“Itutuloy lang, ipagpapatuloy pa rin”
AMONG THE NATIVE tribes of indigenous people living in the province of Bukidnon, Philippines, there is Tribu Matigsalug (Matigsalug Tribe) settled in the mountainous lands of Barangay White Kulaman, in the southern town of Kitaotao. Their leader-representatives, joining with the rest of the thousands of fellow Filipino indigenous people participating in the ―Pambansang Lakbayan ng Pambansang Minorya 2016‖, shortly dubbed as ―Lakbayan 2016‖, went on w ith their way to the country’s capital to stage and rally their causes as a collective movement to the government. On the afternoon of October 20, Thursday, at the College of Social Work and Community Development, University of the Philippines – Diliman, our group in Community Development 100 (CD 100), composed of Akemi Omori, Henri Sola, Kathleen Gabriel, Kenji Kimura, and myself, were joined in a group integration session by the leader-representatives of Tribu Matigsalug who introduced themselves as Tata Isidro, 56, and Tata Camelo, 43, together with Kenneth, who served as the session’s language interpreter. The group integration session started by inquiring about the native way of life of Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo, together with the members of their tribe, in Barangay White Kulaman, Kitaotao. According to Tata Isidro, they, as a tribe, live as a community. As they are living in the mountainous lands of the area, their main source of livelihood is farming, with close dependence on the river systems nearby their area for irrigation. Farm work in their community is a collective work, as Tata Isidro especially mentioned. The kind of culture they practice in the fields is communal farming. The numerous farmlands of Tribu Matigsalug are not privately owned by individual families belonging to the tribe; rather they are, as a whole piece, are owned by the tribe itself. I especially clarified with Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo on this note, asking if whether the numerous farmlands of the tribe they refer to may actually be a grouped collection of farmlands owned by different individual, or family, members of the tribe or not. They said the farmlands, as well as the lands where the members of the tribe reside and have put up their houses to live in, where they and the tribe go for hunting, and wherever else within the boundaries of the area the tribe considers as their domain of ancestral land, are owned by no individual tribe member, not even the datus (or the chieftains); but by no one, except by the tribe, as whole, itself. On the question on how is the tribe able to exercise complete participation of tribe members in the communal farming culture it practices, Tata Isidro explained that tribe members are simply told of results of unwanted consequences for uncooperative neighbors: ―Kung wala kang naitulong sa pagsasaka ng mga aanihin sa panahon ng taniman, wala kang maaasahang parte ng ani kapag dumating na ang anihan.‖
They said this is how they inculcate and encourage cooperation and participation in the tribe and its members towards communal tribe activities such as farming, among others. When asked on how they go about with the distribution of shares after the harvest, both Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo looked at each other and quite laughingly admitted to the group that such task is left to be taken care of by the women of the tribe. They explained that when it comes to tasks and activities related to resource management, or to any sort of management, for that matter, the women of the tribe know better. As a further example, Tata Camelo even shared to the group that there was once when a tribe member who went home from hunting, carrying a whole wild pig over his shoulders. The said tribe member proceeded not directly back to his home but instead to a hall where the community regularly convenes, and there, had the hunted animal chopped its meat to pieces and had the shares of meat distributed and shared by the women to all the other families of the tribe. ―Kadalasan niyan ay ulo at laman-loob na lang ng baboy ang natitira,‖ ended Tata Camelo proudly. The tribe’s harvest and other resources are shared and distributed equitably to all its members, such that families with several more members than other families get to have a little bit more share of the harvest and resources being shared and distributed. This culture of equitable sharing and distribution is an integral part of their tribal culture, Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo said. They explained how their people give much value and reverence to heart-shaped objects and forms found in Nature, such as various medicinal plants with heart-shaped leaves that they use to tend wounds or the heart-shaped form of a chicken after cutting its throat and draining its blood either before cooking it for food or making use of the chicken’s blood onto which farming tools are dipped into, through a native tribe method known as Padugo, which is in regards of Magbabaya, their god among other gods and goddesses. This value and reverence to heart-shaped objects and forms also reverberates into the spiritual way of life of the tribe as they reveal themselves to fellow tribe members, to other people, and to Nature as a people of good-natured Hearts, of open generosity towards men and pure kindness to the gifts of the land and their gods. The group integration session proceeded with the discussion of the roles of the datu and other prominent figures of the tribe. Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo clarified to the group that it is seldom for a tribe to have only a single datu leading its way and its people, and rather normally, a council of datus exists and decides as a collective in the interests of the tribe and its people. Decisions in the running and the continuation of the day-to-day life of the tribe are discussed and decided on as a group, or by a council. When asked how the datus of the tribe get to such positions in the community, Tata Isidro said these datus take up on such roles naturally as they grow up in the community, together with their peers and other tribe members. No election or whatsoever take place; nor a passing-on tradition from father-to-son of the said datu title within the tribe. Tata Isidro further said that the elder members in the tribe normally get to observe and notice potential datus in the generation of kids gathered in the tribe, playing together or joining as observers as the elder members work in the fields and within the community of houses. Normally, a number of kids rise among their peers onto whom the rest of the group receive their influences and directions on what to do together, such as what kind of games must they play for the day, for example. Also quite naturally, girls would be inclined to deal with activities of the games related to management and keeping the group in coordinated order while boys would be focused more on coming up with strategies and tactics in their plays. This taking-on of roles in the community through what seems to be a process of natural social determination among a generation of tribe members could perhaps well exemplify, in practical alternative, the commonly agreed belief of the people of the tribe: ―Ang anak ng kanyang ama ay hindi siyang kasingtulad ng sariling niyang ama.‖
They believe that the son of his father is not exactly of the same kind of his own father. The same ―natural‖ social process of determination takes place in the figuring of the tribe’s next babaylan (or spiritual leader). Tata Isidro explained that those who eventually succeed to take on the role of the next babaylan in the tribe naturally receive their calling of such task through a mystical dream or through a symbolic experience. Babaylans, as he further explained, do not practice apprenticeship in preparation for the role; instead, upon having divinely been called upon to take on the task, babaylans naturally and just eventually know and get to learn the things he must know of. Babaylans of Tribu Matigsalug may either come from the male or female populations of the tribe. On this general view of the socio-cultural and politico-economic aspects of the community of Tribu Matigsalug in Barangay White Kulaman, Kitaotao, in Bukidnon, Philippines, it may be considered that the tribe is governed by a concept of communal quasi-kinship-based society, as it is evidenced that members of the said tribe live inter-relatedly towards one another and generally considers another fellow member of the tribe as a brother, or sister, with all of them belonging to a one, big, culturally homogeneous family—or, perhaps, more appropriately, tribe. Private ownership, by individuals or families, of resources in the community takes no place in the social consciousness of the tribe; thus, this, perhaps, may be considered the promulgating reason of the prevailing alternate concept of ownership, if one of such kind do exist, within and among its members: that resources of the tribe, whether found, cultured, tended, or harvested from its lands and ancestral territories, are not owned by the member of the tribe directly, but rather is owned indirectly, as much as other members of the tribe do, as an extension of ownership by belonging to such tribe, where which the tribe, as a whole, directly holds ownership of, rightfully. As this certain kind of social concept permeates into each and every consciousness of the members of the tribe, manifestations of such concept continue to be expressed in the manners and in every other cultural aspect of the community. Perhaps, for example, in the very treatment of the tribe and its members towards the Land, and, correspondingly, towards its gods and goddesses, as having the ultimate control over the products of their works and harvest in the fields of the tribe, the control over the political economy of their community—the means of production, the products of production and their post-processes, the rise of figures towards the positions of power to direct decision-making and influence the future of the tribe, and so on—is permitted to be left in the control, as well, to the Nature of its ―Land‖: the very people, the members of the tribe themselves, composing the very basic social landscape and social fabric of the community, with all the complexities and social dynamics, the diversity and the varied uncertainties, of the very nature of men; without direct, inorganic intervention; without perverted intentions. It considerably goes the same way in terms of how Education is made to be practiced in the said community. It is not directly instructed, nor systematically and ―inorganically‖ done. Elder members of the tribe, in teaching the young of the collective knowledge and skills of the tribe, only bring along the kids in the arenas of knowledge and learning. Tata Isidro said elder members would normally welcome the presence of their younger generation in the fields, not to solicit additional and exploit potential labor from them at an early age, but rather to let them see and observe how knowledge and skills are made to work and practice in the facilitation of their ways to sustain lives and the survival of their tribe and their community. Same goes with the knowledge and skills in the management and running of their households and community affairs. These processes may even be considered to say as just the natural way of things in their lives.
