Since 2005, the Tedurays have been lobbying for the government's formal recognition of their ancestral domain. The urgent priority should be the approval of an IP Code to address these land issues.
At least 27 Tedurays died in the landslides at the foothills of Mt. Minandar, a resettlement area where locals were forced to relocate two years earlier, when Typhoon Paeng struck the Philippines in late October 2022. This investigative series traces the environmental and political factors that created the disaster, and why the indigenous community remains homeless a year after the tragedy. – It was a Tuesday at dusk.
This resettlement controversy eventually led to the deaths of 27 Tedurays after multiple landslides occurred, when Severe Tropical Storm Paeng hit the region. It became the heated subject of a planned Senate inquiry in November 2022, just several weeks into the disaster’s aftermath. Small, worn-out, and substandard, these shelters didn’t have water and electricity, she said. Because the houses were built on a flood-prone area, locals feared that another calamity like the Mt. Minandar landslides in October 2022 could hit them again.
But these land issues in Kusiong go way back, said Romeo Saliga, a former representative of the Non-Moro Indigenous Peoples at the Bangsamoro parliament. Since 1998, the community has been writing to the government to recognize and protect their ancestral domains . Upon landing at the airport, however, the council received a text message that the Senate probe would be postponed. It still hasn’t been pursued to date.Even before the Spaniards arrived in their village in 1901, the Tedurays already lived in Kusiong, according to Pat*. But their ancestors were tricked into toiling for agricultural projects such as planting coconuts and cacao for the benefit of the colonizers.
Since the communities comprehensively mapped their tribal lands and used old, traditional place names in their native language, the source argued that it is enough evidence to establish that the Teduray-Lambangian have lived in these sites for a long time already. But over the years, politicians have dominated these places and changed their names, slowly diminishing their original existence.
“This is not about a question of jurisdiction, it’s about political will of those leaders who are currently in power,” the source added. If these issues aren’t addressed, they may cause more conflict and tension between groups like the Moros and the NMIP that may disrupt the gains achieved by the peace process, International Alert Philippines warned.
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