How Indigenous are Filipino Indigenous People?

4 min readAug 30, 2020

This is the lecture of Dr. Danilo Gerona during the roundtable discussion on Mainstreaming Indigenous Knowledge in the Tertiary Education. It was held at Partido State University Goa, Camarines Sur, Philippines on the 21st of June year of 2017. He discussed about the IPs or the indigenous people during the ancient period. Dr. Gerona discussed on how the people came to the Philippines and what are their resources. Also who are the first people on our country who colonized us and how does it affect our lifestyle in this present time. He shared his ideas and thoughts about our history but the main point of his discussion was how the indigenous people of the Philippines specifically in part of Bicol region lived many years ago and how they surpass the abusive subjugator. Also he discussed the importance of the Indigenous people and its primary role on our history and what are the contribution and its benefits in this present time.

When I was reading Dr. Gerona’s lecture, the first thing that caught my attention is when he said Magellan was already in Asia as early as 1510. We generally know that he arrived at the Philippines in 1521, but we didn’t know that he is already in Asia in 1510 at Singapore. I completely disagree about it because as far as I’ve know based Magellan accidentally discovered the Philippines (Macmillan, 1899) it says that the discover of this new highway of the ocean was Hernando de Maghallanes, a Portuguese by birth, but who in later life became a naturalised Spaniard serving under the sovereignty of Charles I. The squadron discovery, which was fitted out by the King and entrusted to the command of Maghallanes, consisted of five ships, varying in tonage from 60 to 130 tons, and carrying crews of a total strength of 234 men. Losing two of his ships, one by shipwreck and the other by mutiny and desertion, the celebrated explorer his way round the promontory now known Cape Horn with the remaining three vessels and on the 26th of November, 1520, sailed triumphantly into the Pacific Ocean. Four months later he reached the Ladrones Islands, and in the month of April, 1521, effected a landing on several of the islands of the group now known as the Philippines. Magellan is important on studying our indigenous people because he is the first one who encountered them. Dr. Gerona stated a fact that Filipinos are already controlled under the Spaniards for 300 years even in the early stage of colonization using the language only that makes me more realized that during ancient period even they didn’t used weapons, they already controlled the Filipino using only the medium of language.

One of my reactions from the discussion is the relationship between the colonizers and the indigenous people way of living. The lecture helps a lot of understand why indigenous people live on the highlands and what are the reasons behind why they isolate themselves from the others. I've learned that they are not ordained by nature. These are people who decided to make themselves different from the other people in the lowland.

I became more interested to his lectures when he discuss about the Agta, but it makes me more curious when he questioned if they are really indigenous people from the Philippines because we generally know about the Waves of Migration (Beyer, 1948) which the Agta first came here, the Indonesian came here and the Malays too but it has no empirical basis. I also learned a lot about the Cimmarones and the Remontado. The Remontados were lowlander like us and they are converted into Christianity in 1578. They left the lowland to join Agta because they were resisting Spanish oppression. So they were called Remontado because earlier in 1578 they went down on the lowlands but returned again to climb the mountains. Montar in Spanish means "to climb" and remontar is "to climb again". While Cimmarones from the Spanish word cima which means “peak’’, because they went to the peak of the mountains. Dr. Gerona explained that IPs did not go down and integrate themselves to the lowlanders because of the oppression of the colonizers. Many businessmen in lowland territories are abusing them and forced to work for them. Dr. Gerona’s explanation made it clearer to understand that they became from us not because of nature or culture, it’s because of the politics. The Spanish destruction of the self-sufficient baranganic communities by taxation and forced labor (polos y servicios) disrupted the village economy of kinship-based clans. Population was reduced, farm lands laid waste, including whatever trade and industry flourished. The Spanish historian Antonio de Morga lamented that due to the despotic backward policies, the natives abandoned "their farming, poultry and stock-raising, cotton growing and weaving of blankets" (Agoncillo and Guerrero 1970, 104), From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, Spain exploited the natives to support the galleon trade that enriched the friars and local bureaucrats, the Chinese traders, and native mestizo families.

As we conclude the discussion, one of the remarkable words that has been stated by Dr. Gerona is when he said "when you deal with these IPs, do not isolate from their environment". We should know the role of Mount Isarog in the life of the IPs. We should conduct serious studies on the role of the environment in our history. We should know the importance of our history and we should recognize the Indigenous people because they had role and contribution to our history. IPs are the living repository of our ancient heritage.

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How Indigenous are Filipino Indigenous People?

Written by Jerimy B. Balleta