The Mindanao context

It is important to understand the unique context of the southern Philippines relative to the rest of the nation. As a pericolonial area of the colonial Philippines, Mindanao and Sulu's experiences were markedly different from that of the more politically incorporated areas of the archipelago, such as Manila, Cebu, and other population centres to the north. This began to change, slowly but significantly with the systematic arrival of settlers originating from the central and northern Philippines, especially during the American colonial period in the first half of the twentieth century, and increasing after the Second World War and Philippine independence. The mainstream Filipinos who now dominate the south demographically and politically are descended from settlers, but distinct Indigenous minority communities remain, scattered across the landscape and standing their ground whenever possible. Competition and conflict over land and resources has often erupted in violence over the past century, and these ethnic distinctions remain relevant to understanding what it means to be Indigenous in the Mindanao context.

The Indigenous population of the southern Philippines consists of two general ethnic categories: Moros and Lumads. The most recognisable are the various Moro peoples whose ancestors converted to Islam in the centuries before Spanish colonisation began in the late sixteenth century. The Lumads are those peoples whose ancestors remained animists and did not convert to Islam. Both of these categories are characterised by significant cultural and linguistic diversity, as well as multiple historical solidarities and rivalries, both internal and crossing Moro and Lumad lines. Neither ‘Moro’ nor ‘Lumad’ originated as Indigenous terms of self-reference. ‘Moro’ comes from the Spanish for ‘Moor’ or Muslim, while ‘Lumad’ is a Visayan word meaning ‘born from the earth’, adopted from settler languages by Indigenous rights activists in the late twentieth century to foster political solidarity between the different non-Muslim indigenous tribes.Footnote ⁶ Both terms have since been embraced by most Moro and Lumad peoples who continue to build alliances based on shared histories of legal and religious discrimination, state oppression, and social marginalisation in the modern Philippine state. Moro activists, for example, have selected the name Bangsamoro (Moro nation) for a proposed autonomous sub-state for all Moro peoples, which has been under serious negotiation with the national government for the past decade.Footnote ⁷

Settlers — and their descendants — on the other hand are more recent migrants from the Christianised majority ethnic groups in other parts of the Philippines. As such, they are often referred to today as ‘Christians’, even though they all belong to many different denominations and sects, including non-Christian or pseudo-Christian cults. Internal cultural and linguistic diversity also marks the so-called ‘Christians’ of Mindanao, although the archetypical ‘Christian’ settler is from the Visayas islands immediately to the north, and Roman Catholic. Settlers are ‘mainstream’ in that they were already considered Filipinos by the close of the nineteenth century, when minorities like the Moros and Lumads were not yet fully incorporated into the Spanish colonial entity known as Filipinas.Footnote ⁸ It was only under American colonisation (1898–1946) that the Moros and the upland minorities would be incorporated more fully into the Philippine state.Footnote ⁹

On the Southeast Asian upland–lowland axis, the ‘Christians’ correspond to the lowlanders who dominate society and whose interests are disproportionately represented by the state.Footnote ¹⁰ Although Lumads and Moros are now recognised as legal citizens of the Philippines, their cultural citizenship — their Filipino-ness — is routinely called into question in a way that mainstream ‘Christian’ Filipinos never experience.Footnote ¹¹ Because of their strong association with Islam, Moros continue to be viewed as culturally suspect by the majority of Filipinos, who are primarily Catholic. This is in large part due to three centuries of Moros being branded as anti-Christian antagonists by Spanish colonisers.Footnote ¹² The persistence of armed conflict between various Moro rebel groups and the Philippine military has also not helped, especially with the recent emergence of Islamic State-related terrorism from Moro areas. Until very recently, Filipinos were also taught in primary school that lowlanders were both racially distinct from and culturally superior in almost every way to Indigenous upland minorities like the Lumads.Footnote ¹³

A discussion of indigeneity in the southern Philippines thus references concurrently both the literal and political meanings of the word. The term ‘indigenous’ can be applied literally to both Moro and Lumad peoples in that all other inhabitants — those who are neither Moro nor Lumad — are descended from settlers who arrived over the past century, with a majority of them arriving even more recently in the 1960s and 1970s. In other words, the Indigenous Peoples of Mindanao do have clear and verifiable claims to precedence and autochthony — encompassing all of written and remembered history. Politically, given the present demographic, political, economic, and cultural dominance of mainstream Filipino settlers and their descendants, the Indigenous Peoples of Mindanao are also marginalised and minoritised by these relative newcomers, a plight they share with other Indigenous Peoples around the world.Footnote ¹⁴

