CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY –— Members of the Manobo-Pulangihon tribe of Butong, Bukidnon threatened to enter their ancestral domain and die there if the National Commission on Indigenous People’s Commission (NCIP) Commissioner Allen Capuyan will not sign their Certificate of Ancestral Domain Territory (CADT) title.
Fed up with NCIP’s continuing inaction to their plea, the Kiantig Manobo-Pulangihon Tribal Association said that they will occupy their ancestral lands as they accused Capuyan of refusing to sign their CADT which they said, they have complied with all the documents required by the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) law.
“We are so poor yet we chipped in to raise 100 thousand pesos for the survey of our ancestral lands,” Rolando Anglao, chieftain of their tribe.
The one thousand hectares of land which is currently occupied by Kiantig Development Corporation is declared by the NCIP as an ancestral domain.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources as well as the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) have certified and turned over all legal matters to NCIP.
The DENR also wrote to KDC president and Quezon, Bukidnon Mayor Pablo Lorenzo informing him that the land is an ancestral domain. The DENR also did not extend the Forest Land Graze Management Agreement (FLGMA) No. 122 that subsequently expired in 2018.
Anglao said that they are fed up with the NCIP’s promises even as they comply with all the requirements.
“Capuyan is supposed to implement that (IPRA) law, but he is violating it by continuously ignoring and refusing to sign our (CADT) document,” says Florencio ‘Datu Maalamon’ Peratir, a tribe member.
Anglao said that they have been harassed, shot at, accused of being NPA rebels and their members were killed one after another.
Peratir said that they would rather die inside their land, fighting for their right, than to die on the road they are dwelling on right now, a stone’s throw away from their land.
“We will die, all two thousand of us inside our land,” Peratir added.
The land occupation was supposed to take place today, but civil society and the Catholic Church intervened.
Retired Cagayan de Oro City Archbishop Antonio Ledesma persuades the tribe members and there must be other peaceful ways to solve the tribe’s problem.
Ledesma said that he would help in getting Malaybalay Archbishop Noel Pedregosa. “Maybe, if you have time, we can go to (Pedregosa) Archbishop’s house in Malaybalay, so you can air and express your issues,” Ledesma said.
“We will ask for a schedule so we can have an audience because, for his part, he is already aware and interested in helping you,” Ledesma added.
“The Social Action Center of each diocese are helping the Lumad,” Ledesma said.
However, Anglao said that the government is not helping them as they feel that government agencies are aiding KDC and Lorenzon instead of helping champion their cause to get their land back.
“Before September ends, we will enter and reclaim our land, Capuyan is just sitting on our documents and refuses to sign, we will die for our land, all us, we don’t have weapons, but we have our rights,” Anglao said.
