For consider the stark reality: there are 110 IPs/ICCs. Are their rights to ancestral lands and domains not equal in some fundamental sense of Justice as Fairness? If the govt gives in to the ransom demands of an armed group like the MILF, what is to stop one of the other 109 IPs/ICCs from organizing their own armed gang of thugs to enforce their rights under the IPRA Law?

How can the government claim to be undertaking a “Final” Peace Agreement with the MILF, and even have many in “Civil Society” support and demand it, when it is not actually settling the same claims and rights as the 109 other IPs not represented in the Mindanao Peace Talks at all?

Check out the State of the Indigenous Peoples Address

I think all these IPs/ICCs are much better off seeking a universal or omnibus solution under the democratic mechanisms available to all Filipinos, indigenous or not.

Finally, we cannot be so obtuse as to deny the existence of the elephant in the room: the very concept and proposition that Tagalogs, Pampangos, Ilocanos, Cebuanos, et al, are NOT indigenous peoples, is puissantly absurd, in the league of the-emperor-has-no-clothes absurd. But it is the logical conclusion to SCORP’s reasoning in Cruz vs IPs.

Puno divides the Filipino citizenry neatly into two distinct classes, with one rather privileged group of “indigenous peoples” being accorded one-third of the Philippine territory as their ancestral private property (according to Panganiban’s estimate.)

The basis of this rank ethno-religious discrimination is the alleged behavior of their ancestors, mainly that they refused to engage in a culture of incessant fighting off of invaders, but rather, they sought succor and protection from those very “invaders” who happened to have been also fighting off the same oddly familiar Moros even on the other side of the world.

Just imagine. Acts of religious conversion by our great grand ancestors are visited upon us today as inheritable sins, the punishment for which is “no ancestral lands and domains for you, Catholics!” Just as if there were no Bill of Rights!

There is no end to the reductio ad absurdum that can be applied to the whole IPs/ancestral domain ideology.

Correction, Angela: you must mean the ancestors of the Tagalogs, Pampangos, cebuanos, ilokanos, etc. The sins of the forefathers visited upon his progeny?

And how do we know what your ancestors did, or my ancestors did with respect to resisting the Spanish colonial aggressors? How do we know that your ancestors and mine did not engage in incessant fighting against the Spanish invaders. And surely, not ALL the Moros engaged in such continuous resistance to keep the Spanish imperialists out of Mindanao. As well, not all Christians “largely went along” with Christianization.

I would say the vast majority of the tagalogs, pampangos, cebuanos, et al were born into the world and they discovered they had long ago been baptized Catholics!