systems.5 In short, the basic concept of indigenous peoples rights is in
place, despite legal disputes about the details (Green, 1995). So what is
needed to make legal recognition a reality with clear-cut benefits for the
people concerned? It seems that the academic literature is silent when it
comes to exploring the linkages between the social sciences and the devel-
opment of laws, rules and regulations, as well as on issues involved in the
implementation of indigenous rights.
Using the Republic of the Philippines as an example, this article will focus
on the operationalization of this recognition in other words, it will examine
the conditions that need to be in place for a group to be acknowledged as
indigenous, and to gain its legal recognition within an administrative entity,
which is almost always a state (Chaliand, 1989; Daes, 1989). One of these
conditions is the existence of an appropriate set of norms, embedded in
constitutions, laws, and regulations to assure legal recognition. But what
other social institutions are needed in order to ensure that such norms can
either be formulated or, in case they already exist, applied?
As the title of this article suggests, my main thesis is that it takes modern
means to become traditional, to be indigenous. A form of bureaucratic
Orientalism to borrow Edward Saids term (Said, 1978) has been
devised, constructing and reaffirming the Other through the minutiae of
administrative procedures and contemporary representational processes.
These procedures exist for the sole purpose of establishing the right to act
as an indigenous group and, conversely, to circumscribe the obligations of
the state, and possibly of other institutions of governance (Hoekema and
Assies, 1994; Morse and Woodman, 1988). The entire debate is thus the
expression of a dilemma that has no solution but is simultaneously an expres-
sion of modernity. Modernity needs the contrasting concept of indigeneity and
tradition, whereas traditional societies in pre-modern or pre-colonial times did
not need to establish their otherness in opposition to modernity or their own
history.6 In other words, through the very process of being recognized as
indigenous, these groups enter the realms of modernity (Chaliand, 1989).
Before ethnic minorities became known as such, they simply existed. Some
might have had names given to them by outsiders or applied by themselves,
while some communities might have existed without names, such as WaBantu
(person/people), Inuit (the people), or Mapuche (people of the Earth) clearly

4. Such as ILO Convention No 107 (of 1957), Indigenous and Tribal Populations, which was
replaced in 1989 by ILO Convention No 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in
Independent countries. For a critical reading of the ILO conventions, see Venne (1989).
5. For example, the UNDPs Indigenous Knowledge Programme: see http://www.undp.org/
rbap/
6. On modernity as contrast concept, see Habermas (1987) and Kumar (1988), as well as the
classic study of Hobsbawm and Ranger (1992).
890 Frank Hirtz

show. Only with the advance of larger political units within which differences
were to be accommodated, did the issue arise of defining people according to
different sets of activities, all of which are situated within the confines of
influence and governance, and delimited by a geographical boundary.
To achieve such a larger unit, many different paths have been taken.
Conquest, violence, warfare, and extermination run parallel to contracts,
treaties, intermarriage and exchange relationships. Differences in customs,
languages, laws, and religions were obliterated or suppressed, with or
without justifications (Ali, 2001). New customs, languages, laws and even
religions were deliberately devised to smooth over differences between
communities. Some differences are still constructed, researched, catalogued
and indexed today,7 and some groups simply disappear in the universe of
ignorance and insignificance (see UNESCO, 2000). Our present sensibilities
are rooted in this colonial encounter and these complex, often conflictual,
interactions almost invariably have multiple historical layers.8
Yet, it is the difference that makes a difference, a style of thought based
upon an ontological and epistemological distinction (Said, 1978: 5) that
allows one to differentiate between us and them and that, by so doing,
yields consequences. Academia aids these efforts: anthropology and other
social sciences establish facts, and with the help of archaeological research,
offer connections that reach far back into the history of a place. These
(mostly exogenous) labels, concepts and facts are constantly used to legit-
imize contemporary actions. But who uses these labels and peruses the facts?
Which facts and concepts are used and which are not? Who decides and how
does one define what is to be considered a legitimate fact or concept, that
establishes a form of otherness that can yield legal and administrative
consequences? How does the process define what it means to be (or to
become) an indigenous people or population, and how do the participants
in this exchange impinge on that decision?9

7. The most prominent example of this is the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), a data
archive and information retrieval system covering a large sample of world societies and
cultures. HRAF has indexed over 1,000,000 pages of ethnographic text according to the
classifications of the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM). The OCM is a vocabulary of
over 700 cultural categories that allows a researcher to search for specific information
cross-culturally and by the same token define the way in which cultural differences are
labelled.
8. For some parts of the world, we might also include the overlay of prior incidences of
subjugation and expansion of local empires that provide a further layer upon which
indigenous peoples see their plight of proper recognition. Examples include Vietnam
and China, or Senzangakhonas and Shakas expansion in Southern Africa in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where these historical encounters still form part
of local sentiments. For Southern Africa see, for example, Laband (1997), for Southeast
Asia see Benjamin and Chou (2002).
9. That these questions are influenced by the seminal reflections of Foucault (1970) should
be acknowledged here.
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 891

These questions and those mentioned earlier are analysed in more detail
in the rest of this article, taking the Republic of the Philippines as an
example. Although there might be patterns of understanding evolving glob-
ally, a case study of one state allows a closer look at the interplay between
the state, non-governmental organizations and the indigenous cultural
communities (the label for indigenous peoples in the Philippines). After a
short overview of the concepts of indigenous rights in general and a brief
historical sketch of the Philippine case, I will explore the constitutional and
legal framework that requires the recognition and defines the rights of its
indigenous people. Intermediaries are indispensable in the process of recog-
nition because of the vague formulation and sheer number of regulations.
These intermediaries, mostly NGOs, will receive special attention, while the
conclusion will present a final assessment to position the entire process in a
theoretical framework.

CENTRAL ISSUES IN THE RECOGNITION OF INDIGENOUS RIGHTS

This section will look at three sets of problems confronting all groups in the
area of indigenous rights. Political issues and terminological clutter cast a
large shadow over these rights, and differences in ideologies have a major
impact on outcomes. Firstly, any talk of indigenous rights immediately
begs the question of who is indigenous. Secondly, there are issues about
what kind of rights are involved, who defines these rights and how they are
administered. Thirdly, there is a lingering debate over the terms people or
population, each of which carries very different connotations.

Definitions: Appropriate Terminology and its Consequences

The first problem in recognizing the rights of indigenous people is the definition
of indigenous: The term indigenous has emerged in practice over the years
and (like the term peoples) has no accepted definition. Its existence, in fact, is
an accident of history (Barsh, 1986: 373). Usually, a group is defined as
indigenous group if it fulfils any of the following criteria (Eide, 1988: 28):
They are descendants of a people which lived in the region prior to the arrival of settlers
coming in from the outside, settlers who have since become the dominant population;
they have maintained a culture which is different in significant respects from that of the
dominant population;
they are, as a group, in an inferior position in the country concerned, in political and
economic aspects.

The issue of defining indigenous peoples has occupied several of the

UN institutions, and their deliberations and decisions can only be sketched
here. The most widely accepted definition was formulated by Jose Mart nez-
Cobo, the Special Rapporteur to the Subcommission on Prevention of
892 Frank Hirtz

Discrimination and Protection of Minorities. In his report, entitled Study

of the Problem of Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations, Martinez-
Cobo (1987) states:
Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which having a historical continuity
with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider
themselves distinct from other sectors of societies now prevailing in those territories, or
parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to
preserve, develop, and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their
ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their
own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems.

The ILO has also devoted much attention to this question. Article 1 of
ILO Convention 169 (dated 1989, in force since 1991)10 gives the following
definition:
(a) Tribal peoples in independent countries whose social, cultural and economic conditions
distinguish them from other sections of the national community, and whose status is
regulated wholly or partially by their own customs or traditions or by special laws or
regulations;
(b) Peoples in independent countries who are regarded as indigenous on account of their
descent from the populations which inhabited the country, or a geographical region to which
the country belongs, at the time of conquest or colonization or the establishment of present
state boundaries and who, irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own
social, economic, cultural and political institutions.

Most importantly, in accordance with indigenous peoples perspectives,

both the ILO and Martinez-Cobo emphasize self-identification as one of
the main variables in any definition. ILO Convention 169 clearly states that,
self-identification as indigenous or tribal shall be regarded as a fundamen-
tal criterion for determining the groups to which the provisions of this
Convention apply (Article 1, Section 2).11
Still, even these widely shared understandings face several problems. For
instance, they do not reflect situations in which an indigenous population
already constitutes the majority of a country.12 In the Philippines two
further concerns emerge: how to treat intermarriages, including those with
the mainstream population usually defined as lowlanders who are as

10. The predecessor to ILO Convention 169, ILO Convention 107, Convention Concerning
the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal
Populations in Independent Countries, of 1957, was a first attempt to alert the
international community to these issues.
11. The definition used by UNDP incorporates both those of Martinez-Cobo and the ILO. It
also recognizes that despite common characteristics, no single accepted definition of
indigenous peoples exists that captures their diversity. Self-identification as indigenous
or tribal is again the central criterion, to which language spoken and geographic location
or concentration are added as further elements. UNDP also includes a much wider array
of groups who are susceptible to being disadvantaged in the development process. See:
http://www.undp.org/csopp/CSO/NewFiles/ipindex.html
12. Additional problems arise with populations of former slaves who escaped and lived for
many generations apart from the mainstream society. Colombia is a good example.
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 893

indigenous to the Islands as those asking for special rights; and how to treat
persons of Chinese origin who have lived in the country for many gener-
ations and have intermarried into all groups indigenous to the Philippines.
In all these cases the definition offered above comes under considerable stress.13

Which Indigenous Rights?

This leads to the second of the hotly debated issues, namely the question of
rights and their incorporation into a constitutional framework (Levy, 2000;
Stavenhagen, 1994; Tully, 1995). What kind of rights are indigenous rights?
What are their limits and who is ultimately affected? One school of thought
places them in the family of collective rights that cannot be reduced to the
right of an individual (Hartney, 1995; Johnston, 1995). Collective rights
emerge through their collective quality, and thus it can only be the group
and not the individual who is entitled to these rights. One could also argue
the opposite position, denying that a group can be the bearer of rights, and
arguing that it is the individual member who exercises rights. An intermediary
position has emerged that looks more closely at what aspects of rights are
invoked, implying that there might be cases in which the individual char-
acteristics of a right dominate over more collective aspects (Muntarbhorn,
1989; Valadez, 1998). Furthermore, the issue of how rights of indigenous
people intersect with cultural rights poses even more troubling questions
(Kumar, 1988; Urry, 1979). This is not a purely academic question: the
distinction between a collectivist and an individualist approach predefines
which of the two has moral priority, and thus has serious consequences.
Will Kymlicka (1995) has rightly pointed out that this debate helps to confuse
the really important issues regarding the function and legitimacy of these
rights.

Indigenous People, Indigenous Population or Cultural Minorities?

The distinction that carries the most important consequences politically is

that between the terms people and population. Until the declaration of
the International Decade of the Worlds Indigenous People in 1993, the UN
had preferred the term population, for it carries no associations of political
rights, but rather denotes a purely demographic demarcation. As soon as
the term indigenous people is invoked, rights are called into play that have
been enshrined in international conventions and other instruments,14 not

13. There are similar issues in other Southeast Asian nations, foremost Malaysia and
Indonesia. See Benjamin and Chou (2002).
14. However, ILO Convention 169 rejects this view by stating in Article 3: The use of the
term peoples in this Convention shall not be construed as having any implications as
regards the rights which may attach to the term under international law.
894 Frank Hirtz

the least the International Bill of Human Rights.15 Not surprisingly, many
authors and politicians try to shy away from both terms and retreat to the
less contentious term of community, usually adorned with qualifiers such
as cultural, tribal, indigenous or traditional.16 A debate about this very
important issue goes beyond the scope of this article; for the purpose of
the argument advanced here, it is enough to say that agreeing on a common
term is an extremely delicate matter.
At the state level, the issue of minority rights versus indigenous rights
further complicates this picture. This issue is also linked to concerns in
international law. Many indigenous peoples do not see themselves as minor-
ities, but as peoples. Accepting the label minority would imply accepting
the legitimacy of the jurisdiction of the state, the colonizing agent. This
might preclude certain preferred interpretations of self-determination (Sellers,
1996). Some groups see a hierarchy of concepts where nations and nation-
alities are above minorities. Both nations and nationalities would then have
a certain right to political self-determination, whereas minorities might only
have rights of self-expression and protection.17
The distinction between these two sets of rights has consequences, espe-
cially for the common state institutions that are responsible for the orderly
conduct of civil affairs such as local government, the court system, land
tenure issues and problems of patrimony. Although it is within the compe-
tence of classical institutions of governance to deal with minority issues,
indigenous groups contend that if full autonomy is not available at
least those agencies that administer their distinct set of norms need to be
housed in special institutions governed by the affected people.
It is against this background that the case study is developed. In the
Philippines, both indigenous peoples and minority rights have been estab-
lished; this means that any legal strategy on behalf of a group of people
immediately becomes entangled in these complex issues. The following will
describe the legal and administrative solutions that have been devised in the
Philippines.

