By By Raoul Manuel
More than a year has passed after the Cinemalaya 2024 best film “Tumandok” was released with the aim of shedding light on the struggles of indigenous peoples in the island of Panay. Since then, attacks on and marginalization of our country’s indigenous groups have not stopped, and we are nearing five years since the Tumandok massacre.
Seldom can the stories of indigenous people land on the big screen. Much seldom are members of these groups cast as actors who speak their own language in a film about their stories. For these feats, the team behind the film “Tumandok” deserves credit.
I am glad that the film did not rely on the usual portrayal of indigenous people as bearers of artifacts, ornaments, and costumes. It focused on the harsh realities that the indigenous people face, and did not shy away from depicting the insincerity of many government officials and the brutality of armed state forces toward the indigenous.
The film effectively relayed to viewers that when some members of indigenous groups reach urban centers to take on informal jobs (or to be street mendicants), it’s not because they wanted to in the first place. It’s because they have been displaced from their ancestral lands by greedy corporations in cahoots with military and paramilitary units.
As to the title of the film, the word can mean two things for residents of Panay. On one hand, ‘tumandok’ literally means ‘native-born’ in the local context. On the other hand, ‘Tumandok’ is specifically used to denote the indigenous group in the mountainous areas of Central Panay.
Anthropologist Dr. Alicia Magos, in her paper “Sugidanon (Epics) of Central Panay” confirms this. In the paper, the Tumandok are referred to as the mountain dwellers of Central Panay, including Capiz and the towns of Calinog and Lambunao in Iloilo.
The Tumandok have had a long history of resistance against various forms of foreign and development aggression, one expression of which is their moving into the interior and more remote areas of Panay. As a collective way of asserting their rights to their ancestral domain, residents of sixteen barangays in Capiz founded in 1996 the organization TUMANDOK or Tumandok nga mga Mangunguma nga Nagapangapin sa Duta Kag Kinabuhi (Native Tillers Defending Land and Life).
Portions of the Cinemalaya film allude to the Tumandok indigenous group. It featured the Tumandok massacre, the killing of nine Tumandok leaders by Philippine state forces on December 30, 2020, because of their opposition to the Jalaur Mega Dam project. This bold and courageous choice helps in countering the state narrative that the massacre is not associated with the dam, an undeniable example of development aggression in Panay island.
It is worth noting, however, that the film is publicly presented as one that brings attention to the struggles of the Ati, another indigenous group in Panay which is more related to Negrito ethnic groups such as the Aeta in Luzon and Agta in Sierra Madre. The main cast of the film is composed of all-Ati first-time actors speaking in Inati language. Perhaps the crew might have used the word ‘tumandok’ in its general sense for this docu-fiction film.
The struggles of all indigenous peoples are worthy of being shown in films and garnering public support. In this light, carefully referring to each indigenous group remains crucial especially at a time when government agencies themselves heighten their attempts to divide the ranks of the indigenous peoples and deny them recognition.
For instance, in May 2021, Duterte-appointed National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) Commissioner Gaspar Cayat claimed that Tumandok is not included in the agency’s list of 101 indigenous peoples, and that Tumandok—along with Lumad and Igorot—are words merely used by “communists”.
NCIP will once again be put in the spotlight, as a portion of the proceeds from film screenings will be used to support the Ati people in applying for their Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) in Sitio Kabarangkalan, Barotac Viejo, Iloilo. Will the state, through NCIP, make the indigenous people go through the bureaucratic labyrinth?
Will the NCIP continue to support them after CADT approval, or will the NCIP then leave them to colluding private claimants and local officials? We are cautioned by what happened to the Ati community in Boracay: they faced harassment, violence and displacement in the years after NCIP granted their CADT in 2010.
The film gave its audience a glimpse into the struggles that indigenous peoples face within the established mechanisms shaped by the elite to favor and advance their interests. This underscores the necessity of complementing office paper work and court room battles with mass advocacy campaigns—an urgent task that all concerned citizens must undertake before indigenous lands and lives get totally wiped out.
