City Hall, ancestral land or ancestral domain?

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

by Roger Sinot 

(Third of a series)

PINSAO PROPER, Bagiw – On March 3, 2014, I wrote a letter to Atty. Leonor T. Oralde-Quintayo, Chairperson of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples thru Atty. Amador Batay-an, NCIP Cordillera Regional Director. The letter pertains to the moratorium on the processing of ancestral lands applications under NCIP MO No. 513, S. 2013 dated December 9, 2013.

            My purpose in writing the letter was mainly to seek protection of our rights with the NCIP and that we, the heirs of Wisley Sinot may recover our ancestral land from squatters. But his was not the case because our application was never acted upon since it was turned over by the DENR to the NCIP in 2000. Sad to say that four of my siblings have died without seeing the fruit of our struggle. We then asked the NCIP to “not shrink its mandate to protect and promote the rights and interests of the IPs.”

            

           With the recent Vallejo Hotel land issue, I as well as other IPs hope that it will not be used as the reason to stop the processing of valid ancestral land claims. I still believe that the CALT is not faulty. “If the manner by which the writ of possession and the acquisition of an order to demolish the building did not go through the right process, therefore this has to be re-examined before things go out of control that nobody wants to happen,” said my boss Alfred Dizon. I am with him when he said further “an unsolicited proposal is for the present occupants to hold a dialogue with the ancestral land claimants – the heirs of Piraso.” Maybe March Fianza and Alfred can mediate and set a “tong-tong” for both parties.

            I am no lawyer but the contradictions on laws, both moral and legal, should be clear in our minds. Let us not be prejudiced on land issues for it is now up to the Supreme Court to decide. In the World Dictionary, prejudice means “prejudging” or making an estimate of others without knowing the facts. Prejudice is a form of robbery for “it robs its victims of a fair trial in a court of reason.” It is also a murderer because it kills the opportunity of advancement who are its prey.

          

           In school, I learned that the true value of education which we ignore completely is the development of citizens’ virtues. It is the development of people’s virtue that is crucial in determining whether our country moves forward or stagnates. Virtue in people is what makes democratic societies work. It was the basis for what government and liberty meant, first and foremost, government of the self, before self-government as a community could occur. The habits of virtue were only partially, if at all to be fostered by the state. Rather, small communities and the family above all were the source of those habits.

         

            Going back to my letter to the NCIP, the issue on the controversy over ownership of ancestral lands and those covered by the “211 titles” refuses to die and ancestral land claimants are still uncertain on what to do. It is NCIP’s mandate to dig out and clear muddled issues on a case to case basis the history of ancestral lands in Baguio that started even before the foreign colonizers came.

           

 In my fourth series of this column title, it will include a list of Ibaloi land claimants in Baguio. Happy trails to all.