City declares Feb. 23, 2010, 1st Ibaloi Day

By KATHLEEN T. OKUBO
www.nordis.net

BAGUIO CITY — In a resolution passed by the City counncil recently and finally approved by Mayor Reinaldo Bautista, Jr. last week, February 23 has been declared Ibaloy day. The first Ibaloy day will then be observed on a Tuesday in 2010, “and the next years thereof as approved in the resolution.

This resolution came as a result of joint efforts by members of indigenous peoples rights advocate organizations and individuals, the academe in the Baguio Centennial commemoration, and councilors Perlita Chan – Rondez, Popo Cosalan of the Land and Housing committee of the city council who after the Baguio Centennial Conference last March at the University of the Phillipines here, agreed there should be something done for the Ibaloys in this centennial year of Baguio.

The date was when Mateo Cariño, an Ibaloi, the first elected popular representative to the Chief Executive of the American Insular Government, then won a land registration case when his pasture lands in Ypit and Lubas were “grabbed and converted into Camp John Hay.” After six years of case proceedings, the US Supreme Court finally affirmed that “Mateo Carino indeed owned the land by Native Title.”

History shows that “Mateo Cariño did not live to claim his victory, having died on June 6, 1908, before the final decision of the US Supreme court.
Notwithstanding, he left behind the legacy of the decision on Native Title which has now become part of the laws of the land and even of international law. The US Supreme Court decision was made on February 23, 1909. This is the significance of February 23 to the native ibaloi clans;”

Furthermore, before the Americans came and created the chartered city of Baguio, it was owned by and home to a number of Ibaloi clans. The indigenous Ibaloi lineages who were here since time immemorial were those of Cariño, Carantes, Molintas, Suello, Tagley, Piraso, Pucay and their extended family systems.

These native Ibaloi clans were dispossessed of their ancestral lands with the creation of the Baguio Townsite Reservation in 1907, the chartered city in 1909, and earlier colonial legislation such as the Philippine Bill of 1902, the Land Registration Act of 1903, and other similar legislation. Their ancestral lands were declared as public lands and confiscated to make way for the chartered city.

As the prime example, City Hall, Baguio Central School, Rizal Park, Burnham Park, Melvin Jones grounds, Athletic Bowl and immediate environs within a one kilometer radius in the heart of the city stand on what was once Mateo Cariño’s home Kafagway, grabbed from him without any compensation whatsoever by Act 636.

Many other Ibaloi ancestral lands were expropriated without compensation for various national reservations and city development purposes throughout history, and that in fact, the history of the chartered city is also a history of the large-scale dispossession of the native Ibaloi families from their ancestral lands.

In a paper, Joanna Cariño, of the clan said, “The General Assembly of the United Nations recently approved the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, central of which are the prior rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands. The Philippine government is a signatory to this declaration.

Now is therefore an auspicious time for the local government to do affirmative action with regard to the recognition of indigenous peoples rights.”

As Baguio City celebrates its centennial as a chartered city, the local government must have a sense of history, look back and acknowledge the injustice that was caused to the native Ibaloi in the creation of the chartered city. It is high time the City government do affirmative action to redress the abovementioned historical injustice, even if only symbolically.#nordis.net