a r n o l D P.

a l a m o n

D i s c r i m i nat i o n &
the lumaD struggle
in minDanao
WA R S O F E X T I N C T I O N
 A R N O L D P. A L A M O N

WA R S O F
EXTINCTION
D I S C R I M I NAT I O N &

THE LUMAD STRUGGLE

IN MINDANAO

IMAGE SELECTION & BOOK DESIGN BY KARL CASTRO

Wars of Extinction: Discrimination and
the Lumad Struggle in Mindanao
Author: Arnold P. Alamon
Book and cover design: Karl Castro
ISBN: 978-971-95500-4-4
Contents of this book may be quoted from
or copied so long as the source/authors are
acknowledged. Mindanao Interfaith Institute
on Lumad Studies, RMP-NMR Inc and the
‘Healing the Hurt’ Project partners do not
guarantee that information contained in
this book is appropriate in every possible
circumstances and shall not be held liable for
any damage incurred as a result of its use.
This book is available online:
www.miils.org
www.rmp-nmr.org
Frontispiece:
At the center of the “wars of extinction”
being waged against indigenous
communities are Lumad communities
and schools. The photo is a Lumad child’s
depiction of the attack in their communities
in Mahagsay, San Luis, Agusan del Surdrawn
in a psychosocial intervention. (R M P-N M R )
Previous spread:
Lumad schools like this one in San Fernando,
Bukidnon are under threat of closure.
Already far from much needed social
services and public education, indigenous
children that are served by literacy and
numeracy such as this one operated by the
Rural Missionaries of the Philippines are
under attack. (PAU V I L L A N U EVA)
Images courtesy of:
Karl Castro
Erwin Mascariñas
C. Panlilio
Pau Villanueva
Gary Ben Villocino
Google Earth
Art and Picture Collection, The New York
Public Library
University of Michigan Library (Special
Collections Library)
US Geological Survey
US Library of Congress
This book is produced by the Mindanao
Interfaith Institute on Lumad Studies, and
published by RMP-NMR Inc and the ‘Healing
the Hurt’ Project partners.
This book has been published with support
from the European Union. The contents of
this publication are the sole responsibility
of RMP-NMR Inc and the ‘Healing the Hurt’
Project partners and can in no way be taken
to reflect the views of the European Union.
Publisher:
Rural Missionaries of the Philippines
Northern Mindanao Sub-Region
(RMP-NMR), Inc
Office address:
Room 310, 3rd Floor, Diocesan Centrum
Salvador Lluch St., Poblacion
9200 Iligan City,
Philippines
T/F: +63 (63) 303 1595
Mobile: +63 917 590 8804
E: info@rmp-nmr.org
W: www.rmp-nmr.org
Follow us on Twitter: @rmpnmr
Like us on Facebook: @rmpnmr.inc
This book is dedicated to the life and
struggle of Lumad leader Renato “Tatay
Renz” Anglao and countless others before
who paid the ultimate sacrifice in defense
of their community’s ancestral land. One
of the recognized leaders of TINDOGA, he
was with his five year-old child and wife
when he was waylaid by gunmen while
on-board his motorcycle in the Bukidnon
highway last February 3, 2017.
 CONTENTS

Chapter 1
Introduction
1

Chapter 2
Matrices of Oppression
5

Chapter 3
The Lumad Past: The Conquest of Mindanao
through Resettlement
21

Chapter 4
American Benevolence and Shifting Modes of Production:
Agricultural Production in Bukidnon
39

Chapter 5
Logging as Gateway Activity to Economic Plunder
and Environmental Disaster
61

Chapter 6
Mining in Mindanao
67
 Chapter 7
Wars of Extinction
111

Chapter 8
Cowboys and Ranchers
and the Manobo Pulangion of Quezon, Bukidnon
135

Chapter 9
Heeding Lessons of History:
The Banwaon of San Luis, Agusan de Sur
1 57

C h a p t e r 10
The Lumad Present: Accumulation by Dispossession
173

Chapter 11
Dispossession through State-sponsored Wars of Extinction
181

Chapter 12
The Lumad Future: Lumad Identity and Struggle
19 1

Chapter 13
Necessary Decouplings
209

r e f e r e nc e s —— 2 3 2
 1 —— introduction

Structural discrimination is a concept that

has been present in various literatures from
the social sciences, human rights discourse
and international development work. In the
social sciences, the concept is associated
with the concepts of systemic inequality
and racism. Many studies on class and race
in Sociology, for instance, point out the
institutional and cultural divisions that
relegate certain groups to the margins and
they use the concept of institutional racism.
Multilateral international institutions
such as the United Nations also recognize
structural discrimination as a reality.
Mirjana Nejcevska of the UN Office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights
website defines structural discrimination as:

1
 “…the rules, norms, routines, patterns of attitudes and behavior
in institutions and other societal structures that represent
obstacles to groups or individuals in achieving the same rights
and opportunities that are available to the majority of the
population.” (Najcevska, 2010)

The use of the concept of structural discrimination has been

applied by the government of New Zealand in relation to their
significant indigenous population such as the Maori and Pacific
Islander groups. They have defined structural discrimination as the:

“…entire network of rules and practices [that] disadvantages

less empowered groups while serving at the same time to
advantage the dominant group.” (New Zealand State Services
Commission)

The Philippines’ own IPRA law of 1997 also has its own tacit recog-
nition of structural discrimination. In Section 2, Declaration of State
Policies, it is stated that the State “shall guarantee that members of
ICCs/IPs regardless of sex, shall equally enjoy the full measure of
human rights and freedoms without distinction or discrimination.”
Section 21 on Social Justice and Human Rights expresses a strong
recognition to redress structural recognition by requiring the State
to extend to indigenous groups “them the same employment rights,
opportunities, basic services, educational and other rights and priv-
ileges available to every member of the society.”
While discourses on structural discrimination have been present
in the law, academe and development work, empirical studies that
map out their reality on the ground specifically in the Lumad areas

2
of Mindanao remain scant. This book aims to contribute to filling
this void.
In the task to trace the historical development of the structural
discrimination of the Lumad, the study aims to fulfill the following
objectives:
 
1. provide an overview of existing literature on the continuing
structural discrimination against the Indigenous Peoples
of the Philippines in general and the Lumad of Mindanao in
particular; and to:
2. document the common threads of Lumad discrimination
through the gathering of community histories.

Through these research activities, we aim to answer the

following questions:

1. What are the lived experiences of structural discrimination of

the Lumad?
2. What have been their personal and community responses to
their systemic marginalization?

Of particular interest to this study is to relate the formal and

institutional modes of discrimination to the implicit and informal
modes of marginalization from where they sprung. Discrimination
is systemic and thus, attitudes and beliefs that contribute to the
marginalization of indigenous groups have a social, political, and
economic base. Thus, the study intends to map out the contours
of this “system” that places the Lumad in, and even beyond, the
margins. In fact, the study puts forward the argument that what

3
the Lumad of Mindanao experience surpasses the limits of insti-
tutional discrimination to one that is an obvert systemic war of
extinction.
There are two major sections of this book divided into different
chapters. The introduction and the first chapter of the book engage
structural discrimination as a concept and argue that what is taking
place in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao is, in fact, a
war of extinction among the most oppressed and exploited sector
of Philippine society – the Lumad. The rest of the book explores the
Lumad narrative’s past, present, and future.
In Chapters 8 and 9, two contemporary case studies of Lumad
communities are presented. The first speaks about the struggle of
the Manobo Pulangion in reclaiming their ancestral land in the face
of large-scale agricultural expansion. The second case details the
struggle of the Banwaon community of San Luis, Agusan del Sur to
maintain their autonomy amid the charge of state-led logging and
mining interests into their ancestral domain.
There is also an extensive array of historical photographs and
visual images in the book curated by Karl Castro that help deliver
the urgent message of this work.

4
 2 —— M atr ice s of oppr e ssion

The true narrative of the Filipino nation is

yet to be completely written. But the major
narrative threads of this story are already
well-established. Our colonizers came and
conquered; and coopted the traditional
leadership. Since then, our political and
social culture has been a reflection of the
distortions of an economy ruled by foreign
interests in cahoots with a landed elite.
The consequence of which for majority of
the Filipinos is their continuing economic
marginalization and suffering in revolving
regimes of predatory elite rule.
But there is an important aspect to
this story, one that we may have missed to
account for in our attempts to understand

5
the whole tapestry of narratives of the Filipino nation. This is
largely because this group has yet to be integrated into the main-
stream political and economic life of the nation.
Camping around busy intersections across various urban cities,
irritating motorists and commuters with their incessant begging
are the Bajau. They have gained a notoriety among urban dwellers
who are scandalized by all they represent – extreme poverty, mendi-
cancy, and unsanitary practices. They are scorned for allowing
their children to be exposed on the streets, belittled because they
can neither read nor write, and essentially denigrated for repre-
senting the poorest among our kind.
These traits that are not unique to the group for sure. A great
part of our urban spaces are actually inhabited by people of the
same economic situation. But whereas the urban poor can be
contained in their squatter enclaves, it is the assault of the Bajau’s
presence in urbane spaces that is disconcerting for many. However,
the Bajau have not always been urban dwellers, and begging has
not always been their means of subsistence.
What has brought the Bajau to the city centers all over the
country? What is the story of the Bajau and how would do they fit
into the narrative of the Filipino nation beyond being regarded as
eyesores and irritating mendicants of the present? How is the story
of the Bajau representative of the story of our Indigenous Peoples
in the country and the Lumad of Mindanao, more specifically?
The vast expanse of the Sulu sea and the once rich abundant
fishing grounds of the area made the Bajau self-sustaining, but
migratory to the coastal settlements all over. However, when the
Muslim- Christian conflict of the 70s reached their settlements,
their first recourse was to flee in order to escape the threat of war.

6
The entry of large trawlers within their traditional fishing grounds
pushed them further away from their indigenous means of liveli-
hood. Since then, their recourse has always been to flee from the
threat of armed and powerful groups (Bracamonte, 2011).
It is the mixture of their sea-faring nature which insulated them
from the imperatives of social integration into mainstream society,
the terrible effects of war, and entry of commercial operations in
their traditional fishing grounds among other factors which have
brought the Bajau into our city streets in a desperate bid for their
kinds’ survival.
Here, they have subsisted on the scraps and excess that the city
provides always with the threat of being physically sent away by
state social services. No one stands up to protect their rights for
today, they are the modern lepers that officialdom and almost all
want to get rid of.
However, the marginalization of the Bajau is not exclusive and
unique to their kind. They manifest the structural discrimination
that the Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines experience including
the historical marginalization of their fellow Indigenous Peoples of
Mindanao - the Lumad.
The case of the Bajau represents a group that are so incapaci-
tated because of their marginalization that they could not even
begin to work towards integration, thus their recourse to mendi-
cancy. They are actually refugees displaced by war and economic
marginalization. This incapacity actually represents the Bajau’s
shared fates with our other indigenous Filipino brothers and
sisters including that of the Lumad of Mindanao albeit to a lesser
degree. But the experiences of systemic marginalization are the
same and shared.

7
 The Bajau is also the Lumad in terms of our shared fate as an
oppressed people; first in the hands of our colonial rulers, and
then under the domination of more powerful groups in Philippine
society.

On the limits of m a rgina lit y

There are fourteen to seventeen million Indigenous Peoples of the

Philippines from one hundred ten distinct ethnolinguistic groups.
They roughly make up fifteen percent of the country’s total popu-
lation (Journal of Philippine Statistics, 2008: 92) Most of these,
about 61%, are found in the southern island of Mindanao, while
a significant number are located in the Cordillera Administrative
Region, 33%, of the North (UNDP, 2013:1).
In January 2010, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indig-
enous Issues revealed that the Indigenous Peoples of the world
make up a third of the world’s poorest people and that they suffer
disproportionately in areas of health, education, and human rights,
and regularly face systemic discrimination and exclusion (UNDP,
2013:1). These features and qualities are reflected in the condition
of the country’s Indigenous Peoples who are legated to the margins
of political, social, and economic life. This is most especially true
among Mindanao’s Indigenous Peoples who fall under the collec-
tive term “Lumad.”
Various studies have indicated the dire situation of the southern
island’s Lumad because Mindanao is also home to the country’s
poorest regions. Where poverty is deepest and most severe in
Mindanao are also the areas where the Lumad are. (ADB, 2002: 33)
There is a consensus that Indigenous Peoples in general, and the
Lumad in particular, represent the poorest and most marginalized

8
sectors of Philippine society. Social service provision in indigenous
territories is far limited compared to other areas of the country.
Government allocations show that regions with the highest concen-
trations of Indigenous Peoples in Mindanao receive the smallest
amount (Cariño, 2012: 7).
The Lumad therefore represent the most marginalized and
oppressed sector in Philippine society. It is easy to imagine the
structural mechanisms that have placed the Lumad at such a
disadvantaged situation. They are usually found in areas that are
geographically inaccessible, in voting numbers that are far too
inconsequential to make them politically important to politicians
at the center. They only come to the fore of public consciousness
when they come down from the mountains to evacuate or when
their ancestral domains are being appropriated.
But who are Mindanao’s Indigenous Peoples who have to occupy
the unenviable position of experiencing a plethora of oppressions
that our marginalized groups experience? Who are the Lumad and
what is their story? And how is their shared narrative both indica-
tive of, at the same time, present extreme cases of the phenomenon
of structural discrimination that Indigenous Peoples undergo at
present?

W ho a r e the Lum a d?

For starters, the Lumad is not a tribe that is comprised of a distinct

singular ethnolinguistic group. The Cebuano word meaning “native
of the land” refers to the non-Muslim indigenous ethnolinguistic
groups that can be found throughout the island of Mindanao. They
are the following:

9
 Ata Mandaya

Bagobo/Ubo Mangguwangan

Banwaon Manobo

B’laan Mansaka

Kalagan Matigsalog

Kaulo Subanen

Dibabawon Talaandig

Higaonon Tiboli

Mamanwa Tiruray

1 0
 Its provenance as a term to refer to their common collective
identity as the Indigenous Peoples of Mindanao was first used
during the 1970s. As the various groups faced the onslaught of
logging and agricultural plantation expansion pushed by private
business interests and with the backing of the state and its military
in the country then under a dictatorship, “Lumad” entered the
lexicon of progressive church groups and activist organizations
to refer to the Indigenous Peoples victimized by state-led develop-
ment aggression.
During the Lumad Mindanao People’s Federation assembly in
Kidapawan, North Cotabato last June 26, 1986, the term “Katawhang
Lumad” or Lumad Peoples was adopted by the delegates coming
from these different ethnolinguistic groups to refer to their collec-
tive identity henceforth. Since then, the term has evolved to convey
a collective identity and a point of unity among Mindanao’s indig-
enous groups as they face the common struggle of defending and
reclaiming their ancestral rights.
Therefore, the roots of the term Lumad and its evolving
meaning always had political origins and implications. It repre-
sents an emerging and developing political consciousness among
Mindanao’s indigenous groups as they collectively confront the
same systemic mechanisms of structural discrimination oftentimes
with the full backing and complicity of the Philippine State and its
military.

1 1
These are members
of the Matigsalug
from Sitio Malungon,
Kalagangan, San
Fernando, Bukidnon.
Their community
faces issues of
illiteracy, hunger and
militarization. But
they derive strength
from the unity of their
communities and the
continued practice of
their indigenous way
of life. (A L L I M AGE S:
PAU V I L L A N U EVA)
Lumad communities are filled with youngsters who are eager to gain an education.
They also wish to have futures as promising as their lowland counterparts.
 A RT A N D PICT U R E COL L ECT ION, T H E N EW YOR K PU BL IC L I BR A RY
“Types of Spanish Soldiers in the Southern Philippines.
The Spanish Army in the Philippines was composed largely
of young men, many of them mere boys, who had been
drafted into the service. They were glad of the opportunity
to return home, as the Philippine service was not to their
liking.” From the book Our islands and their people as
seen with camera and pencil by José De Olivares, 1899.
 3 —— The Lum a d Past: the conque st
of Minda nao through R e settlement

Why is the plight of the Indigenous Peoples

of Mindanao an indication that we are a
divided nation? The answer is simple but it
is a principle that remains difficult to grasp
for many who have always assumed the
legitimacy of the imposed nation-state that
is the Philippine Republic to the inhabitants
of this culturally and politically diverse
group of islands.
The Filipino nation was born from the
rubble of Spanish colonialism, that much
should be clear. It was largely because of
developments in the global economy and
the consequent collective resistance to
colonial rule, first under the Spaniards and
then shortly after, the Americans, that the
birth of the Filipino nation was implanted

2 1
in the hearts and minds of its first true sons and daughters.
What pushed them to embrace dreams of self-rule and inde-
pendence from their white masters was the almost four centuries
of bearing the colonial yoke. We are not just talking about tales of
yore about the abusive friar or the haughty landlord, but a whole
slew of political and economic arrangements that set the ground
for the eventual integration of the Luzon island’s economy into the
global economic order.
There is much debate about how this process took place. Alfred
McCoy’s work (2001:10) on the Philippines highlights the complex
regional dynamics that came into play at the turn of the last century
undermining the economic influence of Spain as a colony. Instead of
the direct center-periphery relations that existed between neocol-
onies in Latin America and their colonial masters in Europe and
America, McCoy highlighted the intra-regional direct economic
relations between foreign trading houses and local economies in
Visayas and Sulu for instance.
Though the history of the country’s assimilation into the global
economic order may have been fraught with various twists and
turns and resulted to varying social and economic effects, this inte-
gration is driven by a singular unchanging logic – the marshalling
of local resources for the extraction of profit by a colonial power.
Such differentiated political economic realities had acute conse-
quences to the project of national liberation launched by the revo-
lutionaries from Luzon according to McCoy.
The first hundred years of Spanish rule was particularly brutal
and deadly. With the aim of exacting as much tributes for the king,
the colonial government and friars exacted such a heavy toll on
the local population. It was not even a viable operation and hardly

2 2
any contribution was collected for the crown in Spain. However,
the re-organization of the political and economic systems of the
conquered peoples of the island into encomiendas and the pueblos
for taxation goals was socially costly. There was a noted decline in
the tributary population during the period 1588-1686 indicating
the shrinking of the native economy according to OD Corpuz (1997:
45-47) among other social consequences.
By the mid 19th century European and American trading houses
were established in Luzon and the Visayas islands imposing
feudal relations marked by a system of debt peonage and share-
cropping and orienting these towards producing for the demand
of the international market (Corpuz, 1997: 176) and in some
instances creating wage-labor relations among weavers in Iloilo
(McCoy, 2001: 9). The next two hundred years of Spanish colonial
rule perfected the transformation of the local economy from
self-sufficient barangay-based economic production to haciendas
producing for surplus which eventually created a “poverty sector
of subsistence farmers and a rich class of the landed gentry”
(Corpuz, 1997: 139).
The southern island of Mindanao was relatively isolated from
the horrors of these massive transformations in Luzon and Visayas’
political economies though the war of subjugation and pacification
of Spain reached its shores albeit with limited success. An indica-
tion of the difficulty of the Spanish colonizers in exploiting the
southern economy are the scant details in historical records of the
goods they were able to secure for trade from Mindanao whereas
large settlements in Visayas and Luzon as origins of a variety of
goods were identified. In the 1897 Spanish census, they were only
able to account for less than half of the island’s estimated popula-

