When we speak of the indigenous people, we are actually referring to the first settlers in our land. They are the group in actual possession of the land which they occupied even before the Torrens titling system came to be.
And it is for this reason that the lands they have occupied since time immemorial are at their disposal and use.
However, with the onset of the Torrens titling system, wealthy individuals saw the opportunity to grab from the indigenous people the land that has long been theirs long even before these greed-driven people were born.
Interestingly, in the case of the Dumagat indigenous group at the southernmost tip of the Sierra Madre Mountain Range in Rizal Province, they were shooed away by a wealthy family using a mere Memorandum of Agreement signed by the late former Environment Secretary Gina Lopez.
The family, masquerading as environmentalists behind a non-government foundation, is actually aiming to take full control over 2,700 hectares which is almost the size of Pasig City. They are currently operating a so-called eco-park which charges as much as P155,000 for a single event, and collecting P2,000 per head (for a minimum of five persons per group) as entrance to the facility.
It is for this reason that their ancestral domain was reduced to what seemed too negligible an area in the upland portion of Rizal.
For one, Dumagats are recognized as the first known settlers in Rizal.
The tribal community of no less than 27,000 families are now in a dilemma – they have nowhere to go in the midst of aggressive efforts to dislodge them from a place classified by existing laws and presidential proclamations as their ancestral domain.
The Dumagats in Rizal are basically farmers – cultivating the upland using improvised tools they made from what is available in the mountain. They plant crops and sell it along the Marilaque Highway just below the place they called their home or who knows how long.
These people have long been asking for genuine interventions, hoping to be heard and given an audience from the last seven Presidents. But no one listened to their grievances.
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