DAVAO CITY – Policy advocacy group Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center has urged President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. to speak on the issues hounding indigenous communities.

In a statement, LRC said many indigenous communities are under siege but Marcos’ fourth State-of-the-Nation Address on Monday, July 28, was silent over their plight.

“Our latest research saw at least 1.7 million hectares of indigenous territories everywhere in the Philippines currently face conflicting land uses such as large-scale mines, forest tenements, and other environmentally critical projects. Despite this, the urgent concerns of indigenous peoples remain nowhere to be found in President Marcos’ SONA for the fourth year running,” said lawyer Mai Taqueban, executive director of LRC.

Indigenous advocacy groups recently convened for the State-of-the-Indigenous People Address (SIPA), a nationwide gathering of indigenous peoples to present to the Filipino people the current situations of the IPs as well as the issues hounding tribes across the country.

The LRC said that 54 percent of all approved mining tenements are overlapping with ancestral domains of IPs.

Forty nine percent of the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) and 54 percent of forest tenements are conflicting with indigenous territories.

The LRC added that these development projects were heavily presented in the President’s SONA.

“President Marcos has announced an open season for global corporations to enter into the critical minerals, agriculture, water, and renewable energy sectors of the economy. These are industries that greatly impact indigenous territories and forest watersheds, to which no safeguards have been offered,” said Taqueban.

Leticio Datuwata, the Timuay Labi or Supreme Chieftain of the Timuay Justice and Governance (TJG) of the Teduray and Lambangian people, said that tribes continue to face unabated killings allegedly due to land conflict.

However, Datuwata, whose tribe occupies most of the hinterlands of Upi town in Maguindanao del Norte, lamented that not even a word of comfort is spent on the SONA to offer peace for the tribe’s territories.

“We heard the same stories of large-scale mining, coal, fortress conservation, red-tagging, and the relentless undermining of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) from 11 different tribes from across the Philippines. Indigenous territories are clearly the frontlines of the ecological and climate crises and the Marcos government must heed the cries of indigenous peoples to walk his climate talk,” he said.

As of July 29, TJG documented 93 killings perpetrated against IPs in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) since 2018.

The most recent was a former barangay official, Nickasio Tayas Mindo, who was ambushed by still unidentified suspects in Sitio Lenan, Barangay Romongaob, South Upi, Maguindanao del Sur on July 25.

Most of the killings involving the IPs in the region remained unsolved.

“We are hearing the same old climate rhetoric since President Marcos’ first SONA. We want consistency in action, not mere branding, and the plight of Indigenous Peoples is the ultimate litmus test for the Philippines’ program on climate change,” Taqueban said.