2 3
tion (Corpuz, 1997: 143), which reveal their lack of effective control
in most parts of the island.
The impetus was there to eventually conquer Mindanao and
exploit its still untapped resources. But the island was too far and
too big to keep within the limited reach of the Spanish colonial
authorities. The successful resistance of the Sulu and Maguindanao
sultanates is a factor to the continuing independence of the island
during this period and allowed the Islamized population of the
South to continue practicing their ways and beliefs.
While the Spaniards were diligent in setting up settlements in
lowland riverside trading posts along the coasts in the Northern
parts of the island, the non-Moro indigenous population always
had the option to go further into the interior where resources
remained untapped and abundant. In the forests and verdant
valleys of Opol, Bukidnon, and Agusan, they could maintain their
traditional ways of life and beliefs and protect themselves from
being converted into Christianized landless peasants working for
landlords as what happened to their colonized counterparts in
Visayas and Luzon.
It was only the push of the new American colonial ruler to exploit
the rich resources of Mindanao to feed into its growing capitalist
industries that saw the belated integration of the island’s political
economy to that of the rest of the colony and the rest of the devel-
oping global economic order. The pretext was an erroneous legal
fiat achieved through the Treaty of Paris that included the uncon-
quered island in the sale of the Philippine archipelago from Spain
to the US for the paltry price of twenty million dollars.
Hungry for the profit to be given by timber, pasture land for
cattle ranches, and the potential rich agricultural land of logged-

2 4
over areas that the island had to offer, the Americans were finally
able to achieve what the Spaniards for three hundred years failed
to attain – the subjugation of the island of Mindanao and its people.
This was secured through a ruthless military campaign of the
new colonial authorities which decimated whole populations of a
gallant Moro resistance (Rodil, 1994).
But more effective in securing the economic resources of the
whole region, more than any pacification campaign, was the pitting
of people against each other in a proxy economic war that they
waged. It was through relentless resettlement policies that saw
waves of migrants from Luzon and Visayas that brought with them
the same imposed feudal arrangements that eventually opened up
the Mindanao frontier to colonial economic exploitation and the
transformation of the island’s mode of production.
A hundred years hence, we are still reeling from the conse-
quences of this proxy economic war within our divided Mindanao
of Lumads, Moros, and a migrant largely landless peasantry.
Mindanao historian B.R. Rodil (1994:37) put forward a strong
statement in his assessment of the various colonial American
and Philippine government resettlement policies to the island of
Mindanao. He wrote that the in-migration of people into Lumad
and Moro ancestral domains took place in such an unprecedented
scale that it “literally overturned the lives of Indigenous Peoples.”
He makes an interesting conjecture. Though the number of people
who formally availed of the government’s resettlement program
may have been few in number, what it did was to open the once
sparsely-populated Lumad and Moro areas to the “spontaneous
influx” of migrants from Luzon and Visayas who followed their
relatives to these places. The result was the displacement of the

2 5
These colonial portraits of Mindanao’s indigenous
groups were taken by Philippine Commission member
and Secretary to the Interior Dean C. Worcester during
the period of American colonial occupation. He would
later pioneer the establishment of ranches in the
province of Bukidnon together with Manuel Fortich
Sr. Note the contrast in body language between the
Lumad youth in the previous section and this set taken
under the cold gaze of the colonial shutter.

A L L L I M AGE S: U-M L I BR A RY COL L ECT ION. DE A N C. WORCE ST ER , PHOTO GR A PH S OF T H E PH I L I PPI N E ISL A N D S

2 6
2 7
2 8
2 9
3 0
3 1
3 2
3 3
local indigenous population from areas where they derived their
traditional means of livelihood.
Historically, it was a rice shortage in Sulu and Zamboanga from
the period 1911-1912 which prompted then American Governor of
the Moro Province, General John Pershing to call for homesteaders
from Luzon and Visayas who will be asked to plant much needed
cereals. There are accounts of Americans enticing Cebuanos to
migrate to the South by parading around the city a thirteen feet-tall
cornstalk to prove the fertility of the soil in Mindanao. Interest-
ingly, the Cebuanos were also required to be skilled in arnis, a
local martial arts, which betray the pacification objectives of the
resettlement program. Fifty homesteaders were then deployed to
the first agricultural colony established at the Cotabato Valley
where Moro resistance was present (Rodil, 1994: 37).
What followed was a slew of colonial laws formalizing the reset-
tlement program of the American colonial government. The Philip-
pine Commission Act No. 2254 which was passed in 1913 to boost rice
production formally established agricultural colonies composed of
migrants from Visayas and Luzon at the heart of Central Mindanao
particularly Maguindanao, Cotabato Valley, and as far as Glan at
the Southern part of Cotabato (Rodil, 1994: 37).
Early on, there was recognition among the colonial authori-
ties that a decrease in food production incited social unrest and
bringing in homesteaders was seen as a mitigating measure. But
the objective went beyond increasing food production as indicated
by other resettlement policies that would follow the first colonial
homestead act.
For instance, the Quirino-Recto “Colonization” Act of 1935 was
named as such – a tacit recognition of the unconquered state of the

3 4
US L I BR A RY OF CONGR E S S

General John “Black Jack” Pershing became famous as the General of the Armies of the
American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. But he had a long and significant tenure
in the Philippine southern Island of Mindanao at the turn of the last century, where he
fought and struggled to contain a vigorous Moro resistance against American colonial
rule. The entry of this photo at the US Library of Congress reads: Pershing, Capt. John
J. – Moro conqueror in Mindanao.

3 5
island wherein a resettlement program was designed to resolve the
“Mindanao peace and order problem.” The intention was not just
to augment food production but also respond to another govern-
ment concern – the agrarian unrest in Visayas and Luzon where
many of these landless homesteaders come from (Rodil, 1994: 39).
By transplanting them from their places of origin, they can now
have their own land, land which they cannot have from the sugar
barons and hacienderos from the Visayas and Luzon.
What these resettlement programs, and there had been many
after the Quirino-Recto Colonization Act involving the establish-
ment of various government agencies such as the National Land
Settlement Administration of 1939, the Rice and Corn Production
Administration of 1949, and the Economic Development Corpora-
tion in the early 1950s (Rodil, 1994: 39), really meant was the trans-
plantation of a whole army of Christianized landless peasants into
the promised land of Mindanao as a colonizing force, providing the
context and the continuing motivation for the bitter conflict that
rages in the island up to the present.
To add to Rodil’s analysis, the resettlement plan also worked in
placing Christianized settlers at the frontlines against the resilient
Moro resistance, these desperate landless peasants who are willing
to wage war against the original inhabitants of the land so that
they can have their own land to till. Brandishing mint government
papers as a testament to their land ownership, they eased out the
Moro from their domain and assembled themselves into armed
bands to protect themselves and their land.
The resettlement program also had an effect on changing the
existing economic relations in Lumad territories. In almost all of
these non-Moro indigenous communities, there remains in their

3 6
 A temporary mission church under construction, made of wooden poles, sawali sidings,
and a nipa thatched roof. Mati, Davao Oriental, 1898.
U-M L I BR A RY DIGI TA L COL L ECT ION S , PHOTO GR A PH S OF T H E PH I L I PPI N E ISL A N D S

oral history stories of how lowland Christian settlers stole their

land through ingenious ways of first offering gifts only to present
a long list of items supposedly loaned. The Lumad could only pay
using the only property they had which was often communal and
unsurveyed land. Not for long, the once mobile and free Lumad who
practiced shifting agricultural practices in the verdant valleys of
Bukidnon for instance would now find themselves fenced off from
their sources of livelihood and survival – the once open forest,
pasture land, rivers, and agricultural land.
Rodil analyzed the shifts in population characteristics in Cotabato
as an example of areas targeted by decades of both the colonial and
Philippine government’s resettlement program in Mindanao and

3 7
discovered how towns which had Moro and Lumad majorities at the
turn of the century, had overwhelmingly Christian populations at
present (1994: 40). What proportion of these figures can be attributed
to the assimilation of the local population to the dominant culture
or to the decimation of the indigenous inhabitants are the subject of
further studies. But the effect of the influx of resettled homesteaders
cannot be discounted. In Bukidnon for instance, the population in
the province doubled from 28,150 in 1903, to 57,195 by 1932 which
can be assumed to come from the steady flow of migrants from
Visayas and Luzon. All these are proofs of the historical processes of
displacement imposed by the colonial and Philippine government on
the Moro and Lumad populations of Mindanao.
Resettlement and the resulting imposition of formal govern-
ment processes, counterinsurgency operations, and other forms of
containment strategies for the displaced and resisting Moro and
Lumad populations paved the way for the entry of big business
eager to exploit the emancipated resources. (Rodil, 1994: 31)
“In the wake of the settlers, or sometimes ahead of them, came
the rich and the powerful in the form of extensive plantations,
pasture leases or cattle ranches, mining concerns, logging
concessions, and rattan concessions. The government, too,
added its bit: development projects like irrigation dams, hydro-
electric plants, geothermal plants, highways and so on.”

3 8
 4 —— Amer ica n benevolence a nd
shifting mode s of production:
agr icultur a l production in Buk idnon

There is an interesting account of how the

Americans describe their entry into the
province of Bukidnon at the turn of the last
century. In a lot of ways, it reveals the credo
of benevolent assimilation that provided
internal logic on the one hand at the same
time expose the clear economic goals that
ultimately fuelled the American occupation
of the islands.
According to an official government
report submitted to the Philippine
Commission in 1908, Dean Worcester, who
was the then Secretary of the Interior of
the American colonial government, went to
the province of Bukidnon in 1907 to inspect
the area together with a certain Frederick
Lewis and Lieutenant Manuel Fortich Sr.,

3 9
of the Philippine Constabulary. What they discovered there were
the underhanded and usurious business practices of lowland
traders who put the local natives they called the Bukidnons at a
disadvantage (Lao, 1987: 316-331).
These traders, who the Americans found out were acting in
behalf of their lowland politician principals from Cagayan de Oro,
bought the natives’ abaca at ridiculously low prices. There was
coercion and threats involved with the agents brandishing guns
and issuing warnings of sedition to anyone who did not abide by
the imposition. Absentee landlords also from Cagayan de Oro
forced their Bukidnon tenants to sell to them their abaca and other
cash crops. (Lao, 1987: 316-331)
The American officials were properly aghast and noted that
the “non-Christian Filipinos” were probably “the most robbed
and oppressed” by the lowland traders. To free the natives from
the bondage of such relations, the American delegation ordered
the active occupation of the province of Bukidnon by the colonial
government.
This account reveals the pretext to the entry of American
business interests into the province of Bukidnon done in the
guise of protecting the interests of the native population. Apart
from coercive trading practices, it is also interesting to note that
according to the same account, the natives also suffered under the
feudal relations they had with their landlords who were mostly
based in the coastal towns of Misamis and Cagayan de Oro.
The account disclosed as well that the natives subsisted mainly
on hillside swidden farming where they planted root crops and
relied on their trade of abaca. As a remedy to this “miserable”
situation, the Americans established settlement farm schools for

4 0
 U-M L I BR A RY DIGI TA L COL L ECT ION S , PHOTO GR A PH S OF T H E PH I L I PPI N E ISL A N D S

4 1
Dean Worcester with a Negrito woman. Dolores, Pampanga, 1900.
the Bukidnons where the natives could learn to plant rice and corn
as cash crops and from where dependable supply of food can be
sourced. From 16,881 cavans of corn harvested in 1918, the output
increased to 145,894 cavans by 1939.
What took place here was obviously a managed shift in the
dominant mode of production from subsistence farming by the
Bukidnon natives to a new economic model introduced by the
Americans - large-scale agricultural production. Under this
system, locals were conscripted to become students and then farm
workers in these settlement farm schools.
The entry of these capitalist relations under the benevo-
lent patronage of the American masters transformed the local
economy and further sutured the local indigenous population
into the workings of the new economic order as it responded to
the demand for cheap raw materials for their industries such as
corn and timber, and rice for the local food supply. The entry of
a new mestizo landlord class who mediated between the locals,
their resources, and the demands of the new economy was also
apparent as the Americans entrusted the affairs of the province to
local leaders such as Manolo Fortich, Sr. who himself established
cattle ranches, engaged in large-scale agricultural production,
and basically assumed the role as the proxy American colonial
power in the area.

Cattle r a nching in Buk idnon

Bukidnon is not all forests or verdant plains and when the Americans
arrived they also saw that its topography was also characterized by
grassy plateaus and deep canyons. Paired with a favorable climate
and abundance of water supply, the province was an ideal cattle

4 2
region in the country with the canyons serving as a natural barrier
to contagious animal diseases. In fact, not a few Cagayan de
Oro-based cattle ranchers already had thousands of heads of cattle
in some areas of Bukidnon which attracted American colonial
officers (Lao, 1987: 324) to the prospect of operating their own.
Not for long a select group of American military officers and
their rancher Filipino friends were granted twenty-five year
leases with minimal rentals in wide areas of the Bukidnon valley.
The Diklum ranch, an American-financed ranch covered an area
of about ten thousand hectares, a violation of ownership limits
to individual settlers and corporate ownership under American
colonial law. No less than Dean Worcester, the Interior Secretary
to the Philippine Commission, ran his own ranch in an area near
Valencia with thousands of heads of cattle. His guide when he first
visited Bukidnon, Philippine Constabulary Manuel Fortich Sr., put
up his own ranches in Maluko and Maramag and became more
successful at raising cattle than his American counterparts. (Lao,
1987: 324-325) His influence to the economic and political history of
the province would be long-lasting.
After Fortich Sr., other Filipino ranchers would follow suit and
establish their own cattle raising enterprises. By 1939, sixty seven
ranches were already established with a combined 58,776 cattle
heads (Lao, 1987: 326) occupying varying expanses of pasture land.
What were the consequences of these colonial appropriation
of vast tracts of land for cattle raising purposes many of which
were within the traditional domains of indigenous communities?
It was the same story of displacement and even violence as the oral
histories of the indigenous communities reveal. To protect their
prized cattle, the ranchers fenced off wide areas threatening tres-

4 3
passers that they would be captured or shot. The Lumad in these
areas became the unfortunate victims of the violence inflicted by
the private armed guards or cowboys of the ranchers. Because of
the restriction on land that has been for centuries their traditional
domain, it became difficult for them to access their traditional
sources of water and their farm plots.

Agr icultur a l pl a ntations a nd the Amer ica ns

The enduring legacy of the Americans, however, was the estab-

lishment of agricultural plantations in the province of Bukidnon.
Synonymous to the identity of the province is the image of planted
pineapples in grids as far as the eyes can see. And if there is a brand
associated with the province, it is Del Monte, the canned pineapple
product produced from the ancestral lands of the Lumad of
Bukidnon. These green and yellow tin cans famous the world over
are also the very manifestation of how the economy of the province
of Bukidnon was now tied to the global economic order.
Faced with problems in production in Hawaii and California,
the California Packing Corporation or CALPAK sought alternative
areas for production which they found in Bukidnon. They estab-
lished the Philippine Packing Corporation and began to plant
pineapple on a commercial scale in 1928. The company started with
a permit to plant on only 1,024 hectares in keeping with the limits
on corporate ownership of land as stipulated in the Organic Act
of 1902 and 1916. Soon after, political pressure from the company
directed to the Acting Governor General Gilmore of the American
colonial government granted them 14,052 hectares of public land
declared as the Bukidnon Pineapple Reservation through Proc-
lamation No. 230 in 1929. They would receive another 20,000

4 4
hectares when they managed to sublease public lands also in
Bukidnon which have been declared as US Naval Reservations (Lao,
1987: 328).
Under the Regalian doctrine that the Americans imposed on the
islands, all untitled land automatically became part of government
colonial property to be disposed of according to how they see fit.
The thousands of hectares that became government reservations
by virtue of this declaration and later appropriated by agricultural
plantations were integral parts of Lumad ancestral domains. The
effect of all these colonial appropriation of land for logging, cattle
ranching, and plantations is their cultural and economic displace-
ment. These would have the consequence of the indigenous tribes’
further movement into the margins and interior of Bukidnon’s
economy and society.
By 1935, Philippine Packing was only able to utilize 3,000
hectares of the public land they have been granted. But given
these unprecedented economies of scale, the tons of pineapple
that the company produced using very scientific and mechanized
operations, were really meant for export. They set up a cannery for
the export of tinned pineapple in Bugo, Cagayan de Oro as early
as 1930 where they were able to produce 277,131 cases valued at
$776,000 in the period 1930 to 1935. In the next few years with the
steady expansion in their operations, and before the outbreak of
the Second World War, the company was able to harvest 24,159,389
pounds of pineapple amounting to $1,672,849.00 (Lao, 1987: 328).
For the next decades, Philippine Packing and their opera-
tions based in Camp Phillips, Bukidnon would become famous for
providing a slice of Americana on Philippine shores. The executives
and officers of the company enjoyed substantial corporate benefits

4 5
with free housing and other perks in a compound that was like any
in small town America with its own commissary and famous golf
course and club house.
However, just like the outside of the gated homes of the politi-
cian landlord class of the province and the controlled environment
of Camp Phillips, there is the even worsening case of landlessness
and poverty especially among the Lumad population. Apparently,
the logging, cattle raising, and large-scale agricultural planta-
tions that the Americans established - and the local Filipino elite
continued - have not been able to contribute to the upliftment
of the lives of the people and the development of the province
(Lao, 1987: 331).
Ultimately, it was the same desire for profits which was behind
American presence in the province and not really the expressed
objective of emancipating the natives from their backwardness. In
hindsight, regardless of how the Americans saw themselves, they
were not unlike the lowland traders out to make a killing from
indigenous land, labor, and resources. Soon, a powerful landlord
class would take over from the colonial authorities and reign over
both the business and politics of the province.
Elsewhere in Mindanao vast areas of traditional Moro and non-
Christian indigenous grounds continued to be converted into plan-
tations for palm oil, banana, pineapple, and other mono cash crops
over the decades. In Agusan del Sur and Davao del Norte, agri-
cultural lands ranging from a thousand to twenty-three thousand
hectares in areas customarily owned by the Lumad have been
appropriated for this purpose by both government and private
entities (Miclat-Cacayan, 1993: 12 as cited in Gaspar, 2000: 40).

