In Tubbataha, the colors of the sea explode. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

RANGER STATION, TUBBATAHA REEFS – At around noon each day, eight strapping young men wait for Valerie to make her appearance. Her daily entrance, coming almost like clockwork, is what makes their day.

“That’s Valerie, sir,” Navy PO2 Jonathan Lobo says proudly as a dark shadow swims underneath the posts that hold up this ranger station. Even at some distance, her large disk-like shape, with the four flippers where arms and legs should be, is unmistakable.

Valerie is certainly no mermaid, but she is the only four-limbed female (and even the gender is an assumption, but it seemed impolite to point that out) within miles around that the men ever get to interact with.

She is, in fact, a Hawksbill sea turtle – hardly the stuff of any man’s fantasy, but then here everything else has fins, feathers, or gills.

That the men – park rangers sworn to protect the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park (TRNP) and World Heritage Site – choose to turn their affections toward a critically endangered species that dates back 215 million years can mean any of two things: that the park rangers are really serious about their job or that they miss their wives, girlfriends, and families terribly. Since the rangers volunteered to be marooned here for the next two months, it is probably a little of both.

For eight weeks straight, these eight men will live on a small, prefabricated structure 15 meters long by six meters wide, perched on stilts in the middle of the Sulu Sea, with little to protect them from winds, waves, or marauding pirates. Their only lifeline to the rest of the human world is a small portable satellite phone and a temperamental long-range radio. A few hours each day, the tide goes down, and a small spit of powdery white sand emerges underneath, and the station becomes an island atop a temporary island. Most of the time, though, there is nothing but the endless grey and blue of water and sky on all sides of the compass. The isolation is complete.

That’s until one dives beneath the waves and into the world the park rangers are protecting: Tubbataha, where the sea explodes in such a brilliant frenzy of color and life that it is difficult to decide where to look first. Turtles that speed off like race cars, sharks that feed peacefully, clownfish that pout, and corals that bloom like flowers.

Stakeholders all

Tubbataha is the country’s only national marine park, and the rangers’ isolated outpost is just one leg of a modest yet resourceful and determined network of government and non-government agencies, and environmental groups that have taken it upon themselves to become primary stakeholders in its preservation. But the Tubbataha experience is also a story of the empowerment of local stakeholders, and one of the best examples of private-public partnerships for any protected area, motivating not just bureaucrats and environmentalists, but ordinary volunteers as well.

For one, there’s Segundo ‘Seconds’ Conales, whose family used to be among the local folk who made a living out of practically every bit (from clams to corals) they could get out of Tubbataha. Yet for more than a decade now, he has been one of its most dedicated protectors.

It’s a job that once had him counting about 10 whitetip sharks circling him as he was going about his regular duty of monitoring the many species of fish in Tubbataha. Since he started out as a research assistant for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1998, Conales had gotten used to having one or two of the grey, slender-bodied predators accompany his dives, but never this many at one time, all of them checking him out.

Guarding the seas is hard work. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

There are at least 12 shark species in the Tubbataha. While Conales’s research and experience taught him that this particular species is non-territorial and rarely aggressive toward divers, three unprovoked attacks elsewhere by whitetips were recorded in 2008. Conales did not want to add to the statistic, and slowly, cautiously swam to the water’s surface unharmed, in what seemed like an eternity.

The encounter would have been enough to keep anyone out of the water for a long time, but not for Conales. When PCIJ met him in late July 2010, Conales, now the most senior park ranger stationed in Tubbataha, gamely jumped into the water to give the visitors a brief tour of his kingdom. During the dive, inevitably, he bumped into another shark.

To be exact, Conales and his team are charged with guarding 10,000 hectares of coral divided into the North and South Atoll. Thousands of years ago, these were really volcanic islands fringed by reefs. Over time, the islands sank and left only the reef formations that continued to grow upward, toward the sunlight.

Coral Triangle’s heart

The Reefs lie at the heart of the so-called Coral Triangle, a 647.5 million-hectare area spanning from the Philippines in the north to Australia in the south and Fiji in east, which is said to have the highest diversity of corals, fish, crustaceans, and plant species in the world.

A 2007 study by the University of the Philippines in the Visayas determined that the Tubbataha Reefs are “a major source of coral and fish larvae, seeding the greater Sulu sea.” In layman’s terms, it simply means that Tubbataha, Samal dialect for “long reef exposed at low tide,” is a giant fish factory that populates the rest of the seas around the Philippines and much of the region. For those who love figures, it is home to about 600 species of fish and some 359 species of corals, or half the world’s coral species.

Until the 1980s, Tubbataha was virtually unheard of, except to residents of Cagayancillo, the sixth-class Palawan island municipality that has political jurisdiction over the reefs. For generations, the Cagayanons were the only people who would exploit the natural resources of the reefs, travelling by boat for months at a time to fish here.

It helped that the reefs were so isolated. Tubbataha is 130 kilometers from Cagayancillo in the north, and 150 kilometers from the provincial capital, Puerto Princesa, in the northwest.

But by the mid 1980s, visiting divers were already blowing hard on the tambuli. Modern boats with faster motors had discovered Tubbataha, and were mining its resources recklessly. Fishers from the faraway Visayan islands would travel all the way here to harvest endangered clams and sea creatures, and Chinese and Vietnamese fishing boats would poach on the waters for anything that they could sell on the endangered species market. Most of the time, these poachers would use destructive fishing methods to make their catch, from cyanide to dynamite. Suddenly, there was a frenzy to exploit Tubbataha.

Cory Aquino fiat

The Reefs’ rescue began in 1988, when then President Corazon Aquino signed Proclamation No. 306 declaring Tubbataha a National Marine Park, and transferring jurisdiction over the area from the municipality of Cagayancillo to the national government. While the declaration was not enough, it was the first step in recognizing the importance of Tubbataha, not just to the ecosystem, but to the country’s economy as well.

As added impetus, in 1993, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the Reefs a World Heritage Site, meaning it is one of a select few areas or structures that have global significance. The declaration also forces the host country to abide by a UN convention that pledges protection of a heritage site.

President Fidel Ramos deployed the first complement of Tubbataha guards in 1996. Then, the guards’ shelter consisted of canvas tents supported by wooden poles. A wooden structure was built later, but with the shifting sands it could barely withstand the elements. These days, the park rangers are housed just a little more comfortably in a small dome of styrofoam, concrete, and wood, erected on steel beams on a sandy islet that is submerged most times at the edge of the North Atoll.

A few hours each day, the tide goes down, and a small spit of powdery white sand emerges underneath, and the station becomes an island atop a temporary island. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

Tubbataha is a “no-take zone”; no one is allowed to harvest any plant, sea creature, or bird from the area. But the rangers are practically on their own in carrying out their law enforcement role against illegal fishers, local and foreign.  The composite team of Navy personnel, Coast – keep watch over the radar for signs of unauthorized entry.

Most intercepts happen late at night. The rangers board each ship that enters the park, and inspect cargo, equipment, and passengers. All in all, the rangers have to patrol an area four times the size of Makati City, or the equivalent of 80,000 Olympic-size swimming pools, armed only with M16 rifles and two tiny patrol boats.

Conales has no qualms keeping his townmates out of Tubbataha. He also says that if the rangers ever do need reinforcements, they can call for assistance from Puerto Princesa – all of 150 kilometers away, or 12 grueling hours via fast-boat.

Poachers vs park rangers

Thankfully, better-armed poachers have avoided slugging it out with the park rangers, although there have been many tense moments in the past. And like all those who have adopted Tubbataha, the rangers have proven that the problem of lack of resources can be overriden by sheer grit, courage, dedication, and resourcefulness.

