BY: OONA PAREDES
Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies 2015–16 30 (2)–31 (1): 95–108
ABSTRACT.
In the midst of the peace process and the creation of the Bangsamoro, the
voice of the Lumads as a “second-order minority” that has begun to reimagine themselves
as Filipino citizens has not been given enough attention. The Bangsamoro Basic Law
(BBL) draft initially reviewed in 2015 did not contain language that explicitly refers to
the Lumads nor contain any guarantee of protection of their rights under the Indigenous
Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997. A subsequent BBL draft does little to address these
problems. “Indigenous peoples” as used in the second draft refers to the Moros while
the term “non-Moro indigenous peoples” is used to refer to the Lumads. The draft also
cites the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples but does not
mention the Philippines’s IPRA. In the end, Lumads must still decide between
assimilating as Bangsamoros and losing their cultural identity or remain noncitizens and
be treated as outsiders. It is possible that the Lumads may have a better future with the
Bangsamoro considering that the Moros have a history and experience similar to the
Lumads, with both being considered minority groups by mainstream Filipinos. Reimagining
the Bangsamoro as a place not only for Moros or Muslims but for all groups indigenous
to the southern Philippines is a step in the right direction. In the end, however, only
the Lumads can decide what they are willing to compromise in order to retain their rights
as indigenous peoples, either under the national government or under the Moros in the
future Bangsamoro.
INTRODUCTION
At an Asian studies conference in 2013, I chaired a panel titled “Complicating the Nation”(1) with fellow Philippine scholars Leloy Claudio and Rommel Curaming, during which we sought to introduce
new perspectives on Philippine studies as an academic research area, as well as the way we conceptualize the nation. As part of this panel, I presented on how Lumads, as indigenous ethnic minorities of
Mindanao, were beginning to consciously reimagine themselves not as isolated minorities but as Filipino citizens who should be taken seriously as such. I argued that their active assertion of citizenship and
claiming of their rights as citizens were not just a matter of self- empowerment or political calculation but a genuine sentiment that must be acknowledged properly. The divide between indigenous peoples and mainstream Filipinos (2) is not only material and geographic but also a matter of how both “the nation” and the idea of what is a “real” Filipino are imagined. My ongoing research has only further
confirmed this observation. I note further that a parallel phenomenon of asserting Filipino citizenship seems to be taking place among the Moro(3) peoples of the Philippines. In other words, our extant imagining of “Filipino” as an identity is rapidly growing obsolete. This is evidenced indirectly by the persistence of ethnic conflicts between ethnic minorities and the government that are ultimately about rights to ancestral lands but expressed as conflicts over citizenship and governance.
At the end of the panel, I was asked by a scholar from the European
Union about my thoughts on the future Bangsamoro homeland—
which, by the way, is a project I support wholeheartedly as a social
scientist, a Mindanaoan, and a Filipino—and about the fate of Lumads
within its borders. He asked my opinion: were the Lumads better off
under the Moros or the national government? My answer, which
seemed a surprise to most in the audience, was that both choices
involved major risks, but ultimately the Lumads of western Mindanao
may have a better future with the Bangsamoro than the national
government. For one, the national government has had over half a
century to do right by the Lumads and other indigenous peoples, and
serious problems still remain despite the passage of groundbreaking
legislation to protect the rights of indigenous peoples, the Indigenous
Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997.
This goes back to issues of identity and belonging, and I reasoned
that Lumads have a better chance at being taken seriously by the Moros
than by the national government, or the mainstream Filipinos who are
its majority constituency. Moros have had complex and traumatic
experiences quite similar to Lumads vis-à-vis both the national
government and settlers from Luzon and the Visayas. Despite the
contestations of land, resources, and power between Moros and
Lumads, at the end of the day the Moros do have a profound
understanding of what it is like to be excluded from “the nation” of
which they are citizens; they understand the impulse toward autonomy;
they understand the importance of protecting heritage and ancestral
land. Even if they may not understand fully what it is to be Lumad,
Moros do understand what it means to be a minority—in political,
economic, social, cultural, and material terms. And this is something
that mainstream Filipinos will never be able to appreciate fully.
Of course, the relationship between Moros and Lumads is
complicated on several levels, not least because of the demographic
dominance of Moros, and the resulting power imbalance, in general,
between the peoples belonging to these two ethnic categories. However,
there is at least a historical and cultural relationship, one that is
validated by the legendary pact between Mamalu and Tabunaway, the
“brothers” who are symbolic ancestors of the Lumads and the Moros,
respectively (McKenna 1998, 48–50). Over the decades and centuries,
there have also been significant intermarriages such that in some cases
the ethnic boundary between “Lumad” and “Moro” is not so easy to
define. Lumads have also been known to lend support at times to the
Moro rebellion, while Lumads in northern and eastern Mindanao have
fought their own battles for territorial autonomy. In western Mindanao,
like it or not, the fates of Lumads and Moros are definitely intertwined.
This is the complex dynamic that I explored in my article
“Indigenous vs. Native: Negotiating the Place of Lumads in the
Bangsamoro Homeland” (2015), which was part of the journal Asian
Ethnicity’s special issue on “second-order minorities” in Asia. The final
text of the article was submitted before the Bangsamoro Basic Law
(BBL) was finalized and delivered to the Senate (on 10 September
2014) for deliberation, and published immediately before the
Mamasapano incident4 (25 January 2015) that altered radically the
national sentiment about both Moro and Bangsamoro autonomy. As
such, the article in question is rendered incomplete by important
events, and this research note is intended as a coda to what would
otherwise have been an outdated article had the BBL been simply
passed without further controversy.
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