ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines (UCAN) -- Indigenous people rallying outside government offices here banged on gongs to call attention to their stalled petition for an ancestral land title that the city and a government corporation have contested.

Some 500 Subanon people, mostly farmers, led by their timuay (chieftains), rallied at Plaza Pershing, Zamboanga City, 850 kilometers southeast of Manila, on Oct. 31 with supporters from Catholic and other religious groups in the city.

Marching Subanon men, women and children wearing their traditional dress and turbans, accompanied by Christian and Muslim neighbors, stopped outside the Zamboanga Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (ZamboEcozone) office in San Ramon village. They then staged their "peaceful assembly and cultural presentation" outside the city council and National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) offices.

Timuay Lumilid Ansilan of Limpapa village, speaking through a megaphone, explained his people's demand for the issuance of legal documents certifying his community's ownership of a 9,000-hectare territory covering the villages of Limpapa, Labuan and Patalon along Zamboanga's western coast.

About 2,500 ethnic Subanon families live as poor, subsistence farmers in a logged-over, highland area of the three contiguous villages.

Research conducted by Rural-Urban Missionaries (RUM), a Church-based group with a special apostolate for indigenous peoples, compiled a list of centuries-old burial grounds and other archeological tribal artifacts, genealogies of the petitioners and "pre-historic" Subanon names given to villages, rivers, mountains, trees and other landmarks. It cited these as proof of the Subanon's claim of "native title" made possible by the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act (IPRA).

Enacted in 1997, the law recognizes IP rights to ownership or possession of ancestral domains, self-governance and self-determination, and mandates the state to formulate plans and policies to protect IP rights. It paved the way for issuance of "native titles" to IP communities whose ancestors occupied land before Spain colonized the country in the 1500s.

Ansilan's group filed their petition in September, 1997, about a month before the law came into effect. ZamboEcozone, a government corporation that Congress created in 1995, claims the area based on a proclamation then-President Fidel Ramos issued months after approving the IPRA. The proclamation reclassified the area as economic land and put the corporation in charge of its development and use.

In 1997, the local city council opposed Ramos' proclamation, but the current government on Sept. 3 filed a motion with NCIP opposing the Subanon claim.

The city government now says the area is "not alienable" because it lies "within (city) territorial and governing jurisdiction". In August, Councilor Kim Elago also publicly charged the indigenous claimants were not from Zamboanga City.

At the rally, Ansilan lamented NCIP's inaction and said his people have been "pushed" to move upland and fear that soon they will be living "near the clouds."

NCIP is the primary government agency that formulates and implements policies, plans and programs for the recognition, promotion and protection of indigenous peoples and recognition of their ancestral domains and their rights, its website says.

In an Oct. 3 memorandum to the local office, NCIP executive director Rosalina Bistoyong suspended action on the Subanon claim until the city government's opposition is resolved.

RUM executive director Priscilla Saladaga told UCA News that the order only delays the Subanon's petition and cannot "bury" it.

The commission had earlier ruled that about 9,000 hectares of the 15,000-hectare area can "realistically" be granted to the Subanon, since the rest of the area has been titled to "private entities," she noted.

NCIP reports having awarded 21 of 29 petitions for ancestral domain titles as of 2004. The awarded titles reportedly cover a total of 454,929.8549 hectares, mostly in the southern Philippines.

It lists more than 90 indigenous cultural groups and estimates at least 12 million descendants of original Philippine inhabitants have resisted centuries of colonization and retained their customs, traditions and ways of life.

The Subanon who rallied recently live in the area served by Zamboanga archdiocese, where 74 percent of 692,174 people are Catholics, according to the 2006-2007 Catholic Directory of the Philippines. Most of the rest of the people in the archdiocese are Muslims and other Christians.

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(Accompanying photos available at here)