15. The International Bill of Human Rights is the sum total of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural
Rights (1966), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) and the
Optional Protocol on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
see UN (1985, 1993). The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (OAU, 1982;
see also Evans and Murray, 2002) and the nongovernmental Algiers Declaration of the
Rights of Peoples (Cassese and Jouve, 1978) added specific legal instruments for Peoples
rights.
16. Benjamin and Chou (2002) speak of Tribal Communities; the Philippine Constitution
avoids these problems by protecting the rights of indigenous cultural communities Art
XII, Sec. 5, but then proceeds to promulgate the Indigenous Peoples Right Act (emphasis
added).
17. The terminology debate is reflected in the names of organizations such as the
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization and the Assembly of First Nations
(Canada).
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 895

SITUATING INDIGENOUS CULTURAL COMMUNITIES IN THE

PHILIPPINES

The prominence of indigenous issues in the present-day Philippines is inex-

tricably linked with its long and contested past. A history of the Philippine
minority administration is still unwritten: such a history would have to delve
into the ruling elites relationship with those populations who have largely
been bypassed by modernization and incorporation into the world econ-
omy.18 Yet, as recent troubles in the Southern Philippines make abundantly
clear, contemporary issues reach far back into a still vivid past, layered by
strata of domination.
The Philippines are home to enormous ethnic diversity. If one takes
languages as an indicator, there are 172 languages of which Pilipino
(Filipino)/Tagalog and English are the official languages known in the
Philippines; of these, 169 are living languages.19 Although these socio-
linguistic groups vary considerably in size and in their relationship to the
mainstream society, the Philippines represents an ethnically highly diverse
society in which some groups define themselves as distinct from a perceived
majority and their state institutions. Especially since the occupation of the
Philippines by the United States in 1898, dealing administratively with this
diversity has been an issue of governance.
The different names that have adorned the government offices responsible
for minority administration show how anxious the governmental powers
were to give it a firm footing and, incidentally, how differently ethnic groups
were perceived through time: from the Bureau of Non-Christian Tribes,
through the Commission on National Integration (CNI), the Presidential
Arm for National Minorities (PANAMIN),20 the Office for Muslim
Affairs and Cultural Communities (OMACC), later split into the Office
for Muslim Affairs (OMA), Office for Northern Cultural Communities
(ONCC) and Office for Southern Cultural Communities (OSCC), to
the toothless National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) since 1998.
The present debate can, to a great extent, be traced back to the original
policies of the first Philippine Commission in the early twentieth century.
The commissioner for internal affairs, Dean Worcester, played the most
decisive role. He served as Secretary of the Interior for thirteen years, the
longest serving commissioner, and framed the administrative tools for

18. A shameful chapter of this history includes the exhibition of Igorots in the World Fair
19011905; see Kramer (1999).
19. The Summer Institute of Linguistics calculates a diversity index which, for the Philippines,
is 0.85. This means that if a Filipino or Filipina would be in a room with 99 others from
their country, the chances are that 85 of the 99 would speak a different language than his
or hers. The index for Papua New Guinea, for instance, would be 0.99 and for the USA
0.35. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name Philippines.
20. PANAMIN has also been said to stand for Presidential Advisor on National
Minorities.
896 Frank Hirtz

dealing with the indigenous minorities up to this very day.21 Together with
David Barrows,22 the first director of the newly established Bureau of Non-
Christian Tribes, Worcester set the tone for all subsequent developments.
From the very beginning of the American occupation, proper labelling for
indigenous tribes, defining the rights to locally informed ways of life, and
regulating access to and use of natural resources were central in all the
commissioners efforts. The policies of the early administrators were based
on their own assumptions and the works of contemporary ethnologists who,
without exception, had gained their expertise in the continental United
States by working in various capacities for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
The central role thus assigned to the social sciences remains hotly debated, as
it provided the basis of most political and legal decisions. But the advent of
non-governmental organizations in the late twentieth century, and a national
legal framework, altered the situation markedly.
Three recent events, each with high international visibility, had a marked
impact on policies towards indigenous people in the Philippines. These
conflicts have influenced the decisions of administrators, the policies of
affected groups and the activities of advocates and support organizations.23
The first event that drew international attention to minority problems in
the archipelago was the Chico River Dam scandal. The National Power
Corporation proposed the 1000 MW Chico River Hydroelectric Dam in the
Cordillera Mountains in 1974. A mass movement against the project organ-
ized sustained campaigns locally and internationally, where it became an
issue in the newly created Permanent Peoples Tribunal (Permanent Peoples
Tribunal, 1981).24 A number of local people who opposed the Chico Dam
project resorted to armed struggle by joining the New Peoples Army (NPA)
in response to grave government-perpetrated human rights violations and as
an additional way of defending their ancestral lands.25 The struggle, which

21. On Worcester, see Sullivan (1991). For Worcesters own views on the Philippine
population, see Worcester (1899).
22. David Barrows was an alumnus of the University of California with a PhD in
Anthropology and a law degree from Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley. Details of his outlook
and philosophy are in his unpublished memoirs, among his papers bequeathed to the
Bancroft library, UC Berkeley, dated 1954.
23. On the currently unsettled issues see IWGIA (1999), Legaspi et al. (1997).
24. The establishment of the Permanent Peoples Tribunals were of great importance to the whole
development of indigenous rights after World War II. Following the works of the Russel
Tribunals (197476), dealing with the dictatorships in Latin America, establishment of the
Lelio Basso Foundation in 1970, its work in the Permanent Tribunals since 1979, and the
Universal Declaration of the Rights of People in 1976 (Algiers Declaration) were all important
milestones in the development of indigenous rights.
25. Joining the NPA, an organization with a Marxist/Maoist outlook, set those ethnic groups apart
ideologically from groups that claim their identity through ethnic affiliation alone. This
produced and continues to produce considerable tensions within these communities. Much
more research needs to be conducted to gauge the consequences in detail. Important
information and valuable analysis can be found in Sajor (1999).
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 897