4 6
 Another prominent transnational corporation, Dole, was estab-
lished in South Cotabato in 1964 following the success story of Del
Monte in Bukidnon. Similar to the privileges given to the latter, Dole
was able to acquire territory virtually without limitations appropri-
ating even homesteaders’ and Lumad ancestral land. A significant
portion of the 5,569 hectares that Dole initially secured came from
land awarded to migrants earlier through the National Land Settle-
ment Administration and B’laan ancestral land. They have since
been embroiled in a long bitter struggle to take back land that was
stolen from them for the past decades (Gaspar, 2000: 41).
At present, there is also an ongoing expansion of large-scale
agricultural plantations in Mindanao which have encroached upon
areas of traditional food crops such as rice and corn. An estimated
300,000 hectares of land have been planted for export with
monocrops such as banana, pineapple, coffee, sugarcane, rubber,
and palm oil. This number will continue to grow as the impulse to
secure large-scale profit relies on ever growing economies of scale
(Panalipdan, 2014).

47
North of Mount Kitanglad, Bukidnon

Del Monte Golf Course & Country Club

Camp james mcneil crawford

agusan river

4 8
 camp phillips

4 9
G O O GL E E A RT H
The Philippine Packing Corporation, the company behind the famous
Del Monte brand of pineapples shipped all over the world, first
started with a plantation covering just 1,024 hectares in 1928. With
subsequent proclamations of the American colonial government,
they would expand this to tens of thousands of hectares through
Proclamation No. 230 or the Bukidnon Pineapple Reservation in 1929
and subsequent declarations of US military reservations that could
be sublet to the pineapple plantation. With the aggressive contract
growing schemes implemented by the company to date, not only are
the indigenous peoples displaced from their ancestral domains but
also farmers and peasants who have to give way to the unstoppable
logic of an ever growing economies of scale. (A L L I M AGE S: R M P-N M R )

5 0
5 1
5 2
5 3
5 4
5 5
5 6
5 7
5 8
5 9
Rubber forest in Iligan, Lanao del Norte, 1898. U-M L I BR A RY COL L ECT ION, PHOTO GR A PH S OF T H E PH I L I PPI N E ISL A N D S
 5 —— Log ging a s gateway acti v it y to
economic plunder a nd en v ironmenta l disa ster

Side-by-side with the arrival of a steady

stream of migrants and transformations in
the orientation of the local economy from
subsistence to surplus agriculture, was
the flattening of thousands of hectares of
Mindanao’s forests. The entry of American
logging firms in Mindanao paved the way
for the opening up of vast tracts of logged-
over land for large-scale agricultural
production (Miclat-Cacayan, 1993: 12 as
cited by Gaspar, 2000:40).
But Mindanao timber in itself was a
prized resource and they were exported to
the US mainland and also found their way
to the Japan, China, Australia and England
markets courtesy of the logging companies
and sawmills that the Americans established.

6 1
Under the colonial administration thousands of hectares of
logging concessions in Mindanao were granted to American
companies such as the Weyerhause Corporation which had 72,000
has., the Boise-Cascade Corporation which had 42,800 has., and
the Georgia Pacific Corporation which had 92,800 has (Gaspar,
2000: 33). These foreign companies usually had Filipino subsidi-
aries many of whom were known to be owned by politicians from
Misamis Oriental and Bukidnon who facilitated the logging opera-
tions locally. Dongallo, Alvarez, and Roa were just some of these
prominent political families.
Long after the granting of independence of the Americans after
the Second World War, the logging operations were continued by
sections of the Filipino elite who were just more than eager to meet
global demand for Mindanao timber. In the 1950s, only five percent
of Philippine exports were forest products. Within a decade, the
percentage rose to more than a fourth of the total national export
or twenty-eight percent owing to Japanese demand (Gaspar, 2000:
33-34). In 1979, 164 logging concessionaires were operating in
Mindanao with access to over 5 million hectares, far higher than the
4 million hectares of declared commercial forests (Rodil, 1994: 41).
The resulting deforestation was not only disastrous in terms of
the ecological balance of the area but it had direct effect on many
Lumad communities who still relied on the bounty of the forests for
their daily sustenance. It is a source of food, traditional medicine,
and of high cultural significance for their indigenous beliefs and
practices. The forests were an essential component of the culture
and the economy of indigenous communities who still practiced
shifting agriculture, so were the pasture land, rivers, and streams.
These multiple sources of food, firewood, and other essential

6 2
materials provided them with their means of survival and together
were all crucial in their practices of old ways and traditions.
There are even instances when the shifting agricultural
practices undertaken by Indigenous Peoples are prevented by the
logging companies’ forest guards citing forestry laws (Manuel,
1973: 368-368 as cited in Rodil, 1994: 45). For many indigenous
communities, the destruction of the forests was the last straw for
their forced assimilation into the mainstream culture. Having been
deprived of an integral component of the indigenous economy, the
Lumad had no choice but to seek other means of survival. This is
evident in the painful lessons that the Banwaon of San Luis, Agusan
del Sur learned as the case study in this book elucidates.
This mode of survival provided the impetus for the corruption
of their culture and community. When logging companies enter
into a territory, it is usually undertaken through the application
of force. Local politicians, the military, and police are conscripted
to help “clear” an area which often means the management of
indigenous communities resisting such encroachment to their
ancestral domain. These can come in the form of paying off tribal
chieftains or the datu or dividing the community between those
they managed to convince of the perceived benefits and those who
persist on standing their ground.
Unfortunately, there are many tales that belie the promise of
such economic benefits when logging companies enter indigenous
territories. Similar to other forms of development aggression such
as large-scale agricultural plantations or development projects,
the indigenous residents are not given priority in employment
since enterprises bring with them skilled and unskilled migrant
workers.

6 3
6 4
 To provide a snapshot of how lucrative logging is, sources cite
that the industry earned $42.85 billion in the period of 1972 to
1988, earning approximately $2.65 billion per year. This 18-year
period leveled 8.57 million hectares of forests (Teehankee, 1993:
21 as cited in Gaspar, 2000: 33-34). Estimates in 2002 placed Mind-
anao’s remaining forest cover including tree plantations at 21
percent of total land area. By 2010, Mindanao’s remaining forest
block alarmingly was just six percent according to Kalikasan-PNE.
(Salamat, 2014)
In 2011, Typhoon Sendong brought devastating flood waters
to the low-lying urban cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan in
Mindanao which many experts attribute to the decades of conver-
sion of forest cover in upland watersheds into pineapple planta-
tions (Balsa Mindanao, 2012).

Opposite: Macasandig was one of the devastated areas in the wake of the flash
floods brought by Typhoon Sendong last December 16, 2011 is Cagayan de
Oro City, home to one million people. The rampaging waters came all the way
from the headwaters of Bukidnon; it trammeled through the densely populated
barangays of Macasandig and Balulang, both riverside settlements, resulting
in many casualties. The urban flash flood, which experts blamed on large-scale
agriculture expansion and denudation of forests in upland Bukidnon, caused the
deaths of several thousands, many times more than the official tally. (C. PA N LI LIO)

6 5
 Region XIII: Caraga

loreto

cagdianao

siargao islands

nonoc island
surigao city
hinatuan island

claver

carrascal

tubay
USG S / E A RT H STA R GEO GR A PH IC S

butuan city

6 6
 6 —— Mining in Minda nao

Whereas the search for gold and other

mineral resources in conquered territories
has always been the objective of colonialism
and the rich mountains of Northern Luzon
have been mined by both Spanish and
American colonial interests, Mindanao as
an untapped mineral resource haven came
in late into the picture for various reasons.
The unconquered status of the island
because of the resistance of both Moro
and Lumad peoples may have prevented
wholesale access to these mineral rich
areas. Or it could be the case that the same
interests were busy plundering Mindanao
with logging and large-scale agricultural
enterprises before they finally set their eyes
on the lucrative extraction of minerals deep

6 7
into the bowels of Mindanao’s mountains.
There were already gold mines in Eastern Mindanao in the
so-called “Surigao Gold District” even before the Second World
War (Caraga Watch, 2009). In Zamboanga Sibugay, the Malangas
Coal Mine owned and operated by the Philippine National Oil
Corporation has been producing coal since the 1930s.
But it was only from the 1970s, during the Marcos dictatorship
up to the present that mining achieved a serious presence in the
southern island because of the introduction of bulk mining or
open pit mining technology and the entry of transnational mining
corporations in the area. The Caraga region housed many of
these copper and nickel mines having the biggest deposit of iron
ore worldwide, largest nickel and gold deposits in the country, as
well as substantial reserves of copper, chromite, and coal (Caraga
Watch, 2009:2).
During the 1980s, Mt. Diwata became a gold rush site when it
was discovered that the mountain in the province of Compostela
Valley was the site of the largest gold reserves of the country - and
in the world – producing an estimate of PhP 2 billion annually.
(Gonzales and Conde, 2002)
Popularly known as Mt. Diwalwal, the control over the mining
area has been contested by a coterie of small-scale miners, gangs,
politicians, the military, national government agencies and trans-
national mining corporations ever since Datu Camilo Banad, a
Lumad belonging to the Mandaya tribe found small gold nuggets
on the mountain way back in 1983. The Mandaya Datu who first
found gold in the area has since been relegated to the margins
leading a simple peaceful life away from the frenzy caused by his
discovery. The mad rush for gold by these conflicting interests over

6 8
the decades has made the small town the murder capital of the
country. (Gonzales and Conde, 2002)
In both these mining sites as well as in many others in Mindanao,
it is often the Lumad who are displaced by these mining operations.
Caraga region, for instance, is home to the Manobo and Mamanwa
tribes while Compostela Valley has a sizable Mandaya and Ata popu-
lation (Rodil, 1994: 95). What happened to Datu Banad was reflective
of the fate of indigenous communities whose ancestral domain and
territories have been appropriated by mining. They are displaced,
subjected to violence, and essentially excluded from the gains of
the valuable resources extracted from their destroyed mountains,
forests, and rivers essential to their community’s survival.
When the Philippine Mining Act was passed in 1995, even
more transnational corporations established operations all over
Mindanao. Among the controversial features of this law is the
granting of 100 percent ownership to foreign investors, mining
concessions of up to 81,000 hectares, permission to repatriate
fully profits, freedom from expropriation and 100 percent remit-
tance from earnings and interest on foreign loans. Tax holidays
were granted, as well as water, timber and easement rights. (Pana-
lipdan, 2014: 23)
The enactment of the law can be likened to the opening of a
valve which allowed for the steady entry of transnational mining
corporations in Mindanao henceforth. In keeping with neoliberal
policies that allow the entry of foreign investments especially for
lucrative untapped resources, the Arroyo and Aquino administra-
tions courted transnational corporations to invest either directly
or through joint ventures, exploration, processing and purchasing
agreements with local mining companies.

6 9
 By the end of Arroyo’s term in 2009, 44 Mineral Production
Sharing Agreements were approved covering 103,643.25 hectares
comprising half of the total land to be opened for such agreements
in the country (Caraga Watch, 2009: 5) during the period. Existing
and planned mining operations in Caraga involved a number of
foreign transnational mining corporations such as Anglo-Amer-
ican, BHP Billiton, Red 5 Limited, Medusa Mining Limited, Mindoro
Resources Ltd., Semco Exploration and Mining Co., and Century
Peak Metals Holding Corporation among others (Caraga Watch,
2009: 6-8).
Andap Valley, where the ALCADEV school is located and the
site of the gruesome murders of school director Emerito Samarca,
and Lumad leaders Dionel Campos and Bello Sinzo, is part of the
areas offered for coal operating contracts under the Department
of Energy’s Philippine Energy Contracting Round program. Coal
blocks at the Andap Valley have been on offer since 2005, 2006,
and 2009 coinciding with the incidences of intense militariza-
tion in the area. As of 2009, a total of 70,000 hectares have been
offered for coal mining in the province of Caraga alone (Caraga
Watch, 2009: 9).
The Aquino administration pursued the same path as that of
Arroyo in terms of giving unbridled access to transnational corpo-
rations to mine and explore Mindanao and the country’s vast
mineral resources. 700 mining tenements nationwide covering
a total of 1.14 million hectares were approved by Pres. Benigno
Aquino III. Two years later, 999 mining tenements have been
approved with 1,864 applications in the pipeline. As of 2014, close
to half of the approved financial assistance agreements, explora-
tion permits, mineral sharing agreements, and mining tenements

7 0
are located in Southern island comprising of over 296,000 hectares
of land (Panalipdan, 2014).
For the past decade or so, in the wake of the Philippine Mining
Act of 1995 and the demand for cheap sources of raw materials for
the high tech industries of the first world, Mindanao has been the
target for the expansion of transnational mining operations and
large-scale agricultural plantations.

7 1
Carrascal town, Surigao del Sur. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
Orange silt from the mining site blends with the blue waters off the coast
of Carrascal town, Surigao del Sur. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
Surigao del Sur coast
Mindanao ranks 4th in copper, 3rd in gold,
5th in nickel and 6th in chromite deposits
in the world, that is why 500,000 hectares claver
of Mindanao lands are currently covered
by mining concessions. Many of these
areas also happen to be the ancestral
domain of indigenous communities.
 carrascal

USG S / E A RT H STA R GEO GR A PH IC S

Carrascal Nickel Corporation site, Carrascal. (G O O GL E E A RT H )
Once bordered with white sand, an islet is now covered with orange silt from the
large scale mining sites in Claver town, Surigao del Norte. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
Mamanwa children wading in the river, once a source of livelihood
in Barangay Taganito, Claver. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
Taganito HPAL Nickel Corporation, Claver. (G O O GL E E A RT H )
On a reclaimed shoreline, trucks and equipment are parked alongside a stockpile
of iron ore mined from the mountains of Claver. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
A view of the area near an open pit mine in Claver. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
Surigao del Norte

surigao city
nonoc island
hinatuan island

USG S / E A RT H STA R GEO GR A PH IC S

The port of Hinatuan Mining Corporation (HMC) in Tagana-an town,
Hinatuan Island, Surigao del Norte. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
Stripped and mined: a mountain in Tagana-an. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
Silt flows into the ocean from HMC’s nickel mine in Tagana-an. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
Silt from the mining site contaminates the waters of Loreto town, Dinagat Island.
(ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
The coast of Loreto. (G O O GL E E A RT H )
Mining operations in Loreto. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S
Massive siltation mars a white sand beach in Loreto. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
 Cagdianao town, Dinagat Islands
G O O GL E E A RT H
Cagdianao mining corporation
Mining operations in Cagdianao. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
SR metals, inc.
 Tubay town, Agusan del Norte

USG S / E A RT H STA R GEO GR A PH IC S

tubay river
Open pit mine of San Roque Metals Inc., on a mountain overlooking the Tubay River. (ERW I N M A SCA R I ÑA S)
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 7 —— Wa r s of extinction

We have so far established the following

points:

1. Mindanao has been belatedly sutured

into the national narrative by virtue of
its state as an unconquered island at the
crucial point of the birth of the nation at
the turn of the last century, its Moro and
Lumad population relatively insulated
from the effects that colonialism brought
OPP O SI T E: A RT A N D PICT U R E COL L ECT ION, T H E N EW YOR K PU BL IC L I BR A RY

to the local economy.

2. The American colonial period brought in
massive transformations to Mindanao’s
social and economic landscape by way of
a successful resettlement program that
achieved in a relatively short period of
time what the Spaniards were not able to

1 1 1
 realize for more than three hundred years - the colonization
of Mindanao’s economy and its people. This systemic appro-
priation of land and resources that followed thereafter is at
the root of the conflict that continues to plague the Southern
island.
3. The logging, cattle raising, agricultural plantations, and
finally mining, established in various parts of Mindanao first
by American business interests then later assumed by sections
of the Filipino elite caused the integration of the Mindanao
economy to the demands of the global economic order.

In all these changes, the constant feature is the displacement

of the original inhabitants of the island, the Lumad and the Moro
populations. This is the historical and political economic context of
their marginalization in favor of a dominant migrant population.
Such historical and systemic marginalization has become
particularly worse in recent times for the Lumad with the neolib-
eral push to expand agricultural plantations and corner untapped
mineral rich resources within the ancestral domains of the
remaining indigenous populations in Mindanao. What has been
taking place is, in fact, a war of extinction, as the mechanisms of
the state through its armed forces and paramilitary groups are
now poised to trammel over resisting indigenous communities or
coopting and dividing their unity in order to open up areas to the
unmitigated plunder of profitable resources.
The situation of the Lumad go beyond experiencing institu-
tional arrangements that disadvantage them. This study argues
that the situation of the Philippines’ Indigenous Peoples is far worse
than what the concept “structural discrimination” implies. The

1 1 2
concerted, systemic, and violent effort to drive away the Lumad
from their ancestral domain and territories point to a far troubling
reality. There is an ongoing war of extinction that seeks to displace
and uproot indigenous communities from their ancestral land in
the name of extractive industries such as mining and large-scale
agricultural plantations.
What does it mean to be a Lumad, in this day and age? Apart
from the structural discrimination that they face in the contem-
porary social, economic, and political spheres, it seems that to
be a Lumad in this day and age also requires them to confront
the war of extinction being waged by the State. What do you call
the systemic state-backed efforts to drive them away from their
ancestral lands in the name of foreign-backed mining and agricul-
tural expansion in the guise of counterinsurgency? Are these not
wars of extinction?
In the past years, the Lumad have been experiencing a host of
human rights violations in the hands of paramilitary groups and
state forces. There has been a relentless attack by these groups
on indigenous schools, indigenous communities, and indigenous
leaders. In 2015, the Manilakbayan ng Mindanao, a consortium of
groups published a brochure detailing the dire situation of Lumad
communities all over Mindanao (Manilakbayan ng Mindanao, 2015).
87 lumad schools all over Mindanao are threatened with closure
and 3 have ceased operating in tragic and harrowing circum-
stances throwing more than a thousand indigenous children out
of school. More than 95 cases of attacks against schools have been
recorded within the first three quarters of the year 2015.
A school named after slain anti-mining and Italian priest
Fr. Fausto “Pops” Tentorio operated by the Mindanao Interfaith

1 1 3
Michelle Campos, 17 years old when this picture
was taken, is the daughter of slain Lumad leader
Dionel Campos. Commenting on the murder of her
father, together with fellow Manobo leader Bello
Sinzo and Emerito Samarca, the executive director
of ALCADEV, she expressed in a mass action that
the peace that the government wants is the peace
of the graveyard so that mining interests can freely
encroach on Manobo ancestral domain. (R M P-N M R )

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1 1 5
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R M P-N M R

These are the bodies of Emer

Somina, 17 years old; Welmer
Somina, 19 years old; Norman
Samia, 14 years old; Herminio
Samia, 70 years old who is half-
blind and could barely walk;
and Jobert Samia, 20 years old,
brought down from the massacre
site to the town center of Mendis,
Pangantucan. They are all
Manobo farmers mowed down
by elements of the 1st Special
Forces Battalion last August 18,
2015 after they were accused of
being NPA rebels.

