28 Years of IPRA: The Law that Failed to Protect the Sierra Madre and its Ancestral Defenders

This week marks the 28th anniversary of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997, a law once hailed as a milestone for indigenous empowerment, but now just more remembered by many of its supposed beneficiaries as a betrayal.

The IPRA was born out of decades of struggle by national minority movements, with our brothers and colleagues from the Cordillera Peoples’ Alliance (CPA), Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KATRIBU), among others, who demanded recognition of ancestral domain and self-determination long denied under colonial and postcolonial governments. It promised to safeguard our four core rights: to ancestral domains, self-governance, social justice, and cultural integrity. Yet 28 years later, the reality is a grim inversion of those promises.

Student activists and indigenous rights advocates stage a protest outside their campus in Manila in condemnation of the IPRA of 1997. | KATRIBU PUP on Facebook

According to the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), at least 17 million Filipinos belong to some 110 indigenous groups nationwide. Despite their indispensable role as primary stewards of the country’s richest ecosystems, they remain among the poorest and most dispossessed; over 80% live below the poverty line. The IPRA’s mandate was to correct this historical injustice. But its enforcement has instead allowed state institutions, big businesses, and foreign investors to use its very language to justify land grabs, destructive “development” projects, and militarization of ancestral territories.

The creation of the NCIP and the establishment of the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) process were meant to institutionalize protection for indigenous peoples. In principle, these mechanisms should guarantee that no project proceeds without the genuine and collective consent of affected communities. In practice, however, both have been consistently weaponized. The NCIP’s record of rubber-stamping permits and manufacturing consent in collusion with corporations has eroded its legitimacy. Reports from people’s organizations and media outlets like Bulatlat and Altermidya continually document that FPIC consultations are routinely manipulated, rushed, selective, or conducted under duress.

Satellite imaging shows Baranggay Daraitan situated right on the banks of Daraitan River, in Tanay, Rizal, soon to be abandoned and submerged if the dam construction persists. | Rappler

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Dumagat people’s struggle across the Sierra Madre. For decades, they have faced relentless development aggression through the Kaliwa-Kanan-Laiban Dam projects, foreign-funded state-driven megaprojects under the former Duterte regime’s, and now Marcos, Jr. administration’s New Centennial Water Source Project. Our recent international solidarity mission with foreign delegates to Baranggay Sta. Ines, Tanay revealed how FPIC procedures were bypassed altogether in there. Communities were left uninformed about environmental impacts and denied meaningful participation in decision-making. Both the NCIP and the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) dismissed them as “unaffected” populations, their protests reduced to “noise.”

Worse, these communities live under constant threat of militarization. The presence of the 80th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army has turned Dumagat ancestral domains into virtual military zones. Soldiers and intelligence operatives have reportedly used the 2021 killings of uncle-and-nephew Puroy and Randy Dela Cruz as chilling examples of what awaits those who cater to humanitarian efforts, talk to volunteers and advocates, speak out, publicly gather, form and join organizations, and join mobilizations. This pattern of fear and control reflects what locals describe as a de facto martial law, where military command overshadows civilian authority, and the right to self-determination is smothered under the guise of “peace and order.”

[embed]Soldiers harass Dumagat communities in Rizal This climate of fear undermines not only the safety of indigenous peoples but also the democratic rights of all…www.bulatlat.com

The Dumagat’s experience is not an exception but a reflection of a national crisis. In the adjacent baranggay of San Andres of Tanay, Altenergy’s Tanay Wind Power Project threatens to repeat the same cycle of dispossession. In Laguna, Enrique Razon, Jr.’s Ahunan Dam in Pakil looms over farming and fishing communities. In Atimonan, Quezon, the persistence of Manila Electric, Rail, and Light Company (MERALCO)’s Atimonan One Project hangs a dreaded environmental damage and health hazard in the mountains and communities. In Dingalan, Aurora and General Nakar, Quezon, the 80,000-hectare Pacific Coast Cities Project (PCCP) plans to carve a ‘smart city’ into the Sierra Madre, threatening irreversible ecological and cultural loss. Each of these projects carries the same fingerprints: an FPIC process in the name only, NCIP complicity, and an army of battalions nearby.

Let us remind the NCIP and the Marcos, Jr. administration that the Dumagat have resisted these incursions for generations, notably the original Laiban Dam plan under his late father and ousted dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. Their steadfast defense of the Sierra Madre proves that indigenous autonomy, when truly respected, is the most effective protection our forests and watersheds could have. Yet IPRA and the NCIP, as they stand today, continue to fail them. Unless reformed and reoriented toward genuine service, they risk being remembered not as shields of indigenous welfare but as state instruments of exploitation.

Protect Sierra Madre Network for the People stands in firm solidarity with all indigenous and local communities across the country who face harassment, red-tagging, and violence for defending their lands. We echo their demand to uphold the genuine spirit of the IPRA: one that centers the people, not profit; one that empowers consent, not coercion.

Local Dumagat and Remontado residents are joined by indigenous rights advocate and environmentalists in calls for their rights, welfare, and self-determination. | PSM Network on Facebook

We call on he national government to uphold the integrity of FPIC, hold violators accountable, and immediately halt all meaaprojects within our ancestral domains and watershed. Dismantle militarization in indigenous territories. Make the NCIP work for the people it claims to serve.

We call on everyone to stand with the Dumagat and all of the indigenous Filipinos in amplifying their voices, upholding their right to live freely in their ancestral lands, and holding accountable those who threaten their rights and those of their allies and advocates.

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This article was first published on 29 October 2025.