THE LUMADS

Once a thriving people in Mindanao, Their Culture and their numbers are now diminishing. The Original stewards of the lowlands, they have been historically, systematically, forcibly pushed to the hinterlands.

Composed of eighteen ethnological groups, Lumads span the entire island of Mindanao. Most of them live on subsistence agriculture. Many of them illiterate with barely little help accorded to them by government. The Lumads are perhaps the most marginalized, the most exploited and yes, the most abased sector in the Philippine Society.

Yet Lumads are determined to hold their heads high and prove that they are a dignified and proud race. After all, weren’t it them who never yielded to Mindanao’s colonization and conquest?

But today, Lumads are facing perhaps the gravest and decisive threat to their posterity as peoples. Vast tracks of their ancestral lands are gradually being eaten away in the name of Ethnocidal Aggression. When corporate greed for profit combines with State-prescribe”development”, the horrifying effect is ethnic annihilation or ethnocide. No, ethnocide may not take the form of a bloody massacre. But as an ancestral domain is integral to Lumad culture and, with it, the loss of a deeply-rooted race.

In Southern Mindanao, seven major indigenous groups are engage in a struggle against Ethnocidal aggression.

They are the B’laans of Davao del Sur(population: 256,106), The Mansaka of Davao del Norte(115,248), the Mandaya of Davao Oriental(268,913), the Bagobo of Davao del Sur and Davao City(102,444+), the Ubo of Dvao del Sur and North Cotobato(6,403), and the Manobo of North Cotobato, Davao City and Davao del Norte(103,723+).

They are Mounting a battle against 4 major “reforestation ” projects manage by private logging concessionaries, 1 geothermal plant expansion, 2 “biodiversity conservation” project, 1 dam construction project, 3 major tourism sites, 1 brewery project, 4 major mining operations, at least 3 major logging operation and 2 hydro-eletric power plant.

For non-Lumads, the reality of ethnocide is enough motivating factor to rally behind the struggles of indigenous peoples. Being the last bastion of ecological preservation, and being the living legacy of our history as a nation, indigenous peoples posses in their hands the survival and identity of non-indigenous peoples.

Indeed, ethnocide is an elegy to our own dying.