Cruz and Europa v. Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources

transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal systems. This historical continuity may consist of the continuation, for an extended period reaching into the present, of one or more of the following factors: (a) Occupation of ancestral lands, or at least of part of them; (b) Common ancestry with the original occupants of these lands; (c) Culture in general, or in specific manifestations (such as religion, living under a tribal system, membership of an indigenous community, dress, means of livelihood, life-style, etc.); (d) Language (whether used as the only language, as mother-tongue, as the habitual means of communication at home or in the family, or as the main, preferred, habitual, general or normal language); (e) Residence in certain parts of the country; or in certain regions of the world; (f) Other relevant facts.[6] In Philippine constitutional law, the term "indigenous peoples" pertains to those groups of Filipinos who have retained a high degree of continuity from pre-Conquest culture.[7] Philippine legal history, however, has not been kind to the indigenous peoples, characterized them as "uncivilized,"[8] "backward people,"[9] with "barbarous practices"[10] and "a low order of intelligence."[11] Drawing inspiration from both our fundamental law and international law, IPRA now employs the politically- correct conjunctive term "indigenous peoples/indigenous cultural communities" as follows: Sec. 3. Definition of Terms.-- For purposes of this Act, the following terms shall mean: x x x (h) Indigenous peoples/Indigenous cultural communities.— refer to a group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed and utilized such territories, sharing common bonds of language, customs, traditions, and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and cultures, became historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos. Indigenous peoples shall likewise include peoples who are regarded as indigenous on account of their descent from the populations which inhabited the country at the time of conquest or colonization, or at the time of inroads of non-indigenous religions and cultures, or the establishment of present State boundaries, who retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural and political institutions, but who may have been displaced from their traditional domains or who may have resettled outside their ancestral domains x x x. Long before the Spaniards set foot in these islands, the indigenous peoples were already plowing our soil and hunting in our forests. The Filipinos of Aeta and Malay stock, who were the original inhabitants of our