Elusive Peace in Mindanao

Everyone who loves peace must take a stand for peace.  Within one’s capabilities and capacities, one should endeavor to make peace a reality.

The Ampatuan Massacre has brought to the fore the violence that always seethes just below the surface of Mindanao.  It comes at a time when Peace Talks are scheduled to re-open for the Nth time in Mindanao and does not bode well.

But Mindanao is much, much more than this and it shouldn’t turn people away.  It is a beautiful place that holds many fond memories of the last time I ventured deep into its hinterlands in search of tribes who have survived and still work to overcome economic and political marginalization and discrimination.

It is time to give it another try.

The following is the entry proposal submitted to the KaSaMa, the 5 Embassy-UNDP-Eurocom conglomerate in search for innovative human rights initiatives in the Philippines which I blogged about in October.  Whether it wins or not, I post excerpts of it here for posterity.

START-UP PROJECT FOR DEP-ED ACCREDITED, CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE, PRE-SCHOOL HOME-SCHOOL CURICULUM FOR INDIGENOUS CHILDREN OF THE MENUVÙ & MEHINDANEW (CENTRAL MINDANAO); A Project Proposal submitted for funding to KaSaMa

This submission proposes for funding a start-up project for pre-school home-school education among 80 selected children of the Menuvù & Islamized Mehindanew tribes of the Pulangi River, Cotabato, Central Mindanao.  The start up project will begin what is envisioned as a seven-year program for curriculum review and implementation to enable several batches of community scholars to graduate elementary school.

As far as the proponent and its partner Indigenous Peoples organizations are aware, there are no equivalent projects among other indigenous peoples in the country.

The concentration of indigenous peoples organizations have so far remained focused on advocacy issues affecting the environment (mining, illegal logging, corporate plantations, etc.) and ancestral domain titling applications. The closest program is for college scholarship education utilizing a ladderized curriculum for Indigenous Peoples offered at the University of Southern Mindanao in Kabacan, North Cotabato and the “Pamulaan” college scholarship offered by the University of Southern Philippines in Katalunan Grande, Davao City.

The assertion of the right to ancestral land and self-governance take the form of Certificates of Ancestral Domain Titles (CADT) issued by the Philippine government thru its implementing agency the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) organized under the legal mandate of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act or Republic Act N°. 8371.

The Derepa te Erumanen ne Menuvu, one of the partner Peoples Organization is pursuing a unified CADT claim over an estimated 400,000 hectares stretching from Cotabato to Bukidnon and are now authorized by the NCIP to undertake a ground survey.

The Islamized Mehindanew of the Pulangi River, on the other hand, have agreed to allow this project to be located in a 2,000 hectare area called the Kamanga area adjacent to a Mehindanew/Moro/Muslim community across the Pulangi River. Both Menuvu and Mehindanew have agreed to secure this area and keep it free from crossfire in the event MILF-GRP talks break down and hostilities erupt.  This area was traditionally part of the Menuvu domain but it was abandoned during the Ilaga-Blackshirts war during early Martial law.

This culturally appropriate educational pilot project for very young children is perceived as a fundamental element in the struggle for reclamation of tribal/clan collective dignity or “vansá” and for the inter-generational sustainability of their struggle to assert their collective rights amid political and economic marginalization.  It is also envisioned as a peace effort between Islamized and Un-Islamized Indigenous Tribes for them to discover their common ancestry/heritage through interaction between elders, mothers, fathers, teacher-professionals and children.

The great distances between public school facilities and the dwellings of the indigenous tribes, the discrimination built into the mainstream’s curriculum, the costs of tuition and school books as well as the discrimination suffered by the children on a day to day basis are prohibitive factors that result in many families opting for illiteracy.  On the one hand, this high illiteracy level has protected them from being thoroughly integrated into the mainstream consciousness resulting in the loss of indigenous identity.  On the other, it has prevented them from contributing to the development of their ancestral domains leaving them vulnerable to outside incursions leading to dispossession/evacuation.

This proposal’s objectives are: i. to facilitate community elders’ review and revision of existing DepEd-accredited homeschool program/s; ii. To allow a core-group of literate mothers and/or other family members preferably DepEd Teachers who hail from the Menuvu & Mehindanew tribes to guide 80 pre-school age students through courses contained in government-accredited modules that are programmed into desktop computers which call for periodic exams supervised by the Department of Education (DepEd); iii. to produce 5 digitized modules for 1. ART/ART HISTORY; 2. MUSIC/MUSIC HISTORY; 3. PHYSICAL EDUCATION/INDIGENOUS GAMES; 4. FUNDAMENTALS OF MATH; 5. ALPHABET & WORD READING & HANDWRITING in MENUVU & MEHINDANEW;ENGLISH & TAGALOG; iv. to have the project site declared a FREE-ZONE and to have it secured by the partner POs to prevent it from being used as evacuation site or to free it from violence in the event RP-GRP negotiations break down in a tripartite agreement with the Department of national Defense (DND).

Indigenous Peoples Children’s Rights especially in times of armed conflict are protected under Republic Act No. 9344 to wit: “The administration of the juvenile justice and welfare system shall take into consideration the cultural and religious perspectives of the Filipino people, particularly the indigenous people and the Muslims, consistent with the protection of the rights of children belonging to these communities.”  The Philippines is also signatory to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as the UN Convention against Racial Discrimination. Lastly, the Philippines has acceded to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The next objectives are no longer covered by this proposal due to time and money constraints but the long-term objectives must be stated here to make sense of the entire thrust of this pilot project, thus:  v. To obtain government awarded scholastic achievement for 80 children of pre-school ages (ages 4-6) vi.  To review curriculum for grade 1 in preparation for the second cycle of the program and to secure the funding support to sustain the start-up program into a full-blown program to enable curriculum review and implementation up to grade 6 for eventual replication of the process in other indigenous tribes.

A thorough review of the homeschool curriculum by the elders of the two tribes given technical support by the DepEd teachers is necessary to screen, adapt and supplement the content to reflect core values of the tribe.

The result of the review will be a new curriculum which shall be then presented to the Department of Education (DepEd), properly endorsed by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), so that accreditation may be secured. For the Pilot Project, only Kindergarten and  Prep curricula/course contents will be subject of review and reformulation.

The Pilot Program will then be launched by organizing a homeschool teachers group composed of at least 8 literate community-based relatives of the 80 Menuvu and Mehindanew children who will be chosen as first pilot batch of scholars.  The revised curriculum will hopefully be taught in 8-10 months and success will be gauged by the percentage of passing grades in DepEd’s supervised periodic examinations as well as the oral examination administered by the elders on core values.

While the pilot project is ongoing, preparations for curriculum review for grade 1 will be undertaken by the elders review committee so that there will be continuity in the education of the 80 community scholars. The pilot program community will be continuously assisted by the proponent until self-reliant.

Within the next six years, the revised curriculum for elementary level will be ready for other clans/tribes to avail of.  Consultancy/teacher’s training services will be thereafter offered by the beneficiaries of this project.  Teachers from other clans/tribes will be invited for on-the-job-training to facilitate the earliest replication of the program in their areas.  The concerned clan/tribe shall shoulder the costs of the OJT of their trainee teacher.

Objectives:

In the long-term, the value of this pilot program will be to make culturally appropriate education within reach of all indigenous peoples in the country inculcating the core values of respect for mother earth, peaceful co-existence with other peoples, protection of ancestral domain, embracing tribe-specific culture, customary laws and indigenous knowledge; and over-all inculcation of self-worth and pride in one’s indigenous roots.  Imbibed at the earliest stage of development, these core values will be determinative of intergenerational survival of the tribe.  Self-reliance in the area of education is also invaluable for sustainability of ancestral domain management.

In the immediate term, it is envisioned that the participation of the elders and women in the process of curriculum review and program implementation, will be empowering as they are given the opportunity of integrating core values into the teaching modules and take personal responsibility for the education of the very young.  Culturally appropriate education of these children will also inspire hope and fire up collective activity as the tribe takes responsibility for their survival grounded upon the rediscovered leadership capability of tribal elders and womenfolk as repositories of indigenous culture, tradition, customary law and indigenous knowledge.

In the next year of implementation, the proponent and its partner community hopes to produce 80 children who can read and write in English and Tagalog; count and do basic math computations and be familiar with basic scientific principles but whose lessons in civics and society and core value formation are culturally appropriate.

The curricula is initially envisioned to contain 1. Art and Art History meaning basketry/weaving/metal crafts/painting, etc. 2. Music & Poetry and History of Music/Poetry; 3. English/Tagalog/Mehindanew/Menuvu Alphabet reading & writing letters/words 4. Basic Arithmetic 5. Phys Ed–Sports & Games of the Menuvu and Mehindanew.  One subject per day of the week. Saturdays will be dedicated to guiding the mothers/relatives in charge of the scholar to share progress/problems/feedback on the child’s response to & development based on the implemented curricula.

The first year of this project will only cost PhP 1M, roughly USD 21,000.00.   With such modest funding, we intend to keep it sustainable.

More importantly, its impact in terms of contributing to the peace effort and intergenerational survival of the peoples who are the “cradle” of Philippine civilization — is incalculable.