Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KAMP)

Prepared by KAMP (Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas, National Alliance of Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations in the Philippines)
For the 27th Cordillera Day
Buneg, Lacub, Abra

We, the indigenous peoples of the Cordillera, belong to the rest of the Filipino people who continue to suffer terribly under worse conditions of poverty, characterized by soaring prices of basic goods and the unrelenting oil price hikes.

Development aggression and land-grabbing of vast tracts of ancestral lands in the Cordillera and other regions continue and expands. Besides mining, programs of the PPP will affect ancestral territories, it will also promote the construction of dams for hydropower such as Balog Balog in Central Luzon, Laiban in Southern Tagalog, and Pulangi in Northern Mindanao. Attracting foreign investment also spells land conversion for ancestral lands to give way for eco-tourism, plantations, and economic zones such as the Aurora-Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (ACEZA) in Aurora province. Notably, these projects are owned by the elite ruling class close to Aquino, such as Danding Cojuango, Manolo Lopez, and Jon Aboitiz.

Indigenous peoples are not exempt from the ever-increasing prices of basic commodities such as rice, sugar, gas, transportation, and others. The yield and earnings from swidden farms and gardens of indigenous peoples using backward tools of production, simply could not keep up with the rising costs. It results in even worse poverty and bondage to usury. The hunger, poverty, and indebtedness suffered by indigenous peoples which resulted from these situations could not be satisfied by the meager alms that the Conditional Cash Transfer and the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or the 4P could offer.

The privatization of health services and education aggravates the lack of social services in indigenous communities, sinking them even more in discrimination and neglect. It is unacceptable that the Aquino government very willingly submits its duty to provide basic services to the Filipino people to private companies and TNCs, in return for their land-grabbing and plunder of our resources.

Despite its supposed dedication and use of the term ‘human rights’, the non-departure of the Aquino regime to the Arroyo administration’s brutality is felt strongly by the indigenous peoples. Militarization of our communities is unrelenting, while our lands remain targets for economic agendas. The Mansaka and Mandaya people from Surigao evacuated once again due to intense military operations. Two indigenous individuals, Ernesto Bubod, a Kalaguya Igorot from Nueva Ecija, and Eddie Cruz, a Dumagat from Rizal were illegally arrested and detained under false charges. Six indigenous peoples, from Rizal, Cagayan and Davao del Sur are slain.
However, the Filipino people will not be cowered by the fierce deception and fascism, but even strengthen and intensify our struggles, together with the rest of the Filipino people, for land, livelihood, social services, and human rights.

Our Calls and Tasks
In the face of these, indigenous peoples have no other choice but to gather its strength and carry on the struggle. It has no other allies but the rest of the oppressed people of the Philippines and the world.

The strengthening of our organizations, to educate, to arouse, and to mobilize or ranks is our most potent weapon to subdue political persecution and fascism of the Aquino regime. It is only through these that we could effectively defend our rights as a people.

Together with the rest of the people, the unity of the Cordillera people successfully thwarted the Cellophil project and the Chico River Dam. Let us continue to enrich our experiences and lessons from the struggle to expand our ranks and strengthen our unities, so that, in the face of further attacks on our ranks and to all Filipinos, we could effectively expose, oppose, and counter all anti-indigenous people and anti-people gimmicks of this administration and others that will succeed it.

There is a need to expand our ranks even more, and escalate and intensify our assertion for our rights to our ancestral lands, to self-determination, for basic social services, human rights, and peace based on justice. We must maintain our stand against laws and policies that go against these rights. We must continue exposing and opposing anti-people policies of the Aquino regime.

In the end, it is not in Aquino’s, or in any succeeding regimes could we hope to extricate ourselves from these circumstances. It is in our hands, and our determination, that we could find solution to these historic injustices. We will advance in our struggle, ever forward, until we achieve victory.

Thank you!

Agbiag ti umili ti Kordilyera! Agbiag dagiti nainsigudan nga umili! #