EXPERIENCES AND LESSONS LEARNED

RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP ders of migrant urban poor villages protested the Grand Cañao for its prostitution of sacred ceremonies and its false projection of peace and prosperity in the region. Their protest became a movement in its own right, lasting from 1978 to 1983, and drawing the participation of thousands. After five years of being disrupted by protest marches and being challenged with a Counter-Grand Cañao, the event was renamed by the Marcos dictatorship as the High- land Festival. This, however, did not sidetrack protestors. And so the first Highland Fes- tival, held in 1983, also became the last. The campaign against the Grand Cañao, a.k.a. Highland Festival, was the first protest movement in the Philippines to focus on the issue of respect for indigenous peoples’ cultures. For Discussion: Government-Sponsored Festivals In India, the government holds cross-district cultural exchange festivals among stu- dents, in an affirmation of diversity. But in the Philippines, the government holds cul- tural festivals primarily for tourism – for promoting the idea that the Philippines are fiesta islands. In the Philippines’ Cordillera Administrative Region, where an intense protest cam- paign against the exploitation of culture for tourism was waged during the late 1970s and early 1980s, the festivals are, ironically, now drawing massive participation from the same sector that once spearheaded the said protest – the studentry. Elders frown on the festivals. And those of the Pidlisan tribe of the Northern Kankanaey of Sagada even censure tribal youth who participate in the Mountain Province’s Lang-ayan Festival. But the young people in the Mountain Province and elsewhere say the festivals are “our chance to show our pride in what we are.” What are the implications of festivals like these? Should the students participate in them?

V. CHALLENGES

A. Three Levels of Challenges

1. The participants’ needs, capacity and proposed strategies for promoting compli- ance with UNDRIP provisions on the cultural rights of indigenous peoples; 2. The implementation of the said strate- gies; and 3. The monitoring of this implementa- tion. This final section should be a participa- tory process of envisioning and identifica- tion for the particular context of the par- ticipants. • Discuss with the participants the three main points as listed below. • Split up the participants into work- shop groups, and have them do poster presentations afterwards, in plenary. Suggested Method 112 Module-5 RIGHTS AIPP AIPP Regional Capacity Building Program - Training Manual on the UNDRIP

B. Some Suggested Strategies

1. Information-dissemination, education on cultural rights not only among indigenous com- munities but also among the wider population. 2. National, local status assessment, problem-identification and strategizing, preparatory to 3. Lobbying national, local legislative bodies to address cultural rights as provided for in the UNDRIP; 4. Drumming up support for the lobby through media projection, community and school petition-signing campaigns, etc. 5. Following successful lobbies, educating local and national executiveenforcement author- ities, also educators, mass media practitioners and religious authorities on indigenous peoples’ cultural rights: the rights per se, as contained in the UNDRIP, as contained in the national consti- tution where applicable, and as provided for in specific national and local laws. 6. Conceptualizing, planning, implementing actions and projects in the exercise of cultural rights and in gaining redress for the violation of these. Examples of such actions and projects include: • indigenous roots renewal program for urban youth; • textbook-correction and teachers’ re-education projects aimed at rectifying discrimi- natory notions, misconceptions, misinformation, inaccuracies about indigenous peoples and their cultures; • projects in revitalizing and gaining recognition and respect for indigenous learning systems and institutions; • community dialogues, discussions with educational and religious authorities, media practitioners; • campaign for the return of religious, other sacred, historical and other culturally im- portant artifacts taken to museums, collections, laboratories; • campaign for the return of human remains taken to museums, collections, laborato- ries; • campaign for the International Rice Research Institute, other plant breeding institu- tions, commercial seed companies to return and help communities re-propagate the seeds they have taken, purportedly for ex-situ conservation, then replaced with their own Green Revolution seeds or hybrids, and effectively wiped out; • campaign for the revocation of private individual or corporate, or institutional patents to genetic resources for food and medicine which can be identified and ascertained as material originally discovered, domesticatedcultivated, breddeveloped, and propa- gated by indigenous communities; • an alternative option would be to demand to be given a just share of the benefits from the use of indigenous peoples’ “intellectual property”. 113 Module-5