Driven from home, indigenous people long for land
The Lumad in Mindanao are part of nearly 17m indigenous people in the country
As Philippine military battalions closed in, shutting down schools, rounding up men and harassing women, Tungig Mansumuy had to make a tough decision: stay and protect their homes, or flee to save their lives and risk losing their land.
After discussions with other tribesmen, Mansumuy, the chief of a Lumad tribe in Mindanao island, decided they had to leave and seek shelter until martial law was lifted and it was safe to return to their homes in Talaingod village.
A few men stayed behind to guard their homes, while the rest fled by foot in February, carrying few belongings as they made the two-day trek down the mountain, Mansumuy said.
Today 244 of them, mostly women and children, are in rickety shxelters of bamboo and tarpaulin in the middle of a banana plantation in Madaum village, about 80km from Davao City, with no inkling of when they can return to their homes.
‘Told to give up lands’
“We have endured militarisation for a long time, and we have fled several times before. But we were always able to go back,” said Mansumuy, as his wife nursed their newborn child, and older children carried firewood and water to women cooking on fires.
“This time feels different; we have been forced to leave our homes, and we are being told we need to give up our lands for our own good. But we cannot live like this — we belong in our ancestral lands, and we want to go back,” he said.
The Lumad in Mindanao in southern Philippines are part of nearly 17 million indigenous people in the country.
They are among the poorest of minority groups, with little access to social services including education and health care, experts say. They have been caught in the middle of a five-decade old insurgency, as well as a push by logging and mining companies to tap Mindanao’s rich resources including gold, copper and nickel, after President Rodrigo Duterte said he would welcome investors.
Their vulnerability has been exacerbated by the extension of martial law imposed in Mindanao last May by Duterte.
“Duterte is waging war against defenceless indigenous people in Mindanao,” said Duphing Ogan, secretary general of indigenous peoples’ alliance Kalumaran.