1 17
Services Foundation (MISFI) in Bgy. White Kulaman, Kitaotao,
Bukidnon have been harassed by village officials prodded by the
Philippine military. It was forcibly closed last October 23, 2015, at
10 am by armed men who barged into the school where 24 students
and teachers were holding classes. They destroyed the gate and
began demolishing the school in front of the indigenous children
coming from the Pulangion and Matigsalug tribes, and their
volunteer teachers, leaving them in great trauma and shock (Inter-
aksyon.com, 2015).
In the early hours of November 12, 2015, armed men burned
down another school serving Manobo high school children in
Padiay, Sibagat, Agusan del Sur. The cottage where the volunteer
teachers were housed as well as where equipment such as generator
sets, books, school supplies were kept were razed to the ground.
It is an extension of the Alternative Learning Center for Agricul-
tural and Livelihood Development (ALCADEV) serving indigenous
youths from the Manobo, Banwaon, Higaonon, Talaandig, and
Mamanwa tribes.
Last September 1, 2015 the most harrowing and tragic incident
involving the systemic attacks against indigenous schools
occurred. The closure of the ALCADEV, an alternative Lumad
learning institution, was precipitated by the public execution
of the school’s executive director, Emerito Samarca, and indig-
enous leaders Dionel Campos and Bello Sinzo before a stunned
community rounded up by paramilitary forces the community
refers to as the Magahat Bagani. The two leaders were shot
execution style in front of the whole community while the body
of Samarca was later found in a classroom, hogtied and with his
throat slit.

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 There is also a coordinated and systemic attack against indig-
enous leaders. In the six years of the Aquino administration, a total
of 71 indigenous leaders have been victims of extrajudicial killings.
56, a great bulk, of these are Lumad leaders from Mindanao
(Manilakbayan ng Mindanao, 2015).
Even children are not spared from the climate of impunity
prevailing in these indigenous areas terrorized by paramilitaries.
Armed men believed to be members of the Dela Mance group shot
to death Olaking Olinan a 15-year old from the Talaandig tribe and
Obet Pabiana while they were undertaking their daily economic
activities in the forests of St. Peter, Malaybalay City, Bukidnon last
September 15, 2015. (Interaksyon.com, 2015)
In another case, the sole witness to the Pangantucan massacre
last August 18, 2015, was a 15 year old boy who saw first hand how
his father and relatives were shot at close range by members of
the Army’s 1st Special Forces Battalion. Two of those killed were
minors, together with his 70 year-old nearly blind father. After the
incident, the Philippine military released a statement that those
killed were armed rebels. (Gallardo and Orias, 2015)
As a consequence of these attacks on the indigenous communi-
ties, whole communities’ social, political, and economic lives have
been disrupted. A total of more than 40,000 indigenous persons
in many remote and poor communities have been displaced in
the past six years because of a host of human rights violations
against them which range from extrajudicial killings, harass-
ment and intimidation, occupation of public facilities by the state
armed forces, including sexual assault of women among others.
In these evacuation centers, the old, women, and children from
these indigenous communities suffer through difficult and unsan-

1 1 9
itary living conditions that expose them to illness and disease,
and even death.
There were the Banwaon bakwits of Balit, San Luis, Agusan del
Sur last December 2014 who suffered under difficult conditions in
the evacuation center resulting to several deaths of the young and
the old. They left their homes because of the intensifying militariza-
tion of their communities that led to serious human rights violations
which culminated in the assassination of their village leader. They
only managed to return to their communities last March 2015 after
the successful campaign of the community and support groups.
And then there was the massacre  of  a lumad leader and two
other companions and the disappearance  of  a woman peasant
leader and her husband in Paquibato District, Davao last June 14,
2015. Military personnel reportedly strafed the home of Aida Seisa,
secretary-general  of  the local peasant association killing Ruben
Enlog, the leader of Nagkahiusang Lumad Mag-uuma sa Paquibato
(or Nagkalupa)- a local peasant group, Randy Carnasa and Oligario
Quimbo, local church leaders, instantaneously. (Capistrano, 2015)
In Misamis Oriental was the evacuation of 52 families from two
barangays of the Municipality of Lagonglong after the military also
encamped inside civilian homes. They established an evacuation
camp at the provincial grounds in Cagayan de Oro City last June
4, 2015 to dramatize their plight and have managed to return home
after a month when the military finally vacated their communities.
(RMP, 2015)
A similar situation took place at the provincial capitol
grounds of Bukidnon in Malaybalay City. Last June 11, 2015 the whole
Higaonon community of Dalacutan, Cabanglasan left their homes to
encamp at the capitol grounds to decry the killing of a community

1 2 0
leader, Frenie Landasan, and the harassment they have been experi-
encing from the Dela Mance paramilitary group. (RMP, 2015)
Then there is the news  of  Salugpongan Ta’Tanu Igkanugon
Community Learning Center and MISFI Academy schools, being
closed by no less than the Department  of  Education upon the
prodding  of  the military. They intend to replace these schools
with institutions that are run by soldiers acting as para-teachers
which prompted no less than Senator Miriam Santiago to point
out the patent violation of the Constitution of such a plan. Schools
are zones of peace which disallows armed groups, most especially
State forces, to enter and meddle into their affairs (Reyes, 2015).
The 146 Lumad schools all over Mindanao (Manilakbayan
ng Mindanao, 2015) have been the rallying point and
source  of  unity  of  many indigenous communities against different
forms  of  development aggression threatening their way  of  life. It
is obvious that the reason why these schools are being targeted is
because the perpetrators want to weaken if not break up the Lumad
communities. What is the common thread that ties these coordinated
attacks on indigenous schools, leaders, and communities?
These remote areas where these schools, indigenous leaders and
their communities are located also happen to be rich in mineral
deposits or are prime areas for mining or agricultural expansion.
These indigenous communities also happen to declare their oppo-
sition to the entry of these extractive industries that they know
will alter their traditional ways of living and eventually drive them
away from their ancestral lands.
The attacks on schools, indigenous leaders, and communities are
violent attempts to weaken the resolve of communities to resist the
entry of these destructive extractive industries. Closing down the

1 2 1
schools will result to the weakening of the indigenous community,
many of whom come together or congregate on the basis of the
shared desire to provide for the education of their children. These
schools are much needed in these remote areas especially since
public services do not reach their far-flung communities. And yet,
for the interests of extractive industries, these schools are now
being closed down, their leaders killed, and their whole community
and indigenous ways of life displaced.
Who are the perpetrators of these vile sinister acts? In the Phil-
ippines, there is the phenomenon of the proliferation of paramili-
tary groups many of whom are composed of indigenous members.
They are further given legality to operate under Executive Order
Number 264. In the guise of creating community-based counter-
insurgency units, these indigenous paramilitary groups now push
for ancestral domain claims involving thousands of hectares that
the head claimants consequently offer to mining and agricultural
corporations. In many cases, local government officials and the
military act as brokers of these business interests. Those who resist
their grand designs then become the victims of the impunity of
these paramilitary and military groups
What provides motive and fuels this madness in Mindanao? It is
the lucrative potential for mining development. 500,000 hectares
of Mindanao is covered by mining concessions. It is an island that
has extremely valuable mineral reserves relative to other nations. It
is 4th in copper reserves, 3rd in gold, 5th in nickel, and 6th in chromite
deposits in the world. The prospect of mining development and
agricultural enterprises’ expansion is so powerful that these create
the conditions for the relentless attack on indigenous communities
in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.

1 2 2
1 2 3
Last 31st of August 2015 to the 2nd of
September 2015, a solidarity mission was
undertaken by 200 individuals from different
religious congregations, cause-oriented
groups, and human rights organizations in
Barangay Mendis, Pangantucan, Bukidnon.
The mission was able to document the
massacre of the five unarmed Manobo
farmers as well as a host of other human
rights violations from testimonies gathered
on the ground. The details gathered
corroborate the testimony of the sole
survivor witness- the 15-year old son of
Herminia Samia, the 70-year old nearly blind
man who could barely walk who was accused
of being a rebel and subsequently peppered
with bullets by the Army soldiers.

1 2 4
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1 3 0
 The guilt and impunity of the 1st Special Forces Battalion were confirmed by the
harassment experienced by the participants of the solidarity mission. Agents in plain
clothes monitored the activities and took pictures of the participants. When the mission
was about to exit the community, they set up a roadblock and forced participants to
sign their name in a logbook. Days after, the community especially the relatives of the
Pangantucan 5 were gripped by fear as an Armed Personal Carrier and two military
vehicles filled with soldiers encamped on the barangay hall of Mendis, Pangantucan.
1 3 2
1 3 3
 8 —— Cow boys a nd R a ncher s a nd
the M a nobo Pul a ngion of Quezon, Buk idnon

When the definitive story of this nation shall

have been written, it is my prayer that the
muted tales that the winds whisper through
the trees in this land we call Mindanao shall
finally be chronicled and be made known.
There are harrowing tales here from what
seems to be a removed time in the distant
past and yet the scars remain fresh in the
collective memory of this land’s native
people. Only because the trauma cannot
as of yet be buried for the sufferings their
ancestors endured continue to haunt the
Lumad till the present.
As we write the history of this nation
with our actions, we remember, honor, and
unite with the continuing struggle of our
Lumad brethren for historical justice

1 3 5
against the barbaric betrayal of the politicians, loggers, ranchers,
cowboys, landlords and now their armed guards.
It is a story of displacement and violence that can only make
sense in a mad world where the invader’s regard for their entitle-
ments and pursuit of private riches justify the most cruel of human
actions to fellow men and women. If you are scandalized by the
tales of human slavery during the colonial era in Africa and the
Americas, you need not look far and go back further in time to
get a fix on what could be the greatest of humanity’s failures - in
the midst of so much abundance and technological progress, all
these have been achieved always at the cost of Indigenous Peoples’
existence and ways of life.
The version of the conquistadors proudly depict themselves as
tamers of the wild and feral, those who brought much needed civi-
lization to the uncivilized. By civilization, perhaps they mean the
barbarity with which self-sustaining and communal ways of life in
these areas they conquered was supplanted with their predatory
and self-interested ways. They were not satisfied appropriating
first, the forests and then the land, to create riches for themselves
in the north, they had to go further south to victimize a people and
plunder the environment they rely on so that their kind can amass
wealth and power for their progeny.
These were all revealed to me as I conversed with their
leaders and the elderly about the sad story of their people and
their communities. From Botong, Quezon, Bukidnon, to San Luis,
Agusan del Sur, there were shared patterns and continuities to
their tales of sadness. But from these same narratives of betrayal,
emanate also stories of sustained and valiant resistance among
their kind.

1 3 6
 The story of Datu Agdahan’s people’s suffering goes way back to
the time of the Americans just right after the turn of the last century
in the hands of a Spanish-mestizo class who pursued business
opportunities in areas opened up by the new colonial ruler. They
wore many hats not the least of which was to become politicians in
order to facilitate their control over these resources. Side-by-side
with the enterprising Americans who dreamt of timber and plan-
tations, this Spanish-mestizo class visualized ranches and a people
they would rule over.
They came as loggers which toppled the trees and transformed
the land into wide arable spaces. Then they came as ranchers with
their cattle and their cowboys. It was bad enough that the indig-
enous economy was shattered with the destruction of the forests,
but the transformation of the communal forest which sustained
the Lumad and their kind for centuries into private ranches and
plantations in the thousands of hectares further brought untold
suffering for the Lumad.
The so-called pioneer ranchers of Bukidnon, Mindanao’s
version of the Spanish-legacy hacienda, fenced out Datu Agdahan’s
people from their own land. In the tilted scale of these new enter-
prises that operated to generate wealth for their owners, cattle
was far more valuable than the displaced indigenous people who
were regarded as less than human and the cowboys enforced this
rule with impunity. Knowing that it is from robbery that they now
hold control over what used to be Lumad territory, the ranchers
through their hired cowboys guarded these areas and their cattle
with great zeal. There are tales of Lumad folk, skinned, salted, and
hanged on trees to serve as a warning to others not to enter the
fenced off areas.

1 3 7
 Nowadays, the conquistadors and their heirs wear the hat of
being landowners who have managed to retain their scandalous
control over vast tracts of land for generations despite the feeble
attempts by government to implement agrarian reform and the
IPRA law. They want to have it easy by leasing thousands of hectares
of Lumad land to large-scale agricultural enterprises and receive
rental payments without the risks associated with operating the
production process themselves.
If before there were cowboys who protected the ranchers’ cattle,
they have now been replaced by armed private guards whose task is
to remove all impediments to the expansion of pineapple and banana
plantations in the area. Their primary objective is to clear the area
of legitimate indigenous claimants, threaten and then eliminate the
likes of Datu Agdahan, who steadfastly stand their ground because
according to him, he and his people have nowhere to go.
So much pride and capriciousness envelop the so-called
pioneers who brought their Spanish-mestizo blood and feudal ways
into Lumad ancestral land that their present-day heirs still strut
around with the air of nobility in our midst. What the sons and
daughters of these families must understand is that the privilege
and comfort they now enjoy were amassed through the organized
robbery of their class of the resources of the Lumad, all made
legitimate by the embedded neocolonial history of our national
and local government. And there has been no let up to their plun-
dering ways until the present. Those they were not able to dupe
through crates of sardines or a gift of a pair of pants, they elimi-
nated through violence.
I conversed with Datu Santiano Agdahan of the Manobo
Pulangion tribe atop a hill overlooking the vast and verdant valley

1 3 8
that is Quezon, Bukidnon whose forests and rivers used to be their
tribe’s source of sustenance. Here were their roots as a people, he
told me, while looking wistfully at the land that they no longer
enjoy. Below us was a procession of haulers carrying loads upon
loads of harvested cane for the sugar mill stirring up apocalyptic
dust behind their trail. I can’t help but think that these might as
well represent the riches stolen from the Lumad by those who took
their land through cunning and violent ways.
An anthropologist and Lumad scholar would go there himself
many months later and discover that the mound where Datu
Agdahan and I were both on was actually a ritual site for the
Manobo Pulangion. Looking at the view from the elevated vantage
point that they call Bagalbal, in an area they call as Kiokong, it was
easy to understand why. (Gaspar, 2016)
The whole dominion of their ancestral domain was visible from
here. But this time around, the former ritual site which had been a
focal point of their indigenous beliefs and solidarity before, is now
transformed into an observational post and meeting place for the
community as they thwart attempts of the landlord’s armed guards
to evict them from their ancestral land by force. The Manobo
Pulangion still converge here not just to celebrate their community
as they did before, but now, to also assert their rights towards their
land and protect themselves from external threat.

Blood for l a nd

The oral tradition among the Manobo Pulangion trace their

people’s roots to Apo Mamalu who came from the seas with his
brother Tabunaway. It is said that when Islam arrived in Mindanao,
the descendants of Tabunaway became Muslims and settled in the

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great plains of Maguindanao while Apo Mamalu’s people decided to
go further into the center of the island following the river Pulangi.
Their name as Manobo Pulangion came from the Manobo term
“Empulangi,” meaning center of the island, a name they share with
the great river which traverses the center of Mindanao to flow into
the plains and marshland of Maguindanao as well. (Pasagui, 2015)
Based on their oral history, the dominion of the Manobo
Pulangion tribe, therefore, covers a wide expanse of land from what
is now known as Carmen, North Cotabato to Quezon and Valencia,
Bukidnon. It would be easy to imagine that the ancestral domain of
the Manobo Pulangion spanning thousands of hectares including
the whole of present-day Quezon, Bukidnon and even beyond, espe-
cially if one takes into consideration the seasonal economic activi-
ties they undertake which bring them to the forests, their swidden
plots, and rivers around the expanse of Bukidnon.
But their marginalization that commenced during the American
colonial period with the push to extract agricultural resources
from areas that the Spaniards were not able to exploit, saw the
entry of prospecting American and Spanish-mestizo businessmen
into the territory of the Manobo Pulangion. The introduction of
formal bureaucracy that the American colonial government also
brought into the area facilitated further the dispossession of the
local indigenous population’s ancestral domains.
The area of contention is the ancestral domain claim of the
Manabo Pulangion that they call as Kiokong, now in present-day
Botong, Quezon, Bukidnon and form part of the former Montalvan
Ranch Estate. Datu Andong Agdahan retrieves from the oral history
of their tribe the story that his forefathers, the two Datus - Manda-
ghaan Anglao and Manragnas Agdahan, “lent” the area known as

1 4 0
Kiokong first to Manolo Fortich, a Spanish migrant-settler family
in what was ascertained to be the American period. Apart from
serving as the first governor of the newly-constituted province of
Bukidnon in 1914 under the American colonial period, Fortich was
also instrumental in transforming the Bukidnon landscape into
ranches and agricultural plantations together with his American
principals.
Among the Spanish-mestizo families who also set up ranches
and farms in Bukidnon were the Montalvans. There are accounts
that the area of Kiokong where the Bagalbal ritual site is located
was in the control of Manuel Fortich Sr.’s heirs and then the Montal-
vans by the 1960s (RMP, 2014: 22). There are accounts of locals
remembering to have worked for the ranches of these prominent
families by building the very fences that kept their people away
from their own ancestral land.
Etched in their memory was how their people were taken for
fools by the senior Fortich who said that the cows within the ranch
ate people in order to keep them away. There remain whispers from
within the community that not a few of their kind were accused of
stealing cattle from the ranch, were punished and killed by the
cowboys, and were subsequently hanged on a tree as fair warning
to others.
Datu Agdahan’s people soon found themselves barred from
their ancestral domain permanently unable to enjoy the bounty
of the rivers, plains, and forests that are now within the fenced
off ranches. Their ritual site, Bagalbal, was rendered inaccessible
to their kind while cows walked freely around because they were
considered far more economically valuable than the people who
used to subsist on the land’s bounty. While the Montalvans and

1 4 1
Fortiches established themselves as affluent and influential land-
owning and political families in the province over the decades,
with the late Robert Montalvan even heading the Bukidnon
Planter’s Association at some point, the Manobo Pulangion found
themselves mired in a cycle of poverty with no land to work on to
be able to sustain their children’s sustenance and education.
The memory of this betrayal cut deep and was passed on
through oral tales of the Manobo Pulangion from one generation
to another. Such that when their hardships as a people became
intolerable, they came together to take their land back. They used
to be a proud self-sufficient people and yet they are now relegated
as seasonal farm workers toiling on land that was supposed to be
theirs in the first place, or forced to farm on rocky mountain slopes.
Through the Indigenous People’s Rights Act of 1997 or IPRA,
Datu Andong’s maternal side of the family under the Quezon
Manobo Tribes Association (QUEMTRAS) under the leadership of
Datu Carlito Anglao was able to secure a Certificate of Ancentral
Domain Title for about 2,000 hectares in 2004. But this did not
include Datu Andong’s group and many others.
In 2008, just before the expiration of the Agro Forest Farm
Lease Agreement (AFFLA No. 123) entered into by the Montalvans
with the government through the then Ministry of Environment
and Natural Resources from 1983 to 2009, the heirs of the Manobo
Pulangion through the leadership of Datu Agdahan undertook
their first steps in claiming back their ancestral land by organizing
themselves under TINDOGA or the Tribal Indigenous Oppressed
Group and filing for an ancestral domain claim. They are joined by
eight other head claimants in order to secure 100 hectares from the
Rancho Montalvan Estate.

