Laws and Policies, Good and Bad
RIGHTS AIPP
AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP
EXAMPLE: TEXTBOOKS FOR INDIGENOUS EDUCATION
In the Philippines, the IPRA allows indigenous communities to exercise control over the education of their children. Whether in the schools that the communities themselves
have established, or in those that were built within their locality by a church or by the government, teachers are allowed to conduct lower grade classes in the indigenous lan-
guages so that students can grasp basic ideas more readily. Also, the communities can intervene such that false information and discriminatory ideas about their people – es-
pecially about their history – is corrected.
But textbook production is centralized, and teachers are taught by both the Depart- ment of Education and the Civil Service Commission to be true to the texts in their teach-
ing. This is a source of at least two major difficulties for the teachers: 1 how they can help their students grasp what the textbooks say in Filipino or in English; 2 how they
should deal, and help their students deal, with any false information or discriminatory idea they encounter in the textbooks.
Textbook correction and translation are not a priority of the Department of Educa- tion – which is among the departments that receive the lowest budgetary allocations
from the Philippine government. Unless decentralized, translation would also be an ex- tremely difficult task to undertake in a country where the SIL has listed 171 distinct,
living languages.
A similar problem besets Malaysia, where the SIL has listed 140 distinct, living lan- guages. There is space for the use of indigenous languages in the school system, but
there are no funds available from the government for the production of textbooks in these languages.
For Discussion: Higher Education and Acculturation
Governments in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and India have attempted to facilitate the upliftment of indigenous peoples’ economic condition and social status by
providing scholarships in higher education as well as imposing acceptance and employ- ment quotas that will ensure indigenous people’s access to universities and establish-
ments.
In the Philippines and in India, however, this has often resulted in the acculturation of indigenous scholars – indeed, in some cases, not only has the indigenous scholar been
estranged from his or her culture but come to belittle it. In a few cases, the scholars have become so alienated from their respective cultures that they can no longer return to
their localities and use their knowledge and skills in the service of their communities.
How should we view this? Indigenous peoples’ cultural rights are especially difficult to secure in countries where the
scarcity of resources and the de-prioritization of cultural concerns do not allow governments to invest in the development and operation of instruments or mechanisms for rights-protection;
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RIGHTS AIPP
AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP
also in countries where economic need overrides the need to protect cultural rights against vio- lation by, say, the tourism industry.
Indigenous peoples’ cultural rights are most difficult to secure in environments character- ized by religious intolerance. They are similarly difficult to secure in countries where govern-
ments promote a one-nation, one-people, one-culture, one-language policy. The consequence of this policy in Japan, for example, was official denial of the very existence of the Ainu and the
various Ryukyuan peoples for many centuries. It was only in June 2008 when the Japanese par- liament finally conceded that the Ainu, who occupied the island of Hokkaido and the disputed
borderlands between Japan and Russia, were an indigenous people with their own language, re- ligion and way of life quite distinct from those of the Japanese majority, and were entitled to the
rights provided in the UNDRIP. Up to now, the Japanese parliament remains silent on the status of the Ryukyuan peoples who occupy the Okinawa archipelago or the Kingdom of Ryukyu up to
annexation by Japan in 1879.
Gaps Analysis
UNDRIP NATIONAL OR GAPS
CONSIDERATIONS OPTIONS PROVISIONS ON
LOCAL LAWS IMPLICATIONS
RECOMMENDATIONS CULTURAL RIGHTS OR POLICIES
Paragraph or Specific laws, Specific laws, Can current laws,
What needs to be Article number
policies policies NOT
policies be used to done? How? By conforming
conforming support indigenous whom? Where?
with UNDRIP with UNDRIP peoples’ positions When? For how
or interests? Are long?
there loopholes in the law that can be
used for or against indigenous
peoples? Should the matter be
approached legally? Or politically?
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RIGHTS AIPP
AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP