IDWIP 2026: “Makatarungan ang ating paglaban! Ipagtanggol ang lupang ninuno! Igiit ang karapatan at sariling pagpapasya!”

Today, August 9, is the celebration of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (IDWIP), as declared by the United Nations. On this day, KATRIBU Kalipunan ng Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas affirms–together with Indigenous Peoples across the country–that our struggle for our ancestral lands, rights, dignity, and self-determination is just.

In the Philippines, there is nothing to celebrate under the Marcos Jr. administration, the assault on Indigenous Peoples’ territories has intensified through the aggressive expansion of mining, energy, infrastructure, and other so-called development projects, while state forces are deployed to suppress communities that resist.

Our ancestral lands are being opened wider to plunder of resources, both by foreign and their local corporations. The Marcos Jr. administration is further deepening plunder of our ancestral lands by foreign entities and states, particularly the US, to serve its militarist and economic agenda in Asia. Last April, our government entered into the US-led Pax Silica Initiative, an initiative that undermines our sovereignty as a nation through its compelte surrender to the whims of the US. 

For Indigenous Peoples, especially Ayta communities, this initiative raises serious concerns over the further encroachment and displacement from ancestral lands. As Marcos Jr. integrates our country into global supply chains for critical minerals, energy, infrastructure, and others, he also plunges Indigenous Peoples into further despair as we face the intensified entry of other projects.

New mining projects are being approved and existing operations renewed, often without the genuine and collective consent of affected communities.  The Marcos Jr. administration is aggressively pushing renewable energy and positioning the Philippines as a source of critical minerals. This comes with serious consequences for Indigenous Peoples as more often than not, mining projects encroach despite opposition and non-consent of Indigenous communities. We have seen from the experiences of those resisting Crescent Mining, Woggle Corporation, NLMRC, Ipilan Nickel Mining, Tampakan Mining, and so many others that our country's mining laws and policies benefit corporations and pose a risk to communities.

When renewable energy projects are pursued through displacement, militarization, environmental destruction, and violations of FPIC, they reproduce the same exploitative development model that has long threatened Indigenous communities. The experiences of the Ayta affected by the Olongapo Solar Power Project, the Tumandok affected by the Jalaur Dam, and the Masamuyaon affected by the Buhawind offshore wind project demonstrate that the so-called energy transition can come at the expense of Indigenous lands, livelihoods, and self-determination.

This IDWIP is therefore also a day to hold the National Commission of Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) accountable for its role in the continuing dispossession of Indigenous Peoples. We see this in the way the 2026 Revised FPIC Guidelines were railroaded by the NCIP without broad and genuine consultation from the Indigenous Peoples at the local, regional, and national level. These revised guidelines further reduce the FPIC into a process that the state can administer and expedite, rather than recognizing it as an inherent collective right of Indigenous Peoples to determine what happens in their ancestral territories. By speeding up the process, the guidelines treat Indigenous decision-making as something that can be rushed for the convenience of projects and corporations, despite the fact that meaningful collective decision-making requires time, consultation, and the participation of the community.

For KATRIBU and many Indigenous communities, the call for the abolition of the NCIP is a necessity. The NCIP has increasingly functioned not as a defender of Indigenous Peoples but as an active facilitator and enabler of the projects and policies that threaten our lands and lives. Under its current leadership, particularly Chairperson Nancy Catamco, the commission has further demonstrated its role as an instrument of the Marcos Jr. administration in ensuring that mining, renewable energy projects, and initiatives such as Pax Silica can enter Indigenous territories with less resistance. We recall how Catamco attempted to bring state forces to Haran where hundreds of Lumad who took refuge in 2015 due to militarization. We condemn Catamco for her being a member of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Most recently, Catamco held a dialogue with the Ayta communities in Tarlac, in which all she offered was lip service in the face of the various issues they are facing.

Threats to land and life of the Indigenous Peoples are rapidly increasing. Under the Marcos Jr. administration, Indigenous communities have suffered bombings, killings, torture, enforced disappearances, threats, harassment, and other grave human rights violations. The terrorist designation of four leaders of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance is a stark example of how the state uses terror laws to criminalize legitimate Indigenous resistance.

This is why we must commemorate IDWIP militantly. We hold the Marcos Jr. administration accountable for its continuing attacks on Indigenous Peoples; by demanding an end to militarization, criminalization, and human rights violations; by rejecting the entry of destructive projects into our ancestral lands; by calling for the abolition of the NCIP; and by asserting national sovereignty against foreign intervention and US imperialism.

Makatarungan ang ating paglaban!

Reference: Funa-ay Claver, Secretary-General