Tribal group wants new law for louder IP voice
BAGUIO CITY—A new law empowering indigenous Filipinos is being pushed by the party-list group, Sulong Katribu, which has enlisted to run in the 2016 national elections.
Sulong Katribu replaces the original Katribu party-list group which failed to win a seat in Congress in two successive elections.
The group was formed on Oct. 10, 2013 in a Quezon City convention attended by representatives of indigenous Filipino communities representing Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao, according to the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), one of its supporting organizations.
“We filed for accreditation as well as our intent to participate in the 2016 elections. We attended a [Commission on Elections] hearing and submitted the required documents [for the chance] to have genuine indigenous peoples (IP) represent themselves in Congress as an assertion of true self-determination,” said Windel Bolinget, Sulong Katribu national president and CPA chair.
He said the group wants to improve laws affecting IP communities, focusing this time on empowering councils of elders by giving them some measure of veto power over public and private undertakings that violate traditional laws.
Republic Act No. 8371 (Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997), considered by various groups as a landmark IP legislation, “is too flawed,” said Bolinget.
Instead of amending it, Sulong Katribu intends to pass an alternative law that would allow IP communities to govern using their strong indigenous rules and governance system, he said.
Community assemblies and councils of elders are legitimate sources of policy discourse, he said, and their decisions should be as legitimate and as acceptable as any resolution or ordinance passed by village or municipal councils, Bolinget said.
A new IP law should also define properly how IPs can govern and exploit their domains, he added.
Mainstream Filipinos assume that the IP concern is limited to cultural identity, Bolinget said, “but culture and identity are strong when these are practiced and asserted within their ancestral domain.”
“Without their ancestral domain and territory, identity and culture will eventually diminish,” he said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon
