by RORIE R. FAJARDO

SHE SAID it was a crucial journey for her children’s future.

	AETAS of Mt. Pinatubo in Zambales. [PCIJ file photo]

Weeks before classes opened last month, Myrna Verde packed few clothes, gathered her four school-age children, and boarded a bus for Manila, some 138 kms from their village in Zambales. It was their first time to travel that far from home, but Verde, 57, had a mission: to look for kind-hearted city people who would give her money or any kind of help so that her children — all blind since birth — could continue going to school.

Verde, however, knew that the odds were against her and children in fulfilling their objective. As an Aeta, she had heard from relatives and villagers not a few tales of discrimination and contempt for people with her color and looks in the city.

The Aeta are among the 110 ethnographic groupings scattered throughout the Philippine archipelago. Usually living in less accessible forested areas in central and southern Luzon, the Aeta hunt, gather, farm or trade to earn a living. In recent years, they have also added begging to their means of livelihood. “I don’t mind,” said Verde. “I would rather beg than see my children miss school or go hungry.”

Considering that the Philippines boasts of having a national law that protects its 11.8 million indigenous peoples, Verde and others like her should no longer be seen begging in cities or elsewhere in the country. The groundbreaking Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA), in fact, is still the only one of its kind in Southeast Asia. But as IPRA turns a decade this year, both government officials and rights activists acknowledge that the country’s indigenous peoples are becoming more marginalized and deprived of their rights in their own land.

Although the law has enabled hundreds of thousands of indigenous peoples to gain titles to their ancestral domain, most of them are without basic services and remain disconnected with the rest of society — which may be why they did not merit any mention in President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s latest State of the Nation Address. As cultural anthropologist Nestor Castro puts it, “They still cannot identify with the so-called mainstream society or culture.”

If one were to look only at certain numbers, it may seem that significant changes have taken place. According to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), the government agency tasked to oversee the implementation of IPRA, it has delineated and issued 57 certificates of ancestral domain title (CADT) covering 19 percent of the estimated total of six million hectares of ancestral domain.

This translates to some 1.16 million hectares, and benefits some 300,000 families, says the NCIP; another 280 CADT applications are under way. The commission also says it has distributed a total of 172 certificates of ancestral land title (CALT) covering 4,838 hectares, mostly found in Baguio and General Santos cities.

But Jocelyn Villanueva, executive director of the nongovernmental group Legal Rights and Natural Resource Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan (LRC-KSK), says measuring IPRA’s success should go beyond numbers and must dwell on the actual situation of the indigenous peoples in their ancestral domain. Which, as Myrna Verde could attest, has been far from perfect.

Indeed, life in Zambales has been hard for Verde’s family. Since her husband is blind like their children, Verde is the one tasked to put food on the table through occasional gathering and vending of vegetables.

In June, Verde said she and her children would beg in Manila for only two weeks and then go home. But she added that they might return during Christmas season, which, she has been told, is when people are more generous to even those like her.

POPULATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES BY REGION Source: National Commission on Indigenous Peoples
REGION	POPULATION IP and IP Migrants
CAR	1,252,962
Region I	1,039,447
Region II	1,014,955
Region III	227,675
Region IV	717,122
Region V	185,488
Region VI	145,959
Region VII	29,150
Region VIII	0
Region IX	1,137,197
Region X	1,444,503
Region XI	2,539,767
Region XII	855,760
Region XIII (CARAGA)	874,456
ARMM	313,749
TOTAL	11,778,190

NO ONE, of course, expected the IPRA to be a magic pill that would be able to solve the problems of the indigenous peoples that had existed for generations. But many had hoped it would at least help give the indigenous the respect and attention they deserve, yet usually did not get.

A product of debates among lawmakers, advocates and indigenous peoples themselves, IPRA had promised to protect the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral domains, their culture, self-governance and empowerment, and social justice and human rights. But as it has turned out, the law does not seem strong enough to force the government to address basic social needs of its indigenous peoples, many of who still live — and die — without even getting the most basic support to cure their illness, hunger, illiteracy, or homelessness.

Mangyan Tony Calbayog, for instance, can still vividly recall how he watched his wife Julie die from shock in November 2006, at the height of typhoon Reming, as the heavy rains washed away their home in Barangay Mangangan Uno in Baco, Oriental Mindoro.

Calbayog says, “I could not bring her to the nearest hospital,” a two-hour trek from their home at the foot of Mount Halcon, where there is neither road nor electricity. Julie died a day later, leaving him to care for their six children.

The 44-year-old Calbayog was recently in Manila to attend the National Interfaith Rural Peoples’ gathering, a conference co-organized by the Catholic Church and several peoples’ organizations to discuss the rights of the rural poor, including the indigenous communities, to their lands.

The leader of the peoples’ organization Samahang Pangtribu ng mga Mangyan sa Mindoro (SPMM), Calbayog says lack of basic government services is a too familiar experience for some 390,000 Mangyan in Oriental and Occidental Mindoro.

Village health workers are rarely seen in the Mangyan villages, which can be reached only through hours of walking from the town proper. Because of this, Mangyan still rely on the arbularyo (quack doctor) to cure illnesses, Calbayog says. If ever politicians or government representatives reach the Mangyan villages, he says, they are either on the campaign trail or are eyeing the local peoples’ lands for reforestation and mining.

Nelson Mallari, meanwhile, says the lack of teachers in the public elementary school in his Aeta village in Florida, Pampanga has pushed children to attend classes only thrice weekly. His village is about 15 kilometers from Mount Pinatubo; to get there, one has to be ready to endure about two hours on foot from the town proper.

Their health center rarely sees a doctor or village health worker, too, says the 33-year-old secretary general of the peoples’ organization Central Luzon Aeta Association (CLAA). But the bigger headache for Aeta gatherers and traders now is the low pricing for their products like banana, taro, and other vegetables compared to those of non-Aeta traders — which is partly why Aeta like Myrna Verde have now resorted to begging as well. Says Mallari: “Middlemen shortchange us because they think we are illiterate and dumb.”