Indigenous Peoples 'SONA' to be held in Mindanao

From our friends at the LRC-KsK:

On the day Pesident Gloria Macapagal Arroyo delivers her 8th State of the Nation Address, indigenous peoples groups from different parts of Mindanao will be delivering their own version of the annual national situationer to draw attention to the plight of the country’s indigenous people who feel they have been excluded from the country’s development agenda.

“Whereas, the President’s SONA is often an occasion for the national leadership to peddle it’s version of the national situation, the SIPA, or State of the Indigenous Peoples will be an occasion for truth-telling, a venue for various indigenous groups to speak of their situation in their own words,” said Judy Pamela Pasimio of the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center LRC-KsK/FOEI-Phils., a legal and policy research and advocacy organization working primarily on indigenous peoples rights .

According to LRC, the indigenous peoples, estimated to number 12 million,were practically invisible in Arroyo’s past SONA’s. Given the reported theme of this year’s address, there seems little chance of this changing.

will expose the real state of the lives of the indigenous peoples in Mindanao, who seem to be always missing in President Arroyo’s agenda. It is an opportunity for society’s most disenfranchised to be heard, ” Pasimio asserted.

Apart from a failed promise during her first SONA in 2001 to distribute 100 Certificate of Ancestral Domain Titles (CADT) per year, IP issues were left out of succeeding speeches which focused on economic, fiscal and infrastructure targets. LRC stated that while virtually no mention is made of the indigenous peoples in Arroyo’s annual report to Congress, they often bear the brunt of the aggressive drive for development emanating from the targets set during the SONA.

“Indigenous groups in effect suffer a double whammy, being excluded from development agenda-setting even as their ancestral lands often end up as the prime targets for ‘development’. The Arroyo administration’s efforts to attract foreign investment into the mining sector for example often result in displacement of indigenous peoples from their ancestral domains,” Pasimio

LRC revealed that of 23 identified priority mining areas, 16 cover indigenous territories in Mindanao, Palawan, Mindoro and the Cordilleras presenting a clear and present danger to indigenous communities in these areas.“Our indigenous peoples continue to be victims of flawed development priorities which encourage logging, mining, agricultural plantations, chemical farming and other destructive practices. Their survival should not be subordinated to a national agenda they did not participate in crafting. Through the SIPA, they will get the chance formulate their own agenda,” Pasimio said.

The SIPA will bring together IPs and IP advocate groups in Camp Alano, Toril, Davao City from July 28-31 2008.

For more information, visit the SIPA website.