Under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s proposed charter change, corporate seizure and exploitation of indigenous peoples’ (IPs) land and resources at the expense of their rights and environment will only accelerate.

With an estimated 60 percent of Philippine mineral deposits found in ancestral domains, incentives abound for corporate plunder of IPs’ resources. Stark proof comes in an additional 223,000 hectares greenlit for mining projects last year. The absence of legal titles for the residents of seven million hectares of ancestral lands further exposes them to displacement.

Beyond the proposal to open up public utilities, advertising, and educational institutions to full foreign ownership, policymakers urge the same for natural resources. “[Charter change] renders the whole nation vulnerable to the destructive exploitation by foreign firms, whose primary motivation is profit over environmental protection and people’s welfare,” said Alyansa Tigil Muna in a statement in February.

Land grabbing is often the first necessary step for extractive ventures. Such projects, as exemplified by open-pit mining, also erode soil, deplete water, and pollute air. In Nueva Vizcaya, mining conducted by Australian-Canadian firm OceanaGold has dried up over a dozen water pumps in the surrounding community, affecting thousands of IP residents and displacing hundreds of them. 

IP groups and advocates assert that no remedy to the plights IPs face is forthcoming in the current moves towards charter change, and will only exacerbate rights violations. Katribu Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas emphasized that heightened militarization and deprivation of essential services posed by charter change threaten human rights violations (HRVs) and destruction of indigenous ways of life. 

HRVs befell 45,070 IPs in 2023, according to a 2023 report by Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center, while red-tagging and court charges are regularly weaponized by the state against indigenous leaders and land defenders who oppose invasive projects on their domains. Dexter Capuyan and Bazoo de Jesus, two IP rights activists and organizers, were abducted last year by forces from the Philippine National Police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.

Instead of sowing terror while railroading charter change, Marcos is urged by IP groups to pass the People’s Mining Bill, first proposed in 2011 to build a mining industry based on domestic needs and respect for IP rights. Only a complete halt to state harassment and the imposition of stringent restrictions on resource extraction can address IPs’ fundamental demands to stop the bleeding of ancestral lands.  ●

First published in the March 15, 2024 print edition of the Collegian.