Tubbataha Park Superintendent Angelique Songco speaks proudly of her team of park rangers, researchers, scientists, and lawyers. “The difference is perhaps that for some people, this is just a job, but for us, it is a calling,” says Songco, who oversees the day-to-day management of the park from the Tubbataha Management Office (TMO) in Puerto Princesa. Occasionally, she makes a quick visit to the park rangers to boost their morale.

Management of the park has gone through several transitions since its establishment as part of the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) in 1988. But the decision to empower the local government units and turn them into active stakeholders is seen as one of the major success stories of protected areas all over the country.

First managed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in 1990, the Tubbataha marine park’s next handler was the private sector, via the Tubbataha Foundation. That experienced some initial successes, but its operation bogged down because many of the stakeholders and decision makers were in Manila.

Today the park is overseen by the Tubbataha Protected Area Management Board (TPAMB), the policy-making body created in 1999 that consists of 20 partners from government and non-profit organizations, funding institutions, the academe, and the local community of Cagayancillo. The TMO headed by Songco acts as the executive arm of the board.

The board’s composition and size had sparked some initial debate, especially among bureaucrats more used to managing everything from Manila. But then everyone eventually realized that they all wanted to create more practical policies that would empower the locals.

The TPAMB executive committee now includes representatives from WWF – Philippines, the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), which includes local government officials and environmentalists, the Philippine Coast Guard and the Philippine Navy, the NGO Saguda Palawan, and the DENR.

Strength in partnership

Songco says that the partners realized early on how it was inconceivable to have one agency alone manage the park that was literally in the middle of nowhere. Considering the sheer distance and isolation of the Tubbataha Reefs, “you tend to bind together to achieve objectives,” Songco says of the partners.

Lawyer Grizelda Anda of the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) remarks that one good practice in the park’s management is the convergence among all stakeholders. “It’s good that you see a partnership within the management board,” she says of the strong participation of the partners, from the provincial government down to the people’s organizations.

Commodore Orwen Cortez of Naval Forces West also acknowledges the need for tight cooperation among Tubbataha’s stakeholders, since “the Navy is aware that we cannot do it alone.” Thus, the Navy shares the cost with the TMO in providing vessels for the relief trips to the ranger park.

Anda is proud of what she describes as the “no-nonsense enforcement work” in Tubbataha and the innovative strategies they have formulated in dealing with poaching cases, which have been compromised in the past.

It is a partnership that is often tested. Just this year, a coast guard vessel ran aground on the Reefs, supposedly while providing security for then presidential daughter Luli Arroyo during a scuba diving trip in Tubbataha. The Coast Guard ship damaged some 206 square meters of reef.

The TPAMB decided that if the law applies to everyone, then it should definitely apply to the enforcers as well. So even if the Coast Guard sits in the TPAMB and contributes two of its personnel as part of the ranger contingent, the Board fined the Coast Guard P2.5 million for the environmental damage its ship caused.

Local engagement

“The law does not discriminate, that if you are a partner, you can be exempted,” explains lawyer Adelle Villena, Legal Services Division head of the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD).

the Tubbataha experience has spurred a kind of local engagement rarely seen in other protected areas. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

But more than anything, the Tubbataha experience has spurred a kind of local engagement rarely seen in other protected areas. The Palawan governor sits as the TPAMB chairman, while several local government and non-profit groups have distinct and major roles in the board. For example, other board members include representatives from the Philippine Commission on Sports and Scuba Diving, the Department of Tourism, the municipal government of Cagayancillo, and even the chairperson of the environmental committee of the Cagayancillo municipal council, and two local green groups, the Saguda Palawan and the Tambuli ta mga Cagayanon.

The role played by the Cagayanon deserves special mention; as the nearest community, they are the ones affected the most by the total ban on fishing and harvesting in Tubbataha. When it became a national park, the Cagayanon were effectively barred from harvesting anything from the greener pasture next door.

Songco admits that convincing the Cagayanon that the ban was for their own good was the most difficult part of the process of protecting and preserving Tubbataha. After all, Tubbataha had been their happy hunting grounds for generations. What tipped the balance, it seemed, was when the Cagayanon were told that the park “seeds” the Sulu Sea with fish, and its protection only meant more fish for fishers.

As an additional incentive, the municipality of Cagayancillo was guaranteed a share of the conservation fees collected from divers who visit Tubbataha. Ten percent of the fees go to the Cagayanon in the form of livelihood development assistance, while the remainder goes to park operations and a reserve kitty.

Sacrificing fishing

Senior park ranger Conales says his townmates were convinced to sacrifice their traditional fishing grounds because they were “provided livelihood such as micro-finance programs and the setting up of seaweed farms.”

Conales’s grandfather and uncle were earning much more raiding the Tubbataha reefs than what he now makes as one of the park’s protectors. The fact that people like him are willing to make the transition helps the park crack the whip against poachers. Still, everyone admits that bringing an ordinary fisherman to court is never easy.

“It’s the worst part of being manager,” Songco says of the need to apprehend local fisherfolk who are forced by hard times to violate the law. It is a testament to the success of the park that most of those apprehended now belong to faraway municipalities in Palawan and the Visayas.

What really compounds the problem is the issue of foreign poachers, especially Chinese. Park officials have filed several cases against large Chinese poachers, only to have the cases dismissed after the intercession of the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Data from the PCSD, the state agency that handles poaching cases, shows apprehensions involving 140 Chinese nationals, 10 Taiwanese, and nine Filipinos from 1999 up to 2006. Poaching is prohibited under section 97 of the Philippine Fisheries Code (R.A. No. 8550) and carries a penalty of imprisonment of 12 to 20 years and/or a fine of up to P120,000.

But diplomacy has often gotten in the way of environmental protection, with demoralizing results. Paciano Gianan, TPAMB member and head of the Palawan Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, recalls how a Chinese consul even came to Palawan to personally berate him for filing poaching charges against Chinese fishermen. The violators were then let off the hook by the courts, again, on the urging of Manila.

Soft on Sino poachers

Enforcers, though, are hopeful that stronger laws and a new government that promises more transparency and accountability would make a difference. PCSD’s Villena, for instance, notes how it was unfair to be penalizing Filipinos for infractions of environmental laws even as Chinese nationals were being released because “our diplomatic policy is soft on the Chinese.”

Now, she says, “We’re more hopeful in the prosecution of cases because it covers all violations of environmental laws,” referring to the Supreme Court’s new rules of procedure for environmental cases. She adds that this may also result in the speedy disposition of environmental cases since “the new rules have been explained to judges and practitioners in a workshop, so they will understand why environmental cases should be prioritized.”

“It’s important to tap not only the province of Palawan, but the national media and the diving groups when we were assailing the way the poaching cases were mishandled,”  comments Anda. Despite the dismal record of cases involving Chinese poachers, she points to a slight improvement beginning in 2002 when the wider community became more vigilant and the courts became more sensitive to the public’s sentiments.

WWF-Philippines Project Manager Marivel Dygico also commends the perseverance of the team in going after all poachers, “even if you don’t get good results, and even if the justice (system) fails.”

Just last April, however, the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park Act of 2009 was passed.  The new law not only sets a 10-mile buffer zone around the park perimeter, it also establishes a TRNP Trust Fund that will be dedicated solely for the park’s management.  As a result of this provision, Dygico expects to have “a better projection of its income and better planning and programming for the future.”

It’s been a challenge every step of the way, but the efforts of Tubbataha’s warriors have not been for naught. The WWF reports that the hard coral cover of Tubbataha increased from 40 percent in 2004 to 46 percent in 2005, a pretty healthy figure considering the agonizingly slow pace of growth of corals. Fish biomass, or the amount of fish in any given area, also doubled from 166 metric tons per square kilometer in 2004 to 318 metric tons per square kilometer in 2005, according to the WWF. In layman’s terms, there was twice as much fish in the area in the span of just a year.

Another good indicator for marine biologists, although not necessarily for nervous divers, is the increasing number of predatory fish such as sharks, a good sign that the Reefs are a good feeding ground for nature’s hunters.

