I planned to get a copy first of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act before discussing this subject about ancestral lands and the reservations.
Because of the mention again of the issue in a news story where the registration of transactions concerning titled ancestral land claims which have been reserved for public purposes, I would like to quote here Section 7 of Part II of Rule III of the Implementing Rules and Regulations of Republic Act 8371 otherwise known as “The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997”. This Section reads thus: Right to Claim Parts of Reservations. – The dispossession of indigenous peoples from their domains/lands by operation of law, executive fiat or legislative action constitute a violation of the constitutional right to be free from the arbitrary deprivation of property. As such, ICCs/IPshave the right to claim ancestral domains, or parts thereof, which have been reserved for various purposes.
Whenever I hear people questioning the act of the Ibalois of claiming parts of reservations in the City of Baguio, I ask myself if they know the IPRa law which a man who was not an Ibaloi helped to make a law. I believe the good senator Juan Flavier was not a nincompoop who just helped pass into law something he did not think very well of.
May be, just may be, some Ibalois are not the real descendants of the older Ibalois who owned certain tracts of lands in what is now the City of Baguio. May be the procedure followed in the issuance of titles for some lands claimed by certain Ibalois were not regular.
May be.
But I believe the Ibalois who were then the people referred to by the Americans who came here in the early 1900s as Igorottes were the owners of the lands that have been proclaimed for various purposes. Just because they, the Ibalois then did not have the money to pay for the registration of their lands, or did not grasp the meaning of the patenting of their lands before the same were reserved, or they did not have their llands patented during the early titling days for some other reasons, their lands have been included in the area reserved for the Baguio Townsite, the watersheds, the US Military Reservation, and other purposes..
And there descendants have the right to claim the lands which were reserved for various purposes as the law provides. They, like other Filipinos have that right. It is unfair to deprive them of that right just because the land being claimed has been reserved for a certain public purpose.
If they can prove their claim, why deprive them of it?
I would like to discuss this further, but I would like to get some materials first to support my statements. For the meantime, I say Until then. May my fellow Ibalois read and understand what I have quoted, and defend their claims in such manner that the people heckling them will understand. B.T. Pistola
