A Cordillera Day in Montreal

A Cordillera Day in Montreal

Members of different community organizations in Montreal joined FIPOQ in celebrating Cordillera Day 2017. (Photos: Joyce Valbuena)

Recounting the resistance of indigenous people in Cordillera:

By Joyce Valbuena

The Filipino Indigenous People Organization in Quebec (FIPOQ) headed the celebration of Cordillera Day in Montreal last April 15. The event was held a week earlier than the actual Cordillera Day (April 24) because some of the members of FIPOQ were bound to go to the Philippines to join the actual day celebration in the Cordillera region.

Original painting of an Igorot woman by Jason Palolan

The event in Montreal was highlighted by cultural performances of traditional Kalinga, Igorot and Ifugao dances, singing and poetry reading. The audience joined the community dancing where FIPOQ members played gongs. Dance is a big part of every indigenous people’s culture. It is an expression of their struggles and victories, as well as way of communicating with the spirits. Through playing traditional instruments, dance, costumes and visual arts, FIPOQ demonstrated in this event why it is important for them to preserve their traditional, cultural and religious practices, as well to continue fighting to preserve their ancestral lands.

Cordillera Day is celebrated each year to commemorate the death of Macliing Dulag, a respected elder and rice farmer, who successfully led his community and the Cordillera ethnic people in opposing a dam project along Chico River during the Marcos regime in the 1970s. The Chico River was supposedly the site of one of the biggest hydroelectric dams in Southeast Asia, but the Kalinga peoople successfully opposed the project.

FIPOQ cultural performers

Macliing Dulag’s death in 1980 became an inspiration for the formation of a militant mass movement for the defense of ancestral land and self-determination. It symbolizes the widening unity and solidarity amongst the different indigenous peoples of the Cordillera. The first celebration of Cordillera Day was held in Sagada, Mountain Province in 1985. Today, Cordillera Day is also being celebrated in many cities around the world, particularly by families of indigenous people who were displaced in their own lands and were driven to migrate to another country.

During the event, Joy Baduyen-Pasabing recounted what she witnessed during this historical event in Cordillera, “It was the year 1976-77, when I was in my last year of high school in Lubuagan, Kalinga that I witnessed the resistance of the Kalinga people to the Chico River Dam Project; how they organized themselves, from the old to the youngest to form a human shield to block any advancing military trucks and personnel who accompanied any delegations coming from Manila to do survey to where the Dam project was supposed to be built. I did not see any fear of being intimidated on their faces, but I saw their strength and determination to protect their land from any foreign or local developers who wanted to destroy their communities and indigenous way of life.”

Joy is an active member of FIPOQ and of the Parents Support Group in Montreal. She is originally from Bago Tribe but grew up and studied high school in Kalinga.  She proudly stated, “And I realize that the struggle of the Kalingas that I witnessed during my high school days was but a glimpse into a long and hard struggle of a people; the sustained and protracted resistance took many years; many lives of local leaders and indigenous inhabitants were lost; and victory finally came after a united front of inter-tribal collaboration. And the Chico River continues devotedly to be the River of Life to the Cordillerans.”

Solidarity messages were also shared by members of allied organizations. Tess Tesalona of the Centre for Philippine Concerns said that there is a need for continuous vigilance among the Cordillerans. She emphasized the importance of international solidarity for the continuing struggles of the indigenous people in the Philippines as more are now dislocated or will lose their livelihood as an effect of the all-out mining liberalization of the Philippine government. Likewise, indigenous leaders from mining-affected communities are also being killed.

Malcolm Guy, also from the Centre for Philippine Concerns, added that there are still numerous sad stories of indigenous people being displaced due to mining operations, not just in the Cordillera, but also in other regions of the Philippines. He said that whenever he visited the Philippines, he witnessed how environmental destruction continues to affect the lives of the people while the military and paramilitary groups harass indigenous people to leave their ancestral lands.

FIPOQ was founded in 2013 in Montreal. Its mission is to promote culture and advance the rights for ancestral domain through building solidarity with all indigenous people in the Philippines and around the world. As part of their activities, FIPOQ hosts events whenever there are progressive community leaders from the Cordillera visiting Montreal so that they can discuss and exchange insights about the issues in Cordillera. FIPOQ also joins in the Nuestro Americana Friendship Parade, wherein they get to meet other indigenous groups from all over Quebec in a festivity. FIPOQ has also established a linkage for cultural exchange with the First Nations in Wenawac, a community for indigenous people in Quebec.