Community benefits

But perhaps the best indication that Tubbataha’s conservation plan is working can be seen, not only on the impact on the fish and wildlife, but the impact on the people of Cagayancillo as well.

Not a few residents had complained when Tubbataha was declared a national park. But the WWF says that Cagayanons have actually been benefiting economically from the preservation of Tubbataha, either through the TPAMB-funded livelihood projects, or through the improving fish catch in their area.

A 2004 WWF study showed a noticeable upswing in the standards of living of the Cagayanons. For example, it said, lot ownership rose from 82 percent in 2000, to 86 percent in 2004; house ownership also went up for the same period, from 85 percent to 95 percent. There were many other positive indicators, says the study: “(The) number of users of kerosene lamps was reduced from 65 percent in 2000 to 50 percent in 2004… toilet ownership increased significantly from 46 percent to 56 percent.”

It was the ultimate paradox – in barring residents from exploiting their old fishing grounds, life actually got better for them.

For sure these developments can only encourage those who willingly leave their loved ones for weeks on end just so no harm would come to Valerie and the rest of Tubbataha’s residents. Conales, who will be spending his holidays away from home – for the sixth year in a row – because of his job, says, “Although it’s difficult, lonely and we’re far from our families we still do our job for future generations.”

But the WWF study also proves what Songco has been saying to those who used to depend on Tubbataha for their livelihood: “We just tell them, protect the sea, and that it’s all connected.” – PCIJ, December 2010

Bae Inatlawan performs a ritual sacrifice. Photo by Jaemark Tordecilla.

“This will serve as your identification,” says Bae Inatlawan as she hands over the bloody coin, “so that the spirits will allow you to enter.”

An elder of the Daraghuyan tribal community, Bae Inatlawan – also known as Adelina Tarino – had earlier banged a gong and recited a chant to call the spirits. With the help of a couple of other tribal elders, she then slit the throats of three chickens and poured their blood onto a shrub beside the sacrificial table. The visitors’ hands also got a dab of chicken blood each, as did their cell phones and cameras.

All these made up a cleansing ritual that Bae Inatlawan says is necessary for visitors to Mt. Kitanglad. “It is our way of introduction to the spirits of the earth, the spirits of the mountain, and the spirits who came before us,” she says. Members of the Bukidnon tribe, to which the Daraghuyan community belongs, believe that the spirits of their ancestors reside in the mountain. This afternoon’s offering serves to appease the spirits, so that they would grant the visitors safe passage.

The Bukidnon is one of this Northern Mindanao province’s seven tribes, which also include the Matigsalug, Tigwahanon, Umayamnon, Talaandig, Higaonon, and the Manobo. These lumad, indigenous peoples of the region, have for centuries served as Mt. Kitanglad’s gatekeepers and protectors. They decide who is welcome in the mountain, and who is not.

But the guardian role played by the tribes that live in Kitanglad goes beyond performing rituals. Lumad members make up most of the Kitanglad Guard Volunteers (KGV), a group of some 344 men who have been deputized by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to patrol the mountain.

The KGVs, mostly on foot and sometimes on horseback, cover all 47,270 hectares of the Mt. Kitanglad Range Natural Park, reporting violations and offenses. The park encompasses not only Mt. Kitanglad, the protected area, and the buffer zones, but also Malaybalay City and seven towns.

Spirits, flora, fauna

Kitanglad Guard Volunteers patrol the forests and report violations. Photo by Jaemark Tordecilla.

The presence of the KGVs is one of the biggest reasons for the successful protection of Mt. Kitanglad, which was named an ASEAN Heritage Park in 2009, a distinction given to “protected areas with unique, diverse, and outstanding value.” It also demonstrates the unique kinship the local people seem to have with their mountain.

Indeed, this is the common thread that binds the people who are tasked to protect Mt. Kitanglad – from the indigenous tribes who believe their ancestors’ spirits live in the mountain, to the farmers who want to preserve the forest for the next generation, to park management staff who see an intact mountain environment as their legacy, to the politicians who now seem to realize that preserving Kitanglad can be their contribution not only to the rest of the country, but also to the rest of the world.

As one of the few remaining rainforests in the Philippines, Mt. Kitanglad is home to diverse flora and fauna, many of which are rare and endemic. Its most famous resident is the country’s national bird, the Philippine eagle, Pithecophaga jefferyi, one of the largest and most endangered birds in the world. The Philippine Eagle Foundation says that the bird requires 7,000 to 13,000 hectares of hunting territory to survive. The Mt. Kitanglad Range Natural Park has more than that, and the mountain itself has plenty of rats, snakes, and monkeys for the eagle to feast on.

Mt. Kitanglad is also home to Rafflesia schadenbergiana, the second largest flower in the world. Among the endemic species that can be found in the area are the pygmy fruit bat Alionycteris paucidentata and two native mice, Crunomys suncoides and Limonmys bryophilus.

Fewer forest violations

Yet just 20 years ago, all these seemed doomed to be lost forever. According to Mt. Kitanglad’s Protected Area Superintendent Felix Mirasol, protecting the mountain was a big problem before the volunteer guards were organized in 1997.

“A lot of trees were being cut down, a lot of wildlife was being hunted, and a lot of forests were being converted into farms,” he says. At the time, there was an average of 76 cases of forest violations in the park every year. Today, that number is down to two cases annually.

“At first, there were a lot of people who practiced kaingin (slash and burn farming), who cut down trees,” volunteer guard Adelado Bunye, a Datu of the Imbayao tribal community who has been a KGV since the start of the program, also recalls. “Today, the problems have been minimized, we only have to monitor and report. Before, we had to apprehend people and tell them to stop (their illegal practices).”

With KGVs on patrol, authorities are also able to detect violations much earlier. In the past, whole hectares of trees would be cut down before the violation is discovered. These days, cut down a few trees and you are likely to have the KGV on your case. Illegal loggers now have had a difficult time gaining a foothold in the area.

That the volunteer guard program is working – and well – can be traced to its proponents’ deep understanding and respect of tribal structures in the area. The Kitanglad Integrated NGOs (KIN), which organized the first batch of KGVs in 1997, worked closely with the lumad, and found that in each community, there were already members designated as guards, called the alimaong, whose duty was to protect the tribe.

Instead of changing the community structure, park management decided to adopt it, working with KIN to deputize the tribal guards. In addition to their duties as protectors of their community, the guards were also tasked to protect the forest and report any violators.

Initially, participation in the Kitanglad Guard Volunteers was, as its name implied, completely voluntary. Today 70 percent of the park’s annual operating budget goes to allowances, equipment, and free insurance for the KGVs – although volunteer guards are quick to point out that the allowance that they receive is a pittance. A telecommunications company that had set up a transmitter tower on the summit also donated cellular phones to each barangay for the KGV’s use. Too bad the company didn’t take it a step further by throwing in free cellphone load as well.

Kitanglad Day

Each year, park management organizes “Adlaw Ta Kitanglad (Kitanglad Day),” a three-day affair that gathers all the KGVs along with stakeholders of the protected area. At the center of the activities is the KGV congress, which includes orientation for new volunteer guards, as well as lectures by academics and experts from Bukidnon State University, the Department of Agriculture, and the DENR on how to conduct reporting and monitoring of violations. The congress also includes a medical mission for the volunteers and a discussion on how they can avail of their group insurance benefits.

But it’s not all work and no play. For entertainment, the event has a singing contest for indigenous peoples – only lumad songs are allowed in the program – an indigenous sports competition, and, perhaps inevitably, a Miss Kitanglad beauty pageant for tribe members. To close the affair, local government officials hand out awards to recognize the work of the KGV members.

Yet while the allowances and the programs are nice, what motivates the KGVs is neither money nor recognition. Says Bunye: “We love Mt. Kitanglad because it is our homeland, our birthplace, our source. It is where the spirits of our ancestors continue to live.”

