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Bishop hits 'red-tagging' of word lumad in recent NCIP resolution


A church official has criticized the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples’ move to ban the use of the term “lumad” in referring to indigenous peoples in Mindanao because the term has been linked to communists rebels.

In an article on Church-run CBCP News, Cagayan de Oro Archbishop Jose Cabantan said that even words are not spared from "red-tagging."

He said that for NCIP's guidance, the Cebuano term "lumad", meaning native or indigenous people (IP) is not coined by Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF).

“The State’s red scare campaign is now targeting even words,” Cabantan lamented. 

“Directly associating the word Lumad with the NDF-CPP-NPA as if this word was coined by the communist rebels and, consequently, banning it from popular usage is a total disservice to the history of the struggles of the indigenous peoples,” he added.

Cabantan's comment stemmed from the NCIP’s Resolution 08-009-2021 denouncing the use of the term “lumad”, urging the use of their ethnic group names instead.

The NCIP claimed, according to Cabantan, that the word’s “emergency and continued use (are) marred by its association” with the rebels “whose ideologies are not consistent with the cultures, practices and beliefs” of the IPs.

Further, Cabantan said that the NCIP's resolution exposes the agency's ignorance about how the lumad struggles unfolded in Mindanao in the last 60 years.

“All they could have done was… to gather all published and unpublished books, articles in journals, and documentations from various sources so they could have known how lumad, as a word referring to Mindanao’s IPs, entered popular usage. A number of these are readily available,” the bishop said.

Cabantan asked the NCIP to reconsider its resolution and “not to be derailed in their mandate to serve the IPs of this country by engaging in actions that are only counter-productive and can only lead to fragmentations among our ranks.”

On March 2, the NCIP issued Resolution 08-009-2021 denouncing the use of the term “lumad” when referring to Indigenous Cultural Communities (ICC) and different Indigenous Peoples (IPs) groups.

It stated that the elders, leaders, and members of different ICC/IP groups in Mindanao requested that they not be called “lumad”. —LBG, GMA News

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