Kiltepan cacophony of land disputes search for justice

HAPPY WEEKEND

Gina Dizon

(First part of a series)

SAGADA., Mountain Province -- Kiltepan sunrise is a popular tourist attraction owing to its breathtaking view of varied hues of orange, white and blue especially seen 5 o'clock at dawn when the sun shines bright and clear.

As varied as the disputes of land ownership hovering, creeping and teetering around and between individuals and between a tribe and an individual are legal and extralegal assertions of ownership in varying areas and extent. Such that somewhere along the end of the line poses questions of whether a tribe is questioning land sales by its own individual members to others.

And while this is so, claims on communal ownership are being asserted by the Kiltepan people on a ritual site they call “ay-ayagan” as against an individual who asserts ownership to it by way of purchase.

Kiltepan is coined from the three barangays of eastern Sagada namely  Kilong, Tetep-an and Antadao.

The hill where the viewpoint is located has a local name called Tekeng,  and so with the adjoining watershed called Pandey that holds the many disputed lands in it. 

Kiltepan viewpoint is a popular site located on a hill culturally known by the people of Kiltepan as Tekeng with the sacred site specially found on top of a hill  common in indigenous peoples’ areas.

Tekeng is claimed as a communal land where rituals are conducted by elders of Kiltepan.

Locally termed  “ay ayagan,” the ritual site lets elders call on the soul of a  sick person and for her/him to get well, believed to have been approached by spirits of ascendants for some request. Tekeng  is located on a hill overlooking  barangays Kilong, Tetep-an Norte and Sur, and  Antadao. 

While sanctity of an “ay-ayagan” is noted in any indigenous peoples sacred site, the viewing site is  a much visited place for picnics and bonfires through the stretch of time,  both by visitors and residents of Sagada.

It has been noted by elders that the “dalikan” (hearth)  for chicken to be offered to spirits of ancestors has been transferred here and there within said site.  

The site is reached via a winding dirt road starting from a section of the Dantay-Sagada road diverting on the side passing through a winding  trail to an uphill climb o reach the view site. The ritual area specially identifies Lamen property north and west, east by Padkayan, and on the top a lot housing a telecommunications tower.

The  Sangguniang Bayan of Sagada on July 27, 2009 passed ordinance  01-2009  declaring the Kiltepan view deck as  a community park  and  “recognizing  the same as public property”.

Said ordinance forwarded that the picnic ground shall “remain open to the public, recognizing the same as public property and beyond private appropriation, and that it shall belong to the municipal government of Sagada.”

Said ordinance while it was a declaration of the legislative body of the local government unit was met with  hesitance from the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Mountain Province who remanded  the same to the SB of Sagada pending resolution on conflicts on ownership.

Said resolution was protested by  lot-buyer Wilson Capuyan who asked for the cancellation of the ordinance in a letter addressed to Mayor Eduardo Latawan and to other members of the SB opposing said resolution   averring that   subject property is in “my ownership, possession, and declaration before the passage of the ordinance.That using of the property for viewing and picnic grounds do not mean the property belongs to the municipality of Sagada.” 

Capuyan cited that the ordinance is a violation of the law  for taking away  private property without due process of law and usurps the  judicial  function of  the government  for declaring a private property for public purposes.

Within legislative talk where an existing  Sagada tourism code provides that  sacred sites are public property and beyond private appropriation currently lacks  a municipal ordinance  to identify what these sacred sites are. Sangguniang Bayan Indigenous Peoples representative Jaime Dugao in a February 21 rally of the Kiltepan people against the ‘privatization’ of their ‘ay-ayagan’  said an ordinance is being readied by the SB to declare sacred  sites as public property. 

A community resident looks at the proposed ordinance with hesitance forwarding that such should be subjected to public hearing as it encroaches on private property.

While that is so, it is intriguing to note how the ritual site forwarded by the Kiltepan people as communal is the same lot accordingly donated as public park by iKilong Francis Maleng-an to the  Kiltepan people, and who contests ownership of  the lot  bought by Capuyan from  former Mountain Province congressman Alfredo Lamen via a  deed of sale Maleng-an  denies. Maleng-an is the  defendant in a case filed by  Capuyan on forcible entry covering portions of the ritual site.

Communal  in nature, Tekeng and the whole of Pandey are claimed by elders as owned by the umili of Kiltepan. As one Kilong elder Laminis exhorted during said rally, Tekeng  was their ‘palato’ (plate) where they derived food especially during World War 11. And this include the whole of wider Pandey  pastureland with camote patches  as claimed by elder Dontogan as the source of food during the ‘gubat’ referring to World War 2.

Interviews from elders of Kiltepan noted that the communal pasture land had portions where folks in the earlier days from  Tetep-an and Kilong tilled some areas for camote. These cultivated patches of land are considered as ‘lakon’ or ‘saguday’  of a clan. The vast Kiltepan was a pasture land and communal  where ‘pumastol’ (cattle owners) tended to their cows and carabaos at sitiosTekeng, Batalaw, Dummao and Pandey. Pasture land meant that the land is communal and not the ownership of one person with the ‘pumastol’ who have more of the responsibility to fence the area not to let the cattle go to another grazing site. In said case, the ‘pumastol’ of  Tekeng and Pandey and Batalaw made fences that prevented cattle to go to nearby grazing areas in Lamagan and Kanip-aw.

Soon, individuals from the iKiltepan people themselves came forth and tax- declared parcels of the property.  Kilongnatives  SamuelDawas and Josephine Padcayan Dawas through her father the late Felix Padcayan  claim 16 hectares. Others who have tax declared properties of  theTekeng lot are Marcelino Lomiwes with tax-declared 23 hectares in 1962 among others who sold parcels of lots to Alfredo Lamen as documents reveal.

Simon Lamen who traces his roots from  southern Sagada has tax- declared 24 hectares in 1963. With the vast lands of Kiltepan included within the Cordillera forest reserve and considered public land, is nevertheless a tempting resource to be occupied, planted with trees, possessed or owned. For the people who originally stayed in the area however, the very concept of land ownership is clear- lots particularly in residential portions and ricefields are individual-owned, camote patches  located within the pastureland as ‘lakon’ or clan owned, and the open and vast pasture lands of Kiltepan area as communal and owned by the umili.

The land tax-declared in the name of Simon Lamen added more lots from land that Lamen bought from iKiltepan persons all adding up to 31 hectares.

Other individuals came forth and bought parcels of  the Tekeng area including Wilson Capuyan who bought parcels of land from  Alfredo Lamen and from  Wilfredo Sumedca, a native of  Sagada. Other lot buyers are Fely Capuyan, sister of Wilson Capuyan, who filed a case of encroachment on the former’s lot leading to an amicable settlement.

As elder and Kagawad Palsiw said,those who tax-declared ‘our communal land either sold or  and loaned these’. Palsiw must be referring to Alfredo Lamen having sold  a tax-declared lot to Capuyan. Or he may also be referring  to other iKiltepan as a certain Marcelino Lomiwes who sold  some parcels of land to Lamen or to other individuals. ( to be continued next issue)