The mountain, he says, has been kind to him and his people, which is why he continues to do his job despite the meager pay. “It is our hospital, where we get our medicine,” he says. “It is our market, where we get our food. That’s why we have to protect it.”

That has meant taking on duties other than patrolling the park. After park management, with KIN’s help, identified genuine leaders of the tribal communities, it organized them into the Mt. Kitanglad Council of Elders. Today a representative of the Council of Elders sits in the executive committee of Mt. Kitanglad’s Protected Area Management Board (PAMB), while 14 tribal leaders in addition to the council occupy seats in the board.

Culture-sensitive policies

Bae Inatlawan of the Daraghuyan tribal community seats in the Protected Area Management Board. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

The involvement of the Council of Elders and the tribal leaders, according to Mirasol, allows the PAMB “to pass culture-sensitive policies, and address conflicts on boundary, resource use, and customary practices.” The council also has the freedom to bring issues involving indigenous peoples to the Board’s attention.

PAMB, for example, endorsed Bae Inatlawan and the Daraghuyan tribal community’s ancestral domain claim for 4,200 hectares inside the national park. Comments Bae Inatlawan: “We were recognized by the PAMB, so now we recognize the PAMB, too.”

Recognition from tribal leaders is essential to park management’s information and education campaigns. This is especially important when a new policy runs contrary to tribal culture and traditions. Bae Inatlawan says that initially, her people did not take kindly to restrictions on their traditional practices that park management wanted to impose. “They were asking me, ‘Why can’t we hunt wild boars anymore? Why can’t we gather wild honey?’” she says.

Being the village elder, she was listened to when she explained the new regulations to her tribe’s members, and why they should follow these. “Now,” she says, “when the wild boars are pregnant, we don’t hunt anymore.”

‘Tribal justice’

In the case of minor park violations, park management even defers to the authority of the elders. “We have empowered tribal leaders for conflict resolution,” says Mirasol, adding that in most cases, members of the tribe already sort out the punishment for violations among themselves, with what Bae Inatlawan calls “tribal justice.”

But Datu Makapukaw (Adolino Saway), chief of the Council of Elders, notes that sometimes, tribe members still end up violating forest protection rules even if they know better. “Sometimes, there is no other way (for them to get food),” he says. “Then you just have to understand (his circumstances), especially when you hear his child crying.”

Such concerns have driven Mt. Kitanglad’s park management to take a proactive role in providing sustainable livelihood for farmers who live in the protected area’s 16,000-hectare buffer zone.

Benjamin Maputi trains farmers around Mt. Kitanglad in sustainable practices. Photo by Jaemark Tordecilla.

The Mt. Kitanglad Agri-Ecological Techno-Demo Center (MKAETDC) plays a key role in these efforts. Owned jointly by the family of Benjamin Maputi and the Imbayao Multi-Purpose Cooperative, the center conducts regular seminars for farmers, teaching them about sustainable upland farming, diversified agriculture, agroforestry, goat- and sheep-raising, and abaca production.

Some 200 farmers from Malaybalay and other municipalities in Bukidnon visit the center every month.

For Maputi, who describes himself as a “tenured migrant,” running the center is as much of an advocacy as it is a source of livelihood. He says that he wants the farm to demonstrate the best practices of a farm-family approach. His use of organic fertilizers and natural pest control in the farm, he says, is also meant to spread awareness of ecological issues to farmers in the area.

But the real value of the demonstration farms in the center is showing how these sustainable practices can work for the farmer. These techniques can increase the productivity of a farm by about 50 percent, according to Maputi’s estimates, among other things.

For example, contour farming, which is practiced by the center, prevents topsoil erosion and thus preserves the richness of the soil. This in turn allows farms to maintain their productivity – and therefore takes away the need for people to move from one area to another, as well as yet another reason for making a clearing in the middle of the forest.

Diversifying crops

Planting different crops, meanwhile, would allow a farmer to earn no matter what the season. “Even if you have a small area,” says Mirasol, “if you have diverse crops, every week you’ll still have income.”

Park management conservatively estimates that about 50 to 60 percent of farmers in the buffer zone already use these improved techniques. To encourage others to follow suit, the Office of the Protected Area Supervisor keeps a list of farmers who have adopted these and gives their names to other government agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the DENR, and the Department of Science and Technology. These farmers are then entitled to be part of different assistance programs from these agencies. The help ranges from free seedlings to technical assistance to free seminars and training for the farmers.

“Farmers are usually given quality planting materials for free,” says Mirasol. “We had a program where we gave away free coffee seedlings.” After one or two years, he estimates, farmers who received the seedlings will already be able to harvest coffee beans.

While the biggest chunk of the park’s annual budget goes to the KGV, most of the rest of the budget goes to livelihood projects for people – mostly farmers, and usually indigenous – who live in Mt. Kitanglad’s buffer zone. But with limited funding, park management has had to find creative ways to support these projects.

In 2008 and 2009, Mt. Kitanglad was allocated P10 million in the national budget, but no funds were released by the Department of Budget and Management. The park had zero allocation from the national budget in 2010.

Park management has managed to remain afloat from money from the provincial government and the seven municipalities and one city that are part of the park. Mirasol says that the towns of Lantapan, Sumilao, Libona, Baungon, Talakag, Manolo Fortich, Impasugong, and the city of Malaybalay have all integrated into their land-use plans the activities related to Mt. Kitanglad, ensuring that budgetary allocations will be made for park management operations. In 2008, the combined local contributions for the park reached some P4.55 million.

Income from tourism

Members of the Daraghuyan tribal community work closely with the Kitanglad Integrated NGOs. Screen grab by Ed Lingao.

Mirasol also says that the park management splits earnings from tourism – hikers and bird-watchers comprise most of the visitors – in the park with the different indigenous groups. It’s not much, only about P30,000 annually, but it allows people to view tourism as a possible source of income. This motivates people to protect the area, too, so that tourism may grow as an industry in Mt. Kitanglad.

The working relationship of park officials with the Kitanglad Integrated NGOs also serves Mt. Kitanglad in good stead. “NGOs want to spend directly on the people’s organizations,” observes Mirasol. “That’s why we empowered these organizations and trained them on accounting systems, so that they can handle the funding.”

He says that outside donors are more willing to fund projects for groups with successful track records. “This is why I encourage them to comply with their commitment to the support organizations,” he says.

Mirasol also tries to push Kitanglad organizations to seek out their own funding for livelihood projects. “My only condition to them,” he says, “is that whatever money they get, they should spend it in Kitanglad.”

Bukidnon Governor Alex Calingasan is candid enough to admit that the protection of Mt. Kitanglad wasn’t exactly their top priority when he and the other Bukidnon mayors organized the first council to discuss the protected area. The National Integrated Protected Areas Systems Act of 1992 had just been passed, and one of the mayors heard that there would be World Bank funds for protected areas to support the new law. The ears of the mayors perked up on the news of possible funding, and decided to convene.

“We heard there was money, and we could get funding so we can help indigenous peoples in our area,” recounts Calingasan, who was Libona mayor at the time. “We were thinking we could give them livelihood using the World Bank funds.”

In the end, however, the mayors would not get their hands on the money, as the World Bank preferred to course the funds through NGOs. Still, their efforts got the ball rolling, and through time, local government executives, national agency officials, and NGOs forged a strong working relationship. And since Mt. Kitanglad was declared a full-pledged protected area with the Mt. Kitanglad Range Protected Area Act of 2000, the mayors have become active PAMB members.

Calingasan himself continued to attend PAMB meetings as Bukidnon vice governor, which he says inspired mayors to continue their commitments to the board. Today when a new mayor is elected, the other local executives make sure to stress the importance of participation in management of the park to the first termer. The governor boasts that Bukidnon’s mayors have a near-perfect attendance in every board meeting – something that does not usually happen in management councils in other protected areas.

