To The Indigenous Eye, The Forest Is The Resource

This presentation was published in the MindaNews website

http://www.mindanews.com/mindaviews/2014/06/09/peacetalk-to-the-indigenous-eye-the-forest-is-the-resource/

PEACE IS LIVING TOGETHER

Religions and Cultures in Dialogue

For

Peace & Reconciliation in Mindanao

Notre Dame University, Cotabato City

7 June 2014

Presentation

Aveen Acuña-Gulo

Project Manager

IPDEV

Session: Economic Development and Peacebuilding in Mindanao

Day 2, 4:00-5:00 pm

Magandang Hapon sa lahat and Fiyo Teresang!

My presentation is already running inside your heads right now.  I will be focusing on the context of Economic Development as stated in the program.

If we were to put a monetary value to each fully grown tree, which can absorb 50,000 gallons of water every rainfall; shed tons of leaves that are converted to rich fertilizer that nourishes plants that nourish other life forms; cools our surroundings at the equivalent of 40 air conditioners at full blast; and multiply that by the number of trees in one square kilometre; and multiply that further by the number of years that we human beings get for free – would it ever be equal to the amount of money the number of board feet we will earn after say, five-ten-fifty years of relentless logging, environmental degradation? 

Add to that the monetary value of food, dress, dances, rituals, weather forecasting (which now has a fancy-sounding name ethnometeorology), governance & justice systems, flora, fauna, sacred places, lore & history. 

Deduct from that the same amount of money we spend on flood victims, landslide victims, health problems, rehabilitation and disease that resulted from lack of nutritious food and fresh air that forests would have readily provided.  Would the equation or the sum or the dividend or the difference be all worth it?  Do we even have the numbers right now in our heads?    

With that value that is mind-boggling to compute, one researcher said, “No government can afford to lose its own cultures and if I may add, the forests that go with it.”

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The journey for Lumad recognition in the ARMM did not start yesterday, last year nor in the last decade.  Like many of its fellow Lumads in Mindanao, it has suffered, again in the words of researchers – minoritization – with the entry of settlers and their different versions of development.    

Many policies, mostly conflicting ones, have been passed but remain wanting to be fully implemented, because they have been conflicting in the first place.

Many days are celebrated in honor and in the name of the IPs – World IP Day, IPRA Day, UNDRIP Day – there’s almost always something to celebrate any day. 

But there are glimmers of hope.  Twenty-seven years after EDSA Revolution, sixteen years after the passing of IPRA, ten years after Resolution 269, five years after MMAA 241 – it was pronounced by the ARMM Government in January of 2013 that there are no legal impediments in implementing the IPRA in the ARMM. 

Moreover, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) now has a Mindanawon Chair, an IP, a lawyer and a lady at that, and brings with her an awareness and consciousness level unique to our context.

In January this year, the NCIP issued an En Banc Resolution reiterating their commitment to exercise their mandate under the IPRA and things are cranking off to a relatively good start.    

Though long in coming, these two developments provide a glimmer of hope in the journey of the Lumads.  It is hoped that the endless passing around of the Lumads in the ARMM, marginalized as they are, would finally come to a stop. 

The ongoing theme for World IP Day is: “Indigenous Peoples Building Alliances: Honouring Treaties, Agreements and other Constructive Arrangements”.  We support the call of the Lumads in the ARMM for all of us to look at IPRA again as the government’s peace agreement with the Indigenous Peoples. As pacts and agreements were forged orally in the ways of our forefathers, manifestation of this Word of Honor is the issuance of the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) and the full implementation of the law.

In many of our roundtable discussions it is often asked why the IP development agenda is not highlighted.  The answer may be just lying around and we who are in the mainstream have yet to see it.  For many of us, the resources that we can make millions from are individual logs; cubic meters of rock, gravel and sand; ores of gold, copper, manganese; vast tracks of forested land that can be levelled for pineapples, bananas and African palm that are actually foreigners to local soil.  But to the indigenous eye, the forest is the resource.

It’s the same forest that protects us from warm weather, the same forest that protects us from flooding, landslides, disease.  How can we just eradicate forests whose services we have always had for free?     Only a mind with distorted mathematics would justify sense and logic in such an equation.      

The Lumads in the ARMM – Teduray, Lambangian, Dulangan Manobo and Higaonon – need all the support they can get.  From us who are in privileged positions, let this be a call.  Remember that we, too, at certain points in our respective histories, also suffered oppression from the powerful and the mighty.  Let us not be the oppressors of today by depriving the Lumads of what are rightfully theirs.  As one IP leader put it, “You can consult us anytime on sustainable development.  We have been doing it for thousands of years.”

Marami Pong Salamat.

* * * * *

Aveen Acuña-Gulo

Project Manager

IPDEV

7th day of June 2014

* * * * *

Open Forum:

Question: Is there a possibility of creating peace utilizing our own capacities where we can proudly say this is our initiative?

Answer (3^rd responder): Let me volunteer an answer in the context of the IPs.  In the current peace process, the IPs have proactively participated in the crafting of the basic law.  Before you cannot see IPs participating in the discussion.  They are just made to sit there and not given the chance.

I think we have also learned our lessons from the GRP-MNLF Final Peace Agreement and the foiled MOA Signing in 2008.  Lessons on inclusivity and ownership.  It is a breakthrough that all the bundles of rights stipulated in the IPRA are included in the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB).  Vigilance should not stop.  Proactive engagement is needed to ensure that everything is in place (and included in the Basic Law).  That is peacebuilding in action.

Question: Culture of Peace / Values / Start with the Children

Answer (3^rd responder):  The very reason why Project IPDEV was conceptualized by three organizations namely, the Institute for Autonomy & Governance (IAG), Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and Development Consultants (DEVCON) is the lack of data.  This is the biggest stumbling block for most development organizations because we don’t know who the IPs are, where they live, how many they are, what are their needs and aspirations. 

With funding support from the European Union (EU) – Muchas Gracias Senor – we were able to come up with baseline data that other organizations can use.  This has just been published and it is ready for your consumption.  In there is information on 80 barangays within mainland ARMM.  We can start from there.  The UN has already used this for some of their interventions.  We do hope that other organizations will already use it; and we will be making courtesy calls with you, Sirs to show you the gaps.

We need schools, schools, and more schools. 

I’d like to tell you a story.  One combatant told me in the early years of rebuilding from war: “Maam, I have boxes of training certificates I still couldn’t find a job.”

What was he saying?  This was 17 years ago.  What if the same combatant was sent back to school to resume where he had left off when he joined the revolution, he could have been a doctor, a lawyer, an agriculturist, an engineer, a PhD many times over by now! 

I think that’s a good lesson we can look into.  Schools are the best peacebuilding strategy.  It will help young people, old people, the middle-aged, women, children.  They will learn how to compute their land, their assets, their forests, their coffee, their rice, their corn.  Basics.  ##


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Aveen Acuña-Gulo is the Project Manager of IPDEV, a three-year EU-assisted project for the recognition and empowerment of indigenous peoples in the ARMM.  IPDEV is implemented by the consortium of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Institute for Autonomy and Governance and Development Consultants.  The views expressed here are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the EU, KAS, IAG and DEVCON.

She wrote a column “The Voice” for the Mindanao Cross from 1991-2006. She likes to challenge stereotypes.  
“Don’t worry about my opinions,” she says.  “It won’t make a dent to the conventional."