Throughout the twentieth century, Mindanao was regarded as the last remaining frontier in an already overcrowded country, boasting seemingly empty land rich in natural resources just waiting to be extracted.Footnote ¹⁵ From the point of view of Lumads and Moros, the arrival of mainstream Filipino settlers was a crisis, especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when hordes of new settlers displaced Moros and Lumads even from what were formerly isolated interior areas of the island. This invasion was accompanied by largely unregulated private and corporate land grabbing for occupation and commercial exploitation, which in turn triggered conflicts between the settlers and Indigenous Peoples. While Lumads have attempted various armed uprisings, with men in my research area joining the communist New People's Army at one point, these were sporadic and difficult to sustain for long.Footnote ¹⁶ In contrast to sporadic and highly localised Lumad protests, the Moro rebellion is now halfway through its fifth decade, remains highly effective, and despite extensive overtures of peace, may resume if the latest Bangsamoro negotiations with the government fall apart once again.Footnote ¹⁷ Many armed state and non-state combatants are now endemic to this region, including the Philippine military, settler cults and militias, private armies linked to corporate interests and politicians, and the communist New People's Army. There are also the long-standing rebel armies of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front, whose various breakaway groups have gone on to commit terrorism in global alignment with the Islamic State. My discussion of Lumad indigeneity and ‘tradition’ takes place within this culturally entangled and politically volatile context.

The Higaunon Lumad as Indigenous Peoples

Among the eighteen or so different Lumad ethnic groups, the Higaunon are prominent and widespread, occupying the upland border areas of five provinces that span three regional units in northern Mindanao. The Higaunon Lumad have generally been treated by government officials and by most non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as one homogeneous ethnic group. In reality, however, Higaunons are quite diverse as a population, culturally, linguistically, and genealogically. Linguistically, the Higaunon languages are part of the greater Manobo family of languages, the largest linguistic group indigenous to Mindanao, to which most, though not all, of the other Lumad ethnic groups also belong. There are several distinct descent groups scattered across northern Mindanao, each with distinct dialects, separate genealogies, histories of migration over a shared landscape, and oral traditions that relate these movements and the unique experiences and traditions that evolved along the way, including contact with Spaniards and other outsiders. Each descent group and each community carries this knowledge in their panud or oral traditions, which contain information on everything from myths, appeasing the supernatural world, genealogies, histories of migration and warfare, ethics, land tenure and other laws, to various instructions on more mundane matters such as the proper division of labour between men and women, protocols for entertaining visitors, and the best way to farm.Footnote ¹⁸ Another commonality is the political influence of the currently dominant form of Higaunon customary law, referred to universally as the bungkatol ha bulawan.Footnote ¹⁹ The current traditions of Indigenous leadership are constructed around the bungkatol, which specifies the rituals, roles, and ethics to which indigenous leaders — including both men (datu) and women (bae) must adhere. The bungkatol, however, is subject to individual interpretation.

As a culture group, Higaunons are generally similar to all other Lumad peoples in that they consider a forest-based subsistence involving hunting and gathering, supplemented heavily by swidden farming of upland dry rice varieties, to be their most ‘traditional’ lifestyle. In previous centuries, they and other Lumad peoples engaged in the collection of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) such as rattan and tree resins for sale to outside buyers in the lowlands. More recently, many individuals have turned regularly to selling hardwood lumber to lowland markets, by engaging in what is called ‘carabao logging’, or the hauling of fallen trees with a rope, typically aided by a water buffalo.Footnote ²⁰ Beyond these forest-based activities, some Higaunon communities have been known to engage in other livelihood activities such as panning for gold (‘western’ Higaunons in the Iponan river area), or working with cattle and horses (‘southern’ Higaunons in Bukidnon province, a place known for ranching). Of course, Higaunons also seek out work opportunities in towns and cities amongst lowlanders, and it is also quite common for Higaunon men to join paramilitary groups as a prelude to direct military service. Though education remains a challenge, there are now increased opportunities for Higaunons to pursue education beyond secondary school, and an ever-growing cadre of educated and culturally adept Higaunons have branched further out, joining the civil service, or pursuing a vocation in teaching, for example. Quite a few Higaunons are also evangelical Christians who actively engage in preaching and missionary work, and even pursuing religious training in local bible colleges. There are in fact several highly active Higaunon-dominated Christian churches, including one entirely Indigenous Christian church, operating in and around Higaunon ancestral domains.Footnote ²¹ In sum, today there is no longer a single economic activity or vocation or religious practice that defines Higaunons.

As to material culture, there are plenty of colourful clothes, accessories, and weaponry to distinguish the Higaunon from mainstream Filipino society. With a preference for bright red, supplemented by black, white, and yellow, Higaunon clothing and other material culture is marked easily, visually, as Indigenous, and have been highlighted in previous scholarly work, beginning with American ethnologist Fay-Cooper Cole's classic monograph, The Bukidnon of Mindanao, which focuses on western and southern Higaunons in Bukidnon province.Footnote ²² Today, however, traditional clothing or sinabaang is rare, and Higaunons tend to save them for very special occasions. Even datu and bae leaders do not always don their sinabaang for official functions, unless important state officials will be in attendance. The younger generations — especially those below the age of fifty — are able to blend successfully within mainstream Filipino society, and even Indigenous leaders are generally not identifiable in public without their traditional accoutrements. The datus, however, typically travel with a badi or machete, housed in a wooden sheath decorated in tin or silver, and slung across the body with red cloth or string. The badi here serves both as a sidearm and to signal to strangers that the man in question is travelling in his official capacity as a representative of the bungkatol ha bulawan. The tangkulu, a beaded headdress made of cloth, is also commonly worn by men when acting in their capacity as datu.

