Up to 15 per cent of the Philippine population - about
ten million people - belong to distinct indigenous communities and
retain a close link with their traditions. They avoided Hispanisation
during Spain's 350-year colonisation of the Philippines. In 1987,
after the fall of the Marcos regime, a revised Philippine Constitution
recognised the ancestral land rights of indigenous people, and ten
years later, in 1997, those rights finally became law in the
Indigenous
Peoples Rights Act.
The Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act (IPRA) is modelled on the provisions
of the UN Draft Declaration on Indigenous Peoples' Rights. In theory
IPRA is one of the most enlightened laws dealing with Indigenous
Peoples, recognising the free prior and informed consent (FPIC)
of Indigenous Peoples, and asserting that in the absence of such
a clear level of consent, a project cannot proceed. In practice
however, this is regularly undermined, not least by legislation
such as the 1995 Mining
Code, which in many cases gives mining claims to the same Indigenous
land supposedly covered by IPRA. Indigenous Peoples communities
and organisations, and their supporters, have been vocal in fighting
for their legal
rights for many years, and the struggle continues.