led to the killing of the leader Pangat Maclijing Dulag in 1980 by the
Philippines Constabulary Strike Force Battalion, eventually brought the
Chico Dam project to a halt. (Although it could still be revived.)
This conflict focused widespread and intense international attention on
the Philippine governments treatment under the Marcos dictatorship
of its indigenous populations. International solidarity work, fostered by the
Lutheran World Council of Churches and its Indigenous Peoples Programme,
merged with the concerns of the anti-Marcos movements within the
Philippines and internationally. These anti-Marcos movements generally
took the form of NGOs that attended to local issues and that subsequently
organized themselves into networks.
The second incident that put the Philippines on the map of those con-
cerned with the fate of indigenous people was the Tasaday affair. The
discovery of an ethnic group believed to be living in stone-age circum-
stances drew worldwide attention. While coffee-table books about the
Gentle Tasaday (Nance, 1975) were produced, an international contro-
versy erupted about the veracity of the anthropologists claims, and about
how to deal with the Tasaday.26 The Tasaday issue led to the establishment
of a Philippine administrative unit, the PANAMIN, managed by self-
proclaimed anthropologist Manuel Elizalde, a member of an elite family
in the Philippines, who claimed to have been the first to make contact with
the Tasaday. It is difficult to characterize PANAMIN: officially it was a
government organization, yet this wealthy Filipino ran it as if it were his
own private organization.27 Nevertheless, the debate that ensued about the
protection of original tribes influenced movements to look into the plight of
other ethnic groups in the Philippines and elsewhere.
The third event was not an isolated incident but rather an ongoing
conflict, whose prominence has fluctuated since the Philippines were colon-
ized. On the southern Island of Mindanao and the adjacent string of islands
stretching south, a struggle has simmered, and sometimes boiled, between
the Muslim populations of this area and the various central governments of
the North. It is beyond the scope of this article to trace the history and the
paths of this Moro Islamic Challenge (Santos, 2001) over the past century
(but see Elarth, 1949; Hurley, 1938; Tan, 1973), but what is important here
is that this on-going conflict fostered two parallel developments. The first
was the recognition of the Bangsa Moro movement in the Tripoli agreement

26. The debate about the Tasaday seems still to be of pivotal interest to many people in the
indigenous rights movement(s). For a very level-headed assessment of the issues see
Yengoyan (1991).
27. Manuel Elizalde became interested in minorities in Latin America, and moved to Costa
Rica in 1983 after falling out with the Marcos regime. All over the world, anthropologists
(and enthusiastic Christian missionaries) went in search of threatened unreached peoples
(The Economist 1997). The whereabouts of Elizaldes archives is unclear: they seem to
have vanished among his personal possessions.
898 Frank Hirtz

between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation

Front (MNLF), leading eventually to the incorporation of a great number
of its forces into the state apparatus.28 While this movement was also
supported internationally though solidarity movements, its main support
came from Muslim states not only the direct neighbours of the Philippines,
such as Indonesia and Malaysia, but also the countries of the Middle East
(hence the Tripoli agreement, brokered by the government of Libya).29
In a parallel movement, the other, non-Muslim minority groups on
Mindanao started to form an alliance, calling themselves or being called
by their advocates the Lumad.30 Through this exogenous labelling, a new
ethnic identity which represented a pan-Mindanao, pre-colonial realm was
formed in order to bundle together their claims against the central powers
(Casino, 2000; Gaspar, 2000; Rodil, 1987, 1994). In this case, ethnic labelling
(a form of neo-tribalism, as it were), coupled with the apparatus of a (quasi)
state such as local government and local laws, proved to be a winning formula.
The Tripoli agreement served as a blueprint for the constitutional recog-
nition of other ethnic minorities in the 1987 constitution. Ponce Benagen, an
anthropology professor and the sole representative of the Cordilleras minor-
ity group in the Constitutional Commission of the Aquino Government,
modelled his constitutional proposal on the Moro treaty. The bifurcation of
the Philippines into lowland (modern) and upland (indigenous), and the
establishment of two autonomous regions, was thus constitutionally
enshrined. The logic for the establishment of two autonomous regions is
somewhat clouded in the maze of the constitutional process that led to their
existence. Probably the most overriding issue was to incorporate the results
of the Tripoli agreement into a contemporary constitutional form. Origin-
ally, the regions that should be recognized as autonomous were left open,
leaving the option for the Philippines to become a federal state.
All these efforts of secession, integration and retribalization linked ances-
tral domain to cultural identity (Hyndman et al., 1994) and contributed to
the firm establishment of the HighlanderLowlander Divide (Finin, 1996;
Scott, 1977). They allowed the lowland majority to ignore their own cultural
history, cultural heritage and the enduring advance of indigenous institu-
tions. This happens both despite and because of the overlay of the various
colonial interferences and modernizing shocks that characterize the daily

28. The Tripoli agreement was signed on 23 December 1976, in Tripoli, Libya, but a
protracted civil war continued until, on 2 September 1996, the MNLF and the
Philippine Government signed an internationally-lauded peace agreement to end
hostilities in the southern Philippines.
29. For an important legal and political treatment, seen Santos (2001).
30. Lumad is a Cebuano-Bisayan word (the lingua franca of the Southern Philippines)
meaning indigenous. It was adopted in 1986 after a meeting of fifteen of the eighteen
self-identified ethnic groups. The Lumad Mindanao organization is no longer
operating, but the name continues to be used. See also Tri-People Consortium (1998).
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 899

lives of the population (Hirtz, 1998). As we will see below, the involvement
of NGOs has blurred the issues even further.
After this historical overview, we can now gauge the numbers of indi-
genous people in the Philippines. According to the various and malleable
definitions, about 6.5 million people, roughly 10 per cent of the entire
Philippine population, are counted as indigenous. This group represents
enormous ethnic variety and geographical dispersion: aside from the
major ethnic groups on the two main islands of Mindanao and Luzon, a
number of different socio-linguistic groups also exist in other parts of the
Philippines, as in the Visayas, in the coastal mountains of Luzon, on the
islands of Mindoro and Palawan. In the rest of the Philippines, the lowlands
were hispanicized and islamized.
Despite this complexity, the present debate revolves around two closely
interrelated problems: the questions of ancestral domain and indigenous
institutions. Religion is also inadvertently incorporated into this debate,
forming a silent part of the equation. For instance, ancestral domain is
defined, on the one hand, by the notion of land inhabited since time
immemorial; on the other hand it relates to religious activities that are
embedded in the spiritual and ritual practices linked to particular areas of
land. In the highly-publicized opposition to the establishment of a geother-
mal plant on Mount Apo in Mindanao, for example, a Bagobo elder
claimed that the drilling of geothermal wells on Mount Apo would be like
drilling in the floor of Manila Cathedral. In order to understand how these
anthropological categorizations correspond with the definitions of the
Philippine power structure, we need to examine the legal framework within
which these conflicts unfold and are (supposed to be) settled. The relevant
central pieces of legislation are the Philippine Constitution, the Indigenous
Peoples Right Act and the Philippine Local Government Code. The follow-
ing section deals with these in more detail.

