The Pluriversal notion of the Lumads’ exclusion in the Bangsamoro peace process

MAKATI CITY (MindaNews) - Just in my last week’s visit to Cotabato City, an intercultural communication researcher from Japan who purchased a copy of ‘mBayuka Tanu! Maguindanaon Transcription, Translation, and Annotation (https://amzn.to/3uJMjLH) cordially invited me to an after-iftar over-a-cup-of-coffee conversation in a local social enterprise café.

As expected, our chit chat’s opening salvo was the book on Maguindanaon bayuk and her interest in learning the language. I was surprised to know, however, that she was then also reading Kabuntalan Through The Centuries: A Narrative of History and Culture (https:// amzn.to/37N9ETp) whose copy she borrowed from the Bangsamoro Regional Library. When I handed her a complimentary copy of my travelogue Light Moments in Vienna (https://amzn.to/3u8DsCM), she was quick enough in pointing out, “Oh, I remember you mentioned this book in ‘mBayuka Tanu,” to which I nodded in agreement, “Yes, I mentioned it in the Prologue.”

Our talk soon segued, or allowed to segue, to such topics as the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) Parliament’s performance, the upcoming local elections in Cotabato City and Maguindanao, and the growing concern over the probable impact of the presidential race’s outcome upon the future of the autonomous government in transition.

After mentioning the Mamalu and Tabunaway legend and expressing sympathy toward indigenous peoples, as a whole, the Japanese professor asked, “How do you think should the Moro-Lumad relationship be officially written?”

I smiled and told her, “You see, just last month, some colleagues in the academe asked me to comment on a proposed decolonial study about the notion of the Lumads’ exclusion in the Bangsamoro peace process.” Decolonial Theory’s Pluriversality Questioning the positivism and universalism perpetuated by the West, Pluriversality is the notion of multiple worlds coexisting simultaneously, while recognizing the plural ways of knowing and being in the world. Emerging from the Decolonial Theory, Pluriversality is rooted in the modernity/coloniality framework of Anibal Quijano who argues that modernity (capitalism, globalization, and Enlightenment) achieved its hegemonic status through centuries of European systemic oppression of the nonEuropean world (coloniality).

In its decolonial pursuit for emancipation, the concept of Pluriversality posits the existence of multiple ontologies and epistemologies. On the ontological dimension, it acknowledges that more than just the plurality of perspectives in one world, there are multiple worlds in which there are multiple ways of being, doing, sensing, and thinking.

On the epistemological side, it assumes that each of the worlds within the pluriverse has a particular knowledge system existing adjacently to one another, which in turn informs the diverse inhabitants’ multiple ways of being, doing, sensing, and thinking, and subsequently, their relations and interactions.

The Notion of the Lumads’ Exclusion

Using this Pluriversal framework, the proposed study argues that “Despite also being indigenous to the region, and thereby having just as much of a stake in the land, Lumads have been largely excluded from the Mindanao peace process: in negotiations and agreements with both the Moros and the communist insurgents.”

It is even claimed that “The Lumads have never been a party in any of the Bangsamoro peace negotiations and were reportedly coerced into giving their support for the creation of the BARMM.”

It goes on alleging further that “Because of their political weaknesses, the Lumads fear that the Moros might try to assimilate them further and that they would be pressured to convert to Islam or otherwise lose their cultural identity, along with their ancestral lands.”

[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mansoor L. Limba, PhD in International Relations, is a writer, university professor, blogger, chess trainer, and translator (from Persian into English and Filipino). He can be reached at mlimba@diplomats.com, or http:// www.mlimba.com and http://www.muslimandmoney. com.