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By LINA SAGARAL REYES
Special Correspondent .

Last of a four parts

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CLAVER, Surigao del Norte — Sounding exasperated, Ronald Asignacion, community relations manager of Taganito Mining Corp. (TMC), said he would have wanted the Mamanwa to provide more support to their school children enrolled at the Punta Naga Elementary School (PNES) and encourage them to attend classes.

“Because the mining company is giving its all — more than 101 percent — to help their children get an education,’’ he said. TMC provides support to PNES through corporate social responsibility funds.

According to Melly Dagasdas, TMC focal staff for indigenous peoples affairs, among the elementary grades and beyond, absenteeism and drop-outs are rampant, often due to teenage pregnancies and early marriages.

In the past decade, of the 73 who enrolled in high school with support from TMC, none has graduated. A ray of hope is Evangeline Gedi, who graduated with a degree in information technology in April this year from Northeastern Colleges in Surigao City.

The TMC community relations staff are crossing their fingers that two other students taking courses in agriculture will be the next college graduates from among the present batch of nine college scholars.

Funding for their scholarships are drawn from TMC’s corporate social responsibility program, not the Social Development and Management Program (SDMP), a five-year plan mandated by law that lists the activities to be financed and implemented by mining companies as their contribution to the development of host communities.

“Education is the seed that (TMC) has planted there. There should be more kids in school. We do not want education to be a token,” Assignation said.

“How many kids are in your family, are of school age? All of them must go to school,” he added, noting that only a third of the PNES population of 324 are Mamanwa, and the majority are children of migrant miners, most of whom come from the Visayas. He also learned from teachers that Mamanwa parents often pull out their children to bring them to the mountain to help in the fields.

“It remains to be a puzzle,” he said of Surigao del Norte’s IPs.

“The Mamanwa are still in the lowest rung of the social ladder despite overlapping social and financial support from mining companies. It is a puzzle,” he repeats, shaking his head. “What does it take for them to realize they are lagging much behind?”

Fernando Almeda Jr., Surigao’s preeminent historian who has done studies on the Mamanwa in the last 40 years, seethed with anger on hearing what he construed as discriminatory judgments against these nomadic hunters and gatherers.

“These people in Claver see the Mamanwa with jaundiced eyes. They want the Mamanwa to be thankful to them for changing them into better persons. As if the money they give is manna from benevolent companies,” Almeda said.

“They cannot understand what they are dealing with — these are people having their own way of life, (but) they cannot appreciate that (alternative) way of life. These miners think that our way of life is more superior to that of the Mamanwa. They think these are savages. What right do they have to think so?”

Almeda provided a historical context: that the Mamanwa, whose DNA reveals their ancestry traced back to the Denisovans, an archaic lineage of humans coming out of Africa via Siberia, had survived on the Philippine islands for 30,000 years. “They are us, they are our ancestors, and you want to teach them how to live? You have no business to say our model of living is more superior.”

The Surigaonon said, “I continue to be amazed at their endurance.”

He urged mining companies to employ people having a deeper understanding of these people.

“Obviously, they are not doing their job, (instead) they are shortselling the company,” he said.

Cultural anthropologist Dr. Erlinda Burton at Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro, who has been studying the IPs, including the Mamanwa in Claver, appeared to lean toward Almeda’s perspective.

During fieldwork on the environmental effects of mining in Claver in 2011, she sensed the difficulties among mining companies to build relationships with the Mamanwa. ‘’They do not know how to deal with them. Their (development) plan is not culturally based. When you plan you have to know the culture; your plans have to be appropriate and culturally sensitive to their needs.

“A change of mindset is in order,” Asignacion strongly recommended.

“Something outright must be done with the parents,” When asked the specifics, he says maybe “a change of leadership.”

Burton agreed there is a need to change the mindset of the IPs. But such change, she said, must also include the mindset of those who work for and with them.

As for leadership, the researcher said, “They need someone who has the gumption to lead.”

In this Punta Naga village with its rusted dirtroads and waterless tanks, the acknowledged leaders are nowhere to be found. Hurod substitutes for Renante Buklas, who has made himself scarce since the murder of a tribal council member in 2017. Another IP leader, Vangie Bago-Porogoy, has gone up the sanctuary of Barobangkaw within her ancestral domain, preferring to spend more time among the cassava and vegetables in her garden, away from the tensions in the relocation village.

As for attitudinal change , there are no quick fixes, Burton stressed.

“Unlike material culture, non-tangible culture, that which is cognitive, a part of our psyche, our traditions, cannot be changed easily. Societal change is always a process fraught with difficulties.”

The young are being taught about this resistant and resilient way of life at school, through the Department of Education.

“We teach our students our language and rituals, the way of life of our elders so that wherever we go to live, we will not forget the old ways and we won’t feel ashamed of who we are,” said Eric Dayong, 24, a teaching associate on Mamanwa culture at the PNES.

For Burton, the missing pieces of the puzzle that is the Mamanwa, the enigma that stumps Asignacion and other well-intentioned officers of mining companies in Claver, may be found among the post-millenial generation of Minimar Noah Buklas, who straddles, willy-nilly, indigeneity and modernity.

He who is the dancer of tumba-a and chanter of tug-om. He who has learned to bead necklaces and bracelets and crafts baskets and hammocks with teacher Dayong in the IP education center.

He who has learned how to hunt for wild boar, monkeys, and deer in the forests in the primeval forests, and plant camote, cassava, bananas and coconuts in the swidden fields of his parents when he is pulled out from school to stay in the tribe’s mountain haunts of Barobangkaw in the Mt. Diwata Range.

He who loves lessons in science, math, English, and Pilipino. He is bent on pursuing K-12 in June this year at the Taganito National High School, where he will be provided educational assistance by TMC.

“When I grow up, I want to be an engineer,” he said, finger-combing his luxuriant fluffy hair. “Then, when I have finished, I will apply for a job at TMC,” he added as he smiled, baring clean, white teeth.

 

(This four-part series was funded under the Covering the Extractive Industries fellowship program of the Philippine Press Institute in partnership with the Philippine Extractive Industries and Transparency Initiative.)

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