1 4 2
 In 2011, in a bold move and a collective conviction shaped by
decades of poverty and oppression, they moved back to the Bagalbal
area, occupied and fenced off by the Montalvan ranch for decades.
They were thwarted by the defunct Montalvan Ranch’s private
security guards so they encamped in a nearby lot (RMP, 2014: 23).
This meant establishing makeshift houses by the busy highway
since they remain fenced out by the ranch and its armed guards.
From 2011-2014, the people of Bukidnon saw the encampment
of the Manobo Pulangion when they traversed the busy road
connecting the province to adjacent Davao. It was a jarring sight,
rickety shanties by the roadside in a rural area known for its vast
arable land.
But it presented the historical truth of the Lumad’s marginaliza-
tion. Amid the visible productivity and natural bounty of Bukidnon,
the Manobo Pulangion and their fellow Lumad have been relegated
to the figurative and literal margins because migrant-settlers and
their business of ranches, mining, and agricultural plantations
have taken over their ancestral domains.
The unity of the Manobo Pulangion to assert their rights in
reclaiming their ancestral land through visible collective action
reaped them dividends because it forced local politicians and
government agencies to respond to their issues. It also consoli-
dated the Lumad and taught them the valuable lesson that holding
on to their unity produces results.
But such moves also earned them the ire of the Montalvan heirs
who still wanted to maintain their hold over the land despite the
expiration of their Agro Forest Farm Lease Agreement in 2009.
After the death of the patriarch Robert Montalvan, the manage-
ment of the ranch was passed on to nephew Pablo “Poling” Lorenzo

1 4 3
1 4 4
After years of being unable
to draw from the bounty of
their own ancestral land,
the Manobo Pulangion
of Barangay Botong,
Quezon, Bukidnon under
the Lumad organization
TINDOGA or Tribal
Indigenous Oppressed
Group bravely occupied
their land last April
23, 2014. But they were
met by the gunfire and
brawn of 200 men from
landlord Poling Lorenzo’s
private security force
who forcibly demolished
their hastily built shanties
before stunned nuns,
support groups, and the
women and children of the
community. (R M P-N M R )
1 4 5
who was even more ruthless and brutal in his ways. He employs
armed private guards to keep the legitimate Lumad claimants out
of the area that is for all intents and purposes not anymore under
Montalvan ownership.
When a portion of the ancestral domain claim of the group was
granted recently, Poling Lorenzo sought to divide the claimants
by convincing the awardees to lease back the land to him for a
minimal yearly fee per hectare. This is so that he can facilitate
the expansion of Del Monte’s pineapple plantation into what were
formerly the hundreds of hectares of the former Montalvan ranch.
Among the Manobo Pulangion, there were those who acquiesced
and accepted his terms, no doubt aided by the fear that his private
armed guards brought to the community.
Poling will front for the CADT owners, pay them a minimal
yearly fee, but he will collect a lion’s share from the pineapple
plantation who will agree to such unscrupulous schemes because
of the economies of scale that expansion brings. This is the reason
why the claimants are presently divided into two groups, Team A
is comprised of Lumad who have agreed to Poling Lorenzo terms
while Team B includes Datu Andong and the rest of the TINDOGA
group who prefer to toil on the land themselves instead of leasing
these to unscrupulous businessmen like Poling Lorenzo who are
fronting for pineapple plantation expansion. As a result, Team B
has become the target of harassment and intimidation and even
murder by Poling’s armed guards.
These schemes are not new to Bukidnon. Most of the fortune
that launched political careers in the province or made riches in
nearby Cagayan de Oro came from variations of land speculation
and grabbing, often at the expense of the indigenous population.

1 4 6
Speculating landlords and enterprising government employees
who have access to land documents connive to change land clas-
sifications or details in order to open land to plantations. (Broad,
1980) As a consequence, it is the likes of the Manobo Pulangion and
the other Lumad groups who are pushed to the literal margins and
steep slopes while the absentee landlords and plantations harvest
from the rich and abundant farmlands of the province.
This is the waking nightmare that Datu Agdahan and his people
have endured for decades. Before they still had the interior and
the slopes to run to but even these have been taken over by the
expansion of large-scale agricultural plantations. Now, they have
nowhere else to go but to reclaim the ancestral land that has been
taken away from them.
But they learned all these the hard way through years of
struggle when their moves to get back their ancestral land were
met with noncommittal response from government agencies and
even violence from Poling Lorenzo’s armed security guards at
every turn.
In September 20, 2012, they held a protest outside the office
of the National Commission on Indigenous People’s (NCIP) in
Malaybalay City, Bukidnon. Last March 2013, they attempted to
occupy the 28 hectare lot that was awarded to their group under
the CADC. They were in formation, with the men carrying their
makeshift homes by the roadside on their shoulders. Suddenly,
hundreds of armed guards arrived from trucks sent by Poling
Lorenzo and began to hack away and destroy their shanties with
the women and children barely escaping the carnage. Shots were
also fired to drive them away. They have also camped out at the
Department of Environment and Natural Resources Regional

1 47
Office in Cagayan de Oro from October 16 to 21, 2013 to press for
their installation.
After years of struggle, Datu Agdahan and TINDOGA taught
they have finally won when they were set to be installed by officials
of the NCIP on their claimed land on April 23, 2014 under Certif-
icate of Ancestral Domain Title (number R10-QUE-0712-159)
together with eight other claimant groups. But they discovered on
that day that it was a sham. (RMP, 2014)
First, their group which lay claim to 622 hectares within the
Montalvan ranch were only given 70 hectares which had to be
distributed among eight claimants while the rest of the fertile and
arable land were suspiciously reclassified as forest land. On the day
of the supposed installation, the TINDOGA group found out that
their share of 28 hectares was located in a rocky and mountainous
terrain. They rejected the site and insisted that they be placed on
arable land near the Bagalbal ritual area site.
Finally, after living as virtual squatters on their own ancestral
land and working as seasonal workers for the plantations for
many decades, they can now have their own plots from where
they can eke out a simple but sufficient living for their families
and community. For Datu Agdahan, that day was a victory as their
tribe was standing again on the sacred grounds of Bagalbal where
their ancestors used to offer rituals for their gods. But the sense of
accomplishment and celebration were short-lived.
That very afternoon, about 200 men, some armed with bolos
and guns, arrived at the site. They just let the NCIP and government
officials leave before unleashing carnage. They forcibly demol-
ished the hastily built shanties and unloaded their guns before
the stunned community. Nuns from the Medical Mission Sisters

1 4 8
witnessed the impunity of Poling Lorenzo’s guards because they
were there when the strafing took place. The women and children
of the community witnessed the violence and were in shock. It
was not the first instance of strafing. Every now and then, guards
along the perimeter of the ranch would fire their guns keeping the
TINDOGA community in a state of fear. But it was portent of the
escalating violence and impunity of the land speculator’s armed
guards against the members of TINDOGA for the coming months.
The first casualty of the TINDOGA struggle for land and life was
Mabini “Tata” Beato. With seasonal farm work at its ebb with the
long drawn drought of 2014-2015, the community was hard-pressed
to expand their collective farm to be able to feed their families.
Since March 16, 2015, they have engaged in a “bungkalan” activity
to assert their right over portions of their ancestral domain claim
that is still fenced off by the Montalvan ranch. 200 members of the
organization had been crossing the fenced off perimeter to expand
their cultivated farms as a desperate measure for food in a time
of drought and also as a defiant protest action to the continuing
claim of Lorenzo over their ancestral land. While on their way to
their farms on the morning of March 24, 2015, about 30 armed men
opened fire at them killing Beato and wounding two others. The
incident was reported to the police but just like the previous cases
of strafing and harassment, no arrest was ever made.

Collecti v e strug gle a nd Lum a d va lue s

A militant Lumad political awareness is the hallmark of the

TINDOGA community. The heightened political consciousness of
Datu Andong and his fellow Manobo Pulangion were acquired
because of their long and bitter struggle to get back Bagalbal and

1 4 9
 Datu Santiano Agdahan
or Datu Andong to his
community is the recognized
leader of the Manobo
Pulangion who have banded
together to form TINDOGA.
He leads the struggle of
his community against
the violence and impunity
of Poling Lorenzo and his
armed security guards.
Like all Lumad leaders
who are fighting for their
community’s rights to their
ancestral land, his life is in
constant danger. (R M P-N M R )

1 5 0
1 5 1
One of the recognized Lumad
leaders of TINDOGA paid
the ultimate price when
he was gunned down by
bonnet-wearing assassins
on motorcycles on February
3, 2017. Renato Anglao, 42
years old, was with his wife
and five year old child while
driving his motorcycle to
buy school supplies when the
gunmen waylaid him on the
Bukidnon highway. (J I RU R A DA /
PH I L I PPI N E COL L EGI A N )
 On the morning of March 24,
2015, while on their way to
their farms, TINDOGA members
were waylaid and ambushed
by 30 armed security guards
killing Mabini “Tata” Beato
and wounding two others. The
children of the community refuse
to forget the incident and have
dramatized the ambush and
their subsequent actions in this
community play. (R M P-N M R )

1 5 4
1 5 5
and the rest of Kiokong from the defunct Rancho Montalvan Incor-
porated (RMI).
Politicians, landlords, and the dominant Christian public who
are used to the docile and submissive Lumad are scandalized
when they see the assertive members of the TINDOGA community
including the women and children in protest actions. They have
come to the conviction that their struggle for land is righteous and
just that is why they can stand up before prominent politicians
and landlords in public fora to make their case. The children also
exhibit this new pride and confidence to the surprise of those who
look down on the Lumad.
The premium that they placed on their collective unity accounts
for their strength as an organization. It is this emphasis on their
shared collective interests that allows them to withstand the
violent attacks of Poling Lorenzo’s armed guards. Datu Agdahan
believes that their recourse to the power of their collective unity
is a reflection of their values as members of the Manobo Pulangion
tribe and to collectively work on the land is a natural manifestation
of this trait.
While other Lumad groups who were able to secure ancestral
domain titles were quick to subdivide the land amongst themselves
and have these leased for large-scale agricultural plantations,
Datu Agdahan and TINDOGA are heeding the lessons of their long
and brutal oppression. Land is life and giving it up for momentary
monetary gain will also bring about the extinction of their tribe.

1 5 6
 9 —— Heeding Le ssons of History:
the Ba n waon of Sa n Luis, Agusa n de Sur

What would make a thousand indigenous

men, women, and children, evacuate their
homes and farms in the hinterlands to camp
out at an abandoned hospital at the center
of town leaving their farm animals and
means of livelihood? It is months of military
operations and harassment.
In an attempt to flush out suspected
rebel sympathizers, soldiers and their
paramilitary guides swooped down on the
hinterland communities of the Banwaon in
San Luis, Agusan del Sur in the last quarter
of November 2014 supposedly as part of the
military’s Community Organizing for Peace
and Development.
A subsequent solidarity mission
documented 93 cases of human rights

1 5 7
violations that include indiscriminate firing, restriction of
movement, gun-touting, destruction and divestment of proper-
ties, use of public facilities for military purposes, use of civilians
as guides or human shields, fake surrenders, threats, harassments,
and intimidation during this period that caused the Banwaons to
evacuate (Umil, 2015).  
But it was the killing of the Barangay Captain of Balit, Necasio
“Angis” Precioso Sr., an anti-mining advocate, on December
22, 2014 that became the final straw that caused the Banwaon
to collectively flee their homes and descend into the abandoned
hospital compound where they endured desperate conditions for
two months.
On January 23, 2015, 174 Banwaon families went on a massive
exodus from their ancestral lands to the village center of Balit.
They came from 14 sitios from four barangays of the Municipality
of San Luis. The evacuation conditions caused the deaths of three
children and the spread of various illnesses that afflicted hundreds
of women, the elderly, and children in the evacuation center.
After months of encamping in their evacuation center where
scores have died and gotten sick, the Banwaon bakwits of Balit, San
Luis, Agusan del Sur were able to return home only on March 18,
2015 as military officials promised to pull out from civilian facilities
and cease camping near populated areas. This, after the display
of the tribe’s unity and the support of the church, civil society
organizations and progressive groups regarding their plight. It
can be interpreted that the “bakwit,” in this instance, can also be
a political act that dramatize the high degree of political organiza-
tion and consciousness, collective unity, and wide external support
group that the larger Banwaon group enjoyed (see Canuday, 2015).

1 5 8
 Entry of log ging oper ations

It was the second time for me to visit the Banwaon in Balit. The
first time was during the international solidarity mission staged
last March 9, 2015 where there were about a thousand of them in
the abandoned hospital just beside the school formerly operated
by the RGS sisters. Hundreds of religious, human rights advocates,
doctors and nurses, joined the mission and what was otherwise a
sleepy rural village was teeming with activity with programs, a
medical mission, and documentation of human rights violations.
A few months later, I returned to Balit to speak with Banwaon
and Tagdumahan Secretary General, an indigenous people’s
organization, Jolito Otakan for this research and the mood was
different. There was no frenzy of activity and less people walking
around than the last time. I was asked to park my vehicle away
from the view of passers-by. Better to be safe, our guides reasoned.
I would find out days later that members of the organization would
be gunned down by the local paramilitary group a day after we
left. What follows are the details of our long conversation.
The Banwaon consider themselves a subtribe of the far larger
and older Higaonon tribe. What has been recorded in their oral
history is the formal recognition of the Banwaon tribe by the
Higaonon council of elders in a gathering they term as “Dumalong-
dong” convened by Higaonon Datu Apo Bayo around the year 1846
as a separate and distinct tribe.
In this special gathering, the council recognized the Banwaon’s
evolved own set of laws entitled “Ipoan Ko Pinaglaw Daw Kiayala
Ha Batasan” as well as their territory the center of which was
identified as the river Tagpangi and surrounded by the territo-

1 5 9
1 6 0
1 6 1
Previous spread: ries of the Manobo, Higaonon, and
174 Banwaon families left their
hinterland communities last Talaandig. Apo Anggowaning was
January 23, 2015 to encamp also recognized in that “Dumalong-
at the abandoned hospital in
Balit, San Luis, Agusan del dong of Tagpangi” as the elder and
Sur after experiencing intense
harassment and militarization
most senior Datu of the Banwaon
from both paramilitary groups tribe.
and government forces for many
months. But it was the killing For the longest time, the Banwaon
of their Barangay Captain last lived in the same manner as the
December 22, 2014, Necasio
“Angis” Precioso, that was the other indigenous tribes in the island
last straw. They endured difficult
conditions for months resulting
of Mindanao before the advent of
to the death of three children the Christian migrant settlers and
and the spread of various
illnesses that afflicted hundreds the Spanish and American colonial
of women, elderly, and children rulers. They lived off the bounty of
in the evacuation center. (R M P-N M R )
the abundant forests and rivers and
tended to small family plots in a
sustainable self-sufficient manner. They practiced their own ways
of life and followed their own beliefs and laws with hardly any need
to deal with outsiders.
There was already a complex system of social organization
with differentiated roles and tasks for community members whose
cohesion and harmony was the primary task of the appointed
community leader, their datu, and they maintained this system
even during the Spanish occupation. The Spaniards had limited
inroads into Banwaon territory since the tribe was quick to defend
the integrity of their territory against outsiders.
According to their oral history, tribal wars were waged by Datu
Bagani Ginambayan against the Spaniards at the latter end of the
18th century when Spanish authorities and their baptized Christian-
ized locals who occupied the plains of Talacogon and Nuevo Trabajo,

1 6 2
Esperanza, Agusan del Sur. Eventually, these conflicts were settled
through a blood-compact ritual with the Spanish authorities and
the reason why these areas are now outside the ancestral domain
of the Banwaon. But the tribe refused to be assimilated to the ways
of the Spanish and maintained their autonomy and independence
for a good number of decades after, even thwarting the American
and Japanese colonial authorities.
The strongest and most formidable challenge to the autonomy
of the Banwaon began when logging operations entered into their
territory. Balit used to be a forested area until private logging firms
began operations.
Jolito explains that according to Tagdumahan records, it was
in the year 1957 that the Bargas, Philippine Packing or PhilPack,
Calilid and Agusmin logging companies began to enter Banwaon
territory. It was during this time when the forests, which was a
source of their indigenous sustenance, began to be decimated.
Relying on the forest for their sustenance, certain sectors of
the community resisted and incurred the ire of the private logging
firms protected by the military. The Banwaon families of Manloweg
and Manggadol bitterly resisted the entry of logging firms and
various incidents of violence were recorded. These memories of
violence experienced in the hands of military and then later para-
military groups are engraved in the collective memory of the
Banwaon because this was the mode of their first encounter with
government and outsiders.
Jolito shares that the logging operations persisted many decades
after and escalated during the time of the dictatorship in the 1970s.
Twenty three Banwaon community members were salvaged in this
period by the precursor of the present-day CAFGU, the Community

1 6 3
Home Defense Unit or CHDF, civilians armed by the military for
their counter-insurgency operations. The accusation that the
Banwaon are sympathizers of the NPA because they were staunchly
against logging and mining is apparently an old script that justified
the violence that resisting communities faced even before.
The killing of the twenty three Banwaons all took place in a
single day by recruited Higaonon CHDF members from neigh-
boring Esperanza town. They were used by the logging company
to open up forests within the Banwaon ancestral domain.
The pressures of militarization forced some members of the
community to work for the logging operations. But the continuing
resistance of the community even led to a few ambuscades against
the logging operations led by Datu Saling-unga.
Apart from the violence they endured from paramilitary forces
that facilitated the entry of logging that date back to the time of the
dictatorship, the transformation of the way of life of the Banwaon
was also a consequence of the entry of logging operations. From
self-sufficient and abundant ways of communal living relying on
the bounty of the land and the forests, they began to adopt the
practices of dominant culture.
This transformation is manifested in their adoption of the word
“sector” to refer to the land that their family has economic rights
over. Before logging, such a concept was an alien construction.
But the logging company dangled the benefit of royalty payments
in exchange for the trees that will be harvested, which provided
impetus for traditional leaders to claim dominion over land that
used to be communal. At present, a Banwaon datu and his constit-
uent enjoys a “sector” of land that they can plant on or lease if they
so wish.

1 6 4
 Instead of practicing their traditional forms of livelihood
hunting for game in the vanishing forests or tending to their small
farm lots, a significant number of Banwaon men became inte-
grated into the cash economy by working for the logging company
in exchange for wages. The construction of logging roads deep
inside their territories also meant their community’s slow inte-
gration into the body politic. Whereas before their houses were
spaced far apart, and there were just traditional long houses where
they gathered as a community in special occasions, they were now
forced to live in grids close to political centers of power such as
the barrio or the barangay for easy monitoring by the government.
The logging boom did not last long. When the trees were all cut
and the centuries-old virgin forests were all but decimated, many
Banwaon found themselves without the meager royalties and wages
that they relied on. By the late 1980s, they had to return to their old
ways and a significant portion of their tribe who refused to the entry
of logging operations were vindicated. However, the corrupting
effects of logging left a deep imprint among the Banwaon.

