4
Tadem
Indigenous peoples
The work of Ayta-Mag-indi women in Porac, Pampanga Province in the Central
Luzon region delves into culture-based women organizing to address emerging
accounts of gender-based violence and to contribute to their people’s ongoing struggle
for self-determination and culture-sensitive governance. The Ayta-Mag-indi are a
peace-loving indigenous people. While they have struggled to preserve and bequeath
their culture from one generation to the next, they have become vulnerable to the
influence of outside cultures with many accounts of development aggression and
multiple displacements.
Meanwhile, the Save Our Schools Network is an alliance of child-focused NGOs,
church-based groups, and other stakeholders advocating for indigenous children’s
right to education. Since the establishment of alternative tribal schools in the 1980s,
Lumad2 students and faculty have instituted the Bakwit School in Metro Manila
as an expression of children’s resistance against attacks on Lumad education. Due to
the worsening political conditions in Mindanao, the Bakwit School has remained in
different university campuses and areas in Metro Manila to allow Lumad children to
exercise their right to education.
Conclusions, recommendations, and dissemination
The last part of the report summarizes the research findings, draws conclusions, and
compiles a list of policy recommendations for the government and the private sector
to act on. These recommendations are mainly of an immediate and urgent nature and
can be acted upon in the shortest possible time. Some medium-term solutions are
offered as well. The authors of the report believe that all these can be adopted and
implemented if the proper political will is surfaced and mobilized. The most basic of
these is the proposal for a “whole-of-society” approach that brings together health
experts, the relevant government bodies (including local government units), civil
society organizations, sectoral groups, and the affected communities themselves to
set aside their differences and work as one cohesive unit to address the most serious
health crisis that the country and the world is currently facing.
This analytical report will be followed by a much shorter think piece that will
contain the key findings and recommendations as outlined in the longer report.
The last part of the project will be to disseminate widely the research findings “to
the public through social media, TV, radio, print media and other relevant means”
(UNESCO 2020, 2).
2 “Lumad” is a collective self-ascribed designation for the more than thirty indigenous
ethnolinguistic groups in the island of Mindanao in southern Philippines.