OCTOBER is the Indigenous Peoples Month as provided in Proclamation Number 1906 in 2009. As such, it’s all worthwhile to remember this, to remember them, and to see how they are doing.
October also marks President Rodrigo Duterte’s 100th day, and since taking power, the indigenous people have sought a safe haven in Davao City have gone home. There are a few who are still at the UCCP Haran House, and we should not forget them as well. Still, we have to rejoice that majority have already gone home. To what? We may ask. That is where the real concern is.
Yes, the military has been pulled out of their villages, but this will not sit well with the hawks among the military, those who prefer to fan war and animosity than to nurture peace.
There are always people who are like that. What we should ensure is that the people’s will as one whole community will prevail, and not some power-drunk datu whose values and psyche has already been corrupted.
There will be those who will create scenarios to justify arming paramilitary men who will turn against their kind. There will be those who will create scenarios that will justify the return of the military in their schools and barangay centers as antagonistic forces and not as public servants.
There will be such scenarios, we know. People just have to insist on their power over their own communities. They can police their own, if they want to, but not as paramilitary men who abuse power and use their guns to threaten and rule.
We may have been lulled to believe that what is showing live on television is all that we should be concerned about, but the IPs are rarely ever in the news, except those few slots they got when they walked from Mindanao to manila to underline their plight.
Let us not be made to believe that they are no longer being oppressed because the mining companies have now been properly smacked. There will always be those who covet their ancestral domains, they will always be at the farthest periphery of our existence. Let their remote location keep them away from our concerns.
As said by Gukom Jose Catiag Macarial, president officer of the Governing Council of Lumad Mindanao during the recent roundtable discussion organized by Mindanews at the Pinnacle Hotel last September 28, 2016: "The recruitment of Lumad combat fighters by both AFP and NPA units, as well as mobilization of allied paramilitary/bagani units, is altering the practice of traditional tribal defense system and destroying the fabric of Lumad communities who are often divided and polarized into competing factions."
Indeed, those who are clueless about the conflicts in IP lands are easily swayed into believing that the so-called Baganis as they are now are the lumads that they really are. They are not, and that is among the network of roots of the long-standing conflict.
There is truth in what Jimid Mansayagan, chair of the government council of Lumad Mindanaw People's Federation, said. They have their own systems of governance that has worked for them. Let the government recognize this and not corrupt it to fit the agenda of the few.