WHAT does it mean to be a Filipino in this day and age? I do not mean the likes of us who have sold out this country to the first blue-eyed fair-skinned stranger who came to our shores bearing new mythologies hidden beneath were swords.
I do not mean our kind who once had a proud independent blood flowing through our veins but have since exchanged this for the masochist pleasure of being ruled by kings in foreign shores and their anointed mestizos who do their bidding here.
I am referring to the first inhabitants of this island who opted to maintain their autonomy and preserve their beliefs and way of life by going far into the highlands. The lumads are the true Filipinos, as original as you can get. Like their Moro brothers and sisters, they are the Filipinos who can claim that they have never bowed down to a foreign and local power. They are the best representations of our pride as a people.
And yet a century and more after independence, we have yet come to terms to their importance to the national narrative. Instead, the Sate has officially waged a war of extinction toward their kind. What do you call the systemic state-backed efforts to drive them away from their ancestral lands in the name of foreign-backed mining and agricultural expansion in the guise of counterinsurgency?
We recall the Banwaon bakwit of Balit, San Luis, Agusan del Sur last December 2014 who suffered under difficult conditions in the evacuation center resulting to several deaths of the young and the old. They left their homes because of the intensifying militarization of their communities that led to serious human rights violations which culminated in the assassination of their village leader. They only managed to return to their communities just last March 2015 after the successful campaign of the community and support groups. There is strong evidence which point to the entry of three mining companies in the area which precipitated the supposed clearing operations of the military in the area.
And then we hear about the massacre of a lumad leader and two other companions and the disappearance of a woman peasant leader and her husband in Paquibato District, Davao last June 14, 2015. Military personnel reportedly strafed the home of Aida Seisa, secretary-general of the local peasant association killing Ruben Enlog, the leader of Nagkahiusang Lumad Mag-uuma sa Paquibato (or Nagkalupa)- a local peasant group, Randy Carnasa and Gary Quimbo, local church leaders, instantaneously.
Closer to home is the evacuation of 52 families from two barangays of Lagonglong, Misamis Oriental after the military also encamped inside civilian homes. They established an evacuation camp at the provincial grounds in Cagayan de Oro City last June 4, 2015 to dramatize their plight and have managed to return home just this week after the military finally vacated their communities.
A similar situation is currently taking place at the provincial capitol grounds of Bukidnon in Malaybalay City. Last June 11, 2015 the whole Higaonon community of Dalacutan, Cabanglasan left their homes to encamp at the capitol grounds to decry the killing of their tribal chieftain Frenie Landasan and the harassment they have been experiencing from the Dela Mance paramilitary group. As of this writing, they are being forcibly turned away by provincial security officials.
Then there is the news of lumad schools being closed by no less than the Department of Education upon the prodding of the military. They intend to replace these schools with institutions that are run by soldiers acting as para-teachers which prompted no less than Senator Miriam Santiago to point out the patent violation of the Constitution of such a plan. Schools are zones of peace which disallows armed groups most especially State forces to enter and meddle into their affairs.
The 146 lumad schools all over Mindanao have been the rallying point and source of unity of many indigenous communities against different forms of development aggression threatening their way of life. The attack on the schools and the lumad communities can only be interpreted as a systematic scheme to drive out the original Filipinos from their ancestral land so that a few companies with their politician benefactors can profit from the land and minerals therein.
What does it mean to be a lumad, or a native, of this land in this day and age?
Apart from the structural discrimination that they face in the contemporary social, economic, and political spheres, it seems that to be a true Filipino in this day and age also requires them to confront the war of extinction being waged by the State through the just and historic resistance they have been carrying on for centuries.