Key role for locals

Getting local officials to understand the importance of their roles, he says, is the key to the whole thing. “If the awareness of the mayors about the program disappears, they will no longer support it,” Calingasan explains.

As governor, he is looking for ways to increase funding from the provincial government for park management. He says that increasing funding for the park does not exactly have a tangible economic return for the government – and it doesn’t need to have one. “Local government is not a business, it is not an economic enterprise,” he says.

If Mt. Kitanglad’s PAMB has managed to be effective, though, it’s largely because of Protected Area Superintendent Mirasol, whose office manages the day-to-day activities of the board.

“Humble” is the word Calingasan uses to describe Mirasol, who has learned how to manage the egos of the different members of the PAMB, according to the governor. The Board, after all, is a diverse collection of characters: local government executives, officials from national government agencies, tribal leaders, NGOs, a media organization, and a representative for commercial stakeholders in the park.

Mirasol himself says that the relationship among the Board’s members wasn’t always chummy. Government officials and NGOs didn’t always see eye-to-eye about how to run the affairs of the park. But the disagreements, he says, took a backseat to trying to find solutions. “We agreed that we had one purpose: to preserve Mt. Kitanglad,” he says. They agreed to first discuss matters where they could find common ground, putting the thornier issues to the backburner. Slowly, PAMB members began to develop trust with one another.

These days, members of the Board enjoy good camaraderie. Mirasol also makes it a point to organize informal activities such as field trips and bird-watching sessions so that members can get to know each other better.

Stakeholders & partners

But more than that, the real key for Mirasol is that the members have a real stake in park management. He treats stakeholders as partners, which means that consulting them even on the smallest management decisions. “We are partners, which means we’re not just partners when there are problems,” he says, stressing that his communication line is always open.

This approach makes everyone in the board feel important in park management, and any good news about Mt. Kitanglad makes all of the different groups proud. “Whatever success we have,” says Mirasol, “they’re a part of it.”

It helps that his occupation as protected area superintendent is not just another job for Mirasol. A native of Bukidnon, he took the job in 2000 to be able to move back home from his DENR assignment in Cagayan de Oro City. While others discouraged him from taking the thankless job of managing Mt. Kitanglad with meager resources, he jumped at the opportunity because of the challenge to protect the mountain. “I am part of Mt. Kitanglad,” Mirasol says.

Having worked with his staff for many years, he notes that the institutional memories help them navigate through thorny issues. While they are technically competent, he doubts that they will be as successful if they were to manage another protected area. “If we pull out the staff and put them in another area, we won’t be as effective,” he says.

The bigger reason for that is that, like their boss, all 14 staff members of Mirasol’s office are natives of Bukidnon. “This is where we all studied, where we work, where we settled down,” he notes.

The whole staff feels proud when it comes to protecting Mt. Kitanglad, and looks at it as part of their legacy. “Even if we grow old,” he says, “(if we protect the mountain successfully) people will remember us.”

Governor Calingasan, for his part, believes it’s a legacy that is not limited to Bukidnon. Asked what the government will get by making the protection of Mt. Kitanglad a priority, he replies, “You will be able to help all of humanity, the whole world.” – PCIJ, December 2010

In the course of our conversation, the barangay captain of San Andres also kept telling us that her people will not leave this village unless they are paid proper compensation by San Miguel.

Then it hit us. Kapitana Sofia, we said, we are not from San Miguel. Media po kami.

Ay, akala ko San Miguel kayo, she apologized, and the room seemed to brighten just a little bit more.

The kapitana’s apparent hostility toward a name we normally associate with malted barley and hops and happy hour stems from the fact that San Miguel Bulk Water Company, a subsidiary of food-beverage giant San Miguel Corporation, has submitted an unsolicited bid to undertake a joint-venture project with the Metropolitan Waterworks Sewerage System (MWSS) to build the Laiban dam here in Tanay, Rizal.

The Arroyo government recently revived plans to build the 113 meter-high dam at the fork where the Limutan and Lenatin rivers merge into the Kaliwa River, which then merges with the Kanan River before roaring off to the Pacific. That means that after almost three decades of having their fates on hold, residents of San Andres and seven other barangays in Tanay and Quezon are again faced with the prospect of eviction.

The dam was conceptualized in the late ’70s to provide Metro Manila with an additional 1.9 billion liters of water a day and generate some 25 megawatts of electricity. But according to opponents of the dam project, some 10,000 residents will be displaced when the proposed dam submerges the barangays of Laiban, San Andres, Sto. Nino, Sta. Ines, Mamuyao, Tinucan, and Cayabo in Tanay, and Barangay Limutan in Quezon.

Many of these residents are members of the indigenous Dumagat and Remontado, who consider this watershed as part of their ancestral lands and have lived in these parts for centuries. In fact, the kapitana herself is half Remontado, but that may not keep her safe from eviction. According to the kapitana, village chiefs of the affected barangays have already been meeting with representatives of San Miguel Bulk Water.

Last week, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism revealed how unusual secrecy and haste mark the MWSS’s tender for the P52-billion project.

Rival bidders were given only five days to submit counter-offers to San Miguel Bulk Water’s bid. But San Miguel already seems so unusually far ahead in the race to win the dam bid.

It is not clear how far the talks with officials of affected barangays have progressed. At the same time, even before any potential rival in the bid could buy bid documents, San Miguel also seems to have been already dealing directly with the residents.

A staffmember of a division of San Miguel Bulk Water confirmed this to PCIJ recently. The staffer, who asked not to be named, said that representatives from the company have been engaged in talks with the affected residents this year. In fact, the staffer said, the talks may have begun as early as last year. The staffer, however, refused to reveal what was on the table for discussion or how far the talks have gone.

The MWSS, meanwhile, has taken a more low-key role. The kapitana said that MWSS representatives are afraid to come to their barangays for fear that angry residents would take things into their own hands.

And coming to these remote barangays is no easy feat – not for visitors, not even for residents. To get to the more accessible barangays like San Andres, one has to drive down steep, slippery roads that probably disappear with the first hint of rain. The community sprawls out from the barangay center, marked by a large multipurpose hall and an elementary school building. The rest of the structures in the barangay look like they just grew out of the ground.

And that’s San Andres, the barangay that’s easy to reach. The most populated barangay is Laiban, with at least 2,000 residents. To reach it, one has to ride a monster jeepney that crams people inside and on the roof, before lumbering gingerly down a slide of a mountainside and navigating through rivers and creeks like a water buffalo.

That one monster jeepney plies the route to the Tanay town proper only three times a week. The rest of the week one is stuck in or out of Laiban. It’s that kind of a barangay.

Opposition to the dam has apparently been pretty effective, at least up to this point. After almost three decades in the making, the dam project has left behind a trail of false starts. A set of massive water diversion tunnels has already been built from Barangay Laiban to nearby Barangay Daraitan. Also, some of the original residents have already been given compensation in the 1980s, according to Tanay Development Officer Adorable Sunga.

The problem, Sunga said, is that when the project was shelved, many of those who accepted the money did not leave the area, and instead grew deeper roots and created even larger families. Also, new families have settled in the watershed area in the last 30 years or so. The government expected to resettle 4,000 people in the 1980s; today, that figure has climbed to 10,000, all of whom now have to be paid and resettled.

The kapitana admitted that many residents had already been paid, some with 40 percent, others with 100 percent. No one seems to know just how much money people here were given by previous administrations. But the kapitana said this project with San Miguel will be a new deal altogether, with a new generation of claimants to consider. She didn’t say exactly how much the residents are asking in total, but said that the figure would run up to the billions.

Compensation certainly appears to be a prime concern in this barangay, at least among the local barangay officials. The kapitana said the village chiefs have already passed a resolution pegging compensation for displaced families at P3 million to P5 million each.