The cor rup tion of Ba n waon le a der s

The 2015 evacuation was not the first time that the Banwaon left their
communities because of militarization. They have done this before
in 2007 when the communities of Tabon-tabon, Nakadayas, and
Kimambukagyang also of San Luis left their communities because
of the terror tactics undertaken by Mario Napungahan, a Banwaon
datu who has filed for an ancestral domain claim covering the entire
San Luis municipality and beyond. In order to convince his fellow
Banwaon to support his claim, he has conscripted and armed fellow
Banwaons and they sow terror among the local population.

1 6 5
 Local sources reveal that Napungahan was once considered a
respected and senior community leader until he violated the tribe’s
enshrined standards for leadership. Among his betrayals include
conniving with the military in their counterinsurgency operations
and appropriating the thousands of hectares of the Banwaon’s
collective ancestral domain claim as his family’s own private claim.
He is behind the planned entry of mining and plantation interests
within the Banwaon ancestral domain.
Napungahan’s partnership with the military led to the founding
of the Rebel Returnees or the Mabantag paramilitary group now
headed by Narding Pascual and Noel Napanguhan, the son, after
his death. As early as 2001, there had been reports detailing the
abuses of this paramilitary group who represent the same business
interests bannered under counterinsurgency. They have burned
schools and forced the young Banwaon to be recruited into the
CAFGU (UCA, 2002).
In 2007, it was reported that Noel Napungahan threw a grenade
at the house of former Balit Barangay Captain Marcelito Precioso.
Fortunately, no one was hurt.
The recent push to clear San Luis of insurgents, according to
the displaced Banwaon, the same motive behind the killing of Balit
Barangay Captain Angis Precioso Sr., is due to the planned entry
of the Malampay, Makilala, and Tambuli Mining companies into
their ancestral domain that is being pushed by the Napungahan
paramilitary group in the area. The circumstances surrounding
his assassination reveal as much.
Precioso figured in a heated argument with a certain Msgt.
Andres Villaganas of the Army a day before about his opposi-
tion to the military encampment within their community. On his

1 6 6
way to the municipal hall to file a formal complaint the next day,
he was shot by two men riding in tandem and wearing ski masks
which, in turn, led to the evacuation which lasted for months. The
said argument has a loaded history that goes back to the opposing
positions of Precioso and Napungahan regarding mining.
Mario Napungahan used to be a respected member of the Banwaon
community. In fact his children were schooled under the RGS Tribal
Filipino Ministry. His daughters became a midwife and a teacher but
his son Wilfredon “Boyboy” Napungahan entered the military. After
Mario’s death just recently, Boyboy took over his father’s activities
and continued to cause problems for the community just like his
father did. It is a problem that has been recurring for decades.
The motive for the December 2015 bakwit was that they were
forcing the entire community to be part of the CADT that the
Napungahans were pushing. And behind the Napungahan’s claim,
backed up by the military’s Oplan Bayanihan and COPD’s are the
mining explorations of three companies who want to enter Banwaon
territory – Tambuli Mining Corporation, Makilala Mining Corpo-
ration, and Metro Luxury Mining Corporation. If before the moti-
vation was to profit from the forests, now the objective of business
was to excavate and mine from the Banwaon land.
The rise of the Napungahans and the problems their ancestral
domain claims caused the community can be traced to the
weakening of traditional leadership practices among the Banwaons
because of the corrupting influence of businesses such as logging
and mining. For instance, according to their traditional practices,
a datu is elected as a leader of the community because of certain
standards. He must be a role model and holds the interests of the
community at heart.

1 6 7
 Under the datu are the bagani, elite warriors, and the alimaong
or troops. It is the datu’s task to lead the attack or defend the
community. There had been instances in the past when tribal wars
occurred between rival indigenous tribes who each have their
territories within the region. The Banwaon are known to be fierce
warriors and oral history indicate that, despite their small number
relative to bigger groups, they have never been beaten in any such
tribal war or “pangayaw.”
It is this aspect of the Banwaon culture also present in other
Lumad groups that the military and extractive interests exploit.
They corrupt indigenous leaders such as Napungahan and use
them to divide the community. They arm the datu and his followers
in the name of counterinsurgency and they evolve to become para-
military groups wreaking havoc in the rural areas. The spate of
recent extrajudicial killings of resisting Banwaon members under
the Tagdumahan people’s organization is suspected to have been
perpetrated by the Napungahan paramilitary group.
The corrupting effect of military counterinsurgency operations
and external business interests to the traditional role of the datu
figures greatly into the current situation of the Banwaon. Apart
from the mining companies who intend to enter the Banwaon
ancestral domain, there are also existing logging concessions
within the territory that account for the increasing economic and
cultural vulnerability of the Banwaon. Wood Domain Incorporated
controls 50,000 hectares while JAKA controls 5,000 hectare of
tree plantations together with 32,070 hectares under Provident
Tree Farms Incorporated all within the domain of the Banwaon.
As a consequence, the Banwaon community is now divided into
opposing camps - the Napanguhan paramilitary group who push

1 6 8
for and protect existing mining and logging interests in the area
and, on the other hand, the far larger group of traditional leaders,
such as the fallen Angis Precioso Sr., who belong to TAGDUMAHAN,
a grassroots organization of the Banwaon opposed to the entry of
mining and logging into their ancestral domain.
Since its establishment, scores of the organization’s leaders and
members have been killed by Napungahan’s paramilitary group
beginning with the killing of Datu Aladino Badbaran in 2009,
Genesis Ambason in 2012, Angis Precioso Sr. in 2014, Lito Abion
in 2015, and Jerry Layola and Jimmy Barosa in 2016 according to
Tagdumahan. The sacrifices that these gallant defenders of the
Banwaon tribe are rooted in their enduring faithfulness to their
indigenous beliefs.

Indigenous notions of dev elopment

Without the corrupting influence of business, the Banwaon

community believes in the collective ownership of land. That is
why a significant number of Banwaon people rejected the entry
of logging and mining firms under their leader Datu Saling-unga
at the onset. The problem of the community began when logging
was able to enter the picture nevertheless and more recently when
Mario Napungahan applied for an ancestral domain claim repre-
senting himself as the tribe’s Supreme Datu.
There is the view that the titling process is something alien and
even oppressive to them. Giving individual rights to land would
allow non-Banwaons to enter their territory. However, if they
don’t have it titled, government would assume that their ancestral
domain is public land. The IPRA law would have provided remedy
but the moves of the likes of Mario Napungahan and his family to

1 6 9
use the CADT process for their own gain make the Banwaon suspi-
cious of such government-sponsored processes.
Moreover, the community frowns upon the practice of having
their family plots titled. A Banwaon family can plant on small
family farms with crops such as bananas, root crops, corn, and
mountain rice and passed this on to family members based on
tradition; but it is another story if one has it titled because it can
then be disposed of. It is their preference to maintain their ways of
life, living off what their environment can provide for subsistence.
Bae Emil, one of the traditional woman leaders of the Banwaon
in Balit, spoke before a gathering to share her experience when she
was called to a dialogue with the military commander. The official
supposedly dangled the prospect of having a Jollibee in the area once
mining development takes place within their ancestral domain. To
this, she bravely replied that they do not need such fast food chains
if it meant that they would be driven out of their communities. She
added that they were happy with their sweet potato as long as they
held on to their economic, political, and social way of life.
Even though they did not have the trappings of modern life,
they said that they never went hungry. Their surroundings did
not fail to provide them with their daily sustenance. It was also in
their culture to share with the rest of the community whatever they
found in the forests. When someone from the community were to
catch a wild board, it will be cut up in equal portions for the whole
community to share.
Not a few voiced their fears that with the plans of the Napun-
gahans to claim the community’s ancestral domain and when the
mining companies come in, they will lose all the bounty coming
from their environment. They note that even small trees are now

17 0
already being harvested for money and it would not take long for
the forests to be decimated completely especially when outsiders
and extractive industries are allowed in. If the mountains and the
trees were to be flattened, they are sure that their Banwaon culture
is also sure to vanish.

Heeding le ssons, m a inta ining independence

The staunch stance of the Banwaon at present against mining, a

principle that not a few of their kind sacrificed their lives for in
the hands of paramilitary groups who also painfully come from
their own ranks, is a product of the bitter lessons they learned
when their leaders allowed logging to enter into their territory.
Apart from destroying the land and forests from where they
subsisted, the entry of logging also corrupted the social fabric
of the tribe.
It is not the desire of the Banwaon to isolate themselves from
the outside world although they value their cultural and economic
independence from their historical experience versus the exploita-
tive and violent incursions of external interests.
They have experienced living with operating logging companies
within their midst and they have not seen development, the kind
that benefits all, to have taken place. They are sure that with
mining it will be the same, if not worse. The conviction is strong
among the Banwaon to protect their community against incursions
into their ancestral land because they nearly lost the identity of
their tribe and their accompanying indigenous ways of life with
the corrupting effects of logging. They also believe that their
struggle for autonomy at present will ensure their tribe’s existence
and their children’s future.

17 1
 At the core of this political consciousness is a return to Banwaon
values of old where personal interests take secondary importance
to the primacy of communal goals. There is also resurging appreci-
ation of the importance of the environment. Their adamant refusal
to succumb to the terror tactics of paramilitary groups who are
pushing for mining interests to enter their domain is a manifesta-
tion of this belief. The organized evacuation of 2015 in Balit was a
manifestation of this community solidarity.
After our long conversation, there was one thing that Jolito
Otakan, secretary general of Tagdumahan, said that struck me.
He shared that the lessons of history for the Banwaon were clear:
“Ang Banwaon man gud naa kanunay pagsabot, tungod kay
nakita man niya nga kami mabuhi bisag wala mo.” (The Banwaon
have achieved an understanding that we as a people can survive
without you.)

17 2
 10 —— The Lum a d Pr e sent:
Accumul ation by Disposse ssion

Karl Gaspar (2000) makes a number of

important arguments in his landmark
work “The Lumad’s Struggle in the Face of
Globalization.” He traces how the fate of the
Lumad as a marginalized and dispossessed
people can be traced historically to both the
colonial and neocolonial period’s political
economic features and their powerlessness
is bound to continue unless these deep-
seated social configurations are challenged.
He writes (2000: 32):

“It thus seemed inevitable that what began

in the post-1946 scenario would continue
through the post-1986 period. Despite the
promise of people power, the indigenous
people remain powerless. The grip of

17 3
 neo-colonialism – on the country’s mode of production, the
political economy, the reins of government, the business
conglomerates, the landlord clique and on the majority of the
Filipino people – has become tighter, if anything.”

Accumul ation by disposse ssion:

a theor etica l lens for the Lum a d ex per ience

In the march of modernity towards abundant rational societies,

it is given that the global economic system will relegate certain
geographic sectors as sources of raw materials. It is through these
arrangements that they are able to siphon off from the West much
of the wealth and abundance that is now in display in the first world
leaving many of these neo-colonies as showcases of great poverty
or if there is apparent wealth, scandalous inequality.
David Harvey, the Marxist geographer, has labeled this as the
New Imperialism (2003) where overaccumulated capital seeks new
frontiers for cheaper access to resources.
There are two predicaments inherent to capitalism according
to Harvey’s analysis. Following Rosa Luxemburg, apart from the
problems of underconsumption which is related to the phenom-
enon of overproduction wherein there are more goods produced
for existing markets to absorb, there is also the problem of overac-
cummulation which responds to the lack of opportunities for prof-
itable investment of accumulated capital. Capitalism is a profit-
making machine and there are opportunity costs if idle capital is
not reinvested to generate even more profit. (Harvey, 2003: 139)
In the face of stagnant demand, capital will find ways to reinvest
and make profit by lowering the costs of production via the process

17 4
of what Harvey calls as “accumulation by dispossession.” There is,
he says, “an organic relation between expanded reproduction on
the one hand and the often violent processes of dispossession on
the other…” (Harvey, 2003: 141-142) These new frontiers are opened
up for the free and unmitigated exploitation of still untapped
resources in what is revealed to be a continuing process of contem-
porary primitive accumulation through dispossession.  
“What accumulation by dispossession does is to release a set
of assets (including labour power) at very low (and in some
instances zero) cost. Overaccummulated capital can seize hold
of such assets and immediately turn them to profitable use.”
(Harvey, 2003: 147)
It was, of course, Karl Marx, who first put forward the concept
of primitive accumulation. It was his prediction that capitalism
will violently transform social relations from one that is defined
by patronage arrangements related to land to one that is predomi-
nantly characterized by an emancipated labor power dependent
on wage-labor. He predicted the proletarianization of peoples all
over the world and the conversion of social relations to two distinct
classes primarily – the capitalist and the working classes in a
process that he labeled as primitive accumulation.
This historical upheaval is also characterized by a host of other
mechanisms which Harvey, interpreting Marx (2003: 144) identi-
fied as the following: “the privatization of land and the forceful
expulsion of peasant populations; conversion of various forms
of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive
property rights; the suppression of rights to the commons; the
commodification of labour power and the suppression of alterna-
tive (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial,

17 5
American soldiers Cavalry surveying a plateau in Zamboanga, Mindanao, circa 1900s.
(U-M L I BR A RY COL L ECT ION, GEN ER A L JOH N J. PER SH I NG PHOTO GR A PH COL L ECT ION )

17 6
17 7
neo-colonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets
(including natural resources); the monetization of exchange and
taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade, and usury, the
national debt, ultimately, the credit system as radical means of
primitive accumulation.” Note that Marx was describing here the
processes undertaken when societies shift from feudalism to capi-
talism which was suppose to take place a few hundred years ago in
the wake of the Industrial Revolution.
But in the history of capitalist evolution, there had been many
twists and turns and one of these is the continuing preponder-
ance of feudal arrangements in semi-feudal semi-colonial contexts.
The social processes, in reality, were not as cut and dried as Marx
imagined them to be but rather one where a kind of political
economic lag that was integral to the development of the global
economic system actually occurred. The case of Mindanao and its
belated colonization and the rest of the economy of the country
given its designation as producer of raw materials for its colonial
principal may provide examples of this nuance.
These may be the reasons why primitive accumulation, a set
of conditions that should have occurred in the transition from
feudal to industrial society 400 years ago, is curiously applicable
to modern day realities especially in countries like the Philippines
that went through colonialism. As one scholar observed:

“Though primitive accumulation is a process that some have

considered a historical phase through which societies pass on
the way to more fully proletarianized social structures based on
expanded reproduction, the current state of global affairs makes
it evident that primitive accumulation has maintained or even

17 8
 increased its salience, meaning either that it is in fact central
to capitalist accumulation in general or else has a much longer
period of historical ‘dissolution’ than previously imagined.”
(Glassman, 2006: 621-622 as cited in Baird, 2011: 10-26)

It is in this context that the Lumad can be seen as the contem-

porary victims of capital’s violent onslaught for cheaper raw
materials to raise the rate of private accumulation.  Especially in
the periodic capitalist crisis of overproduction and overaccumu-
lation, the drive to conquer new frontiers where the indigenous
communities reside has been the recourse of transnationals and
their local counterparts. It is this global economic context that
provides logic to agricultural expansion and the mining boom that
in turn cause the killings and displacement of Indigenous Peoples
not just in the Philippines but also worldwide.
This important political economic angle has not been given
emphasis in current discourses regarding the Lumad and Indig-
enous Peoples. They have been idealized as repositories of a non-
existent and idealized pre-modern cultural truth when in fact they
are the most contemporary showcase of the economic and political
violence of global capital made possible through the facilitation of
their local agents.
In the contemporary period, accumulation by dispossession take
place in the context of the onslaught of a rapacious global neolib-
eral order pressuring neocolonies to submit to their demand or in
the case of the Philippines, the acquiescence of a pliant political
elite that has been ideologically captured by the same forces. The
contemporary Philippine State is the nexus of all these forces that
make all these happen. David Harvey writes:

17 9
“The primary vehicle for accumulation by dispossession,
therefore, has been the forcing open of markets throughout the
world by institutional pressures exercised through the IMF and
WTO, backed by the power of the United States (and to a lesser
extent Europe) to deny access to its own vast market to those
countries that refuse to dismantle their protections.” (2003: 181)

1 8 0
 11 —— Disposse ssion through
State-sponsor ed Wa r s of Extinction

What Marx, a hundred a years ago, and

Harvey, just a decade ago, were able to
do was to provide us with the theoretical
language to understand the motives and
operations behind global capitalism. But
how does this reality actually occur on the
ground; through what social mechanisms
does it operate; and how do these elements
impact on the history of dispossession and
current war of extinction being waged
against Mindanao’s Indigenous Peoples,
the Lumad?
The preceding sections hopefully were
able to provide the historical context and
the political economic shifts brought
about by the integration of the Mindanao
economy to the global economic order.

1 8 1
However, the picture would not be complete without outlining
the other forces that make this process of marginalization occur.
How does this accumulation by dispossession really occur on the
ground?
The narratives in the preceding section of this book as well
as the historical accounts provide a clear and definite answer.
There are forces that have brought the Lumad to their historical
and current plight and these actions have been undertaken for a
common reason – bolstering the strength of the dominant political
and economic order of the colonial government and after, an
elite-led democracy.
There had been a host of apparatuses that helped achieve these
goals but it is the Philippine State which is the most organized
and consistent among these. First, the resettlement program, as
a colonial imposition, undertaken through the force and imposed
legitimacy of the state was crucial in creating the eventual condi-
tions that would make the local economy pliant to the designs of the
new order. Following the wake of these resettlement programs, it
must also be noted that the whole apparatus of the State including
its armed forces and police came in to enforce the new regime.
They also set up parallel governance structures separate from the
traditional and indigenous political systems. When the migrant
settlers faced resistance from the original inhabitants of the lands
they have been awarded, the State through the police and military
took the migrants’ side which is not surprising since the military
and police came from the ranks of the migrants themselves.
All these indicate that the entry of formal structures of govern-
ance in many parts of Mindanao took place as an imposition to
indigenous and Moro communities. The first and lasting experience

1 8 2
U-M L I BR A RY COL L ECT ION, GEN ER A L JOH N J. PER SH I NG PHOTO GR A PH COL L ECT ION (TOP) A N D PHOTO GR A PH S OF T H E PH I L I PPI N E ISL A N D S (BOT TOM )

Here are pictures of a proud Moro chieftain riding on

horseback and flotilla of Moro boats carrying the American
flag in Jolo in the 1900s. Brute war and cooptation were
just some of the ploys resorted to by the American colonial
government to secure their colonial objectives.

