From Under This Hat: “William F. Billy Claver”, a compilation of speeches ‘72-’92

5 MIN READ

By KATHLEEN T. OKUBO
www.nordis.net

Last Tuesday, December 14, at the CRC hall by the bishop’s house at Baguio Cathedral was a “soft launching” of the book, “ William F. Billy Claver”, a compilation of speeches from 1972 to 1992, “towards genuine implementation of the indigenous peoples rights law.”

Giovan Reyes, the other editor introduced the book in his opening remarks, and I am reprinting here a shortened version to introduce the forthcoming book.

Madame and manang Jane Claver, members of the Claver Family, colleagues in the indigenous peoples movement, friends, ladies and gentlemen: Gawis ay agew ya dagdagup tako am-in. Nan nagapo isnan nateketeken ay lugar – especially the representatives from places and remote communities of CARAGA Region, Mindanao who are here with us today.

As you are perhaps aware, that part of the country is being colonized by large scale extractive mining, nothing will be left of the environment if the Manobo and Mamanwas will be pushed out and their ancestral lands turned into waste land. At any rate, how elating really that people of diverse views and perspectives are gathered today by a common interest – for a book that I believe will resonate long in the future – as an educational tool for our children and our children’s children.

My friends, I’d like to think that in a way, this gathering is some kind of an Editorial Board Meeting or if you like, a meeting of “co-authors” in the sense that the communities where we come from served as the primary sources in which the author himself based much of his reflections.

Being a province-mate and having had the privilege of working under Billy in early 2000, and dwell on such complex concerns that is largely the domain of lawyers, such as the implementation of indigenous rights law, I have no doubt that Billy’s reflections about indigenous peoples, particularly the Igorots, specifically Bontoks and Kalingas whom he dearly loved, form the immediate surrounding material and cultural reality as primary sources of his perceptions and thoughts.

In turn, these perceptions and thoughts formed the bases of his arguments. His statements etched on bond papers will not just be collections with limited circulation, to be lent to researchers, to be misplaced or in danger of getting lost. This time, these statements will find space in pages with assured permanency.

Billy used much of his reflections and statements in defense of ancestral domain and resources for the people. In the process, he was in fact re-orienting deeply ingrained attitudes imposed by western law and jurisprudence, which is ironically the same discipline where he was trained as a lawyer. These deeply ingrained attitudes are described by Judge Richard Posner writing on Friedrich Nietsche’s classic essay “On the Use and Disadvantages of History for Life”. I quote it at length:

”Law is the most historically – oriented, or if you like the most ‘past-dependent’. It venerates tradition, precedent, pedigree, ritual, customs, ancient practices, ancient texts, archaic terminology, maturity, wisdom, seniority, gerontocracy and interpretation conceived of as a method of recovering history. It is suspicious of innovation, discontinuities, ‘paradigm shifts’ and the energy and brashness of youth.”

Posner continued, “these ingrained attitudes are obstacles to anyone who wants to re-orient law in a more pragmatic direction”.

When manong Billy introduced the ancestral domain bill before the 1971 Constitutional Convention to change the American-inspired 1935 constitution, he introduced a radical concept that went against a doctrine imposed for three hundred years under the King of Spain, one hundred years under Americans through an entity called the State and throughout the post-Commonwealth Republic.

He sought to ‘extirpate’ this Regalian Doctrine that gave State powers dominion over ownership of all lands of the public domain. The ruling class at that time did not allow this to pass. The date for the conventions’ adoption of the ancestral domain bill was overlapped by former President Marcos order to his delegates to deliberate on the issue of shifting from presidential to parliamentary form of government. The ancestral domain bill was never taken up – and Marcos would not have permitted it.

What Billy could not achieve in the Constitutional Convention in 1972, was achieved in the 1987 Constitution. The change in administration from Martial Law to Cory Aquino’s liberal democratic politics provided opening for Billy Claver to push the agenda of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance, not losing momentum of the mobilization against the Chico Dam Project in the ‘70s and ‘80s.The lobbying by CPA following EDSA 1 was largely responsible for the adoption of constitutional provisions recognizing indigenous peoples rights.

As congressman of the 8th congress from 1987 to 1992, he introduced a bill entitled “An Act Creating the Commission on Indigenous Cultural Communities and Ancestral Domain, Defining its Powers and Functions and Appropriating Funds Therefor”, the forerunner of what is now called the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).

Now, the idea of compiling manong Billy’s speeches and putting these into book form traces its roots during that period when the first three years of implementation of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act exposed what many saw was the perversity of the law’s original spirit and intent. With NCIP making wonders for large scale extractive mining, Billy asked, “Where in the implementation of the IPRA law is the sacred responsibility to protect ancestral lands?

This was manong Billy’s question that triggered the idea. We asked him, “what about tracing back your statements as recorded and written and make a compilation of these so that more indigenous peoples could read and learn lesson from such views?” Initially, the idea was something like putting these speeches together as a sourcebook or a “native” reader of sorts.

The speeches are from 1972 up to 1992. On the basic theme of ancestral domain. We may not have collected all speeches he had made, written and delivered but we are sure that the speeches chosen are representative of the span of his work and would still be complete to explicitate his key points in the mainstream campaign for indigenous peoples rights and individual human rights.

We tried as best to keep the wholeness of each speech and to minimize the repeated use of the same prefatory note or explanation, because some speeches were after all presented at different times and to different audiences.

To make the book simple and straightforward, Billy’s name serves as the title of the book. This means the manuscript will likewise be made simple and readable.

Let me now acknowledge the group on whose collective support for this book project was based: Jo Dongail of the Reality of Aid global secretariat; Kathleen T. Okubo, editor of Northern Dispatch Weekly; Professor Julienne R. Dulnuan, of the University of the Philippines Asian Institute of Tourism; Professor Michiyo Y. Reyes, University of the Philippines Asian Center; and Geraldine Fiag-oy, member of the board, Teb-tebba Foundation.

For their unprecedented support and finding common cause endorsing this book: Our gratitude to Vicky Tauli Corpuz, Executive Director of Teb-tebba Foundation for providing a grant for the book’s publication; Abigail B. Anongos and Elvira Taguba, secretary-general and treasurer, respectively, of the Cordillera People’s Alliance and Audrey Beltran of the Cordillera Human Rights Alliance, for the archival photos. And Richard Abellon, Jr. for sharing other photos.

Special thanks are due to Mr. Victor Ananayo of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines’ Diocese of Northern Philippines and Ms. Joanna K. Cariño, member, Advisory Council of the Cordillera Peoples Alliance, whose information and knowledge about Billy Claver’s service forms Chapter One (1) of the book. # nordis.net