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FACTS:
Petitioners Isagani Cruz and Cesar Europa filed a suit for prohibition and
mandamus as citizens and taxpayers, assailing the constitutionality of certain
provisions of Republic Act No. 8371, otherwise known as the Indigenous People’s
Rights Act of 1997 (IPRA) and its implementing rules and regulations (IRR). The
petitioners assail certain provisions of the IPRA and its IRR on the ground that these
amount to an unlawful deprivation of the State’s ownership over lands of the public
domain as well as minerals and other natural resources therein, in violation of the
regalian doctrine embodied in section 2, Article XII of the Constitution.
ISSUE:
HELD:
Additionally, ancestral lands and ancestral domains are not part of the lands
of the public domain. They are private lands and belong to the ICCs/IPs by native
title, which is a concept of private land title that existed irrespective of any royal
grant from the State. However, the right of ownership and possession by the
ICCs/IPs of their ancestral domains is a limited form of ownership and does not
include the right to alienate the same.