IP Imprimaturs to Mining: Symptoms of

Internalized Oppression

By: Cheryl L. Daytec-Yangot and Mary Ann M. Bayang

Cordillera Indigenous Peoples Legal Center

In 2006, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines denounced

the Arroyo administration’s Mining Revitalization Program. Reiterating its call
for the repeal of the Mining Act, the CBCP said: “The right to life of people is
inseparable from their right to sources of food and livelihood. Allowing the
interests of big mining corporations to prevail over people’s right to these
sources amounts to violating their right to life. The promised economic
benefits of mining …are outweighed by the dislocation of communities
especially among our indigenous brothers and sisters, and the risks to health
and livelihood and massive environmental damage. Mining areas remain
among the poorest areas in the country… The cultural fabric of indigenous
peoples is also being destroyed by the entry of mining corporations.” A 2003
report of the Extractive Industries Review project commissioned by the
World Bank warned of environmental degradation, social disruption, conflict,
and uneven sharing of benefits with local communities that bear the negative
social and environmental impact.

Glossing over the warnings, the Arroyo administration which

aggressively adopted mining as the cornerstone of its economic development
paradigm recently identified 24 major mining priority areas, eighteen of
which are in indigenous territories. As if this is not alarming enough, it
boasted in its report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination (CERD) that the National Commission on Indigenous
Peoples (NCIP) whose primary mandate is to protect indigenous peoples (IPs)
has already issued a total of 127 Certificates of Precondition, 70 of which are
for mining. A certificate of precondition removes the final obstacle to the
national government’s issuance, renewal or grant of concession, lease or
license over natural resources within ancestral domains. Under the
Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA), the free, prior and informed
consent(FPIC) of affected IPs must be secured before NCIP issues the
certificate.

Citing the issuance of the 127 Certificates of Precondition as an

accomplishment is baffling for it indicates failure on the part of NCIP to fulfill
its mandate. Announcing it to the international community is very upsetting
considering the aftermath. Every certificate of precondition allowing large-
scale mining perpetuates the oppression of IPs. Every such certification
legitimizes displacement from their ancestral domains. Every displacement
culminates in cultural genocide. It is hoped that the CERD will see the
certificates for the license to exploit that they are and not for the
accomplishments that they are not.

One may argue that NCIP would not have turned on the green light
without the FPIC of the affected IP communities. But communities who labor
under a state of internalized oppression are not capable of giving consent.

Internalized oppression is a construct pivotal to the understanding of

IP’s psychology. It means simply that they have become co-authors of their
own abuse. But more than being a cause of the escalation of marginalization,
internalized oppression is the aftermath of lingering external oppression
committed against them by a well-entrenched political system which has
historically ignored their welfare while plundering their territories,
endangering their very existence.

People who have long been oppressed are prone to eventually see
their situation with the eyes of their oppressor. In neocolonial states, hunger
may be defined as the need for a McDonalds hamburger, thirst is the need for
Coke, illiteracy is the need for English proficiency, underdevelopment is the
need for free trade and US intervention into their domestic affairs, a child’s
loneliness is the need for Barbie dolls or Mickey Mouse stuffed toys, ugliness
is the need for whitening products.

For so long, generations of IPs have been painfully excluded from

enjoyment of the bounties within their ancestral territories which became
protected areas, timberlands, national parks, government reservations,
mines, or plantations of the oligarchy. Without letting up, the State has been
trampling down IP rights for the sake of “national interest” translated into the
interest of the ruling elite or oligarchy that dominates the political system.
Because of drawn-out experiences of marginalization and underdevelopment,
many IPs now view their abject state through the vision of their exploiters. So
underdevelopment has become the need for an extractive industry even with
its deleterious effects on their food security, culture and survival. There is
nothing to see beyond the promised jobs and livelihood opportunities which
have eluded them for long. They have come to accept that there are heavy
costs to pay and sacrifices to make to be like the dominant groups.

The giving of FPIC’s to mining and other destructive industries is proof

of the IP’s state of unenlightenment and internalized oppression. Consent to
large-scale mining can never be free and informed. Communities especially
indigenous ones whose culture has always championed intergenerational
responsibility in resource management and who fully understand that mining
deprives the future generations of resources loaned from them, will never
agree to it. By giving their “FPIC,” they become unsuspecting co-conspirators
in the bureaucratic process aimed at opening their natural wealth to limitless
pillage by capitalist interests and their eventual dislocation from their cultural
and economic base.

The recently-issued EO 726 putting the NCIP under the Department of

Environment and Natural Resources is, in the ultimate analysis, a
premeditated move to subordinate IP rights to the Regalian Doctrine which is
the latter’s raison d’etre. This is fairly obvious. Gloria Arroyo, principal author
of the Mining Act of 1995, has began to sound like a destroyed compact disc
with her oft-repeated declaration that mining will pave the road to national
development, given that the economy is ailing. In areas where community
opposition to mining is high, she put the military at the disposal of mining
industries in the guise of counter-insurgency. Under the Investment Defense
Force, the military has become the private army of what Romulo Neri called
the “booty capitalists” who used the elections to gain policy favors and
advantages from the political system. EO 726 should thus be viewed with
suspicion and with suspicion comes vigilance.

The NCIP is put in a bind and its current position in the Arroyo
administration might reduce it into a “fixer” to facilitate the obtainment of
IP’s imprimatur to mining. But it needs to understand that its job is not to
ensure FPIC; the pith and core of its existence is to protect IPs from abuse,
and this means making sure that there is no “FPIC” to destructive, large-
scale industries, for such “FPIC” is a weapon for auto-genocide. When NCIP
issues no Certificate of Precondition to mining and other large-scale
extractive industries, it becomes a measure of its zeal to pursue its mandate.
It is a record that the Filipino nation can proudly announce to the international
community. But when it signs 127 such certificates, it leaves a legacy of
oppression –by the State, by itself and by the sector whose interest it should
protect.

As the bureaucratic apparatus whose primary mandate is to protect IPs,

NCIP has to break through the miserable state of unenlightenment that afflicts
many IP communities. It should incorporate the construct of internalized
oppression in implementing its mandate of advancing IP rights. But first, it
must rise above its own internalized oppression. With that will come the
courage and competence to throw its heavy weight nourished by IPRA and
make the state rectify wrongs committed against the IPs. Otherwise it will
metamorphose into a bureau to manage oligarchic interests in ancestral
domains, if it is not so already.

Only when IPs conquer their internalized oppression can they be

capable of giving FPIC. And only when NCIP conquers its internalized
oppression can it liberate IPs from internalized oppression. The blind cannot
lead the blind.