Village officials have also been rather loudly asking that they be given additional money by the project proponents for their troubles in reaching out and informing people about the revived dam project. Making like a walking calculator, the kapitana said that perhaps another P200,000 per barangay would do.

But then she mentioned that there are residents, especially the older ones, who would rather be buried here than be moved out. Ancestral roots are deep, and while some roots can be dug out for the right amount, other roots would rather die in place.

Curiously, part of the reason why the watershed area is so undeveloped may also have to do with the fact that the project has been perpetually in suspended animation.

Sunga noted that the dam project has hung over these eight barangays like a sword of Damocles for close to two generations. Since local businessmen and politicians know that these barangays may end up going underwater if government insists on pushing the dam project, no one is willing to pour much money into developing these areas. Schools built for children may just end up being inhabited by schools of fish.

The kapitana herself said that she was only 12 years old when residents of San Andres were told they were being moved out to make way for the dam. There was a lot of bitterness at that time among the local residents and the tribes, but it was bitterness tempered by the reality that the government would get its way in the end.

Now 42, the kapitana said that she would have no problem moving out, even though her father is a Remontado; she has another house in the upper portions of Tanay, where she can resettle.

But resettlement for the thousands of other residents may be a big headache that no one has yet factored into the equation.

When the project was conceived in the late ‘70s, the government went as far as to identify a resettlement site in San Ysiro, Antipolo. Sunga, however, pointed out that it’s been so long since the project was conceived that the resettlement site for the Laiban Dam evacuees has already been filled up with people from other communities.

In other words, the dam has a ready home, but the people it will displace do not. – PCIJ, July 2009

HIKERS traverse the mossy forest of Mount Pulag, the highest peak in Luzon at 2,922 meters above sea level. Many residents from the towns of Bokod and Kabayan, Benguet, which play host to the protected mountain, expressed opposed to any mining activity within the coverage of Mount Pulag National Park. [photo by Harley Palangchao]

But for the indigenous Ibaloi, Mount Pulag (also called Pulog) is where the gods live, rest, and play year-round.

Even mountaineers attest to the mystique of Pulag, pointing to the ever-present sea of clouds that provides a constant puffy cover to its evergreen summit. Too, this “playground of the gods” boasts of a great array of flora and fauna, including the pitcher plant, the Philippine brown deer, the pygmy fruit bat (Otopteropus cartilagonodus), the bushy-tailed cloud rat (Crateromys schadenbergi), and the Northern Luzon giant cloud rat (Phloemys palidos), said to be the biggest rat species in the world that grows up to 40 centimeters long.

Last May, a team of Filipino and American scientists even rediscovered “a highly distinctive mammal” in Pulag: the greater dwarf cloud rat (Carpomys melanurus) that was last seen 112 years ago.

This species — until then believed to have been extinct — was described in press reports as having dense, soft reddish-brown fur, a black mask around large dark eyes, small rounded ears, a broad and blunt snout, and a long tail covered with dark hair. An adult weighs about 185 grams.

But there has been trouble in the paradise of Ibaloi lore. Large parts of Pulag’s mossy forest where the dwarf cloud rat was found last year had been logged over in the 1960s, and only a few large trees remain standing today.

Part of the forest had disappeared, a gradual regeneration unfolds in other parts, even as many local residents have shifted to planting vegetables, Mount Pulag National Park Superintendent Emerita Albas was quoted in press reports.

“Other parts of the park have extensive areas of mossy forest but where there are roads into the park, the vegetable farms are expanding,” Albas, herself an Ibaloi, said. “The people deserve to have a place to live and to have their farms, but the mossy forest needs to be protected”

In 2007, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) had also raised an alarm over habitat loss in Pulag because of excessive hunting and agricultural expansion.

This had left rare bird species at risk of extinction, among them the whiskered pitta and the Luzon water-redstrad.

Other birds such as the flame-breasted fruit-dove (Ptilinopus marchei), Luzon scopes-owl (Otus longicornis), chestnut-faced babbler (Stachyris white headi), long-tailed bush warbler (Bradypterus caudatus), and white-browed jungle-flycatcher (Rhinomyias insignis), also landed in the “near-threatened” list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resource (IUCN), said Teber Dionisio, then chief of the DENR’s Wildlife Management Section. Species are deemed vulnerable to extinction when its population has dipped to less than 10,000 nationwide.

Meanwhile, the Ibaloi themselves seem to be dwindling in number. From a peak of 174,337 in 1986, the Ibaloi population dipped to 112,443 just four years later.

Of the total, 86,000 were living in Benguet. 13,000 in Nueva Vizcaya, a few hundreds across Luzon, dozens across the Visayas, and even a handful had moved far down to Basilan, South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat in Mindanao, according to the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA).

Throughout Philippine history, discrimination and displacement have become the tragic story of the Ibaloi, like most other indigenous communities, notes Jacqueline K. Carino of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance, in her 1999 seminal study titled “Dams, Indigenous People and Vulnerable Ethic Minorities: A Case Study on the Ibaloy People and the Agno River Basin.”

Where the dams of the Marcos regime from the ’70s inundated entire Ibaloi communities, today mining companies threaten to make the gentle Ibaloi’s haven into virtual graves.

There could even come a time when the Ibaloi may be hard to find anywhere near their sacred mountain, with the museum in Kabayan town and the centuries-old mummies at the Opdas Mass Burial Cave the only evidence that they were there at all.

Then again, the Ibaloi will always return to Pulag. According to Hamada-Pawid and Bagamaspad, authors of A People’s History of Benguet, the majestic mountain is “the final resting place in the afterlife” for the Ibaloi. — PCIJ

THE story of the Bugkalot, the last of the Philippine headhunting tribes, is a chronicle of loss. Like many indigenous peoples in many parts of the world, they have been dispossessed of their land, their culture destroyed, and the forests from which they derive sustenance exploited by outsiders.

Overwhelmed by settlers from the Cordillera, the once-feared Bugkalot are now a minority in the Caraballo mountain range which they call their ancestral home. But since the 1970s, many of them have been reduced to being sharecroppers or farm workers of the more affluent Igorot settlers. Today, what little they have left is threatened to be devastated by a mining company.

In 2002, the PCIJ released a documentary and a book on indigenous Filipinos which featured the Bugkalot and Igorot of Nueva Vizcaya, the Tagbanua of Coron, Palawan, and the Manobo of Mount Apo. In the places the PCIJ crew visited, the spectacle was one of impoverished peoples ranged against forces much more powerful than them — mining in Nueva Vizcaya, mass tourism in Palawan, a geothermal plant on Mount Apo.

But beyond their economic and cultural dislocation, the PCIJ saw tribal communities engaged in a robust struggle to preserve their land and their way of life. Katutubo: Memory of Dances looks at them as victors rather than as victims, and gives voice to the hopes of indigenous peoples that they will “relive the memory of their dances not on a video screen or a museum but with the soles of their feet firmly touching the sacred ground that has been the homeland of their ancestors since time immemorial.”

Excerpted from Katutubo: Memory of Dances
Director: Antonio Jose Pérez
Scriptwriter/Supervising Producer: Luz Rimban
Producer: PCIJ

(If you want to order your copy of the Katutubo: Memory of Dances book and documentary, kindly email admin@pcij.org.)

FIRST Mangyan lawyer in history: Renato Zosimo Evangelista. [photo by Lala Ordenes-Cascolan]

It gets colder in the mountains during those months. But it was not the cold that bothered him too much; Christmas was the time when his fellow Mangyan would come down from the mountains and ask for money from the lowlanders. As the youngest Mangyan studying in predominantly Tagalog Holy Infant Academy in Calapan, Oriental Mindoro, he was often bullied by his classmates who would tell him: “Bakit ka nandito? Doon ka sa mga kasama mo. Di ka ba mamamasko? Nasaan ang bahag mo? (Why are you here? Go stick to your own kind. Aren’t you going to ask for Christmas charity? Where’s your g-string?)”