This brings us to the matter of how Higaunons represent and are represented in the public sphere, as well as in contact with the state and the local government system. Within the politically saturated context of Lumad affairs in Mindanao, and in this case the micro-politics of northern Mindanao, not to mention the serious imbalances of upland–lowland relations in general, the question of who speaks for the Indigenous Peoples is a conundrum of epic proportions, one that has even resulted a few times in open violence.Footnote ²³ In the past decade or so, around a dozen Higaunon datus have been killed for, in some cases, violating customary laws for personal profit, and in other cases, attempting to prevent other datus from violating these laws.

Elsewhere I have described in greater detail the evolution of an alternate path of indigenous leadership among the Higaunon Lumad, one that most Higaunons agree deviates substantially from established ancestral traditions regarding what is considered legitimate political authority, as well as the training of datu and bae leaders and how they are expected to behave.Footnote ²⁴ Basically, Indigenous leaders who are seen as hewing most closely to ancestral traditions, and garner respect for their extensive knowledge of oral traditions and customary law, or the bungkatol, are identified internally among Higaunons as datu ha kultura or ‘cultural datus’. This is to distinguish them from Indigenous leaders who rise to official leadership positions due mainly to government schooling, familiarity with lowland culture, and the ability to speak outsider languages (i.e., English, Filipino, and the lowland lingua franca Cebuano). Such datus are referred to, often disparagingly, as datu ha gubilnu or ‘government datus’, because their political advantages come at the cost of acquiring the traditional cultural knowledge and experience with rituals normally required of a datu. Their mastery of their ancestral language also suffers in that public speaking in Higaunon is either awkward or accented, or else devolves almost entirely into Cebuano except for memorised and ceremonial phrases.

These differences are more than a matter of style or ceremony because they also represent very different approaches towards identity and governance. Regardless of their age or cultural attitudes, Higaunons see cultural and government datus as symbolising, respectively, tradition and orthodoxy versus assimilation and culture loss. Yet government datus are widely acknowledged, even by cultural datus, as much more effective political actors when it comes to dealing with non-traditional concerns, like securing their constituents’ access to health care, educational scholarships, jobs, and other government benefits, and dealing with outsiders in general. There is therefore a perpetual tension between not only the datus themselves, but also within Higaunon society, about the long-term relevance and sustainability of their cultural traditions in the face of modern demands. While the bungkatol certainly colours the Higaunon experience, participating in modern ‘democracy’ itself is changing fundamentally how Higaunons view political authority and legitimacy, as well as the practice of datuship itself.

These tensions over datuship resonate profoundly amongst Higaunons, given the widely divergent conceptualisations of Higaunon identity within the society itself. Cultural datus embody ancestral traditions and are the sacred bearers of the panud, yet the path they must follow as part of this tradition renders them woefully ineffective in dealing with the urgent material needs of their communities, which almost always requires successfully negotiating with lowland politicians and manoeuvring government bureaucracies, which even mainstream Filipinos consider opaque, difficult, and corrupt. Even the wisest and most able cultural datu cannot be effective if he is unable to speak fluently and persuasively in the lowland languages, or better yet, in English, to government officials and other outsiders.

Meanwhile, government datus may be far more effective bureaucrats, but they have little or no cultural legitimacy, and are often accused of acting like lowlanders, and selling out their culture and/or their land for self-enrichment or to achieve more ambitious political goals. This accusation has been a common refrain in my interviews with datus and baes, as well as with ordinary Higaunons, when people speak critically of other Indigenous leaders. A few datus have in fact attempted to amass enough power and wealth to act unilaterally, in the manner of mainstream Filipino politicians in the lowlands. Even if a cultural datu were able to overcome the traditional aversion to self-promotion and showmanship in the manner of lowland politicians, most cultural datus are unwilling to bypass the strict ethical demands of the bungkatol, whereas government datus are seen by most Higaunons as having no such terminal distaste for political bargaining and bribery.

I note that these simple models do not necessarily reflect reality; there are individual datus in the modern mould who are regarded as thoroughly ethical, as well as datus in the traditional mould who are seen as so thoroughly corrupt that they are ignored even by their own relatives. But the way in which datuship is now dichotomised reflects fundamental concerns about ‘tradition’ and ‘Higaunon-ness’, and echo competing narratives about the meaning and performance of ‘indigeneity’ itself: how to become and remain an ‘authentic’ Higaunon today, within the context of modern Philippine society; how to somehow preserve ancestral traditions in a way that ensures they will still be relevant as the younger generations make strides in conforming to lowland standards for ‘success’; which aspects of tradition and identity to eliminate or preserve?

Indigenous authenticity and representation

One area in which government datus excel is in the packaging of Higaunon-ness to be legible to lowland officials and mainstream Filipino society as a whole. This has had a powerful impact on who is recognised by government bodies as legitimate representatives of the different Higaunon communities. Because of their greater exposure to lowland society, government datus understand more precisely how mainstream Filipinos see Indigenous Peoples and what cultural elements appeal to them. These are the same elements that appeal to Indigenous Peoples who have been raised at a remove from their own ancestral cultures, or perhaps are the products of mixed marriages, and therefore have limited or no comprehension of the Indigenous language, much less the culture, but nonetheless seek a meaningful connection to that part of their identity. I refer to largely ephemeral elements that can be slotted most easily without disrupting their modern lifestyles or requiring them to return to tending swiddens in the uplands, such as folk dances and songs, folk stories, repurposed material culture like fabrics, jewellery, and traditional clothing, the fetishistic use of the indigenous language or indigenous cultural concepts, thus symbolising a vague allegiance to their ancestral culture, sometimes with little comprehension of any deeper significance.

This has become evident in the now widespread use of the uniporme or ‘uniform’ that, in lowlander's eyes, identifies the rightful datu and bae leaders of the Higaunon. A type of sinabaang or traditional clothing, the uniporme is a relatively recent innovation from the late twentieth century, consisting of a tailored outfit consisting of a collared and buttoned men's shirt (either short- or long-sleeved) and matching slacks (and for women, a calf-length A-line skirt) decorated with patches of geometric shapes and colours that recall popular Higaunon designs, but without the meaning or symbolism once attached to leaders’ sinabaang. The men's uniporme is further accessorised by the tangkulo headdress. While some tangkulu are quite elaborate and made from native cloth and antique glass beads, it is more common to see them made from commercially printed bandanas or polyester cloth, and accessorised with cheap plastic beads. A more recent variation is a billed cap accessorised with beads or special patches, coordinated with the colour and design of the uniporme.

These days, it is a struggle to be taken seriously by lowlanders as an Indigenous leader without this uniporme, despite the fact that it is not actually ‘traditional’ gear in the sense of originating from ancestral culture as preserved in the panud. Yet all datus and baes now feel they must wear it in order to be legible, not only to outsiders, but also to the growing number of urbanised Higaunons whose exposure to the culture has come largely from commodified representations during festivals and such. One big issue for Indigenous leaders, however, is that it costs a lot of money to make such outfits, and most Higaunons, especially the cultural datus, tend to be rather cash poor. The fabric alone is unaffordable for most. Thus once a datu or bae manages to acquire one complete outfit, it is never worn except for special occasions, because they are unable to afford a replacement if it becomes damaged. It is also common to see older datus at gatherings wearing uniporme that are already faded or otherwise the worse for wear.

In contrast, those with greater access to outside money, including government datus, do not have this problem. In public gatherings, and often on a daily basis, such persons are easily identifiable for having nicely starched uniporme with the crispest colours and newest fabrics, their tangkulu headdresses with beading far more elaborate than the rest. Thus they attract far more attention from mainstream Filipinos, including government officials, than the dusty old cultural datus whose uniporme may be drab or incomplete or who may not even have a uniporme to begin with. They also attract more attention from Higaunons who are urbanised, or otherwise less familiar with traditional culture. While this may seem grossly superficial, my own observations in the field have confirmed that emphasising the obvious aspects of ethnicity does provide definite political advantages in terms of public recognition and the appearance of authoritativeness.

An even more serious problem is when lowlanders present themselves as Indigenous Peoples, whether for self-aggrandisement, to take advantage of limited scholarships, steal land, or for whatever reason. This is surprisingly a common phenomenon in northern Mindanao, and I personally know of four separate cases of such impostors from Misamis Oriental province alone who have had some success in presenting themselves to the public as a ‘Higaunon datu’. According to Higaunons I have interviewed, such impostors have the most elaborate uniporme of all, and often support an entourage of similarly elaborately clothed supporters, so as to appear the most visually exotic and authentic to those who are not knowledgeable about Higaunons. In contrast, anyone visiting a typical Higaunon village in the uplands will normally not encounter anyone in such costume unless it is a special occasion, and even on special occasions often it is only a handful who have any special ‘traditional’ clothing. However, most ordinary Filipinos — including government officials and foreign visitors — are inevitably impressed by the more colourful impostors, because they conform to stereotypes about how tribal people look.

One major reason why such impostors are able to get away with such cultural appropriation and fraud is that ‘indigeneity’ remains an extremely vague concept, even within the provisions of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act. As mentioned previously, practically all Filipinos are, technically speaking, indigenous to the Philippines. Moreover, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), as a bureaucracy, relies heavily on self-identification. There is no formal system of registration or paper trail similar to, for example, Indian census rolls in the United States. In fact, ethnicity has never been recorded by the Philippine national census and we do not have any official or verifiable population count of the Higaunons, or other Lumads, or other Indigenous Peoples for that matter. Therefore, the politics of representation is a much larger issue than any single community or ethnic group's feelings about how to preserve their cultural traditions.

