Unravelling the strings attached: Philippine indigeneity in law and practice

Abstract

After the fall of the Marcos regime in 1986, Philippine policymakers became the first in Asia to recognise indigeneity and Indigenous rights. By law, Indigenous groups throughout the archipelago now have priority rights to their ‘ancestral domains’, but in return they are expected to maintain an ‘ecological balance’ and cooperate with environmental regulations. As in many other parts of the world, the conditionalities of recognition mean that invocations of Indigenous rights often serve to initiate ever-deeper entanglements with governmental power. At the same time, however, Indigenous Peoples and their advocates do not approach the dilemmas of recognition as hapless bystanders; rather, they negotiate them in strategic and often unexpected ways. This article considers how members of Indigenous Palawan communities in the southwestern Philippines have used dominant policy assumptions to intervene in dispossessory processes. Specifically, I examine instances in which they have: (1) codified a ‘tradition’ of inheritance to influence legislative outcomes; (2) performed the policy narrative of ‘ecological balance’ to shape the outcome of conservation interventions; and (3) filed a civil case tacitly challenging official expectations that they govern themselves as homogenous collectivities. These examples, I argue, offer broader insights into the paradoxical and at times unexpected consequences of legislating Indigenous rights.

Reframing the Boundaries of Indigeneity: State‐Based Ontologies and Assertions of Distinction and Compatibility in Thailand

“…While scholars working on Indigenous identity politics outside of Thailand have brought attention to the “cunning of recognition” (Povinelli ) and the “cunning of the recognized” (Theriault ), in Thailand we see at the moment the “cunning of nonrecognition” on the part of the state and the “cunning of the unrecognized” on the part of Indigenous Peoples. The example of the Indigenous movement in Thailand supports the argument that while global connections are indeed important, “the nation continues to be the locus of political negotiations in most places” (Tsing , 39).…”

Quarantining activism: COVID-19, frontline defenders and intensifying extractivism in the Philippines

“…The policy pivot to the forested uplands--the basis of abating extractivism on indigenous lands--has also been hollowed out and constrained. Despite new laws being drafted to protect indigenous rights to land, resources and social protections under the much-celebrated Indigenous Peoples Rights Act 1997, the issuance of 'native title' through de jure Certificates of Ancestral Domain Title (CADTs) ultimately did less than was hoped for in protecting 'tribal lands' from the expansion of agribusiness and mining in the country (Theriault, 2019). Regardless, CADTs and associated People's Organizations continued to serve as the political and institutional basis for NGOs and indigenous land rights defenders, whose work increasingly collided with the violence of extractive accumulation (Dressler, 2009;Theriault, 2019).…”