Cruz and Europa v. Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources

shown during the period unto the Commonwealth and the early years of the Philippine Republic when government organized and supported massive resettlement of the people to the land of the ICCs." Senate Bill No. 1728 seeks to genuinely recognize the IPs right to own and possess their ancestral land. The bill was prepared also under the principle of parens patriae inherent in the supreme power of the State and deeply embedded in Philippine legal tradition. This principle mandates that persons suffering from serious disadvantage or handicap, which places them in a position of actual inequality in their relation or transaction with others, are entitled to the protection of the State. Senate Bill No. 1728 was passed on Third Reading by twenty-one (21) Senators voting in favor and none against, with no abstention.[112] House Bill No. 9125 was sponsored by Rep. Zapata, Chairman of the Committee on Cultural Communities. It was originally authored and subsequently presented and defended on the floor by Rep. Gregorio Andolana of North Cotabato.[113] Rep. Andolana's sponsorhip speech reads as follows: "This Representation, as early as in the 8th Congress, filed a bill of similar implications that would promote, recognize the rights of indigenous cultural communities within the framework of national unity and development. Apart from this, Mr. Speaker, is our obligation, the government's obligation to assure and ascertain that these rights shall be well-preserved and the cultural traditions as well as the indigenous laws that remained long before this Republic was established shall be preserved and promoted. There is a need, Mr. Speaker, to look into these matters seriously and early approval of the substitute bill shall bring into reality the aspirations, the hope and the dreams of more than 12 million Filipinos that they be considered in the mainstream of the Philippine society as we fashion for the year 2000." [114] Rep. Andolana stressed that H.B. No. 9125 is based on the policy of preservation as mandated in the Constitution. He also emphasized that the rights of IPs to their land was enunciated in Cariño v. Insular Government which recognized the fact that they had vested rights prior to the establishment of the Spanish and American regimes.[115] After exhaustive interpellation, House Bill No. 9125, and its corresponding amendments, was approved on Second Reading with no objections. IV. THE PROVISIONS OF THE IPRA DO NOT CONTRAVENE THE CONSTITUTION. A. Ancestral Domains and Ancestral Lands are the Private Property of Indigenous Peoples and Do Not Constitute Part of the Land of the Public Domain. The IPRA grants to ICCs/IPs a distinct kind of ownership over ancestral domains and ancestral lands. Ancestral lands are not the same as ancestral domains. These are defined in Section 3 [a] and [b] of the Indigenous Peoples Right Act, viz: