The issue of ancestral lands in Mindanao, Sulu and Palawan is one of the root causes of the armed conflicts which have characterized life in those areas through the centuries. And final settling of the issue is not only relevant to the economic well-being of the indigenous peoples of MinSuPala but also critical to the resolution of the armed conflicts.
The indigenous people of the Philippines represented in Mindanao by the Bangsamoro and the Lumad people rightfully claim historical rights to the entire MinSuPala region as their homeland divided only by natural geographic and cultural boundaries into several ethno-linguistic groups which have mostly survived today. These groups include the Sama, Tausug, Yakan, Subanun, Molbog, Tagbanua, Melebugnon, Palawan, Tiruray, Sangil, B'laan. Tasaday, Higaonon, Bukidnon, Bagobo, Mansaka, Mamanuas, Kalagan, Kalibugan, Giyangan, Ata,Tagabili and still others.
The indigenous concept of ancestral land rights revolves around the beliefs (1) that land is God's gift to the people for their sustenance and enjoyment and not to individuals, (2) that man's relationship to the land is not only physical but also spiritual, and (3) that it must be preserved from destruction, pollution and desecration. As a consequence, land ownership in pre-Spanish Mindanao and throughout the rest of the ancient Philippines was communal. The ecological balance was religiously maintained by rituals and sacrifices to spirits and supernatural beings, asking them to protect the land and by communal efforts preserved its productivity and natural beauty.
But the advent of colonialism in the 16th century with its laws and military subjugation deprived the indigenous peoples of their rights to the ancestral lands, and these gradually passed on to new colonial possessors called enconenderos, hacierideros, and corporate owners including the government who claimed by its new laws all private lands as public lands. Consequently, the indigenous people under what then was called the regalian doctrine lost their legal rights to the lands they occupied and cultivated and had to compete with other individuals applying for land titles. Because of ignorance and colonial prejudice, the Lumads and Muslims lost to Christian migrants, whose numbers increased tremendously during the American regime.
The American colonial rule from 1899 to 1946 in Mindanao was marked not only by the progressive loss of ancestral lands to the new settlers due to the torrens system introduced by American rule (which encouraged observations and distribution of public lands into individual homesteads and corprate estates) but also by the radical transformation of Mindanao to Christian majority by 1946.
The alienation of ancestral lands by purchase including anomalous ones continued even after the Philippines became independent on July 4, 1946. An example was in the Lanao-Cotabato areas where resettled peasant families from Central Luzon found legal support in owning government land through the "Land for the Landless," program of the Magsaysay administration.
The formidable problem in the indigenous people's efforts to recover their ancestral land rights is. what is known as "democratic numbers." Under the Hispano-American legal heritage of the Philippines, the recovery of ancestral lands had to be based on the democratic system guaranteed by the Constitution and the volumes of legislation enacted and preserved by colonial rule. Consequently, the presentation of certificates or titles of ownership through the judicial process became the only acceptable way of resolving the issue of ancestral land rights between the indigenous people and the new owners. This was the kind of "justice" that Philippine democracy promoted.in Mindanao and still promotes. It does not consider historical rights for the final determination of ownership. It only adopts the premises of justice from established laws.
So the MinSuPalans have maintained that: a. The colonial laws preserved in the Philippine democratic system were precisely unjust to the indigenous people who were undemocratically deprived of their rights to their ancestral lands. b. The determination by "democratic numbers" of the issue is not only anchored on the unjust colonial laws but also on the serious defects of Philippine democratic processes which were anti-minority, anti-non-Christian, anti-poor.
There are numerous cases including the government itself where the prejudice against the cultural communities, especially the Muslims, still dominates decision-making in every respect. This kind of attitude has inimically been reinforced by the "democratic values" inherited from the West.
Consequently, today Mindanao is confronted by the unresolved conflict between "historical rights" and "democratic numbers" in the issue of ancestral land rights. Unless this is approached and resolved through the reconciliation of seemingly two contradictory premises, there is no doubt that the Mindanao conflict will continue and the far-reaching effects and implications not only to the present but also the future of Mindanao are too sad to contemplate.
Hopefully, however, there are enough people from all sectors of Mindanao society who are in a position to help achieve a compromise and end a long and bloody conflict.
Perhaps a start can be made by accepting certain premises that will bridge the gap between democratic rights and historical rights. For instance, it can be accepted by all that land is as fundamental to the well-being of the indigenous people as it is to their physical survival.
Consequently, people with influence can actively engage in advocacy work to prevent further alienation of ancestral lands. Secondly, those who have substantial ownership rights under the law to former ancestral lands in Mindanao can consider equitable sharing of the land products and use or giving a substantial part of their land for land reform. Thirdly, the Lumads or Bangsamoro people can accept the impossibility of recovering all the ancestral lands they claim and consider just as reasonable a part thereof essential for the exercise of autonomy being offered by the government as the overall solution to the Bangsamoro problem.
Finally, the government which is the principal actor in the search for an end to the Mindanao problem can make the delivery of services and release of funds for the commitments faster by the radical reform of the Philippine democratic system through the revival of indigenous mechanisms, institutions and systems that have been preserved by the people as a means of their survival in the face of what they regard as a democratic system for the rich, the powerful and the Christian majority. In belief, it is high time for the government to seriously consider the revival of appropriate indigenous systems to augment or strengthen the fabric of Philippine democracy. This might yet, at least, preempt the irreversible trend towards the transformation of conflict in Mindanao into a full-blown religious war and all its dire consequences. - Al Tillah was Policy Adviser of ARMM and SPCPD; Administrator of SPDA; Executive Director of Region IX Commission (forerunner ofARMM); Vice President for Mindanao, League of Provincial
Governors and City Mayors of the Philippines; & Governor, Province of Tawi-Tawi; and columnist of the Manila Bulletin.