The other major reason why such impostors succeed is through the collusion, often unwitting, of Higaunon datus. As mentioned earlier, there is already an overreliance on third parties to facilitate many of the bureaucratic processes that Lumads must contend with on a regular basis. One of the ways in which Higaunons and other Lumads formalise such working relationships between their communities and such third-party facilitators is through granting them ceremonial or honorary ‘membership’ in the community. Given the leadership roles that such outsiders are already taking or expected to take, it should not be much of a surprise that they are often given honorary leadership titles in recognition of this fact. Thus we have the phenomenon of outsiders carrying the honorary titles of datu or bae because they have been thus ‘baptised’ by the community anticipating their assistance and intervention, or perhaps financial support. The logic behind this is not simply to show gratitude by bestowing an honorific, but also to incorporate these actors within the jurisdiction of customary law, in the hope that these relationships will operate on the same ethical principles that Higaunons hold sacred.

Though honorary Higaunon datu or bae status conveys intentions regarding a positive future relationship, in which the honoree will stand as a patron to Higaunons, protect them, and help them pursue their goals, there is never any intention to bestow the status of actual indigeneity to the outsider. The tie is merely ceremonial, a recognition of a relationship, and not intended to transfer any legal rights or entitlements whatsoever. However, when such an individual then turns around and declares himself or herself to be self-identified as a Higaunon, there is not much that the government can do. Even when they file a complaint that someone is an impostor, the Higaunons themselves are unable to deny that the impostor is recognised within customary law as a datu or bae, regardless of the intent behind the ceremony that was conducted. In this manner several lowland Filipinos have been able to present themselves to the public as Higaunon datus or baes without any legal consequences. While this is a recurring problem that has only worsened over time, it is only very recently that some Higaunon datus have begun to take a principled stand on granting honorary titles to non-Higaunons. However, the seemingly endemic poverty of Higaunons, as well as the greed of certain datus, continues to keep them vulnerable to the lure of outside intervention.

There have been two particularly egregious cases of Higaunon impostors, both involving lowland men who, while initially ingratiating themselves to datus with promises to help Higaunons in one way or another, ultimately took advantage of vulnerable populations to acquire land, money, and status. Both men had been given honorary status as datus but were not Higaunons themselves. However, in both cases, they married Higaunon women and began to fashion narratives of themselves as authentic Higaunons, and ultimately using the datu title for their own benefit rather than the Higaunons’, as explained below.

The first impostor, ‘Datu Baguiz’, a former Philippine National Police officer who was made an honorary datu in gratitude for taking care of a popular datu’s major medical expenses some decades earlier, had ultimately succeeded in taking over one Higaunon ancestral domain, shouldering out dissenting community members through social and physical intimidation, and by bringing in lowland settlers to displace them. He later attempted to secure the office of the Indigenous Peoples’ Mandatory Representative (a position within the local government system mandated by national law), for a major city in northern Mindanao. The position would have granted him complete authority over a percentage of local government funds allotted specifically for the benefit of Indigenous communities. He would have also been able to influence legal decisions regarding zoning, utilities, project approvals, business licences, and scholarships at the local level. He was widely suspected of ordering the 2015 assassination of Marc Anthony Bagaipo, a local politician supportive of Indigenous rights, and was eventually assassinated himself the following year. Although the rebel New Peoples’ Army has claimed responsibility for Baguiz's death,Footnote ²⁵ his murderers are rumoured in the uplands to have been a mob of some of the Higaunons whom he had wronged.Footnote ²⁶

The second impostor, calling himself ‘Datu Mandipensa’, had offered his help to the datus of several Higaunon communities to generate much-needed income through a variety of fundraising schemes in the 1990s. With the permission of the Higaunon datus, he travelled far and wide, as far as the United States and Australia, to attract the attention of charitable foundations with a grand plan for reforestation, environmental protection, and sustainable livelihoods in the Higaunon homeland. The datus had in fact commissioned him to do this, and had raised cash amongst themselves to help pay for this man's travels. With calls to foundations in the different areas where he travelled, I was able to document that he had raised at least US$50,000 through these efforts on behalf of the Higaunon people. However, he kept all the donated money for himself, and committed many other offences against the datus in the course of this farce, which lasted several years until he was finally outed in 2005. These offences include lying outright to the datus and to other Higaunons, intentionally defrauding them of considerable sums of money they had given him to help pay his alleged travel expenses, passing himself off as Indigenous, marrying an elder datu’s niece and then abandoning her and their children to ‘marry’ other women, bringing one such (foreign) woman to Mindanao and proclaiming her a ‘bae’, claiming the development projects of other NGOs as his own, and once, bringing several elderly datus and baes to Metro Manila to perform for a fundraising event (for cash the datus never saw) and then abandoning them without any means to return home.

