What does the MILF mean by Ancestral Domain as territory
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Editor's Note: The following are excerpts from Rudy Rodil's paper on Territorial Ancestral Domain presented during the consultation with local experts by the Committee on Political Autonomy of the Bangsamoro Transition Commission, Marawi City, 2-3 January 2014. Read the complete paper in the forthcoming first quarter 2014 issue of IAG's Autonomy & Peace Review.
This is a very complex question but to simplify it, the MILF refers to a combination of tribal lands occupied by the Bangsamoro people since time immemorial and territories encompassed in the two sultanates of Sulu and Maguindanao and the Pat a Pongampong ko Ranaw. What they desire is a political territory. This is not the same as the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT), tenure in character, issued to claimants from the Indigenous Peoples in the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA).
To further simplify, the MILF has broken down ancestral domain to four aspects: concept, territory, resources and governance.
Concept refers to the name Moro orPoint No. 1 of the Ten Decision Points on Principles signed by the GPH and the MILF Panels on April 24, 2012 in Kuala Lumpur, states: The Parties recognize Bangsamoro identity and the legitimate grievances and claims of the Bangsamoro people. More, it defines self in self-determination, the collective political entity that is asserting the right. The self now wants to be called Moro, hence the names Moro National Liberation Front and later, Moro Islamic Liberation Front. And in referring to themselves as a nation that they are and wish to be, they call themselves Bangsamoro or Moro nation whose roots go a long way back in time to their ancestors. Hence ancestral. The Sultanate of Sulu was established in 1450 A.D., the Sultanate of Maguindanao in 1619, both antedating the Philippine state whose independence was declared on June 12, 1898.
What are the legitimate grievances and claims of the Bangsamoro people?
Owing to government policies and resettlement programs that goes back to the American colonial period, the indigenous communities were displaced by the newcomers who were encouraged by government to migrate to Mindanao, using public land laws that favored them. Marginalized and reduced to numerical minorities, unable to run their lives anymore, these indigenous peoples feel the need to assert their right to self-determination in order for them to survive with dignity. They have their distinct selves, distinct lives, distinct histories and distinct territories and would like to run their own lives. So, the Bangsamoro grew out of the Muslim population. For their part, the indigenous peoples, too, so formed themselves into a collective entity called Lumad in 1986 and articulated their own right to self-determination within their respective ancestral domains.
What is the territorial claim of the Bangsamoro?
With the redefinition of the self comes the redefinition of the territory. As nation it must stand on its own traditional territory. We need to assess more closely the meaning of ancestral domain as territory. The concept ancestral is relatively easy to understand in the Philippines because we all have similar histories as distinct ethnolinguistic groups. For example, the Ilocanos, the Tagalogs, the Bicolanos, the Ilongos, the Cebuanos, the Warays -- they all know who they are and where their ancestral homelands are, their respective domains. Thus, domain, from the Latin word domus, meaning home, is their home or homeland. We have all heard about Ilocandia the home of the Ilocanos, or Bicolandia the home of the Bicolanos, fr example. These homelands have been handed down from their respective ancestors. The only political transformation has been the creation of the Filipino self and its superimposition over all the various ethnolinguistic groups and the conversion of the tribal lands into one whole national territory now called the Philippines.
The case of the Bangsamoro has been different. They, too, had their 13 ethnolinguistic groups, the major ones are Maguindanao, Maranao and Tausug, but these have been subsumed under their datu system and the sultanates. So, aside from their ethnolinguistic territories, they also had their sultanate state territories and the Pat a Pongampong ko Ranaw. Sulu Sultanate had been there from 1450 to 1898, and the Maguindanao Sultanate from 1619 to 1898. They, along with the Pat a Pongampong ko Ranaw, were uncolonized by the Spaniards. This was the situation at the time of the Treaty of Paris in December, 1898 when Moroland became part of the Philippine Islands. Their current understanding of ancestral domain is the combination of tribal ethnolinguistic homeland and the political domains of the sultanates and pat a pongampong ko ranaw. Following the example of their indigenous brothers in Canada, they also claim themselves to be first nations, meaning nations long before the existence of Canada. Their territories, handed down from their ancestors since time immemorial are covered by native title, meaning that their lands private and have never been public. This has been accepted in American jurisprudence and is also upheld in the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of the Philippines. The Bangsamoro calls this domain their political territory.
Also self-explanatory is the last item in the section on territory in the Framework of Agreement on the Bangsamoro:
The Bangsamoro Basic Law shall recognize the collective democratic rights of the constituents in the Bangsamoro.
Some reflections:
On President Aquino’s affirmation and acceptance of Bangsamoro
I first read the President’s speech, October 7, the same day it was delivered – my 70th birthday; I saw the GPH-MILF Framework Agreement later in the day. His words really hit me hard:
This agreement creates a new political entity, and it deserves a name that symbolizes and honors the struggles of our forebears in Mindanao, and celebrates the history and character of that part of our nation. That name will be Bangsamoro.
