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By CONG B. CORRALES,
Associate Editor

This timeline of events would show how the government line agencies supposedly mandated by law to protect their interests and rights of the indigenous peoples have continually circumvented processes.

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 MANOBOS call it “Naliyagan,” which literally means “the chosen one” or “the most loved one.” Manobos, and other indigenes, have called Agusan de Sur their home since the bronze era. It has provided their ancestors sustenance for thousands of years.

Agusan del Sur is a landlocked province located in the eastern part of Minda-nao. The capital town is Prosperidad that borders   from the north clockwise   Agusan del Norte, Surigao del Sur, Davao Oriental, Compostela Valley, Davao del Norte, Bukidnon, and Misamis Oriental. Together with the provinces of Agusan del Norte, Surigao del Sur, and Surigao del Norte make up the Caraga region.

In Caraga region alone, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) pegged the population of indigenes at some 874,456. Of these, 72,000 belong to the Manobo tribe.1 The Manobos are concentrated in Agusan, Bukidnon, Cota-bato, Davao, Misamis Oriental, and Surigao del Sur.2

According to Ethnic Groups of the Philippines, the word “manobo” simply means “people” or “person.” Alternatively, it is also spelled as Manuvu, Minuvu, or Menuvu.

The term may have originated from ‘Mansuba,’ a combination of man (people) and suba (river). Manobos are concentrated in Agusan, Bukidnon, Cotabato, Davao, Misamis Oriental, and Surigao del Sur.3

The Manobo people usually build their villages near small bodies of water or forest clearings, although they also opt for hillsides, rivers, valleys, and plateaus. A basic Manobo community consist of only four to 12 houses.

The Agusan Manobo or simply Agusan are scattered all over Agusan del Norte, Agusan del Sur, and even Surigao del Sur. Agusans call their language Minanubu, and is one of the Manobo languages that still has a large number of speakers. It has four dialects: Umayam, Adgawan, Surigao, and Omayamnon.

The Manobos in the towns of Rosario and Bunawan are now at a quandary on how to confront a large-scale mining firm that has encroached their ancestral domains.

This timeline of events would show how the government line agencies   supposedly mandated by law to protect their interests and rights of the indigenous peoples   have continually circumvented processes and could possibly have even colluded with the large-scale mining firms to the detriment of the indigenes who, it would appear, could not even access the resources in their ancestral domains.

It started in Dec. 20, 1999, when the Bunawan Mining Corporation (BMC) filed an exploration permit application denominated as EXPA 00037-XIII (Buna-wan EXPA) for an area located in the towns of Rosario and Bunawan in Agusan del Sur.

The areas in the towns of Rosario and Bunawan the mining firm applied to explore, however, encroached the ancestral domains of the Manobo groups: Caulishan Maligaya, Marfil, Pamintingan, Ca-bantao, Maputi, Masa-bong, Ancestral Domain Manobo Tribal Association, Inc. (Cammpa-camm); and the Bunawan Tribal Council of Baes and Datus, Inc. (BTCBDI), which holds Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) Nos. 78 and 136, respectively.

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Before joining the Gold Star Daily, Cong worked as the deputy director of the multimedia desk of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), and before that he served as a writing fellow of Vera Files. Under the pen name "Cong," Leonardo Vicente B. Corrales has worked as a journalist since 2008.Corrales has published news, in-depth, investigative and feature articles on agrarian reform, peace and dialogue initiatives, climate justice, and socio-economics in local and international news organizations, which which includes among others: Philippine Daily Inquirer, Business World, MindaNews, Interaksyon.com, Agence France-Presse, Xinhua News Wires, Thomson-Reuters News Wires, UCANews.com, and Pecojon-PH.He is currently the Editor in Chief of this paper.