With all these being said and known, of considerably little traces of ―poverty‖ that can possibly be derived from the accounts of harmonious and sustainable daily lives of Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo in Tribu Matigsalug, one would perhaps be led to wonder why people and leaderrepresentatives like Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo had to come all their way from the southern premises of Bukidnon, Philippines, to the country’s capital of Manila farther way up North. It is majorly all because of their Land—their most precious holding. As almost every single thing that makes their community life in Tribu Matigsalug keep going involves and revolves around the Land of the tribe, when it gets to be put under the pressures of threat or thievery, instincts of men would tell the body to respond accordingly. Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo opened their case to the group by saying that the current state of the lands in Barangay White Kulaman, Kitaotao, is being disturbed and perturbed by the presence of military and armed forces of the government and of private corporations having perverted interests towards what is natively, and of ancestry, theirs. Relaying to the group a brief history of how their lands got into the hands of, and as claimed by, ―outsiders‖, Tata Camelo told us that there was once a former datu of Tribu Matigsalug, after having succeeded in becoming the mayor of Kitaotao town, who allegedly applied and claimed for land title of the tribe’s lands and ancestral territories, through the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997, and who then allegedly sold off the said land title, without prior notice for collective discussion and consent from the tribe, to a particular Japanese corporation for its purposes of establishing a crop plantation to serve and supply raw materials to its alternative fuels power plant project in Mindanao. Following such acts unconscientiously made by the said former datu of Tribu Matigsalug, the turmoil of complex and overlapping legalities, between the tribe and the private corporation and among and between the tribe, the private corporation, and the government, have then ensued. At present, the armed troops of the mentioned private corporation as well as the military forces of the government in aid of its implementing agencies, such as the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP), the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), have stationed themselves in the area, and continue to do so, to secure their parties’ interests and claims. As legalities may be said to have started off all these mess and troubles being faced by Tata Isidro, Tata Camelo, and the Tribu Matigsalug, legalities, as well, somehow are being enforced and disadvantageously used by parties with the upper-hand to ―solve‖ and put an awful end to it all. Paramilitary formations are being instigated by both sides of the upper-hand parties, persuading several members of the Tribu Matigsalug to turn their backs away their community and compose such insidious formations. Having these said paramilitary formations composed of members of the tribe themselves would legally screen off the upper-hand parties from court litigations if, and whenever, a skirmish between these said paramilitary groups and the forces of the Tribu Matigsalug would ensue as it could easily, and legally, be framed as an ―internal‖ tribe war, which under the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 may not be amendable by mediating bodies as it is considered and qualified under ―native tribal, or indigenous, culture‖, according to Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo as they further explained the matter.
Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo, together with the thousands of other fellow Filipino indigenous peoples participating in the ―Lakbayan 2016‖, have been staying in the country’s capital for weeks now, since their movement’s arrival in early October 2016. When asked how will they go on about their next steps, if there are, after ―Lakbayan 2016‖, Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo only said it will all depend on the results, both the tangible and the intangible, of their concerted efforts and collective movement with the nation’s minority population. When followed up by a curious inquiry from the group on the possibility of the results of ―Lakbayan 2016‖ this year to be of unsatisfactory value, Tata Isidro and Tata Camelo only have this to say: ―Itutuloy lang; ipagpapatuloy pa rin.‖