The same datus learned only after the fact that Mandipensa had been presenting himself overseas not as a fundraiser for the Higaunon datus, but as the last remaining ‘prince’ of the Higaunons who needed desperately to save ‘his’ people. In talks he gave at universities in the United States and Australia, and at organisations such as Cultural Survival, he spun tales, fabricated out of whole cloth, about his ‘royal’ lineage, about sacred monkeys and other animals that were like siblings to ‘his’ people, who could speak to trees. He even chanted for Western audiences in ‘Higaunon’, all while dressed in his ‘ancestral’ uniporme. He was in the process of applying for a multimillion-euro development grant from the European Union at the time he was outed as a complete fraud to both the Higaunon datus and to the NGOs that had supported him.Footnote ²⁷ He has since absconded to Australia with one of his female admirers and maintains his fabricated ‘Indigenous’ persona as a musical performer, apparently using Datu as his legal first name.

Unfortunately, it is not only lowlanders who engage in fraud. Higaunons themselves, especially certain well-established government datus, seem to be notorious for enriching themselves at the expense of their own communities. In such cases, there is no question regarding their status as a genuine Indigenous person, yet even ‘authentic’ indigeneity itself cannot protect Indigenous Peoples from corruption and exploitation. One example is that of a local businessman in northern Mindanao who, through most of his life, had never shown any interest in Higaunon culture, much less in becoming a datu. By his own admission in my interviews with him, he was far more interested in assimilating into mainstream Filipino culture and regarded the Higaunon culture of his impoverished grandparents to be backward and of little value in the modern world. Rather than marry within his culture, he dated and married a succession of lowland women, and raised his children within lowland culture. However, as he began experiencing some personal success, he faced increasingly racist treatment from the mainstream Filipinos with whom he competed. With the passage of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act, he decided to take advantage of its provisions for Indigenous Peoples by laying claim to his ancestral legacy, fashioning himself into a datu, goading and bribing cultural datus into ‘baptising’ him hurriedly as a datu, which was his birthright by genealogy.

Today, he is extremely active in local politics and regards himself as the moral representative of Higaunons in northern Mindanao, despite his massive unpopularity amongst Higaunons. Having already learned to assimilate into mainstream Filipino society, this particular government datu has had no problem taking advantage of the system to ingratiate himself to local politicians. Lowlanders turn to him regularly on Indigenous issues, and in this manner he has gained access to government funds and local government support, and has risen in status correspondingly, much to the consternation of other Higaunons, especially the cultural datus. He has also used his access to provide college scholarships selectively to the children of key cultural datus who, given their poverty, are subsequently held hostage to serve his political ambitions in order to afford their children the dream of a college education. His power over other Higaunons — including his power to speak for Higaunons — has thus become grossly disproportionate to any datu’s authority within Higaunon customary law. One of his long-term objectives is to gain legal control over the ancestral domains of various Higaunon communities because, by his reckoning, his fellow Higaunons are failing to maximise their potential. He advocates for selling rights to mining, logging, and other extractive industries in order to profit from the natural resources from the otherwise ‘unprofitable’ ancestral domains. Naturally, he would receive a cut of such profits as a finder's fee, for facilitating the process. While he has not yet succeeded outright, he has managed over the years to scuttle alternative livelihood projects in these communities and has blocked the delivery of government services in some areas in an effort to squeeze indigenous leaders into supporting him. This micro-political battle continues to be fought and its outcome remains uncertain. Meanwhile, the relevant local government officials are aware of the situation, but are loathe to intervene because of the government datu’s close ties to influential politicians, and they have taken to treating the situation as an internal squabble among Higaunons.

Regimes of legal indigeneity

With very few exceptions, all Filipino citizens today are native to the archipelago. That is to say, while there has been considerable population mobility within the archipelago itself, immigration to the Philippines from the outside has always been negligible, and practically all Filipinos are indigenous to the Philippine archipelago. While there has been immigration from China, Spain and elsewhere over the centuries, the Philippines is not a nation of immigrants, nor one with a significant percentage of the population descended from immigrants. As a political concept, therefore, indigeneity within the Philippines cannot be primarily about universally recognised notions of territorial precedence and racial subjugation. Instead, it speaks to highly localised politics and demographics, and when examined more closely, is clearly employed within the context of economic inequalities and micro-level disputes over specific stretches of land. Despite the heavy cultural baggage and boundary maintenance that accompany the term Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines, as well as the problems with determining appropriate representation, the label is less about marking culture and identity and more about addressing stark economic inequalities and land disputes that have developed over time.

The Philippine government's definition of indigeneity, as written into the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997, legalises a fundamental characteristic of the cultures of Indigenous Peoples as unchanging since ‘time immemorial’. There is also, notably, an explicit acknowledgement of the specific political contexts in which Indigenous Peoples have become differentiated and marginalised.

This definition clearly indicates a particular understanding of Indigenous Peoples as those who have, in essence, resisted all change and innovation in order to hold on to their precolonial cultural traditions. Despite the final sentence referring to displacement and resettlement, it also presumes that most Indigenous Peoples today are to be found where they were prior to the colonial period. Not surprisingly, given the notion that Indigenous Peoples have somehow successfully resisted all cultural change ‘since time immemorial’, Indigenous Peoples are understood implicitly to be living exemplars of what Filipinos were like before they became Filipinos. This is problematic for a host of reasons I have already explored elsewhere,Footnote ²⁹ particularly the romanticised ‘noble savage’ ideal that dominates lowland notions and stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples. This definition and understanding of Indigenous Peoples is additionally problematic because, essentially, it has made a legal requirement of what lowlanders’ might imagine or expect ‘Indigenous’ cultures and traditions to look like.

The Moros, for one, recognise the pitfalls of embracing the term. Though they freely assert their indigeneity, they have routinely refused to be categorised under the term ‘Indigenous Peoples’, preferring to employ the word in other ways in their political narratives. This is due in part to the association of the term Indigenous Peoples with a level of primitivity and lack of cultural development that mainstream Filipinos attribute to the types of culture groups classified typically as such. The Moros’ close association with the ‘great tradition’ of Islam, recognised widely as a major world religion, perhaps also adds to a sense of distinctiveness from the Lumad ethnic groups who, by and large, are not historically associated with any major religious tradition, although most Lumads today are Christians of one denomination or another. Though Moros in the present day appeal to the Lumads as their ‘younger brothers’ to increase political solidarity, in precolonial times the Lumads were the people they raided for slaves,Footnote ³⁰ and the memory of this association remains a barrier to uniting Moros and Lumads politically.

Partly in response to this, Lumad activists have consistently pushed back against their conflation with Moros under the umbrella identity of Bangsamoro, which purports to cover all those whose ancestors were already in Mindanao and Sulu prior to Spanish colonisation — including Lumads. In other words, ‘Bangsamoro’ references not only Moros but all the peoples indigenous to the southern Philippines, even if they might not be classified as Indigenous Peoples in today's Philippines.Footnote ³¹ As Indigenous rights activist and Teduray Lumad timuay (leader) Santos Magay Unsad stated in 2015: ‘We want to be clearly identified as distinct, with our rights recognised within the new political entity. We don't want to be assimilated further as the national government did to all the indigenous inhabitants in the Philippines.’Footnote ³² With the added struggle over land — that is, broad territorial autonomy in the form of a sub-state for the Moros, and localised autonomous ancestral domains for the Lumads, in some cases located within the proposed autonomous territory — the fault lines between Mindanao's Indigenous Peoples have become quite pronounced politically.Footnote ³³

While there are cultural, genealogical, and technological distinctions to be made between Indigenous Peoples and settlers in Mindanao, the complexity of contact and frontier life means that these distinctions are as much about the wider imbalance of power as they are about the exclusion of specific territories claimed by Indigenous communities as ancestral domains. Even in clear cases of settler incursion, defining and identifying who counts as Indigenous is ostensibly a political act, one that is often loaded with aspirational subtexts pertaining to nationalism, race, and economic progress. As I have argued elsewhere, Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines are seen as a hurdle to national development, in that ‘their cultural distinctiveness is explained in nationalist discourse as primitivity or backwardness’.Footnote ³⁴ Within the broader national context, Indigeneity itself is seen as a hurdle to social and economic progress, and the preservation of corresponding cultural traditions, though perhaps appealing aesthetically to elites and academics, comes at a real cost to the necessary progress of those who need it most. To the extent that Indigenous cultures are conceptualised as the result of resistance to change and outside influence, it functions as a wall separating Lumads and other Indigenous Peoples from mainstream Filipino national identity that was born out of the colonial experience and characterised by traditions that are highly Christianised and Hispanicised. This means that when Higaunons or other Indigenous Peoples attempt to assert their citizenship as Filipinos, they face considerable pressure to conform to the aspirations and cultural standards of mainstream Filipino society, yet are also expected in many contexts to conform to that society's notions of what constitutes ‘Indigenous’ Peoples, cultures, and traditions.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the populations we refer to as Indigenous Peoples today have been administered separately from the mainstream population of the Philippines. The American colonial officials who then governed the Philippines felt that both the Moros and the peoples they referred to as the ‘non-Christian tribes’ ought to be administered separately because they were at different stages of cultural development than mainstream Christianised Filipinos. As subsequent administrations revamped their programmes, the same peoples were labelled ‘National Minorities’ and ‘Cultural Communities’ until the term Indigenous Peoples came into vogue globally. A critical look at the work of later post-independence government agencies created to administer Indigenous Peoples — the Presidential Assistant on National Minorities and the Office of Southern Cultural Communities — reveals that, in practice, only those Indigenous Peoples who performed and conformed to stereotype were able to benefit in any way from government attention. The current administrative regime of the NCIP is comparatively more sophisticated and pragmatic, thanks to both Indigenous activism and the large number of Indigenous Peoples from all over the Philippines who have entered the civil service. A persistent problem, however, is the fact that, though the NCIP professes to protect and take care of the needs of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines, it has very limited jurisdiction, specifically, the administration of ancestral domains, and the disbursement of minor financial aid, provided mainly as an act of charity, for urgent needs like education and medical care. This tends to constrain rather than liberate Indigenous Peoples because the corresponding bureaucratic apparatus leaves out other significant needs, like education, health care, voting, vital records, and other social services. For such matters, Indigenous Peoples still must fend for themselves, and unfortunately, endemic poverty, compounded by prejudice and discrimination against Indigenous Peoples, remain major hurdles in the full exercise of their citizenship. The commission, meanwhile, focuses almost exclusively on cultural concerns.

