Indigenous Religions

Learning Objectives
 
Enumerate the different groups of indig
enous peoples in the Philippines
Identify the themes that characterize in
digenous religions
Key Understanding
• Knowledge of the themes of
indigenous religions of indigenous
peoples may help us understand their
culture, beliefs, and habits.
Key Question
• What are the different groups of
indigenous peoples in the Philippines?
• How can we characterize indigenous
religions?
Indigenous Peoples
• Six percent of the world’s population practice
indigenous religions, which due to the minority
status associated to them were perceived to be
“simple”, “primitive”, or “less complex”.
• Indigenous beliefs are often associated with
specific groups of people whose identities have
been kept preserved against foreigners.
• Indigenous peoples are persons and their
descendants “who lived on their lands before
settlers came from elsewhere.”
• Indigenous peoples refer to a group of people
or homogenous societies identified by self-
ascription and ascription by others:
Indigenous Peoples
 who have continuously lived as organized
community on communally bounded and
defined territory,
 who have, under claims of ownership since
time immemorial, occupied, possessed, and
utilized such territories, sharing common
bonds of language, customs, traditions, and
other distinctive cultural traits,
 who have, through resistance to political,
social, and cultural inroads of colonization,
non-indigenous religions and cultures,
became historically differentiated from the
majority of Filipinos. (IPRA)
Indigenous Peoples
• Indigenous peoples shall include peoples who are
regarded as indigenous on account of their descent
from the populations which inhabited the country
 at the time of conquest or colonization,
 at the time of inroads of non-indigenous religions
and cultures,
 at the time of the establishment of present state
boundaries,
who retain some or all of their own social,
economic, cultural, and political institutions, but who
may have been displaced from their traditional
domains or who may have resettled outside their
ancestral domains.
Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines
• There are about 370 million indigenous people.
• They constitute 5% of the world’s population
and, collectively, speak 4,000 languages and
comprise of 5,000 different groups in 90
countries, 70% of which are found in Asia.
• There are about 14-17 million indigenous
peoples in the Philippines who constitute 110
ethno-linguistic groups scattered in its various
islands: 61% are in Mindanao and 33% in the
Cordillera Administrative Region.
Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines
• These communities may be categorized
according to different major groups:
 Igorot – means “people from mountains”;
refers to the various ethnic groups in the
Cordillera
 Lumad – a “residual category” that reflects
the indigenous communities’ “secondary
status” in Mindanao as those who “did not
convert to Islam and become Moros”; means
“born from the earth”; a term used to
recognize the similarities and shared histories
of the different ethnic groups in Mindanao
before contact with the Spaniards
Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines
 Mangyan – indigenous peoples in Mindoro,
Sibuyan, and some islands of Palawan
 Negrito – found in different parts of the
Philippines; distinguishable through their
physical features such as dark skin and curly
hair
• Each of the indigenous communities has its own
history, ancestry, migration patterns, and
engagements with the environment as well as their
respective ethnicities, dialects, and geographies
thus we need to be careful in nuancing differences
across them when referring to indigenous peoples
with collective category.
Indigenous Religions
• Indigenous religions around the world have
similarities that they share with one another and
are inseparable from the everyday life of the
local people.
• Indigenous religions around the world do not
have direct contact with one another especially
in terms of historical, cultural, and geographic
distance but common denominators exist
between them because their local experiences
tie them to fundamental settings like the
environment, livelihood, and kinship which all
form their spiritualities.
Indigenous Religions
• The following are the various themes that
characterize indigenous religions around the world:
 For many indigenous religions, nature is a sacred
entity, which the Creator (or divine beings) has
entrusted to people. Stewardship of nature is
therefore a religious duty.
 The indigenous worldview is kinship-based. This
means that the spirits of ancestors figure in
religious practice and worship. They are believed
to be active in the life of the community.
Indigenous Religions
 Apart from ancestors, indigenous religions
may also relate to spirits of nature, deities,
and life-forces access to which is a “preserve
of particular religious officials or ceremonies”.
 Rituals occupy a prominent role among
indigenous religions. Given that religious life
follows a community’s genealogy or ancestry,
to convert other people is not a mission.
 Many indigenous communities rely on the oral
transmission of beliefs and practices.
Cosmologies may therefore not be fully
coherent.
Indigenous Religions
 Followers of indigenous religions receive
divine revelation through direct
communication in the form of visions, dreams,
and spirit possession.
 Indigenous religions are primarily inner-
worldly in terms of their worldview concerning
salvation. Physical and material gains,
usually tied to their economic activities, are
central to their religious activities.
Activity
Read the Bangsamoro Framework Agreement
(signed in 2012) and the Bangsamoro Basic Law (if
already passed) and identify the following:
a. provisions that clearly protect the rights and
welfare of indigenous peoples; and
b. those that may be used to take advantage of
these communities and their resources.