LEGAL FRAMEWORK REGARDING INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN THE

PHILIPPINES

The Philippine Constitution

The main purpose of a constitution is to publicly pronounce some central

features of a nation state. Guiding normative and state-organizing prin-
ciples are cast into an increasingly similar form worldwide. The incorporation
of the rights of cultural, ethnic and other minorities is a new challenge to
contemporary constitutions, for it requires an understanding of how to deal
with group rights short of secession or full autonomy as part of the frame-
work that constitutionally limits state powers.
The twentieth century history of the Philippines is filled with attempts
to properly organize the relationship between ruling powers, colonial or
900 Frank Hirtz

post-colonial, and the minorities.31 It includes a wide range of understandings,

misunderstandings and confusion (often simultaneously) as to what the
space of ethnic minorities ought to be within the wider Philippine context.
A brief examination of relevant articles from the 1987 Constitution of the
Philippines shows the way in which Indigenous Cultural Communities are
situated in the overall constitutional architecture. In short, it indicates that
minority issues are seen as a topic of governance the organization of
the hierarchy of power and rights, the incorporation of minorities into the
world of contemporary constitutional norms. The constitution is con-
cerned with the definition of authority over natural habitat and natural
resources, and their management, set within national confines. In the
absence of an agreed canon of norms, the general principles of cultural
sensitivity, historical reverence, and unresolved ambiguity towards the
other, lead to general pronouncements of goodwill and inclusion.
The Philippine Constitution of 1987 introduces the term Indigenous
Cultural Communities (ICC). In the section Declaration of State Principles,
it announces: The state recognizes and promotes the rights of indigenous
cultural communities within the framework of national unity and develop-
ment (Art. II, Sec. 22). Nolledo, one of the most prominent constitutional
lawyers in the Philippines and a Constitutional Commissioner in 1986,
explains: The guiding principle is the need to preserve and develop our
cultural heritage (Nolledo, 1997: 238). This short and no doubt well-
intentioned statement reveals an ambiguity, between the need to preserve
and the unquestioned incorporation of the entire, diverse population within
a single unit (the nation), whose boundaries were set by distant imperial
European powers some 300 years ago. Declaring all people within these
limits to be ours, constitutes an inclusive us that is simultaneously both
accepted and contested. It exposes the circular logic that confirms that there
is indeed a need to preserve (in a somewhat patriarchal fashion).
This guiding principle is further elaborated in several articles on how to
frame the rights of an indigenous cultural community. The placement of
these sections is in itself significant: they are included amongst the articles
on Local Government (Art. X), Social Justice and Human Rights (Art.
XIII), National Economy and Patrimony (Art. XII, on arts and culture),
and General Provisions (Art. XVI, on a consultative body to advise the
President). As well as legalizing the rights of indigenous cultural commu-
nities for the first time, another significant innovation can be found in the
section dealing with local government. This grants semi-autonomous status
to two geographical regions in the North and the South of the archipelago
within the framework of this Constitution and the national sovereignty as well
as territorial integrity of the Republic of the Philippines (Art. X, Sec. 15).
Finally, the role of NGOs is also given a constitutional basis (Declaration

31. For a brief overview of Philippine constitutional history, see Bernas (1996: vxi).
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 901

of Principles, Art. II, Sec. 23; Art. X Sec. 14, Participation in Local
Government) so that their role in the fabric of governance is secured.
Art. XI, Sec. 12 of the Constitution provides for the establishment of a
Presidential advisory board, the National Commission on Indigenous People
(NCIP), to recommend and execute policies affecting indigenous cultural
communities. Ten years later, the Indigenous Peoples Right Act (IPRA)
was promulgated, representing a major historical landmark in Philippine
legal history. Within seven months the Implementing Rules and Regulations
of IPRA (June 1998) were decreed. Since IPRA is the cornerstone of the
governments interaction with its ethnic groups, it deserves a detailed
assessment.

Indigenous Peoples Right Act

The Indigenous Peoples Right Act of 1997 is the key legislation in the
recognition of indigenous peoples rights. It is a further extension of the
constitutional definitions of indigeneity, understood basically as preserva-
tion of historical continuity with pre-invasion societies that developed on
Philippine territories. IPRA (RA 8371, 1997, IPRA: Sec. 3[h]) includes a
much more elaborate definition of indigenous than the constitution:
Indigenous Cultural Communities/Indigenous Peoples . . . refer to a group of people or
homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by other, who have con-
tinuously lived as an organized community on communally bounded and defined territory,
and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed
customs, tradition and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to
political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and culture,
become historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos. ICCs/IPs shall likewise
include peoples who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the
populations which inhabited the country, at the time of conquest or colonization, or at the
time of inroads of non-indigenous religions and cultures, or the establishment of present
state boundaries, who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political
institutions, but who may have been displaced from their traditional domains or who may
have resettled outside their ancestral domains.

All the issues mentioned in the constitution were consolidated in this one
piece of legislation. It is still too early to gauge the impact of this law, but it
has clarified what is considered achievable in the present political climate;
in other words, the selection of issues circumscribes the stance of the con-
temporary ruling elites in their relation to the cultural minorities in the
Philippines. The law codifies a historically-derived understanding and
conceptualization of minoritymajority relationships and the definition
of culture(s), and it reflects the issue of diversity as one of culture and
religion concepts that are constantly developing. Nevertheless, the law
is concerned, first and foremost, with the administrative space inhabited by
cultural minorities, and concomitant issues of local governance, also reach-
ing to some degree in the direction of classical human rights protection.
902 Frank Hirtz

IPRA also regulates the various government institutions and para-statal

organizations. These are organizations that are mandated by law but mostly
run in the form of non-governmental institutions and thus, overlap con-
siderably with NGO operations in the Philippines. The most prominent
government institution is the National Commission on Indigenous People
(NCIP). The President of the Philippines appoints the commissioners of the
NCIP. Some of these commissioners are representatives who have come up
through the ranks of peoples organizations; but for many, their appointment
to the NCIP is a way of paying political debts, a reward from those in
power, in the form of a position in which the distribution of resources, be it
government derived or natural, can be quite substantial (Coronel, 2000).
These distinct forms of gaining political support are a constant source of
tension in the daily interactions of the NCIP.
Although the IPRA, its subsequent regulations, and the establishment
of the NCIP were a stunning success based on a political groundswell in the
Philippines at that time, opposition to IPRA and its sweeping powers was
also substantial. A case questioning the constitutionality of the IPRA was only
recently dismissed by the Philippine Supreme Court.32 This constitutional
insecurity has been further exacerbated by curtailing the budget of the NCIP to
such a degree that it is rendered toothless, deprived of the means to exercise its
mandate.
One central plank in the Philippine debate (as indeed in most other parts of the
world) is how access to resources is regulated. This includes authority over
resources such as land, mineral and forest assets as well as all those areas that
fall under the rubric of (indigenous) intellectual property rights. Related issues
include cultural identity, self-determination, and recognition of indigenous legal
systems. There are many laws that touch on these issues, two of the most
important being the Philippine Forestry Reform Code (1982)33 and the Philip-
pine Mining Act of 1995. Philippine newspapers are filled with stories in which
the rights of indigenous people are threatened or trampled by powerful local and
international mining interests. All the laws have to contend with the constitu-
tional mandate that (t)he congress may provide for the applicability of custom-
ary laws governing property rights or relations determining the ownership and
the extent of ancestral domain (Art. XII, Sec. 5). Furthermore, the relationship
with other laws regulating environmental and natural resources, or laws pertain-
ing to issues of governance, can lead to contradictory interpretations which
require the involvement of the legal system to settle.34 These overlapping legal