For processing ancestral domain claims, the NCIP itself must contend with the national bureaucracies concerned with land titles and environmental protection, as well as national, regional, provincial, city, and sub-city government units under the country's decentralised local government system. Decentralisation has had mixed results in that the quality of governance now depends largely on the qualities of the local participants involved and, in effect, has intensified local politics. The problems Indigenous Peoples encounter on a daily basis are overwhelmingly localised in nature, whereas the local elites that dominate the economy, for example, also dominate local politics and control much of the land in and around their jurisdiction. Even the administration of Indigenous affairs can be hobbled or facilitated by local politicians — whether they be lowlanders or government datus. At the national level, however, Indigenous concerns are subject both to policy abstractions and mainstream Filipino stereotypes about tribal people disarticulated from actual Indigenous realities.Footnote ³⁵ Both local and national fronts therefore structure and constrain the forms that indigeneity may take.

A case in point is an ancestral domain claim I have followed since 1995, when I assisted one Higaunon community in the submission of one of the earliest ancestral domain claims in the country to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in the national capital, Metro Manila.Footnote ³⁶ The department officials showed me the land claim documents prior to final certification, the first step in a long process to obtaining legal title to the land. In reviewing the thick file, I noted a parallel second claim for the same ancestral domain, submitted by another party.Footnote ³⁷ That second claim had been rejected out of hand by the DENR, and I inquired about how they had determined (correctly) that it was illegitimate. They referred to the second claim's rather thin documentation of cultural traditions, in contrast to the wealth of cultural materials that were submitted as ‘evidences’ with the approved first claim. This cultural material includes detailed information about marriage practices, traditional dress, burial customs, ancestral religion, and other ethnological minutiae, that the Higaunons were required to provide as part of the ancestral domain claim process, regardless of actual relevance to land ownership. In other words, the national officials made their determination with no actual understanding of the community's settlement history, land tenure system, or internal partisan politics related directly to the claim. Instead, rather than consult cultural experts, or talk to the various parties themselves, they relied exclusively on the superficial and obvious aspects of culture to gauge indigeneity, political legitimacy, and cultural authenticity — the more exotic the better. The working philosophy of NPIC is similarly problematic. Indigenous culture is immutable, or at least ought to be, which means that change constitutes culture loss, any deviation from tradition a loss of authenticity, and ultimately, the corruption of indigeneity.

That said, Lumads do talk about their own cultural traditions as largely immutable, despite ethnographic evidence of dynamic and culture-changing interaction with outsiders since the beginning of the Spanish colonial period, and likely before that as well. In fact, among the Higaunon Lumad, their panud or oral traditions revolve around the changes and innovations introduced by key ancestors across the centuries — including radical religious changes, migrations, and intermarriages with outsiders — that constitute the core of Higaunon cultural ‘tradition’. Despite talk of immutability, they do recognise the mutability of their own traditions over time, and do not consider this to be relevant to determining indigeneity. In fact, Higaunons have their own concept of indigeneity, which links specific territories to specific genealogical lines, with use rights determined by descent from or by marriage into these lines. This concept of indigeneity is notably delinked from issues of Higaunon-ness, as simply being Higaunon does not, in itself, grant territorial rights.

With the English term Indigenous Peoples coming into mainstream use, first among NGOs and later by the national government, Lumads have embraced it freely, and Higaunons in particular have done so without substantial critique, either publicly or privately, even though it conflicts somewhat with their own cultural notions of indigeneity. This is because they see indigeneity as largely a means to an end, as a way of achieving highly localised goals revolving around the retention of ancestral territory and control over its natural resources. All other cultural concerns, while undoubtedly significant, are secondary to their territorial concerns. For example, while they continue to frame their economic and political concerns as Indigenous concerns, endemic poverty and marginalisation are widespread problems throughout the Philippines, and not linked exclusively to being Higaunon or Lumad, or to Indigenous status in general.Footnote ³⁸

These examples from the Higaunon Lumad reveal some of the problematic consequences of how indigeneity is operationalised in the Philippines at present. As exemplified by the other articles in this volume, indigeneity means different things to different people and in different contexts. To Indigenous Peoples themselves — such as the Higaunon and other Lumads — indigeneity and ethnic identity may be conflated or divergent, depending upon the circumstances. For Higaunons, for example, ideas about ‘Higaunon-ness’ are, at times, at serious odds with how Indigenous Peoples are expected to present themselves to the world as ‘Indigenous Peoples’. To government agencies, indigeneity is quantified through the documentation of cultural ephemera. To mainstream Filipinos, indigeneity is legible only through the public display of material culture whose authenticity is then gauged according to how exotic or obviously different it is from their own. As indigeneity becomes increasingly commodified and monetised by unscrupulous individuals, such conflicts will continue to structure the lives of Higaunons, Lumads, and other Indigenous Peoples, as they navigate the business of being Indigenous.