Finally, titled land for non-Moro tribe in Muslim Mindanao
DAVAO CITY—Barring another snag, the Teduray-Lambangian tribe, one of the non-Moro indigenous peoples’ (IPs) groups in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARRM), expect their certificate of ancestral domain title (CADT) to be finally released in June next year.
This was promised to them by the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs (Mipa) and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) following the series of intensive dialogues between the two government agencies, the concerned IP tribes and other stakeholders, starting in February until November this year.
Leticio Datuwata, the supreme chief of the Timuay Justice and Governance (TJG), the IPs’ structure of the Teduray-Lambangian tribe, said that the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Energy (Menre) in the BARMM was currently in the process of segregating all existing legal tenurial instruments within their ancestral domain claim so that these land titles would be overlaid on the map of their approved title.
“By June, the CADT would be released, that is their commitment,” Datuwata told the Inquirer by phone on Sunday.
Covered areas
Except for some 2,234 hectares of land that overlapped with two other CADTs by other non-Moro tribes in the area, and which the tribe was willing to waive, the Teduray-Lambangian ancestral domain claim covers 208,258 hectares of land that spans eight towns in Maguindanao del Sur, part of Maguindanao del Norte, six villages of Lebak town, Sultan Kudarat; and 14,000 hectares of water.
Datuwata said the TJG had already passed the community resolution waiving their claim over the 2,234 hectares covered by CADT 214 and CADT 229 in Esperanza town of Sultan Kudarat, which happened to overlap in their ancestral domain claim.
“By January (2026), we would be submitting the community resolution to the NCIP and Menre which is already doing the segregation,” Datuwata said.
The processing of their ancestral domain claim was already at its height in 2019, when the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) issued a cease-and-desist order halting the processing by NCIP, which the BTA claimed no longer had jurisdiction over the BARMM territory.
But in a series of dialogs that culminated on Nov. 4, Mipa had agreed that NCIP, being a national body, and the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 (Ipra) being a national law, still had jurisdiction over IP rights in the BARMM, or that the BARMM has no exclusive power over IP matters in the BARMM.
Mipa will issue the CADT within 90 days from turn over of documents by the NCIP, subject to the issuance of a certificate of nonoverlap signed by Menre, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Agrarian Reform and the Land Registration Authority.
Ipra, or Republic Act No. 8371, passed in 1997, is a landmark law that recognizes, protects, and promotes the rights of indigenous cultural communities/IPs to their ancestral domains, self-governance, cultural integrity and human rights. The NCIP is established to implement the law.