Indeed, his life would be defined by people telling him where his place was. But he would defy them all.

He says he was conceived in a church. His mother, a Mangyan adopted by a Roman Catholic missionary when she was eight, had fallen in love with a sacristan mayor from Batangas. It was the early `70s, and intermarriage was frowned upon, much as it is now.

He knew little of his father who left, in shame perhaps, even before he was born. But he carried his father’s name, and years later his father’s brother would ask for his forgiveness, and would tell him that they were proud of him.

And they should be, for Renato Zosimo Evangelista, a Mangyan from Oriental Mindoro, beat the odds to become the first Mangyan lawyer in history. When his uncle said his father’s family was proud of him, Evangelista was already the provincial legal officer in Oriental Mindoro.

The Mangyan are an indigenous people who call the mountains of Oriental and Occidental Mindoro home, and whose history is about 3,000 years old. There are eight major tribes of Mangyan, whose population reaches some 390,000, including those whose names do not appear in the local civil registries. Typically of slight build, some of them still wear g-strings made of bark and cloth even today, including the women, who cover their breasts with pieces of cloth or ulango and rattan nito or yakis. Perennial chewing of betel nut, which leaves the mouth looking as if it were bloody, has also left many Mangyan with teeth that blacken as time passes.

Evangelista, now 34, did not pick up that tribal habit, sparing his teeth the unusual tint brought by the betel nut. His mother, from the Hanunuo tribe, was an activist, a trailblazer who would later become one of the first Mangyan elementary school teachers. In school she would always win in extemporaneous public speaking competitions. Her son describes her as being very vocal and a “fighter.” She used her gifts, he says, to fight for her people’s rights.

THEIRS IS a story of struggle, of fighting tooth and nail for every right that was denied, every parcel of land that was grabbed, every dignity that was trampled upon. Yet at first Evangelista’s young mind could not comprehend the scorn, the utter lack of respect for his people. The jeers — how the lowlanders would sneer at them. How they would be cheated of their products — vegetables, baskets, bags, and hammocks — whenever they sold these in town, how they would be displaced from their land, how friends and family would disappear because the military suspected them of being members of the New People’s Army.

Drivers would not let them sit inside jeepneys, other passengers would cover their nose when they were around, they were not allowed to use the utensils in other people’s houses. Once, he remembers, a boy his age threw a tantrum when the boy’s mother let him borrow the boy’s toys.

He says that in Mindoro, when one does something stupid or shows ignorance about something, people would say, “Ano ka, Mangyan? (What are you, Mangyan?)” or “Mamangyan-mangyan ka (You’re being such a Mangyan).” His people were perceived as dumb, partly because they still clung to many of their old ways and partly because so many of them were bereft of education. In time, however, Evangelista says he learned to ignore the jeers and to listen only to his own dreams. He recalls thinking, “Someday, you will look up to me. Someday I can prove that I can do great things.”

BUSY with his law practice these days, Evangelista says he’ll go back to the mountains of Mindoro someday to share what he has learned with the community that nurtured him. [photo by Lala Ordenes-Cascolan]

He knew he wanted to be a lawyer even before his mother asked him to study the law. After all, he had been exposed early on to the reality that he had to fight for almost every bit of what was due them. He saw how his mother, as spokesperson and advocate for indigenous peoples’ rights, valiantly tried to protect them from abuse, using her passion and gift of gab. But passion did not win arguments, and it did not guarantee them their rights. The boy Renato realized he had to arm himself with knowledge, and with the same tools lowlanders used to suppress their rights; he knew he had to study the lowlanders’ law.

The Mangyan have their own legal system called kasaba. It is composed of one or two elders from the community who sit as the judge and jury in a “legal” battle. An accuser has his own defender of choice, usually a friend, and so does the accused. The conflicting parties argue until they convince the elders of their guilt or innocence. Once, says Evangelista, he witnessed a tigian, a Mangyan ritual to determine who was telling the truth. An egg was put in a cauldron of boiling water and the contending parties were asked to reach down and get the egg. In the ritual, he who comes out unburned is declared the victor.

But the lowlanders had a different legal system, and Evangelista knew he had to study their laws if he wanted to be taken seriously. So in high school, he endured walking for five hours — three hours to come down the mountain, and two hours from the highway to the Mangyan Education Center in Mansalay — just to attend class. Tuition at the center was free, but parents brought chicken, rice, fruits, and vegetables to augment the school’s food supply. When the school started, it had around a hundred Mangyan. Of that batch, though, only 20 (including Evangelista) eventually graduated from high school.

THAT EVANGELISTA was able to finish college at all was already a great achievement. Although official data are hard to come by, just 400 or so Mangyan are college graduates, according to the Mangyan Heritage Center, a private foundation. Evangelista was able to attend the Divine Word College in Calapan during the first two years in college, and on to the Manuel Luis Quezon University (MLQU) in Quiapo on his third and fourth year only because he was supported by the same missionary who had taken his mother decades before. And even in college, he had to put up with insults about his people, although some were perhaps not intended to be so. He says that upon learning he was from Mindoro, one classmate asked, quite innocently, “Is it true that the Mangyan have tails?”

Yet this only made Evangelista more determined to plod on, and to do his best. When finances (or the lack thereof) got in the way of his dream, he taught beginner’s piano to children, for he knew how to play, having inherited his mother’s love for music. His mother was a consummate pianist who played classical music and was the first katutubo to have a premier piano recital in Calapan.

Evangelista wrote to various organizations, asking them to “be a part of history” by providing a scholarship and stipend to a Mangyan whose goal was to finish law. But part of the P4,000 he received as stipend from his eventual sponsors, the famed Ayala business clan, he sent home to his mother in Mindoro.

At his MLQU law graduation in 2000, his grandparents were there, in their full ethnic garb, bahag and all, to celebrate the moment with him. It was the culmination of his dream, and it was sweeter, he says, than when he passed the Philippine Bar in 2001, or when he received a master’s degree in law in the United Kingdom in 2005. When he walked up the stage to get his law diploma in 2000, he was accepting it not just for himself, not just for his family, but for his people.

Evangelista has his own private practice now, and is comfortable in a barong or in a suit. He is currently based in Metro Manila, where he sits in the board of the Mangyan Heritage Center, a foundation set up by Mangyan missionaries Fr. Ewald Dinter, Antoon Postma and Jesuit volunteer Quint Fansler. But someday, he says, he will go back to the mountains of Mindoro to be with his people. It is for them that he works hard, he says, so that when he returns home he can share what he has learned and contribute in his small way to the community that nurtured him.

Renato Zosimo Evangelista has not stopped dreaming. He is now working to consolidate the eight Mangyan tribes to form what he calls a Mangyan consultative assembly, which will serve as the Mangyan’s united voice in social, cultural, educational, and economic concerns. He is patterning the assembly after similar groups formed by Australian aborigines and American Indians. He says it’s about time that the Mangyan determine their future based on their own initiative, that people see the Mangyan situation based on the Mangyan’s viewpoint, and not on ready-made solutions “force-fed” to them by the government and other well-meaning groups.

“Maybe I’m too ambitious,” he says, “but I think it’s the only way.”

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.

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.”

DISCRIMINATION AGAINST indigenous peoples in a city like Manila is rather blatant. Recently, this writer saw how passengers in a jeepney plying to Diliman in Quezon City avoided getting the seat near three Aeta women and an Aeta child. The indigenous women, meanwhile, looked down whenever they noticed people staring at them. Their bags indicated they were in the city to beg.

Himpad Mangumalas, spokesperson of the non-government Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KAMP or Federation of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines), says these only show that indigenous peoples are like squatters in their own land.