1 8 3
of the State for the indigenous in these areas, and this has cut deep
into their community’s collective memory that remain fresh, is that
the State is an occupying force who appropriate their resources,
modify their local economy, and in many instances apply violence
in doing so. Throughout the regime of logging, cattle raising, plan-
tations, and mining, the experience of these communities has been
that of displacement and violence courtesy of the apparatuses of
the State. A complete understanding of the current plight of the
Lumad would not be possible without an interrogation of the role
of the Philippine State in this regard.
As a primary conduit of colonial interests at its emergence,
the Philippine State was characterized by the practice of accom-
modating the goals of their American masters through the main-
tenance of the same Spanish political and economic elite. Despite
the promise of modernization and liberating the Filipinos from
feudal backwardness, the Americans did not improve the existing
economic relations and, in fact, as far as the Lumad and other indig-
enous populations of Mindanao were concerned, actually exac-
erbated their condition with the appropriation of their ancestral
domains. The Philippine State maintained its colonial character
arising from a feudal base where a landlord class dominates.
The existing Spanish mestizo landed class maintained their
ownership and control of land and thus enjoyed the same feudal
advantages of having a peasant class generating income from
their land and labor. Neither was the situation made better for
the hordes of migrant settlers who moved to the new frontier that
was Mindanao. A section of the migrant peasants who cornered
homestead lots played the role of being masters to other migrants.
They played the role of being protectors to the new homesteaders

1 8 4
versus the Moro resistance to their encroachment and soon became
the political warlords and landlords who have been dominating the
economy and politics of former Moro lands.
In other words, the Americans made use of the same landed
political leadership from the Spanish era, give or take a few
changes owing to conflicting interests and the effect of the reset-
tlement program, to do their bidding. This was achieved primarily
through the mechanisms of the newly-established commonwealth
government and later on the neocolonial state in the post-war
era. By maintaining the economic structure of feudal Philippine
society, the Americans also established a Philippine State that had
the same landlord class at the helm that held a predatory desire
for the land and resources to benefit themselves and their colonial
masters.
Simbulan (2005: 61) in his study of the nature of the Philippine
ruling class from 1946-1963 identifies the longevity of the landlord-
tenant relationship that was at the base of the Philippine State
during the American colonial period. Instead of breaking this
down as the promise of modernization would imply, the Americans
encouraged its growth instead. He wrote: “In a master-ward rela-
tionship, it is much more convenient for the master to be dealing
with a few bosses than many wards.”
As a consequence, the cultural practice of bossism, borrowed
from the cacique relations of former Spanish colonies, became
even more embedded in the workings of the Philippine State. It
is characterized by a penchant for Filipinos to approach politics
in terms of a principalia-non-principalia dichotomy: “of big
and small, of superior and inferior, of leaders and followers”
(Simbulan, 2005: 181).

1 8 5
 Simbulan traces the roots of this tendency to relate to political
power in terms of this dichotomy from the intermediary role that
the Spaniards assigned to the cabeza position. Given the tight and
centralized hold on power by the colonial authorities, the cabeza
became the important go-between, the dispenser of favors, the
fixer between the indios and the Spaniards and they used this
position to amass influence, power, and wealth in colonial Filipino
society (Simbulan, 2005: 29). The nation’s political elite would
emerge from this class relying on their mastery of the culture of
patronage learned under Spanish and American colonialism to
keep themselves in power up to the present.
The maintenance of the landlord-tenant relationship during
this stage would have far reaching consequences to evolution
of the modern Philippine State. The ties of the political elite to
colonial business interests, predatory regard for the nation’s land
and resources, and its proclivity to sponsor activities that result in
accumulation by dispossession at the expense of indigenous and
Moro peoples for private profit are enshrined at the onset upon the
founding of the Philippine Republic.
“In the Philippines, where political and economic power are
concentrated in the hands of a few, the probability of bureaucrat
capitalism to exist tends to increase. The power-wielders, as has
been pointed out, are clothed with a highly centralized formal
authority. The social and cultural norms recognize a built-in
superior-inferior relation between the elite and the masses.
The sovereign people are mostly ignorant and inarticulate
while the power-holders are skillful individuals. Under these
circumstances, the power-holders who are not subjected to an
effective restraint from the people tend to become arbitrary in

1 8 6
 the exercise of official power. And the direction is towards the
building of private fortune.” (Simbulan, 2005: 266)
Mindanao became the new political and economic playground
of the Philippine political elite parceling its resources to their
appointed cronies, transnational corporations, and local warlords.
This can be seen in the history of logging, agricultural planta-
tions, and mining that have plundered Mindanao through various
mechanisms. Various cronies of succeeding administrations have
done this to Mindanao. The Benedictos, a known Marcos crony who
appropriated land from the Manobos of barrio Paitan of Quezon
Bukidnon in order to establish the Bukidnon Sugar Industries Co.,
or BUSCO in 1975 (Gaspar, 2000: 126) is an example of how the
Philippine State was utilized in order to dispossess and accumu-
late for the sake of private profit. The establishment of the Agus
Hydropower plants in Lanao is another which may have bene-
fitted lowland populations at the expense of the displacement and
exclusion of significant Maranao populations.
All these activities by the State are undertaken with the veneer
of legitimacy provided by various legal instruments that justify
the dispossession of the Lumad and other Indigenous Peoples, and
the Moro population of their ancestral domain. Rodil (1994:46-47)
draws attention to the progressive provisions of the 1987 Consti-
tution, particularly Article XII, Section 5 which declares that the
State shall “protect the rights of indigenous cultural communi-
ties to their ancestral lands to ensure their economic, social and
cultural well-being.” And yet in Article XII, Section 2, of the same
constitution, it states that “all lands of the public domain waters,
minerals, coal, petroleum, and other mineral oils, all forces of
potential energy, fisheries, forests or timber, wildlife, flora and

1 8 7
fauna, and other natural resources are owned by the State. With the
exception of agricultural lands, all other natural resources shall
not be alienated” nullifying the previous progressive provision.
For Rodil (1994:35), this sweeping appropriation in the Consti-
tution of the definition of what constitutes the public domain was
in contradiction to the established rights of Indigenous Peoples on
ancestral lands based on three grounds: 1) they have been living in
these areas since 1596 until 1898, throughout the three hundred or
so years of Spanish Occupation; 2) they have practiced communal
ownership of these areas throughout this period; and lastly, 3) they
have continuously occupied these areas without interruption.
The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997 or the IPRA Law of
the Philippines was considered a landmark document when it was
signed into law by then Philippine President Fidel V. Ramos on
July 28, 1997. The Philippines became the first country in Asia that
recognized the struggles and aspirations of its Indigenous Peoples
by way of a legal instrument that spelled in black and white an
acknowledgement of their historical marginalization and provided
access to mechanisms of redress.
At the heart of the IPRA law, following the draft promulgations of
the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
(UNDRIP) from 1983 and 1995 until it was adopted overwhelmingly
in a UN General Assembly in 2007, is the insistence on the principle
of securing free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) of indigenous
communities when third party entities such as business or govern-
ment deal with the group. The law also granted the right of these
communities to ancestral domain claims and tasked a government
entity, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), to
oversee these processes.

1 8 8
 Almost two decades since the IPRA Law’s implementation, the
indigenous groups in the country are nowhere near achieving the
stated aims of the law. The State was tasked to guarantee the full
enjoyment of the human rights and freedoms of these marginal-
ized groups and yet the spectre of social, political, and economic
displacement continues to hound indigenous communities.
In an unfortunate development, these hard-won mechanisms of
redress such as the IPRA Law have actually become instruments
for the continued marginalization and in many cases provided the
imperative for the spate of extrajudicial killings and forced evacu-
ations of indigenous leaders and their communities.
As early as 2003, a study (Burton, 2003 as cited in Keienburg,
2012: 17) which looked into the implementations of the law in the
province of Bukidnon noted the institutional incapacity of the NCIP
to properly implement the principle of free, prior, and informed
consent. Apart from the “poor performance” of the agency in its
important policy-making and adjudication duties, there were also
indications that the FPIC process related to the issuance of mining
and other business-related certifications in indigenous areas “have
been compromised if not corrupted.”’
The case of the killing of the anti-mining Matigsalog tribal
leader Jimmy Liguyon of Dao, Quezon, Bukidnon reveals the deadly
consequences when the very mechanisms that are supposed to
guarantee redress provide the very imperatives for the murder of
indigenous leaders and the displacement of the whole community.
Liguyon was shot at close range with an armalite rifle in front of
his children by a known paramilitary leader Alde “Butsoy” Salusad
on March 5, 2012 according to witnesses. Salusad belongs to the
New Indigenous Peoples Army for Reform (NIPAR) paramilitary

1 8 9
group with strong military backing, and who stands behind an
ancestral domain claim that seeks to open up 52,000 has. of indig-
enous land to large-scale mining operations. Liguyon was killed
for his resistance to the paramilitary group’s designs to force the
community Liguyon leads to acquiesce to the planned expansion of
San Cristo Mining in the area.
The same story had been told in the killing of Necasio “Angis”
Precioso as recounted in a previous chapter.
All over the Southern Philippine island of Mindanao, cases of
big businesses with the backing of the Philippine military and
conscripted paramilitary groups sponsoring ancestral domain
claims enabled by the IPRA law have brought murder and anguish
to once peaceful indigenous communities. In many cases,either the
NCIP has stood idly by or has even facilitated the ancestral domain
claims of bogus tribal leaders and fake tribal organizations in
serious violation of the spirit behind the principle of free, prior,
and informed consent enshrined in the UNDRIP and the IPRA Law.
These cases indicate the bastardization of formal mechanisms
established to supposedly protect the interests of indigenous
groups but end up in reality as platforms for their historical and
continuing political, economic, and social displacement. The IPRA
Law, has become in reality, a tool employed by the very forces that
it was supposed to protect the indigenous groups from. The experi-
ence of Indigenous Peoples with the IPRA Law is evidence of how
a progressive legal mechanism can actually be corrupted by the
political and economic context.

1 9 0
 1 2 —— The Lum a d F utur e:
The Lum a d Identit y a nd Strug gle

Last November 25, 2015, an interesting

article was published by the Philippine
Daily Inquirer about the gathering of about
a thousand indigenous leaders of Mindanao
in a hotel in Davao City. Sponsored by
the National Commission on Indigenous
Peoples (NCIP), the three-day assembly
seemed to have a single agenda and
purpose, that is to present a government
counter foil to the successful campaign
of cause-oriented groups against the
displacement and killings which have
victimized Lumad communities and their
leaders in Mindanao.
It is a move that is revealing of the
government’s attitude and position toward
the spate of human rights violations against

1 9 1
indigenous communities in Mindanao. Beyond being dismissive
and unresponsive, these actions actually reveal the deep malicious
contempt not just of government as a whole but by the very agency
that is mandated to uphold indigenous rights versus Lumad
communities and their legitimate and urgent grievances.
Instead of being at the forefront of protecting indigenous
groups against the terror of paramilitary forces, the NCIP reveals
its true colors as a divisive state instrument that stoke the fires of
conflict by actually pitting indigenous groups against one another.
The gathering had an interesting collective clamor, dutifully
reported by the article with matching quotes from selected indig-
enous leaders and seconded by the high officials of the NCIP.
The indigenous leaders all hailing from Mindanao in attendance
and holders of CADTs which make them genuine representa-
tives according to the government agency supposedly are united
in rejecting the label “Lumad,” a term used to refer to them as
members of Mindanao’s indigenous tribes.
It is supposedly a label used by Non-IPs particularly by Visayan
settlers and then later by Christian missionaries who enter their
communities to refer to original settlers of an area. The term
comes from a language that is external to them and according to a
participant, it has been hijacked and given a negative connotation.
In a bad attempt to drive home a point, the term has supposedly
been “massacred,” an oblique but insensitive reference perhaps to
the many victims of state-backed paramilitary violence in indig-
enous communities.
This represents a shift in the field of contestation between
government, their accredited indigenous leaders and groups, some
of whom they also arm and control, on the one hand; and the legit-

1 9 2
imate indigenous groups victimized by government policies and
programs pushed by the military and state agents such as the NCIP,
on the other.
What appears to be a harmless academic and cultural exercise in
finding a suitable term under which the Indigenous Peoples of the
southern island can collectively identify with, is in truth a precise
move to severe the historical ties that bind together the Lumad and
their struggle for the land that they have been disposed with. By
discarding the term Lumad, the long narrative of marginalization
that Mindanao’s tribes share and the continuous appropriation of
their land and resources by logging, agricultural plantations and
more recently, mining operations causing their constant displace-
ment is to be forgotten or elided.
It is not just the mining areas within resisting indigenous
communities’ ancestral domain that is now the object of control
and appropriation, but the very essence of indigeneity for the
Lumad of Mindanao that is now being colonized through a process
of appropriation.
This move by dominant culture and entrenched power has been
ongoing for decades already. There is the appropriation of their
culture by the many festivals that celebrate everything indig-
enous except for their struggle against marginalization. There
is the mainstream depiction of the Lumad as innocent and naïve
such that when they staunchly resist development from external
forces, they are regarded as influenced by other external forces.
And all these, including the redefinition of their indigeneity, have
one objective and purpose, to separate the Lumad from their land.
The term “Lumad,” even though the term’s provenance may
have come from Visayan settlers, has come to mean so much

1 9 3
more for indigenous communities in the course of their decades
of struggle to keep their way of life which is inextricably linked
to their ownership and control over their land and resources. In
this sense, indigeneity is not an essential category that refers to
an unchanging notion of something similar to the idea of a noble
savage, but rather one that is defined by historical circumstances
and dialectical struggle as well.
I was a young undergraduate researcher just entering my senior
year when I was sent to an Ata/Mandaya community in Kapalong,
Davao del Norte to undertake ethnographic research under the
Inisyatibo sa Pag-aaral ng mga Etnolinggwistikong Grupo sa
Pilipinas of UP. The research task was to document the beliefs and
practices of an indigenous community. But what confronted me
when I lived with them for a couple of days was the abject poverty
of the people in the area.
At that time, the community was in the midst of a bitter
struggle of reclaiming their ancestral land from a banana planta-
tion firm APECO. It was their attempt to regain their community’s
economic losses from the logging operations in their area which
first denuded the forests, their source of indigenous livelihood, and
now their continuing marginalization under the regime of large-
scale agricultural operations. While the Ata/Mandayas only had
discarded banana cartons as materials for their homes, nearby was
a progressive Christian community of settler-migrants who were
hired to work for the firm.
It was my first confrontation with the problematics of the
“Lumad” ethnic identity. The intermarriages between indigenous
tribes have muddled the so-called “pure” distinctions between
and among Lumad groups. I have since found out with repeated

1 9 4
exposure to indigenous communities doing research that the
Lumad are distinct in their beliefs and practices according to their
location.
It was their economic struggles, however, as marginalized
groups driven off and marginalized in their own land that struck
me as the defining trait of the Lumad existence. They may not
have a homogenous set of cultural traits among themselves but
what they share is the same narrative of economic displacement
as mining firms, large-scale agricultural plantations, and private
landowners steal their ancestral land often with the willing aid of
state agencies and armed forces.
With the current mining boom all over Mindanao, the situation
has become even more desperate and alarming. Not a few leaders
of these indigenous groups have been murdered in the name of
foreign-led resource extraction and unabated expansion of large-
scale agricultural enterprises.
As the struggle for mineral-rich and fertile landholdings
continue, it is not just the historical marginalization of the indig-
enous tribes that is the concern, but the increasing incidents of
direct human rights violations as big business finances the so-called
investment defense forces, paramilitary groups, recruited and
armed by government among the ranks of the Lumad people.
Of importance is the recognition that the Lumad identity, which
many in the academe and beyond bandy about, earn funding from,
and mine for appropriation, is more than the dances and garbs,
the beliefs of old, all of which have become a cottage-industry
operating in the guise of cultural preservation. What is at threat
here are their very lives as the march toward state-led development
aggression continue.

1 9 5
1 9 6
 An ikat textile (opposite) and a T’nalak-inspired
beaded pillowcase at the Davao Museum. (K A R L CA ST RO)

1 9 7
1 9 8
 A Lumad boy doing
beadwork at the UCCP
Haran evacuation center.
(R M P-N M R )

1 9 9
2 0 0
2 0 1
2 0 2
 This spread and previous:
A Lumad community in the
middle of a political discussion
at the UCCP Haran evacuation
2 0 3 center. (K A R L CA ST RO)
 As previously discussed, the term “Lumad” did not enter the
lexicon until 1986. For instance, the progressive Church referred
to them as “Tribal Filipinos” and in various documents of the Left
they are referred to as national minorities distinct from the Moro
and Cordillera peoples. It was an assembly of the Lumad Mindanao
People’s Federation at the Guadalupe Formation Center, Balindog,
Kidapawan, North Cotabato on June 26, 1986 that the gathered
15 out of the 18 Mindanao’s indigenous tribes agreed to adopt the
term as a self-ascribed collective identity.
However, the formation of a true Lumad imaginary arising from
their shared historical experience of marginalization would occur
much earlier and the transformation of such shared vulnerability
to become one of collective resistance would continue to evolve up
to the present.
For decades, the indigenous communities endured attacks from
the State and private interests who took advantage of their weak-
nesses. They are largely uneducated and don’t have access to mecha-
nisms of redress that lowland settlers easily secure. Far from political
and economic centers, they rely on their traditional leadership
and community structures and therefore remain at the margins of
national and local political life. The fact that they are also dispersed
and few in number make them all the more vulnerable to landgrab-
bing, human rights violations, and other forms of abuse.
These shared vulnerabilities became the cause of divisions
within Lumad communities as their leaders are coopted and
corrupted by these forces who use money and intimidation. Despite
these, many remained steadfast in protecting their communities
and their traditional ways of life whereas others slowly became
assimilated into mainstream culture.

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 Engaged in guerilla warfare against the State, the rebels of the
New People’s Army often found themselves in the remote areas of
these indigenous communities. As the case was elsewhere in the
islands where this armed uprising that imagines itself as the heirs
of the unfinished nationalist revolution flourished and took root,
there was a natural affinity between indigenous communities and
the peasant causes the group espouses. The growth of the nation-
wide armed peasant-based movement in Mindanao in the 1970s and
1980s coincided with the popularization of the common plight of
its non-Moro Indigenous Peoples at the national stage. It would not
be surprising too that many Indigenous Peoples over decades have
joined the rebels’ ranks especially when their historical experi-
ence of the State has been that of a colonizing force that dispos-
sess them of their ancestral land so that they can accumulate profit
from their resources.
Over time, there has been the sharpening of the principles
behind Lumad identity and struggle to recognize that it goes
beyond the mere recognition of cultural rights. More importantly,
it is a struggle for self-determination and the right to regain back
stolen ancestral domains. It is in the spaces of political and economic
freedom that resistance offers that the Lumad can survive amidst
the wars of extinction waged by the State.
Lumad identity and struggle have been at the forefront of
popular consciousness in the year 2015. What used to be a term
exclusively understood only within and around Mindanao circles
has broken through the minds and hearts of Filipinos everywhere.
A measure of this shift in public understanding is that the term
“Lumad” can now be used in social media and there is an associa-
tion with their current experiences of state persecution.

