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First Posted on Inside Mindanao: April 4, 2007
Sea-dwelling tribe claims sea as ancestral domain
By Ellen Red
continued from page 1
In an article published on Culture of Peace Studies Journal of Ateneo de Zamboanga, Perla de Castro wrote, "The loss of their [Bajau] traditional fishing grounds to big commercial fishing businessmen have so exacerbated their pitiful socio-economic condition that in large groups they have taken refuge in key cities of Visayas and Luzon to engage in begging..."
Jaafar Alari, the panglima or the tribal leader of the Bajau in Sitangkai, told Inside Mindanao, "Our ancestors were fortunate as they had very wide fishing ground then."
Panglima Alari said this very wide fishing ground at the Sulu Sea made the ancestors of the Bajau lived in timber-made boats called lepah which were also used as a home—a place to eat, sleep, and fish.
At the back of Panglima Alari's stilt house, an old lepah is displayed—a reminder to the new generation of Bajau of their boat-dwelling ancestors.
Due to the limited fishing ground, Panglima Alari said the Bajau people do not anymore live in lepah, but instead live in stilt houses or lumah—forming sea villages like the one at Sowang Pukul.
Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title
On October 21, 2005, the indigenous cultural community of Bajau in barangays Sangali and Victoria, Zamboanga City was awarded a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) pursuant to Republic Act 8371, otherwise known as the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act, an act which recognizes the rights of indigenous cultural communities/indigenous peoples.
The said CADT is the first CADT issued to include the sea. The CADT of the Bajau in Zamboanga City covers 191 hectares, of which 48 hectares is a mangrove area, 12 hectares foreshore, and 131 hectares of the adjacent sea.
The CADT specifically provides that the Bajau in Sangali and Victoria has the right "to hold in ownership" the 191 hectares "as their private but community property... to develop, control, manage and utilize collectively the said ancestral domain with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities, subject to the condition that the said ancestral domain shall not be sold, disposed, nor destroyed."
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