HANUNUO Mangyan folk try to identify the boundaries and landmarks in their ancestral domain through 3-D mapping. [photo courtesy of Mangyan Heritage Center]

A Higaonon, he has spent most of his life fleeing from his home in Agusan del Norte in southern Philippines due to military operations and conflict from massive logging operations. He remarks, “We are not secured in our own ancestral land and we don’t have equal opportunities.”

Lack of equal access to basic social services, compounded by a long history of discrimination and prejudice, has ingrained poverty in indigenous communities.

According to the 2005 Philippine Human Development Report, eight of the 10 poorest provinces are populated mainly by indigenous peoples or indigenous cultural communities: Apayao, Ifugao, and Batanes in the north; and Basilan, Maguindanao, Sulu, Tawi-tawi, and Saranggani down south. These provinces share high incidence in nutritional deficiency among women and children, lack of education, homelessness, and poor income opportunities among other indicators, the report said.

Yet it may be cold comfort to the likes of Mallari and Calbayog to know that the local situation is a microcosm of the high correlation between ethnicity and poverty among 250 million indigenous peoples around the globe.

In 2005, the International Labor Organization reported that poverty is widespread and persistent among indigenous and tribal peoples and in areas where they are dominant.

The United Nations, meanwhile, has admitted that few gains were made in income poverty reduction among indigenous peoples during the First Decade of Indigenous Peoples, from 1994 to 2004. The UN has declared 2005 to 2015 the Second Decade of Indigenous Peoples, focusing more on the improvement of the well-being of the indigenous peoples. The decade ends the same year that the UN’s poverty-busting Millennium Development Goals (MDG) culminates.

INTERESTINGLY, THE Philippines has committed to both global efforts, with the Arroyo administration highlighting the role of indigenous peoples in fighting poverty. President Arroyo has said in several official pronouncements that indigenous peoples are part of her administration’s 10-point anti-poverty agenda, stressing that indigenous communities “are part of the national mainstream and should not work in isolation from all Filipinos.”

Yet indigenous peoples seemingly remain on the outside looking in. Castro, a professor at the University of the Philippines, is now even convinced that that indigenous Filipinos are virtual foreigners in their birth land and that their being Filipinos is only incidental.

Last May, he stayed for a month in Sabah, Malaysia for an anthropology project with his students. There Castro observed that Filipino Badjao, Iranun, Tausug, and Yakan — part of the Philippines’ Moro indigenous peoples — who settled in Sabah seemed to identify more with the Malaysian system than the Filipino system.

“They are not lost there because they shared the same faith, music and culture with the Badjao of Sabah,” says Castro. He also notes that the Badjao used to live in the borders of the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia before colonizers of these countries arbitrarily set up boundaries.

But what was “most alarming,” Castro says, was that he could not communicate with the Filipino Badjao and other indigenous peoples there because they did not share the same language. He says this only affirms the dichotomized Philippine culture and society: the mainstream and indigenous. Often, indigenous groups cannot relate to the laws, policies, and programs of the “Manila-centric” government to advance their welfare, even if some of these are supposedly geared precisely toward that, he says.

Castro, who has spent more than 15 years of studying the struggle of the indigenous peoples of Kalinga in northern Luzon for his graduate studies, says it is about time for government to prove that its projects are indeed for the advancement of indigenous peoples. Unless no bold moves are done, he says, indigenous peoples would continue to equate government with the mining, dam construction, and logging projects they oppose.

PART OF the problem is that while IPRA is laudable, it exists alongside government programs and policies that indigenous communities say are against their interests.

“IPRA is Johnny-come-lately,” admits NCIP chairperson Janette Cansing Serrano. She says that by the time IPRA was enforced, contentious laws were already put in place, particularly the Mining Act of 1995, and environment and natural resource laws on protected areas, and the land reform law. This is why, she says, much of the job of the NCIP is talking with more established agencies to harmonize laws.

To date, NCIP has inked harmonization guidelines with the environment and agrarian reform departments as well as the Land Registration Authority on delineation, titling and management of resources within ancestral domains. NCIP has also talked to the interior department to secure cooperation of local government units to recognize ancestral domain rights of indigenous peoples.

Most local governments were apprehensive to the delineation process, which cuts across political boundaries, says Serrano. They thought these would reduce their internal revenue allotment, she explains. But she says the greater challenge to NCIP lies in securing sufficient money from the national coffers to do its job. She quips, “Our mandate is bigger than our pockets.”

In fact, in its first three years, under the term of ousted president Joseph Estrada, the Commission was not given any budget because its first head was allegedly involved in graft. It was only in 2000 that the NCIP began receiving a budget through the General Appropriations Act. It gets an average of only P460 million a year, or roughly P39 — less than a dollar — per indigenous person annually. Of this average budget, about 70 percent goes to personnel salaries while the rest go to projects and other operation expenditures.

Serrano says that with such measly budget, “our agency also feels we are marginalized.” She also says increasing the budget to finish titling and delineating ancestral domains is a matter of political will. But she insists that the NCIP has advanced well in protecting the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral domain despite budgetary constraints.

LRC-KSK’s VILLANUEVA, though, is less upbeat. While she concedes that IPRA is a landmark legislation, she argues that it has become a mere “accommodation in the present political system” because it has failed to resolve conflicts in relation to land and natural resources, especially those in state-owned projects.

HANUNUO Mangyan recite poetry during an ambahan session. [photo courtesy of Mangyan Heritage Center]

For instance, the Subanen peoples in Siocon, Zamboanga del Norte did secure their ancestral domain claim in 1997, which was converted into a CADT in 2003. Yet two years later, the Canadian mining firm TVI Pacific Inc. opened its mine operations in Mount Canatuan, which Subanen believe to be a sacred place that should be untouched.

TVI has been operating in the province since the 1990s despite charges of displacement, intimidation, and loss of livelihood, and environmental destruction from Subanen and small-scale miners.

“I can’t return to my own home now,” says Timuay (indigenous leader) Jose Boy Anoy, who has led more than 500 Subanen families to protest against TVI’s presence in the mountain. Anoy, 64, says he has received threats from paramilitary groups that TVI hired to fence off and guard the mountain from protesting Subanen like him.

In 2005, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) ruled that the Canadian subsidiary failed to get genuine free and prior informed consent from the indigenous peoples there. The TVI chose to deal with the Siocon Subanon Association, which both the CHR and the NCIP said was a product of midnight deals and did not represent the true Subanen in the area.

TVI over the years has refuted these allegations, stating that it has the consent of the area’s indigenous peoples. In a recent letter to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, it said that it enjoys the support of the Subanen who “have joined in the common effort to judiciously use resources as a means of attaining economic and social progress.” It also said Anoy was not a tribal leader and that Mount Canatuan “is not sacred.”

The NCIP says the TVI continues to give the Siocon Subanon Association a hefty royalty of at least P1 million monthly. In the meantime, Villanueva says it is time for a progressive interpretation of IPRA. “Advocacy should not stop just because there is already a law,” she says. “It should further be used to let non-indigenous peoples understand and respect the rights of indigenous groups.”

She also says the NCIP should work to be truly biased for the indigenous peoples, instead of virtually facilitating the entry of mining projects in ancestral lands.

But Serrano says her commission is not pro-mining, even if it is under the Office of the President, which aggressively promotes the mining to increase investment. Still, she argues, “We have to balance liberty with prosperity. We have to get better deals for the indigenous peoples.”

Cultural anthropologist Castro, for his part, says institutions like schools and media should begin doing their part in helping indigenous peoples into the mainstream. He says that at the very least, there should be an end in stereotyping or putting token representation of indigenous peoples in media stories, books, and films.

Castro says that the contribution of the indigenous people in shaping our history is even usually overlooked. He points out, “Did you know that heroine Gabriela Silang was an indigenous woman, a Tingguian? But it was never mentioned in our history books.”