32. December 7, 2000, with the fourteen justices evenly split.

33. The legislative history of Filipino forestry affairs is a confusing array of promulgated
laws and regulations, going back to 1863, interspersed with Presidential decrees. Forestry
regulation is relevant here in that it can conceal policies towards ethnic minorities, since
forests are one of their main habitats. See Sullivan (1991); see also Cristobal (1991).
34. The Babilonia Wilner Foundation hosts a constantly updated list of pertinent laws: see
http://www.bknet.org/lawindex.html
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 903

spheres and related conflicts constitute the core of activities of many NGOs and
peoples organizations.
A special law for the Muslim population allows this religious group to
settle its own civic affairs in accordance with provisions of the Sharia.35 The
already complex relationship between the various laws governing the use
and exploitation of natural resources, together with the interplay between
Philippine laws and the Sharia, require the assistance of well-trained jurists
to unravel. A number of NGOs act as brokers between governmental and
private powers and the ethnic minorities. Further issues play into this mix of
rights of different constituencies: laws governing natural resource manage-
ment, regulations to access government resources, and issues of civic rights,
all require an equal amount of legal expertise if marginal populations are to
be protected. To add to the complexity, issues of administration of justice
are intertwined with the authorities given to local government entities, such
as whether a local institution of conflict resolution is chosen to settle a case,
or whether the state court system claims authority, while the relationship
between the Philippine concept of local government and rights of cultural
communities is far from clear.

The Concept of Local Government in the Philippines

There are several reasons why one needs to discuss the recognition of
indigenous legal systems in the Philippine context as a sub-issue of local
government. The first is simply formal: it was the Constitutional Subcom-
mission on Local Government, chaired by Nolledo, that introduced
the recognition of ancestral domain and other indigenous legal issues.
Furthermore, minority rights are seen as an issue of regulating power:
who has authority over whose affairs, which institutions settle conflicts,
and how is the authority over revenues defined? The one area where the
issue of governance has not been satisfactorily settled is in defining the
appropriate form of local government for indigenous cultural communities.
This pertains both to independence from the central government and to
possibilities of popular control over indigenous forms of governance. To
understand the position in which the Indigenous Cultural Communities find
themselves, a short overview of the present system of local governance is
appropriate.
The nation of the Philippines is subdivided into provinces, cities, munici-
palities, and barangays as the standard territorial and political entities.
Besides these subdivisions, the constitution provides for autonomous

35. Presidential Decree No 1083 (1977), Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines,
included the establishment of special Sharia courts at the district and circuit court level.
Muslim family affairs are regulated in the Family Code (Executive Order No 209, 1987, as
amended by Executive Order No 227, 1987).
904 Frank Hirtz

regions in Muslim Mindanao and the Cordilleras (Art. X, Sec. 1).36 The
structure of local government is based on the American example.37 The
right of these territorial subdivisions to exist is not just a statutory right, but
is now a constitutional right (Bernas, 1996: 375). In making it a constitu-
tional right, any changes become much more difficult.
The barangay was established as the smallest administrative unit in direct
contact with the population. The word barangay which can be loosely
translated as village was first introduced as an administrative term
under President Marcos through PD 557 in 1974, replacing barrio which
had previously been the term for the smallest political unit. The term was
retained in the new constitution, in spite of its connections with the Marcos
dictatorship, for three reasons: its historical significance in Asian history,
existing laws that use the term, and the contemporary usage (Records, 1986:
Vol. III: 38991; also Scott, 1994).
Bernas (1988: 377) sees local autonomy in its present form as synonymous
with decentralization. The political impetus to decentralize is clearly a
response to the centralizing tendencies that characterized previous govern-
ments, especially during the Marcos rule. However, when one tries to
reconcile the concept of an Autonomous Region and the local government
units, different concepts of centralization/decentralization arise (Constitution
Art. X, Sec. 3; see Records, 1986: Vol. III: 4356). The Local Government
Code (BP Blng 337) is silent on the interaction between indigenous peoples
rights and the processes of local government (Pimentel, 1993). The idea of
ancestral domain and the norms regulating the administrative powers of the
Autonomous Regions can be seen as an outcome of a basic administrative
philosophy of decentralization, at the same time acknowledging the tension
between the two ideals by maintaining the central governments authority
over natural resources.
In summarizing the present legal situation, several themes emerge. Issues
of power and control over territories remain open and almost all regulations
originate from legislative and executive sources that are only marginally
influenced by the (indigenous) people for whom they have direct conse-
quences. Furthermore, there are no institutional mechanisms through which
new legislative efforts are reviewed, a process which might give voice to
those concerned. In this unmarked policy space, new political players enter,
especially NGOs.

36. The Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) was created on 1 August 1989
through RA No 6734, and was inaugurated on 6 November 1990 at Cotabato City, the
seat of the Regional Government. The Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR) was
established through RA No 8438, approved in December 1997.
37. As embodied in the 1935 Constitution (Art. V, Sec. 1 and Art. VI), and reiterated in the
1973 Constitution (Art. XI).
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 905

