Two self-ascribed ethnic groups—Moro and Lumad—are native to Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Both groups share a common history of oppression from Western colonialism, Christian resettlement, and capitalist interests where the former has waged a more organized insurgency against the Philippine government in the late twentieth century. Due to the political superiority of the Moros, the Lumads are often left marginalized in the various peace processes in Mindanao due to their accommodation to the Moro’s call for the creation of anautonomous region under an internal power-sharing agreement. This form of double marginalization against the Lumad promotes a sense of internal colonialism where such arrangements are only left between the Bangsamoro regional government and the Philippine national government, thereby forcing the latter to accommodate to Moro interests. Analyzing the text of the recent peace agreements between the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (GRP-MILF), the article attempts to understand the conflict dynamics between Moros and Lumads under power-sharing and power-dividing measures. The article concludes that consociationalismin ethnically divided societies often lead to more ethnic cleavages if done haphazardly to favor certain interests while leaving ethnic minorities at a disadvantage. Keywords: Moro, Lumad, Mindanao, Bangsamoro, consociationalism, identity politics.

Are vertical or horizontal inequalities causing the Lumad struggle in Mindanao? This study attempts to answer whether ethnic or economic causes, or a combination of both, are motivating the key conflict actors in the Lumad struggle to wage long-term wars. Employing the greed and grievances model in analysing conflicts, we hypothesize that the causes of the Lumad struggle stems from ethnic grievances in the onset of conflict but eventually become an issue on economic greed in the duration of conflict over time. Using critical discourse framework, the study generated a dataset of online headlines from news reports from 2010-2019 in order to trace the framing of the Lumad struggle from the Aquino to the Duterte administrations. The results show that shared discursive themes affirm the notion that the nature of the Lumad struggle is an interaction of ethnic grievances and economic greed due to the interrelationships of various conflict actors on the ground such as the Philippine government, Lumad and Moro insurgents, Christian settlers and multinational corporations. Overall, the findings indicate that issues on ethnic grievances and economic greed in the Lumad struggle are interacting with one another due to notable events occurring on both Aquino and Duterte administrations such as the ongoing peace process between the Philippine government, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Lumad ethnic groups themselves. Nonetheless, these results must be interpreted with caution due to a number of limitations such as the application of the greed and grievances model as an external explanation inferred from the discursive themes emerging from the news headlines and the lack of previous studies detailing the Lumad struggle using the said framework.