In that single paragraph, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III officially accepted and affirmed the Bangsamoro, presumably before the whole country and before the world, since we are now in the era of cable TV. The two panels watched it together on television in Kuala Lumpur.
My first reaction was: nahinog rin, sa wakas (ripe, at last).
I did not shed a teardrop then but I did sob quietly earlier … I could not help it, while drafting my thoughts on the Framework. I read in the news that the two negotiating panels watched and listened to the President’s speech. There were tears of joy, too, from both panels, including the chair of the MILF panel.
Tears of joy are perhaps left unexplained. I have heard many stories of parties in rido (roughly: feud, clan conflicts),sobbing, or even bawling aloud when the moment of settlement is reached, when mutual affirmation and acceptance is realized. That unexplained melting of hatred and rejection and the transformation to tears of joy and overwhelming spirit of brotherhood seems to be a typically human phenomenon. From what I have heard and read, this happens all the time in sandugo (blood brotherhood) and other similar conflict settlement processes.
The Framework Agreement reminds me of sandugo that runs deep in our culture. It comes in different names and is practiced in many tribes. I read about sandugo in history, the ones that the Spaniards had with the datus of Leyte, Butuan and Cebu. But I doubt that I grasped what it really meant. It was so remote from my personal existence. I understood it better when I did fieldwork among the Dibabawon of Davao del Norte in 1974. Twenty-two years later, I did another field work among the Blaans of South Cotabato. I also interviewed my friends among the Tedurays of Upi in 2008. Now I understand that Tagalog saying: bakit kailangan pang daanin sa patayo kung kaya pa sa paupo (literally: no need to settle standing, if it can be done seated done). Now I also realize that the root word husay(literally: fix ) is found in Tagalog, Ilonggo, Bisaya and Manobo. It is our generic equivalent of peace process. Long before peace process became popular, husay was already there, being practiced among many tribes in the country. It is what sandugo is all about, called khandugo in Subanen, dyandi in Blaan and Manobo. But what is remarkable about it is that there is mutually acceptable elder who presides. He need not be from the same community, he can be from a neighboring community. Not much different from foreign facilitators in our government peace talks with the MNLF and the MILF. Journeying between the two parties, on foot or by horseback, to determine the nature and details of the conflict from the parties separately, the damages and the estimated compensation for such damages. We call this back-channeling today. By talking to the parties in conflict the facilitator slowly thaws their hatred for each other and soon they are ready to come face to face, really to settle. Then the facilitator calls them together for a conference where the details of the settlement are further discussed. The process ends with a ritual presided over by a baylan. The spirits are called upon to witness the event. The parties become like blood brothers, regarded by the entire community as sacred. Their respective families, too, are party to the settlement. Order and harmony in the community is restored. Perhaps it is the vital role of the spirits that we do not have anymore. But having international witnesses to the signing also generates a similar effect.
The official acceptance of Bangsamoro is a quantum leap from history. The Moro image to a Christian conjures images of raids upon Christian communities which Spanish chronicles loved to call Moro piracy. The Moros themselves hated the name. It was not until the MNLF and the MILF adopted it as an integral part of their revolutionary organizations’ official denomination that it did become a badge of honor. Now, by adding these words: a name that symbolizes and honors the struggles of our forebears in Mindanao, and celebrates the history and character of that part of our nation, the President has memorialized the name as a sacred part of our national identity.
The Framework Agreement is not only a peace agreement between government and MILF, it also inaugurates a new relationship, a brotherhood, a kapatiran (in Tagalog), a panagsuon (in Bisaya). It also corrects and straightens out the ugly twists in history that created the Moro problem. Now we have a new united Filipino people, with full consent from the governed. We begin a new history.
A peace specialist, Rudy Buhay Rodil is an active Mindanao historian and peace advocate. In 1988 he was a commissioner of the Regional Consultative Commission in Muslim Mindanao which helped Congress draft the Organic Act for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. As an acknowledged expert on the history of the Moro conflict, he was twice member of the GRP peace negotiating panel in the talks with the Moro National Liberation Front, 1993-96, and also vice chair of the GRP Panel in the talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Dec 2004 to 3 Sep 08. He was Visiting Professor at Hiroshima University in Oct-Dec 2011. Having started his studies on Mindanao, especially on the Moro and Lumad affairs, in the summer of 1973, he has so far written four books, several monographs and 127 articles. As educator, he has taught in Sulu, Cotabato, Davao, Manila and Iligan. Now retired, he was professor of history in the last twenty-four years in Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, Jun 1983 to Oct 2007. As peace advocate, he has so far participated as resource person in more than 703 forums, seminars and conferences related to the creation of a culture of peace in Mindanao.