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

IN THE PHILIPPINES

The Philippines has been at the forefront of NGO development. Silliman

and Noble (1998) include a list of NGOs which runs to nine pages. By 2003,
this list would not only be much longer, but would also have changed
considerably, as new organizations appear, and others cease to exist or
re-emerge in different configurations. It is therefore extremely difficult to
provide a succint overview of the NGO situation in the Philippines, but for
the thesis of this article it is important to understand the role these organiza-
tions play in the public arena of the Philippines.
In the 1940s, the Jesuits started to organize urban slum dwellers into
neighbourhood societies, pressure groups and semi-political or meta-political
organizations. Out of this experience emerged early participatory commu-
nity organizations. In her influential article, Hollnsteiner (1974) outlined the
role of organizations that fell between personal, familial and religious
gatherings of people, on the one hand, and the government and local
administration, on the other. Intellectual and financial support for this
new type of organization came from many sources, including the Ford
Foundation,38 the (German) Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the Swedish
International Development Agency, the Dutch development organizations,
and the World Council of Churches, to name but a few. Ideologically, these
foreign donor organizations tried to use the new grassroots groups, peoples
organizations, and NGOs to bypass the ever more autocratic, dictatorial,
and corrupt regime of Marcos.39
A further factor contributing to the growth of NGOs in the Philippines
came from the political contradictions that emerged during the final Marcos
years. It was in Marcoss interest to support NGOs, so that his administra-
tion and especially his wife Imelda in her role as Governor of Metro-
Manila and Secretary of the Department of Human Settlements could
jump on the international bandwagon by promoting peoples organiza-
tions. There was further international legitimacy to be gained by adopting
the development buzzword of the time participation in this case using
government-sponsored fora in which the enlightened and benevolent Marcos
couple could display their magnanimity towards their own populace. How-
ever, the dictatorial Marcoses and their cronies got more than they had
bargained for. The country showed itself increasingly willing to organize
outside the classical forms and institutions of state governance, such as the

38. Mary Racelis (previously Hollnsteiner), an ardent supporter of the NGO cause, became
the Ford Foundation representative in the Philippines. The support of the Ford
Foundation was extended by her successor, Gary Hawes, providing not only resources
but intellectual linkages to similar movements throughout the world.
39. Silliman (1998) gives a broad, detailed and balanced overview of the role of international
connections in the development of NGOs in the Philippines.
906 Frank Hirtz

KBL (Kilusan Bogong Lipunan) and the myriad government-run and

initiated NGOs (GRINGOS) which set the tone for legitimizing a shadow
state (Wolch, 1990) and ultimately helped to undermine its autocratic
regime.
Today, there is a huge array of NGOs in the Philippines, often with
qualifiers to indicate to which side of the political spectrum they belong.
This multitude of NGOs and peoples organizations can be seen as the
embodiment of contradictory development policies, in which every inter-
national development fad, indigenous political formation, and regional con-
figuration that was formed over several decades, found its organizational
equivalent. Constantino-David (1998) imposes some order on this varied
landscape of movements, institutions, and organizations (Constantino-
David, 1998: 2731). Following her systematic work, one can distinguish
four major categories, (1) individuals, (2) membership-based organizations,
(3) ideological forces, and (4) institutions/agencies.
The Philippine Securities and Exchange (SEC) commission is the govern-
ment agency responsible for granting an organization the status of NGO.
The need to obtain such a status is mainly concerned with taxation rules,
and closely follows the format the USA has established for tax-exempt
organizations. Constantino-David provides a tentative overview of the com-
plex network of NGOs, in which geographical and sectoral alliances, sector
consortia and incorporated networks are formed, comprising individual
NGOs divided by forms of membership base, institutional linkages, religious
affiliations, and ideologies (Constantino-David, 1998: 28).
It is within this multi-layered landscape of civic organizations that the
plight of indigenous peoples is addressed. In a country as diverse as the
Philippines, with no real political or cultural centre, having its voice heard is
of key importance to any group that seeks recognition. Indigenous people
find themselves mostly connected to the operations of the GUAPOs and the
DJANGOs.40 The relationship poses distinct problems for indigenous
groups, however: NGOs operate in a political space that makes them
recognizable and recognized by local and international powers. This recog-
nition is based on their ability to literally communicate in the language of
those institutions. Indigenous peoples, on the other hand, often employ
distinctly different modes of communication: they are thus forced to either
change their ways of addressing the world, or to rely on the proper trans-
mission of their issues by NGOs into the conceptual universe (or both
simultaneously), in order that the decisive powers at the state level can
react. Should the indigenous communities decide not to rely on this layer
of brokerage and to appear on the political scene as a group in their own
right, then they must adopt a contemporary role on the political stage in

40. GUAPO means genuine, autonomous peoples organizations; DJANGO stands for
Development, Justice, and Advocacy NGOs. Here, ideological similarities are
coalesced and coalitions and co-operation intersect (Rood, 1998).
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 907

order to be accepted into the drama (adaptation of language, norms,

terminology, procedures).41
As this brief overview makes clear, the indigenous organizations inevitably
encounter the Janus face of contemporary civil society, in which indigeneity
is forged into a modern organizational form that conforms to the necessities
of depersonalized and issue-oriented institutional settings.
A decisive difference between the government and NGOs in their under-
standing of, and involvement in, minority issues can be discerned in the
different labels they use. Whereas the NGO world in the Philippines only
uses the term indigenous peoples, the government still prefers the term
cultural communities. The main contention of NGOs and indigenous
peoples alike is that the term cultural renders them tourist attractions for
photo opportunities, or stilted museum pieces near Manila International
airport. This seemingly minute difference over words yields very different
forms of engagement.
One of the characteristics of NGO involvement with the indigenous
peoples in the Philippines, has been the role of local traditional leadership.
This has meant that the new civic associations could interact with already
politically-organized groups, so that one of the first stages of many NGO
efforts in other contexts, namely community organizing, was less of an
issue. The main role of NGOs in the struggle of indigenous peoples has
therefore been to offer communication resources, and technical assistance in
the form of legal and environmental expertise. As we saw above, two
important cases that reached beyond the national boundaries were the
fight against the Chico river dam and the campaign against the geothermal
plant in Mindanao. With the introduction of the ancestral domain claim
originally a purely administrative order of the Department of Energy and
National Resources (DAO 2) and later codified in IPRA as CADC
(Certificate of Ancestral Domain Claim) the technical and legal expertise
of NGOs was not only utilized in the formation of these laws, but also
helped in the establishment and granting of these legal titles (McDermott,
2000)
These two cases also encouraged the development of specialized NGOs
for dealing with indigenous peoples and issues. ALUMAHAD (Alyansia ng
mga Lumad sa Habagatang Mindanaw Alang sa Democrasya), the TABAK
(Tunay na Alyansa ng Bayan Alay sa Katutbo) and the national network of
KAMP (Katipunan ng mga Katatubong Mamayaman ng Pilipinas) are
direct results of these two struggles. The distinction between NGOs and
peoples organizations is blurred in these circumstances, all the more so
when one remembers that the church-based local organizations intersect
with all their activities as well.

