Who’s to Blame? The Politics of Recognition in Ayta Land Claims under IPRA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70922/r1zxvr65Keywords:
Ayta, Ancestral Domain, Indigenous Peoples, IPRA, NCIPAbstract
With the enactment of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) in 1997, the Philippines became one of the first Asian countries to legally recognize and protect the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Yet many Indigenous communities continue to struggle to realize the very promises that the law was intended to fulfill. This paper therefore examines how IPRA has shaped—and continues to shape—the Ayta’s efforts to assert ownership and control over their ancestral domain. Drawing on multi-sited ethnography conducted in selected Ayta communities, the study reveals that IPRA remains a paradox. While it has heightened the Ayta’s awareness of their rights and strengthened their political mobilization, it has largely failed to protect the lands and rights it promised. Both IPRA and its implementing agency, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), are widely perceived by the Ayta as “toothless” and “inefficient,” largely due to their failure to address longstanding land issues that continue to produce marginalization and dispossession. As these issues persist, Ayta communities and the NCIP often blame one another for perceived irregularities, inefficiencies, and lapses in responsibility. Ultimately, this paper underscores the need to revisit and strengthen IPRA, while also fostering a more collaborative relationship between Ayta communities and the NCIP to advance their shared goal of fully realizing Indigenous Peoples’ rights and dignity.
Downloads
References
Alcorn, J. (1993). Indigenous Peoples and Conservation. Conservation Biology, 7(2), 424–426.
Caballero, E. (2004). Ancestral domain delineation and recognition: CADT of Aytas of Bataan. Department of Environment and Natural Resources–United States Agency for International Development Philippine Environmental Governance (EcoGov).
Cadena, M. de la, & Starn, O. (Eds.). (2007). Indigenous experience today. Berg.
Caranto Morford, A., & Ansloos, J. (2021). Indigenous sovereignty in digital territory: A qualitative study on land-based relations with #NativeTwitter. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 17(2), 293–305. https://doi.org/10.1177/11771801211019097
Castro, N. (1999). Ang pulitika ng ancestral domain. Katipon Lecture Series, 1–11.
Ciencia, A. (2011). Governance Issues and the NCIP. The Cordillera Review, 3, 17–42.
Duarte, M. E. (2017). Connected Activism: Indigenous Uses of Social Media for Shaping Political Change. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21. https://doi.org/10.3127/ajis.v21i0.1525
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Lawrence & Wishart and International Publishers.
Hagen, R. V., & Minter, T. (2020). Displacement in the Name of Development. How Indigenous Rights Legislation Fails to Protect Philippine Hunter-Gatherers. Society & Natural Resources, 33(1), 65–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2019.1677970
Hirtz, F. (2003). It Takes Modern Means to be Traditional: On Recognizing Indigenous Cultural Communities in the Philippines. Development and Change, 34(5), 887–914. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2003.00333.x
Hopke, J. E., Simis-Wilkinson, M., & Loew, P. A. (2018). Social Media in Agenda-setting: The Elsipogtog First Nation and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Social Media and Society, 310–314. https://doi.org/10.1145/3217804.3217935
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank. (2024). No Data, No Story: Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines. https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/baa43cc91ec55266a538e9023c528bd7-0070062024/original/No-Data-No-Story-Indigenous-Peoples-in-the-Philippines.pdf
Jia, A. Y. (2024). Doing Multi-Site Ethnography. In D. Oswald & L. Olde Scholtenhuis, Embracing Ethnography (1st ed., pp. 143–164). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003379584-15
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions.
Kovach, M. (2010). Indigenous methodologies: Characteristics, conversations and contexts (Reprinted in paperback 2010). University of Toronto Press.
Malayang Iii, B. S. (2001). Tenure rights and ancestral domains in the Philippines. A study of the roots of conflict. Bijdragen Tot de Taal-, Land- En Volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 157(3), 661–676. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134379-90003805
Marcus, G. (1995). Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 95–117.
NCIP Administrative Order No. 1, s. 1998: The Rules and Regulations Implementing the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 (IPRA) (1998).
NCIP Administrative Order No. 1, s. 2009: National Guidelines for the Mandatory Representation of Indigenous Peoples in Local Legislative Councils (2009).
NCIP National Advisory No. NA-2020-08-001 (2020).
Niezen, R. (2003). The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity. 1st ed. University of California Press,. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1ppf7b
Prill-Brett, J. (2007). Contested Domains: The Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) and Legal Pluralism in the Northern Philippines. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law, 39(55), 11–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2007.10756606
Republic Act No. 8371: The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (1997). https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1997/10/29/republic-act-no-8371/
Rosales, C. A. (2022). Territories of Fire: Indigenous Communities, Land, and Anarchy Among a Highland People in Mindoro. Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics, 16(2), 239–272. https://doi.org/10.2478/jef-2022-0021
Sarkowsky, K. (2020). Cartographies of the Self: Indigenous Territoriality and Literary Sovereignty in Contemporary Native American Life Writing. Journal of Transnational American Studies, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.5070/T8111046994
Scarangella, L. (2004). Indigenous Knowledge and Ethics. NEXUS: The Canadian Student Journal of Anthropology, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.15173/nexus.v17i1.191
Smith, L. T. (2008). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (12. impression). Zed Books [u.a.].
Snow, K. C., Hays, D. G., Caliwagan, G., Ford, D. J., Mariotti, D., Mwendwa, J. M., & Scott, W. E. (2016). Guiding principles for indigenous research practices. Action Research, 14(4), 357–375. https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750315622542
Theriault, N. (2019). Unravelling the strings attached: Philippine indigeneity in law and practice. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 50(1), 107–128. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022463419000018
Walpole, P., & Annawi, D. (n.d.). Where are Indigenous Peoples Going? Review of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act 1997 Philippines (pp. 1–52). Environmental Science for Social Change Philippines. https://essc.org.ph/content/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/where_are_indigenous_peoples_going.pdf
Wilson, S. (2001). What is an Indigenous Research Methodology. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 25(2), 175–180.
Wilson, S. (2008). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Fernwood Publishing.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 John Albert Dela Rosa (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Articles published in the SOCIAL SCIENCES AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW will be Open-Access articles distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). This allows for immediate free access to the work and permits any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose.