2 0 5
 This recent rise of the Lumad in popular consciousness took
place just in 2015. It can be traced to the cases of closure of indige-
nous schools in Talaingod, the evacuation of the Banwaon commu-
nities in Agusan because of militarization, and the killing of their
leaders in Surigao del Sur and many more cases of persecution and
harassment – all precipitated by the state-backed counterinsur-
gency drive within the year.
These incidents caused the once marginal Lumad to leave their
remote communities to urban centers to dramatize their plight. As
a result, they have come to occupy a sizable space in the national
imaginary. The historic Manilakbayan of 2015 at the University of
the Philippines-Diliman continue to reap dividends for the Lumad
cause many months after its successful staging. However, the recent
incidents in Kidapawan and Haran involving Lumad communities
in the first quarter of 2016 indicate that there is still no let-up to the
continuing victimization of Mindanao’s Indigenous Peoples.
There is a context to all of these and it is a complex but necessary
message that needs to be put across. Beyond the correct impulse to
side with the Lumad because they are marginalized, there must
also be an appreciation of the real historical conditions which have
brought them repeatedly to this state.
The book “Undermining Patrimony: The Large-Scale Mining
Plunder in Mindanao and the People’s Continuing Struggle and
Resistance” published by Panalipdan, InPeace Mindanao, and the
Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (2014) painstakingly weaves this
complex tapestry of history and current conditions to help us achieve
a more grounded understanding of Lumad identity and struggle.
The continuing attacks against indigenous communities in
Mindanao are related to the ongoing mining boom in the whole

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island. These transformations of the Mindanao agricultural
economy have caused the reconcentration of land in favor of the
control of Transnational Companies and a handful of landlord and
political families through various schemes of direct acquisition,
leasehold, or growership resulting in the exclusion of more indig-
enous and peasant families from the bounty of the land.
What complicates matters is that these moves by agricultural
plantations and foreign mining companies which have created
the conditions for the growing poverty and unrest in Mindanao is
undertaken with the full-backing of the state military machinery
under the cover of counterinsurgency. This mix of political
economic realities and state-sponsored violence in Mindanao
provide the harsh context from where the current resurgence of
the Lumad identity and struggle come from.
And it is here where I make an important theoretical point.
In order to reclaim Lumad identity from those who misappro-
priate its use as a purely cultural construct despite the continuing
political and economic oppression that these indigenous groups
experience, there is a need to regard the Lumad identity as, first
and foremost, a class position. Following Ian Baird (2011: 10-26),
Indigenous Peoples is not a static concept but is “part of a socially
constructed emancipatory political project to support disadvan-
taged and marginalized ethnic groups.”

2 0 7
Bello Tindasan, chair of Compostela Farmers Association, speaks
at their camp-out at the Mines and Geosciences Bureau in Davao
City to voice his community’s opposition to mining exploration
in their area. In 2015, his home was among those strafed by
armed men believed to be soldiers of the 66th Infantry Battalion;
he was not at home during the attack. (K A R2L CA
0 ST8RO)
 1 3 —— Nece ssa ry decoupling s

What does the Lumad narrative tell us about

the journey of the Filipino nation? The
true story of the Filipino nation is yet to be
completely written. But the major narrative
threads of this story are already well-
established. A century ago, our colonizers
came and conquered; and co-opted the
local elite. Since then, our political and
social culture has been a reflection of the
distortions of an economy ruled by foreign
interests in cahoots with a landed local elite.
The consequence of which for majority of
the Filipinos is their continuing economic
marginalization and suffering in revolving
regimes of predatory elite rule. But there is
an important aspect to this story, one that
we may have missed to account for in our

2 0 9
attempts to understand the whole tapestry of narratives of the
Filipino nation. 
Within this nation that, by all accounts remains to be flawed
and deeply divided, there are those who have been pushed to the
margins of national life, their culture and resources appropriated
for the goals of national development that ultimately benefit the
few. Our continuing complacency and incapacity to understand the
Lumad manifest our ignorance and collective scorn over our shared
history as a people oppressed. Their narratives of oppression and
their contemporary plight as the dispossessed are glaring omissions
in the dominant national consciousness.

The Lum a d a nd the State Wa r M achine

Some matters need to be stated. The Lumad and other Indigenous

Peoples of Mindanao are the most disadvantaged sector histori-
cally and in the present, the on-going state-led era of accumu-
lation by dispossession. Their fate as victims of this historical
and systemic process of marginalization is tied to political and
economic shifts emanating from the global to the local. The
moves to render them extinct through the state war machine
indicate what we may irretrievably lose amidst this neoliberal
onslaught.
There are concerted efforts to erase them ideologically and
physically from the national imaginary. The attempt to divorce
them from their struggle over their land and resources through the
formation of state-backed Lumad groups and other sectors creating
fissures among their ranks is one ploy. Another is to discard what the
term Lumad has come to mean by decoupling it from their historical
struggle over land and resources.

2 1 0
 The Lumad from Mindanao is good only as a cultural marker of
an ideal time that has gone by. They are of no use asserting their
rights against big businesses or even as activists who have come to
embrace a more comprehensive and political view of their situation
and that of others.

The Lum a d a nd L a nd Ow ner ship

Their experience has, in fact, a lot to teach us in terms of how we

could imagine an alternative national order. One of the long-lasting
and structural consequences of colonization was the imposition of
private property relations to the local economy. From a regard for
land that was a “trusteeship or stewardship” (Gaspar, 2000:122),
this was supplanted with individual ownership rights during colo-
nization and became the base of landlord-serf relations.
One cannot underestimate the importance of such an impo-
sition for it would have ramifications to the development of the
local economy even after the period of colonialism. By awarding
ownership rights to the cabezas or the go-betweens, the Spaniards
were able to modify the disposition of the local leaders who once
acted as custodians of their community’s interest to that which
prioritize their own private interest and their colonial master’s.
This trait would endure even after the departure of the Spaniards,
tolerated and even strengthened by the Americans, and essentially
defined the dynamics between and among the members of the
modern principalia and the Filipino masses in the post-war era up
to the present.
There is a contrary view presented by a number of scholars who
assert that our Indigenous Peoples have private property concepts
on land and therefore challenge the ”myth of communal land

2 1 1
tenure” (Gatmaytan, 2005 in Aguilar and Uson, eds., 2005:85).
It is their assertion that the Manobos, for instance, hold private
land ownership concepts that may be contrary to the implied
assumptions of the 1997 Indigenous Peoples Rights Act. One of the
arguments cites the prevalence of Datu or community chieftains
who are allowed to own more land than the rest of the community.
(Gatmaytan, 2005 in Aguilar and Uson, eds., 2005:82)
Gaspar, however, cites various studies comparing Manobo and
Kalinga land laws where the communal nature of land ownership is
shared. As a possible riposte to such assertions by Gatmaytan et.al.,
Gaspar cites the study of Martinez (1989) among the Hanunoos of
Mindoro wherein culture contact between indigenous and lowland
culture have led to the articulation of a semi-feudal semi-capitalist
mode of production and the incursion of private land ownership
practices (Gaspar, 2000: 53). Our own case study among the
Banwaon of Agusan del Sur shows their resistance to adopt private
ownership of land, a cause of their bitter struggle with their Datu
who wants to appropriate it for himself and his family’s gain.
Whether communal land ownership was a myth and never took
place remains a contestable position. But the damage of what OD
Corpus (1997) called as the landlord-serf double economy imposed
by colonialism, in hindsight, has been enduring and deep, and has
clearly played a role in the historical marginalization of the Lumad.
A judicious study of Lumad culture is now pointing us to alter-
natives. The struggle of the Lumad versus the attempt of the State
and private interests to assimilate their way of life can point us to
recover what is on the verge of extinction or at least to imagine an
alternative that has always been there ready for us to give birth to.

2 1 2
 Beyond Industr i a

There is also the tendency among many to look at the situation of

the Lumad in Mindanao and Indigenous Peoples in general through
rose-colored lenses. There are those afflicted by a hidden roman-
ticism in understanding Indigenous Peoples’ plight and just like
idealist philosophers Rousseau and Thoreau, they are seen as noble
savages that deserve to remain untouched and uncontaminated by
the vagaries of this modern life.
There is a rich social subconscious behind such impulses. Many
feel for the Lumad because they represent an idealization of the
innocent and pure amongst us and the desire to come towards their
protection is at once a function of guilt over what we have done to
the most marginalized in society at the same time our subliminal
pining for collective flight to an imagined bygone era.
The unexpressed desire is for a social time machine wherein
reality can be winded backwards to a time prior to industrialization
and environmental destruction, before the peasants were shackled
to labor over land for their vassals and kings, before people were
divided between the two distinct classes – the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie, towards the imagined blue lagoon paradise before
we were banished to the drab grey paranoid android reality of the
modern present.
But sadly, there is no such time machine nor can society careen
backwards because no such idealized period ever existed. The
great thinker Karl Marx said that the history of man has always
been a history of struggle - first against the challenges posed by
scarcity in a harsh environment. When human societies devised
the material and social arrangements to resolve these problems,

2 1 3
it became a struggle of man versus his fellowman for the resulting
surplus resources in the form of competing classes.
That is why there are many who argue that Left discourse is
equally dangerous to Indigenous Peoples and their culture. The
social Darwinist and modernist slant in Marxist thought is the
basis for this fear. Native American author Leslie Marmon Silko
argues that Indigenous Peoples’ concerns are not compatible with
Marxism, since both models require the “exploitation of natural
resources and industrial development that conflict with indigenous
ideas about the scared nature of the Earth.” (Teale 1998 as cited
from Simon, 2011: 6-9)
Marx himself supposedly thought that simple forms of produc-
tive relations, from where Indigenous Peoples are classified under,
were destined to disappear in the march of societies towards
industrialization/capitalism (Marx, 1887: 51 as cited in Simon, 2011:
6-9) and later on socialist construction. He anticipated that in the
evolutionary processes of human societies, all classes will eventu-
ally fall into two broad categories - the proletariat and the bour-
geoisie. Given the inherent contradiction between the conflicting
classes, they will finally come into a dialectical resolution in the
classless stage of communism (Cohen, 1978).
This is the belief and promise according to some ardent propo-
nents of Marxism such that if the relations of production do not
reflect these progressive stages, they must be brought to that state
through socialist planning and reconstruction. Ian Baird (2011:
10-26) cites the case of Laos where state-led primitive accumula-
tion of the self-described Marxist state is putting great pressure
on the country’s Indigenous Peoples who are well on their way
towards proletarianization. The process represents a massive

2 1 4
social upheaval where changing socio-economic conditions give
birth to new roles. (Baird, 2011: 10-26)
“For example, older women used to help weed the fields, but
they are now without their land while not being allowed to
participate in the wage-labour economy due to being classified
as too old to work for the rubber companies. Many point to the
fact that they previously worked their own hours, but now have
little choice but to send some family members to work for the
very companies that stole their land.”
This orthodox view of the modern progression of human
societies hews very closely, as Baird observes, to liberal views of
John Locke and his regard for the Native Americans who, unable
to produce profit from their labor on the land, must be subjected
to the “improvement” of their economic activities to become at
par with that of the European settlers. What is happening in Laos,
Baird continues, is a version of state capitalism not unlike what
the IMF, World Bank, and ADB are imposing in other parts of the
world. The difference is that in Laos, it is the state which manages
the process of accumulation by dispossession whereas in other
parts of the globe it is the transnational corporations who oversee
and reap dividends from this process.
Such observations highlight the conflicting modes of
understanding the place of Indigenous Peoples from what appears
to be both the Left and Right discourses. There is such a thing
as state-sponsored capitalism whose aim is to generate surplus
from available resources at the expanse of the Indigenous Peoples
and the environment. There is also the neoliberal onslaught that
appear to occur in a far larger scale and in many instances imposed
with such impunity.

2 1 5
 Lumad feet working on
the mines of Compostela
Valley. (K A R L CA ST RO)

2 1 6
2 17
 Such dilemma will surface if the horizon of our political imagi-
nation is limited only to the model of “Industria,” the Western
prototype of industrialized societies, that certain kinds of Left
and Right thinking are still hung over (Simon, 2011: 6-9). A
hundred years hence, such vision has only created a world with
three kingdoms – the first world, the Global South, and within
these spaces, the underclass among the underclass, the Indige-
nous Peoples of the world against whom are waged mechanisms of
structural and historical marginalization, or shoud I say, wars of
extinction. It is still, however Left discourse, despite its shortcom-
ings, which offer the most comprehensive analysis of the workings
of the enduring dynamics of accumulation by dispossession and
thus, point the way forward.
While we search for new models and alternatives, the plight
of the most marginalized direct us to a new horizon. The Lumad
in particular and Indigenous Peoples in general do not really
comprise a special category of people that intrinsically distinguish
them from the rest of the oppressed population. Their otherness
originates from the fact they are global capitalism’s most margin-
alized contemporary victims.
In his book, “The Lumad’s Struggle in the Face of Globaliza-
tion” (2000: 52), Karl Gaspar laments the social upheavals that the
Indigenous Peoples of Mindanao face as their politics, culture, and
economy are violently transformed by the coupling of the local
economy to the global economic order. He wrote:
“Subsistence may have to give way to surplus production.
Kinship relations that previously determined both the forms of
access to resources and labor processes might have to give way
to class relations. Local barter systems may have to give way

2 1 8
 to a more complicated system over which they have very little
control. A more community-oriented way of sharing resources
may have to completely give way to individual accumulation of
wealth. A manner that respects the rhythms of the eco-systems
may have to give way to an extractive form of exploitation
that will ultimately spell big trouble for all creatures of the
archipelago.” (Gaspar, 2000: 52)
The emancipation of the Lumad involves a necessary process
of decoupling from the vestiges of colonialism and neocolonialism
that tied Mindanao to the global economic order, which necessi-
tates as well a withdrawal, violent or otherwise, against the hold of
a violent predatory state of the elite.
To reverse Gaspar’s lamentations and hopeful of an emancipated
future through the Lumads and all oppressed peoples’ practices of
resistance and the achievement of their right to self-determination,
we can now imagine an alternative future where: surplus production
may have to give way to food security; class relations might have
to give way to communal relations in providing access to labor and
resources; the complicated trade system may have to give way to a
system that is within the communities’ control; the individual accu-
mulation of wealth may have to give way to a community-oriented
way of sharing; and the extractive form of exploitation may have to
give way to a manner that respects the rhythms of the ecosystem.

A New For mul ation

On October 12-28, 2016, three thousand delegates from the indig-

enous groups of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao have gathered
together to forge an alliance amongst themselves as members of
our country’s national minority groups.

2 1 9
2 2 0
2 2 1
  The previous years saw the rise of the Lumad, referring to Mind-
anao’s non-Moro Indigenous Peoples, in the national consciousness.
The MANILAKBAYAN of the past years saw the Indigenous Peoples
of Mindanao take the pilgrimage of thousands of kilometers from
the southern island to the nation’s capital in order to dramatize the
issue of extrajudicial killings, encroachment of big business into
their ancestral domains, and the militarization of their communi-
ties leading to their collective displacement as a people. 
 This time around, the Lumad are now joined by the Moro and
other indigenous groups all over the country as part of this year’s
activity they have dubbed LAKBAYAN 2016, or the Lakbayan
ng Pambansang Minorya para sa Sariling Pagpapasya at Maka-
tarungan Kapayapaan. From October 12-28, 2016, they engaged in
a series of activities that were meant to convey to the Filipino public
their collective situation as members of our country’s minorities
facing the same forms of national oppression.
 The pilgrimage and the coming together of the Moro and the
Indigenous Peoples of the Philippines are dramatizations of an
important historical truth that has finally come to the surface.
Together, they represent the most marginalized among the
FIlipino people and are, in fact, facing the same issues of historical
and structural marginalization. In varying degrees, these national
minority groups have limited access to social services and experi-
ence militarization and the encroachment of foreign mining and
agricultural expansion into their ancestral lands. 
One of the important unities forged is that the Lumad and Moro
from Mindanao, and other indigenous groups such as the Aetas,
Igorots, and Mangyans from Luzon, together with the Ati and the
Tumandoks of Visayas have decided to band together under the

2 2 2
banner of the SANDUGO alliance, a throwback to the anti-colonial
solidarities forged by our indigenous forefathers amongst them-
selves versus the onslaught of colonialism.  
  Forging an alliance to face together colonialism’s enduring
contemporary manifestations by combating the appropriation
and plunder of their ancestral lands of foreign interests often with
the backing and complicity of the Philippine nation-state, is the
new unity amongst our national minority groups who have come
together under the SANDUGO alliance.
  For observers of social movements in the Philippines, this is
an illuminating moment in terms of clarifying the relationship
of national minority groups to the feudal and elite-led Philippine
State. The tendency before was to appeal to the varied specifici-
ties of each minority groups’ history and struggle, when there is a
common denominator that underlies these marginalized groups’
historical experience.  It is high time that the conversation between
our minority groups has shifted from an emphasis on unique-
ness to that of commonalities. The emerging conclusion from
these conversations is the agreement that what fuels their shared
marginalization has been the plunder of their resources by foreign
interests with the complicity of our elite-led state.
  There is much to learn from the experience of our national
minorities since they have launched the most fearsome models of
resistance against imperialism’s past and continuing onslaught.
These lessons are enriched as they continue in their journey
towards self-determination.

2 2 3
2 2 4
2 2 5
 The pilgrimage and the coming together of the Moro and other indigenous peoples
of the Philippines are dramatizations of an important historical truth that has finally
come to the surface. Together, they represent the most marginalized among the
Filipino people and are, in fact, facing the same issues of historical and structural
marginalization. The Lumad are now at the frontlines of struggle, not only for their own
causes, but also for the causes of others who join them. (R M P-N M R )

2 2 6
2 2 7
2 2 8
2 2 9
2 3 0
2 3 1
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 A bout the book i sbn- 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Cover design: Karl Castro

This book puts forward the argument that the
experience of the indigenous peoples of Mindanao,
Philippines, the Lumad, goes beyond the limits of
what is considered in the literature as structural
discrimination. What they have endured are really
obvert wars of extinction waged against them by
the colonial and contemporary Philippine State
fronting for extractive enterprises. In the face of
such direct and indirect experiences of historical
marginalization, the Lumad has no recourse but
to resist and fight back.

A bout the Author

Arnold P. Alamon teaches Sociology at the

Mindanao State University–Iligan Institute of
Technology and writes for Sun.Star Cagayan de
Oro as columnist where earlier versions of some
chapters of this book were first published. He
is also involved with the Mindanao Interfaith
Institute on Lumad Studies under whose auspices
the research for this book was undertaken.