41. For a clear analysis on the degree to which the discourses of modern institutions of
governance run parallel to indigenous understandings, see Hilhorst (2001).
908 Frank Hirtz

In fact, historically, the churches were the first groups to assist the
indigenous peoples. Their efforts are somewhat distinct, but not totally
separate, from the evolution of the vibrant NGO scene in the Philippines.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines actively supported the
Tribal Filipino Apostolates in separate dioceses. These Tribal Filipino
Apostolates allowed locally-based organizations to emerge and contributed
to the decentralized development of a common consciousness regarding
indigenous issues. Since 1977, the Protestant United Church of Christ in the
Philippines (UCCP), the National Council of Churches in the Philippines
(NCCP), and the World Council of Churches have assisted in various ways
to highlight the situation of indigenous peoples. For example, the only
existing map of ethnic groups is one published by the NCCP in 1982,
while their publication Sandugo established the first common forum in
which the voices of indigenous peoples could be heard.
The long-standing presence of churches and the relative absence of state
institutions in some localities probably explains why church-based or
church-financed institutions enjoy such a high degree of legitimacy among
the indigenous peoples. With their particular mode of financing, the
churches and their personnel were seen as solely serving the communities
in which they operate. This sets them apart from NGOs, which always have
to look in two directions at once keeping one eye on their popular base
and the other on their (international or national) funding sources. The
highly visible involvement of prominent clergy, such as Bishop Claver in
Bukidnon, especially during the Marcos reign, and Bishop Juan de Dios
Peblo of Kidapawan, Cotabato, further deepened the legitimacy of the
churches.
Nevertheless, the new instruments adopted by the Philippine government
to deal with the central issue of ancestral domain have made it necessary for
the indigenous peoples to engage in legally sophisticated interaction with the
government agencies concerned. Most of the indigenous peoples find them-
selves in areas that are considered to be public domain, claimed under the
Regalian Doctrine (see Lynch, 1982), inherited by the American occupying
forces from their Spanish predecessors, and transferred to the independent
Philippine Republic in 1947. In short, this doctrine says that all land that is
not owned by someone as certified by a title in the office of the public
registrar is the property of the state. The majority of indigenous people
are thus defined as squatters on their own land. New NGOs, especially, are
concerning themselves with the legal issues involved; the most prominent
among them are PANLIPI (Tanggapang Panligal ng Katatubong Pilipino)
and the Legal Resource Center (LRC), a group of independent and
university-based legal scholars, lawyers and anthropologists. Not sur-
prisingly, these intricate issues of law and power are leading to internal
tensions (Wiber, 1993).
Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines 909

CONCLUSION

The indigenous populations of the Philippines had one advantage over their
hispanicized brethren of the lowlands, namely that they could base many of
their community efforts on existing social configurations that had survived
and developed since pre-colonial times. In spite of the strength they brought
into their struggles for proper recognition, however, the specific social
configuration of indigeneity also poses difficult questions.
Many of the socio-political forms of the original organizations do not
square with the modern, individualizing forms of voluntary association that
NGOs represent. In this way, the NGOs mirror a phenomenon of the
western world that is often in direct contradiction to the social norms of
indigenous people. For example, the use of datus a term widely used and
usually reserved for indigenous elders or decision-makers in mobilizing
indigenous support and cohesion rests on the notion of male leadership that
excludes women from the decision-making processes. Most contemporary
NGOs, on the other hand, insist on an egalitarian, non-sexist form of
decision-making and representation, as do many of their international donors.
The adaptation of lowland mores among upland women calls into question
the insistence on traditional forms of representation (Resurreccion, 1999).
An argument sometimes used is that the life-worlds of indigenous peoples
should be understood as religious practices, and that they should therefore
be eligible for the protection afforded by the freedom of religious beliefs.
This modern constitutional concept, however, transforms a dynamic trad-
itional way of life into a demand for a static understanding of an indigenous
world view, for only the proof of practices since time immemorial allows the
establishment of a distinctive form of existence, which in turn allows for the
recognition of legal rights to utilize ones own resources. The involvement of
Christian churches in the defence of indigenous populations adds another
puzzling piece to this jigsaw of religious pluralism.
The emergence of populism within state and government in the last two
decades may be attributed to global civil society movements and local
NGOs who are increasingly putting forward more emancipatory agendas
on behalf of local peoples and communities (Machado, 1994). The response
of states has been to offer more community-based resource management
programmes involving national minorities, under the programmatic device
of indigenous norm recognition, which in turn distorts and reconfirms old
fault lines within indigenous communities (Wiber, 1993). Further, populist
notions have constructed minorities as traditional repositories of sound and
sustainable knowledge of resource management, thus passing on to them the
responsibility of resource conservation and regeneration, usually under
systems of state monitoring mechanisms (Lewis, 1992; Li, 1999; Resurrec-
cion, 1999; Sajor, 1999). Like previous state-led tendencies, such a trend
may mistakenly treat minorities as homogeneous groups with uniform
claims and needs, and fail to consider the complexity of their lives.
910 Frank Hirtz

In the words of Benjamin (2002: 9), this relationship between the rulers
and the ruled allows two aspects to be emphasized:
First, it is not an evolutionary series. It is, rather, a single complex, formed of alternative,
mutually dissimilatory responses to the same sociopolitical circumstance the imposition of
a hierarchically organized, supralocal, state apparatus. On this view, all historically and
ethnographically reported tribal societies are secondary formations, characterized by the
positive steps they have taken to hold themselves apart from incorporation into the state
apparatus (or its more remote tentacles), while often attempting to suppress the knowledge
that their way of life has nevertheless been profoundly shaped by the presence of the state or
whatever locally represents its complexifying effects.

The process of recognition as an indigenous people is thus embedded in the

emergence of a world society and its rationalizing forms of communication
and institutions (Luhmann, 1997: 14571). A comparative-historical approach
illuminates the worldwide increase of invention if not reconstruction of
ones own traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1992). Paradoxically, one
has to leave behind the contrasting notions of traditional and modern
societies, simply because modern process and means are employed to assert
this difference.42 Divergent conditions produce different regional styles of
tradition that allow tradition-based social institutions and strategies to
produce advantages to participating in the contemporary world. Yet in so
doing, these groups are forced to make use of the rational forms of
organization and institution-building. Thus, they employ exogenously,
internationally legitimated forms of due process to secure the institutional
support of contemporary state offices and non-governmental organizations.

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Frank Hirtz is Associate Professor in the Department of Human and Com-

munity Development (University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616,
USA). He graduated in both law and sociology, and works on issues of
social welfare, social policy and the Third Sector in Southeast Asia and
California. He is presently finishing a manuscript entitled Crumbs of Com-
passion, a work on hunger and foodbanks in California.