Alma Sinumlag

Alma Sinumlag is an indigenous activist from the Kalinga-Igorot of the Cordillera, Philippines. Mining, militarisation and other state violations of collective and individual rights of indigenous communities are significant players in leading her way towards activism. Treading this path made her vulnerable to threats to her right to life and freedom. This reality among women human rights defenders bolstered her will to keep the fire burning in upholding the rights of women and indigenous peoples.

APWLD interviewed Alma in December 2020 and below is her story.

Becoming an indigenous women human rights defender 

Before joining Cordillera Women’s Education Action Research Center (CWEARC) in 2012, I worked for a community newspaper based in Baguio City. It covered indigenous people’s issues, like indigenous communities’ struggles with the mining explorations in Benguet. 

The newspaper also featured stories about indigenous women. We had featured village women defending their ancestral lands and their rights. Since I am an indigenous woman from a tribe in Kalinga where women were not heard at community events, I became interested in how women were able to voice their opinions in patriarchal communities. The newspaper helped me learn that women’s voices could be strong in other tribal communities.

In this regard, when CWEARC was looking for a Research and Publications Coordinator in 2012, I joined it to work with these women leaders. At first, I worked with a community affected by a geothermal power project of Chevron. It’s a village in Kalinga. Between 2012 and 2016, we conducted feminist participatory action research with the community to understand energy projects and how they are privatised or corporatised.

Geothermal power projects claim to generate renewable energy. Chevron, however, violated the community’s right to free, prior and informed consent through bribery, cherry-picking leaders, and other practices. Also, the Philippine Army has been encamped in the community since before 2012. The military became more present when the company was seeking the community’s consent during protests and dissent, specifically in the village where we were doing the FPAR.

Women leaders expressed their concerns regarding the project in the FPAR during increased military encampments in their communities. They were continuously threatened by the military, including their paramilitary forces. In 2015, it was not only the local leaders who were threatened or harassed by the military forces and their paramilitary forces but also the researchers like me. There was an encounter in October between the government’s military forces and the New People’s Army’s (NPA) forces in the area. The military forces broadcast that I was a member of the NPA and declared me killed.

It’s a form of death threats and a form of red-tagging. I was therefore identified as a member of the NPA and became an open target for extrajudicial killings like what happened to many indigenous leaders in Cordillera.

That was the main reason CWEARC decided that I had to step back. So, I joined the Philippine Task for Indigenous Peoples’ Rights(PTIPR) to respite these threats. However, I did not leave CWEARC. I am still working with them regarding the issues in Kalinga, specifically the issues that we were working with during the FPAR.

Growing together with APWLD

In 2012, I first learned about APWLD through the FPAR. It was also my first year in CWEARC and I was still learning. At that time, I knew a little about Participatory Action Research because I had few experiences. During the FPAR regional training held in Nepal, I studied the history of feminism and compared it to the experiences of CWEARC in the past.

CWEARC had a bad experience in its early years after founding in 1987. The education tools proliferated by CWEARC before did not conform to the community’s cultural aspects, and disregarding class issues, it focused on the patriarchy. Therefore, instead of providing information on women’s rights to the women or the community, it divided families and the organisation. Educating or explaining feminism to communities with no knowledge of it must be done carefully. It was one of the historical challenges of CWEARC in terms of empowering indigenous women.

One important principle of the FPAR is intersectionality, which treats indigenous women as part of the whole community and not as a separate entity. FPAR has processes or actions to foster unity among community members, both among women and among community sectors, so that we can achieve our common objectives.

In the FPAR in Kalinga, we identified that women are more marginalised than others because of their identity, economic status, etc. By understanding the intersectionality of marginalisation, we were able to comprehend every woman’s experience in the community. At the same time, we created actions to unite the community in their shared goal – to protect their ancestral land.

There was, for instance, a government conditional cash transfer program (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, 4Ps), which began long before the Aquino administration. Many of the women in the community were members of 4Ps. It was difficult to unite these women because they were afraid that their community leaders or 4Ps leaders would report them to the government for taking part in the CWEARC activities. The women who were not members of 4Ps also felt envious of their neighbours who were members and received cash from the government when they were not.

FPAR took that into consideration to understand the context of the non-members and members of the 4Ps. As a result, we always emphasised that whether you are a member of 4Ps or not, you are part of the tribe, whose ancestral territory was threatened by the geothermal power project. As a community, we should unite when confronted with a big issue, such as the geothermal power project’s encroachment or the ongoing militarisation of our area.

Apart from the FPAR in the village affected by Chevron’s geothermal power project, we also carried out FPARs in villages with issues of GMO (genetically modified organism) corn, rice production challenges, and communities threatened by dams and hydroelectric power projects. 

As part of action research, we also held a regional conference on energy projects in 2014 during the FPAR process. In Baguio City, we conducted a regional summit for these villages so they could learn from each other and develop a unity statement regarding energy projects in the Cordillera region. Women were able to share their experiences with one another and felt, in a way, that they were not alone in their situation, but invigorated.

Raising indigenous voices through international engagement

It’s very important to let the international society hear indigenous communities’ voices in the Philippines because the government needs pressure.

Together with CWEARC, we had a dialogue with the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders in 2020 to express our concerns regarding human rights violations against women human rights defenders. Later, the UN Special Rapporteur organised an international dialogue which I also took part in, not only to share my own experiences but also to hear from other women human rights defenders. This was my recent engagement with the international platform. 

Sometimes the engagement confused me. International activities are important, especially when our voices are stifled in the Philippines. But sometimes, grassroots participants spend at least a month preparing, but are only given one or two minutes to speak out and observe the member states of the UN: some of them are absent, some of them are not listening, and so on. 

I think it over, “Is my intervention worth it? Is my preparation worth it?” and my answer is, those hardships would be paid off if your engagement was heard by some UN people or some international organisations that could support you. We should prepare to engage with communities outside the UN, since many of them can help raise the issues. When it comes to climate justice, for example, there are such activities outside the UN like sit-ins, along with the possibility of networking with people and organisations. I think that’s more important than only focusing on UN-organised activities.

Ways moving forward

Over the last decade, indigenous women have been speaking out more and more. Some indigenous women’s leaders have passed away since 2010, including Petra Macling, Endena Cogasi and others, and many are growing old.

When we conducted the FPAR in the community, we empowered the older generation of indigenous women and involved the younger generation. We always ensured there was a representation of young indigenous women. In geothermal power projects in Kalinga, young indigenous women were involved in the documentation process, in the analysis of the data, in planning the advocacy, and in carrying out the actions necessary to achieve the community’s goal. During this process, indigenous women from the older generation also had the opportunity to share their stories or transfer their knowledge to the younger generation.

Women’s human rights issues are escalating, especially since President Duterte took office. The red-tagging intensified, our organisations are demonised. Not just our organisations, but also nearly all those who advocate on behalf of indigenous women are tagged as Leftists or NPA supporters. However, young indigenous women leaders are rising up and taking the lead in advancing our dissent.